More about boats….

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Several things have struck me while gathering the texts for Boats for the R.A.F. 1931-1935.

First, this is an area that Lawrence’s biographers have, on the whole, left unexplored beyond a bare outline. Some, like Victoria Ocampo and Harold Orlans seem to have had little personal enthusiasm for boats or machinery. Fair enough, but the result was blindness to really significant aspects of TEL’s personality and skillset. You can’t leave gaps like that if you are seriously interested in someone’s biography. Gaps weaken the validity of your conclusions. As TEL wrote (to F.L.Lucas): “I like reading all a man. Often at the very end one suddenly seems to comprehend him”. That is the guiding principle behind our edition of his writings.

Second, it is surprising how much material survives from TEL’s work on boats. The volume as it stands runs to 350 pages. This week and next we are running a final check in some less obvious places in case they hold anything we are missing. So the book just might grow a bit more.

350 pages of writing by TEL is quite a bit, especially when it provides a coherent narrative of his work during four years of his service career (and, as it turned out, the last four years of his life). That narrative is, incidentally, central to a question on which Lawrence’s biographers are divided: did he find those years fulfilling and satisfying – or were they really a period of pointless and miserable time-serving?

One reason so much evidence survives is that officers and other ranks who worked with Lawrence hung on  to his letters and reports. Most of this material ought to have been kept in official files – and maybe it once was. Had it stayed in those files, it’s probable that little would survive. As it is, the documents were hoarded and later, in most cases, sold. Today they are widely scattered. Some may have been lost, and some may still be lurking unrecorded in private collections; nevertheless, we have managed to reunite enough of their texts to tell a fairly detailed story.

In that context, the Harry Ransom Centre at Austin, Texas merits particular acknowledgement. Many collections might have sought to acquire TEL’s literary, military or diplomatic correspondence; but HRC – in its focus on Lawrence’s post-war years – also acquired some of the key Boats material, including most of Lawrence’s letters to Flt. Lt. W.E.G. Beauforte-Greenwood, TEL’s boss at the RAF Marine Branch, and TEL’s final log of winter overhaul work at Bridlington. HRC also holds one of the few surviving copies of his 200 Class Seaplane Tender manual (it is an early uncorrected copy, and I am not sure where it came from).

As to the story itself, two things are striking. First, Lawrence’s acute grasp of technical questions, and secondly his skill as a technical author.

One can see, going back to his work on photography and at Carchemish, as well as his subsequent interest in the mechanics of fine printing, that Lawrence must have had some practical ability. But what is displayed here is far more than mere ability. Sydney Smith, his Commanding Officer at Plymouth, considered him “one of the ablest mechanics in his command” (Golden Reign, 1940. p. 140). Did ‘T.E. Shaw’ (as he was then known) learn all that just from tinkering with his motor-cycles?

I think not – and this is a case where the written record of an earlier period implies far more than it spells out. We know that, from the beginning of 1927 until May 1928, Lawrence worked as clerk in the Engine Repair Shop at Karachi. That was the base where the engines of all RAF aircraft in India were periodically returned for complete overhaul. Lawrence’s job was to make a detailed official record of every stage – as the engines were stripped down and reassembled – noting all abnormal damage and replacement parts. Lawrence mentions this job, but I have seen no examples of these reports. Then, three years later, we suddenly encounter this man who – deus ex machina -  understands the function of every component in an internal combustion engine, knows how to remove and reassemble it, and can rapidly grasp the strong and weak points of particular design features. We shouldn’t be surprised. His work on aircraft engines at Karachi was an exceptional apprenticeship. He thoroughly understood what he was writing about.

We must also owe to the Karachi machine-shop his extraordinary ability to describe these things in words. Over the years I have done a good deal of technical writing. It isn’t easy. In fact, some engineers with great technical knowledge find it difficult to put what they know into words that are easily understood. Lawrence’s technical writing remains amazingly clear to this day. Anyone who knows the basic functions of the parts of an internal combustion engine (the kind of thing many now learn at school) should have little difficulty understanding the problems and solutions he describes.

The same is true of his understanding and writing about boats. We connect Lawrence’s name with the desert, but boats were not a new enthusiasm. He had even shipped an Oxford canoe to Carchemish, before the war. By the time he began working on RAF boats, he had owned and maintained an American Biscayne Baby speedboat – built to cutting-edge design – for over a year.   Soon after arriving at Plymouth (a seaplane station) in 1929 he had been posted to the Marine and Workshop section.  So by 1931 he knew plenty about boats.

And how did his superiors rate him? “Dear Wing Commander,” Beauforte-Greenwood wrote to Sydney Smith in May 1931, “May I express to you my great appreciation for all the assistance you have been good enough to afford my branch by allowing Shaw to run the trials of the new speed-boat at Hythe.”

Notice the word “run”.