Michel E. T. D. Vlasto, RNWorld War l, 1914-18
04-2000
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Michel E. T. D. Vlasto, RN World War l, 1914-18 04-2000 |
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A few items of memorabilia relating to the wartime experiences of Michel E. T. D. Vlasto who served with the Royal Navy in the Falklands, the Aegean and Mediterranean. These involve two sea battles, a posthumous brush with Rupert Brooke and some unexpected intelligence gathering. See also: Other Family History Items The Battles Of Coronel & The Falklands, 1914 Michel Ernest T. D. Vlasto – Obituary |
Michel E. T. D. Vlasto (1888-1979) was born in Paris, spent his childhood at 7 Rue Lamennais and was educated at Winchester College, England from 1901-03. By 1914 he had qualified as a surgeon at University College Hospital, London, and adopted British nationality (1913). He was called up into the Royal Navy (Volunteer Reserve) as a surgeon on the outbreak of war with Germany. The call-up came in the customary terse form: a telegram ordered him to report to Devonport and HMS Canopus – in which he saw action in the battles of Coronel and the Falkland Islands in 1914. In 1915 he served in her in the Mediterranean and Aegean. Later he was at the naval hospital HMS Bighi, in Malta and in HMS London. A prominent member of the Greek community in London, his knowledge of Greek became an Intelligence asset when British warships in the Aegean were preparing for the Gallipoli and Salonika campaigns. At HMS Bighi, Malta, he met his future wife, Chrissy Mitchell Croil, then a Royal Navy V.A.D. |
 HMS Canopus in 1914 or 1915. She saw action in the battles of Coronel and the Falkland Islands in late 1914. At Coronel she had the sad task of taking command of the remains of Admiral Craddock's ravaged squadron and reporting the defeat to the Admiralty. At the Falklands she had only practice rounds in the breaches of her rear guns when she launched salvoes at German cruisers threatening to trap and destroy the entire Britsh battle squadron as it lay at berth in Port Stanley. Thanks to her prompt action the British squadron had time to raise steam, chase the German vessels and sink them one by one in the South Atlantic. The presence of the awning over the rear decks suggests that this picture may have been taken in the Mediterranean or Aegean where she was on station in Spring 1915 as the Gallipoli invasion approached. It was from this ship that arrangements were made for the burial of Rupert Brooke on the island of Skyros in April 1915 and the British handled intelligence communications with agents ashore. |
The Battles of Coronel and the Falkland Islands...
Enclosure No. with letter from "CANOPUS", No.9, dated th. November 1914. COPY OF W/T SIGNAL From "CANOPUS". To Governor, Falkand Islands. Date 7th. November 1914. 8.30 p.m. Please send following message to British Minister Montevideo for Admiralty and Admiral, 5th. Cruiser Squadron. Begins. At 4.40 p.m. Sunday, 1st. November, "CANOPUS" then in latitude 41.20 S., longitude 76.10 W., course N 10 W speed 9 knots, with colliers "BENBROOK" and "LANGOE", and CANOPUS raised steam full speed and proceeded to northward. At 8.45 p.m. received first intimation that squadron had been engaged from GLASGOW. Signal read "Fear GOOD HOPE lost, our squadron scattered". CANOPUS continued course to northward at full speed until 1 a.m. Monday, 2nd. November, in hope of rendering assistance to any ships being chased by superior force, Ship's position being signalled. At 1 a.m. having had no communication except from GLASGOW since 6 p.m. 1st. November, made rendezvous with GLASGOW who was steering SW, 20 knots, and steered to cut off colliers and order them return to Falkland Islands. 3.30 a.m. Signalled colliers to return Falkland and altered course to southward and gave ship's position to GLASGOW with orders to overhaul CANOPUS and rendezvous Falklands. Reduced speed to 14 knots. It was blowing southerly gale with heavy sea. There was systematic jambing [sic] by enemy's ships from 4.30 p.m. 1st. November until 5 a.m. 2nd. November, rendering it most difficult to obtain signals. GLASGOW passed ahead night of 2nd. and proceeded through Magellan Straits and made rendezvous with CANOPUS in Spiteful Bay, Friday, 6th. at daylight when CANOPUS escorted her to Falklands, she being short of coal and unseaworthy from gunfire and gale from S W. OTRANTO'S position at 5 p.m., Monday, 2nd. November, was latitude 39.36 S., longitude 78.6 W., course S. 18 W., 17 knots. rendezvous at Falklands was signalled her. Her position on Friday, 11 p.m., was latitude 55 S. Longitude 63 W., course N.25 E., speed 14 knots. She was ordered Monte Video by CANOPUS. - - - - - - - Handwritten note by M. E. T. D. Vlasto: Canopus Lat. 51S Long 59.18W Course S72E Speed 12 kt. [See detailed information on The Battles of Coronel & Falkland Islands |
 Journalism has always been unreliable! HMS Otranto was in fact involved in the Battle of Coronel on 1 November 1914. |
On the death of Rupert Brooke...The poet Rupert Brooke was serving as a Sub Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, a day or so away from joining the Gallipoli Campaign, when he died of blood poisoning aboard a British hospital ship in Tris Boukes Bay, the Aegean, on 23rd April 1915 – Easter Sunday. Owing to hostilities, arrangements for Brooke's burial on the island of Skyros were hampered by communication difficulties between the British and Greek governments. A signal from London was made to HMS Canopus in which Surg. Lt. Michel Vlasto was serving and was also responsible for hospital ship casualties. As the only Greek-speaking officer aboard, Vlasto was asked to translate the message to be forwarded to the Greek government in Athens. However, a small error resulted in him requesting that Brooke's body be 'exhumed' rather than 'buried'. The two words are rather similar in Greek. The note [above right] was written by Michel Vlasto's daughter Helen Long (née Vlasto). 
Brooke was in fact buried hastily by his fellow officers at night and his grave marked by a stone cairn and an inscription which read: Here lies the servant of God, Sub-lieutenant in the English Navy, who died for the deliverance of Constantinople from the Turks. Soon after the war his mother laid out his present grave inscribed with his best-known work, The Soldier: If I should die, think only this of me: / That there's some corner of a foreign field / That is for ever England. There shall be / In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; / A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, / Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam. / A body of England's, breathing English air, / Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. /// And think, this heart, all evil shed away, / A pulse in the eternal mind, no less / Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; / Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; / And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, / In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. (August 1914) Poignantly, he must have written the following, Fragment, on board ship and only days before the carnage of the Gallipoli campaign which he was not to see: I strayed about the deck, an hour, to-night / Under a cloudy moonless sky; and peeped / In at the windows, watched my friends at table, / Or playing cards, or standing in the doorway, / Or coming out into the darkness. Still / No one could see me. /// I would have thought of them - / Heedless, within a week of battle - in pity, / Pride in their strength and in the weight and firmness / And link'd beauty of bodies, and pity that / This gay machine of splendour 'ld soon be broken, / Thought little of, pashed, scattered... /// Only, always, / I could but see them - against the lamplight - pass / Like coloured shadows, thinner than filmy glass, / Slight bubbles, fainter than the wave's faint light, / That broke to phosphorous out in the night, / Perishing things and strange ghosts - soon to die / To other ghosts - this one, or that, or I. (Spring 1915) |
Intelligence Matters and Compton Mackenzie...
Nicholas J. Vassilakakis Grocer & Ship-Chandler Canéa & Suda Bay – Crete Tenedas 14/2/15 Sir Please inform to the Captain H. S. Grant [captain of HMS Canopus] that last night left Tenedas 10 Turks for the another part at Turks coast (?). [Message in Greek with additional translation notes written by Michel Vlasto] N. Vassilakakis The above is the only remaining evidence of Surg. Lt. Michel Vlasto's brief foray into intelligence work. Here he was asked to act as an intermediary between the Royal Navy and a Cretan Greek acting as an intelligence agent. The agent, Vassilakakis, is advising the navy on the redeployment of enemy Turks on the island. It seems likely that Vlasto was also ordered to pass on approved information for local consumption and publication [see below] and that HMS Canopus was acting as a signals conduit between London and its spymaster in Athens, Compton Mackenzie. It is easy to understand how Michel Vlasto, a British naval officer who spoke Greek and was of Greek ancestry, would have been invaluable to Mackenzie. However, it seems likely that Vlasto's recruitment was an informal arrangement of purely passing convenience. 
Sixty years later, in conversations with the author (his grandson), Michel Vlasto was typically diffident and reticent about what these intelligence activities had involved. But he appears to have maintained an admiring and friendly contact for several years after the First World War with Compton Mackenzie (right) who had been head of the British secret service counter-espionage section in Athens from 1915 to early 1916. They apparently had close and probably frequent contact in 1915. Mackenzie is now best remembered as a reknowned author – not least of Whisky Galore – but, as an intelligence officer, he played a key rôle in organising Britain's security service within the Aegean theatre, as well as planning and executing clandestine operations against the Germans in Greece and against others in the region who were considered enemies of the Entente.For further information, see:
Gallipoli... 
This information, published in the Greek press, was supplied by Surg. Lt. Michel Vlasto, perhaps in return for the intelligence he was asked to collect from Greeks acting as agents and informers for the Royal Navy... [see example above]. It's likely that Compton Mackenzie wanted this information to be fed to the local press for strategic purposes."There are missing today from the several anchorages of the [British] fleet the special hospital ships, the special aeroplane ship and the fleet-line battleships. We do not know up till now the extent of their action. In the direction of the narrows can be distinguished thick smoke of vessels in motion but it has not yet been established whether these are warships or other vessels. A doctor of an English battleship, Vlasto by name, ensures us that a definite undertaking for the passage of the narrows has been decided on by the English but that a day has not yet been fixed. He also informs us that the Turks have guns within the forts operated by electricity which are hidden within special fortifications after firing." The 'narrows' referred to above are the Dardanelles and the 'action' is presumably the Allied attack, prior to the Gallipoli campaign, on Turkish gun positions which caused serious damage to British warships. The humiliating Gallipoli episode claimed the lives of over 100,000 on both sides before allied troops were withdrawn later in 1915. HMS Canopus though powerful, was relatively old and slow. She was presumably moving north, along with her hospital ships, to support the impending attack on the Turkish batteries in the Dardanelles and the massive allied invasion of Gallipoli on the opposite shore. |
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The originals of the above documents are the property of the author. 
The Scottish writer Compton Mackenzie was one of the star officers of MI6 during the World War l. He was the an outspoken supporter of Scottish nationalism who once described himself as a Jacobite Tory. Born in 1883, Mackenzie had made his reputation as a writer before joining the ill-fated Dardanelles expedition in 1915. Invalided out of the army soon afterwards he was recruited by British Intelligence in the eastern Mediterranean and was soon in charge of counter-espionage for the Aegean region at Intelligence HQ in Athens. So impressed was 'C' (Sir Mansfield Cumming, head of MI6) with Mackenzie's performance that he proposed that Mackenzie become his second-in-command once the war was over. Instead, Mackenzie returned to writing and in 1932 ran afoul of the authorities for publishing details of his secret service work in the third volume of his war memoirs Greek Memories. Prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act, he was tried and found technically guilty at the Old Bailey in January 1933. Like so many others who have been shabbily treated by MI6, Mackenzie had his revenge. A year later he published Water On The Brain a savage and caustic satire on the absurdities of the secret service.Meanwhile, in c. 1917 (above right) on the home front, Michel Vlasto's young nephews and nieces were demonstrating solidarity with him and Britain's wartime navy! In the fashion and patriotic spirit of the times the girls are wearing straw hats with HMS (Superior?) written on the bands. The children are: Fanny Zarifi, Theodore Demitriadi, Hélène Zarifi and Georgie Demitriadi, probably outside No. 29 Porchester Terrace, London – the home of their grandmother, Helen Vlasto (née Zarifi). |
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© Christopher Long (2000). Copyright, Syndication & All Rights Reserved Worldwide. The text and graphical content of this and linked documents are the copyright of their author and or creator and site designer, Christopher Long, unless otherwise stated. No publication, reproduction or exploitation of this material may be made in any form prior to clear written agreement of terms with the author or his agents. Christopher Long |
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