Cunningham was barely 14, in his first year as a navy man on the training ship HMS Britannia, when he was dubbed “Meat Face” for his am­a­teur pugilism — bloody, bare-fisted brawls staged in a stone quarry. He went to sea as a midshipman cadet at 15, transported to his first duty in South Africa on a steamer, where he won the ship’s chess tournament, defeating none other than Cecil Rhodes, the British industrialist and founder of the Rhodes Scholarship. Turns out the brawler also had brains.

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As a young destroyer commander in World War I, Cunningham was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and went on to earn a reputation as a master ship-handler in the interwar period. Serving mostly in the Mediterranean in the 1930s, the admiral was eventually named commander in chief of the Mediterranean Fleet in 1939.With the outbreak of World War II, he soon drew Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s attention.

Churchill shared Cunningham’s belief that the island of Malta was a linchpin in the war. For his part, the admiral respected Churchill’s intelligence and ability to persuade the British people to the side of necessity — “the great man,” Cunningham called him. But he didn’t think much of Churchill’s impatience, tone (“ungracious and hasty”) or decision-making process. Cunningham is quite restrained in his criticism of the prime minister in his 1951 autobiography A Sailor’s Odyssey (just as Churchill is restrained in his criticism of others in his own memoirs), but his personal diary shows how he really felt. A recurring complaint appeared in an entry made on June 5, 1944: “He really is an incorrigible optimist.” Seven months later he finished the thought. “How he works in such complete ignorance & disregard for facts beats me.

“The trouble is the PM can never give way gracefully,” he later added. “He must always be right & if forced to give way, gets vindictive & tries by almost any means to get his own back.”

The admiral resented Churchill’s micro­management and insistence on receiving labor-intensive reports he may well have read but often disregarded. Cunningham believed delay was the only result. “What a drag on the wheel of war this man is,” he said. “Everything is centralised in him, with consequent indecision & waste of time before anything can be done.”

He was similarly vexed when Churchill asked King George VI to make Cunningham a baron, a title the admiral finally accepted in order to recognize the sailors who served under him in the Mediterranean. “I fear it is just what I don’t want,” he wrote in his diary. “I have not the cash to sustain the dignity….I care not for these titles, but I suppose for the good of the navy one must take it.”

The honor came with a diplomatic assignment. He was told that the first sea lord, Admiral Dudley Pound, wanted him in Washington to deal with the difficult and all-powerful secretary of the Navy and commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet, Admiral Ernest King. Among all his missions, Cunningham chafed over just this one: a desk job in Washington for about four months in 1942, a time he believed he was needed most in the Mediterranean. But Cunningham’s writings also suggest that Church­ill had an ulterior motive. By offering insultingly low pay for the Washington assignment, the admiral reasoned that Churchill was hoping Cunningham would refuse. The prime minister would then assign him command of the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow, replacing Admiral Jack Tovey, who was opposed to the sacrificial Arctic convoys Churchill was using to appease Stalin. With this move, Churchill could keep his warrior Cunningham without overruling Pound, and in the bargain ridding himself of an admi­ral who resisted him — although it’s questionable whether Cunningham would have accepted the Arctic convoys either.

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