page_title: David Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty
section_title: Boxer Rebellion
hierarchical_section_title: David Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty / Boxer Rebellion
context_page_description: David Richard Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty, GCB, OM, GCVO, DSO, PC was a Royal Navy officer. After serving in the Mahdist War and then the response to the Boxer Rebellion, he commanded the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron at the Battle of Jutland in 1916, a tactically indecisive engagement after which his aggressive approach was contrasted with the caution of his commander Admiral Sir John Jellicoe. He is remembered for his comment at Jutland that "There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today", after two of his ships exploded. Later in the war he succeeded Jellicoe as Commander in Chief of the Grand Fleet, in which capacity he received the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet at the end of the war. He then followed Jellicoe's path a second time, serving as First Sea Lord—a position that Beatty held longer than any other First Sea Lord. While First Sea Lord, he was involved in negotiating the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 in which it was agreed that the United States, Britain and Japan should set their navies in a ratio of 5:5:3, with France and Italy maintaining smaller ratio fleets of 1.75 each.
context_section_description: Beatty was appointed executive officer of the small battleship HMS Barfleur, flagship of the China Station, on 20 April 1899. The first year of his tour of duty was uneventful, but unrest against foreigners was growing in China. The Boxer movement was a secret Chinese peasant society committed to resisting oppression both from foreigners and from the Chinese government. The Empress Dowager Tzu-hsi partly encouraged the Boxer's opposition to foreigners in an attempt to turn their attention away from herself. The name was derived from ritual exercises supposed to make their users immune to bullets, which resembled boxing.
  In the summer of 1900 the rebellion reached Peking, where the German legation was attacked and foreign nationals withdrew to the relative safety of the Legation Quarter. Government troops joined forces with the rebels and the railway to the Treaty Port of Tientsin was interrupted. Admiral Sir Edward Seymour, then the Commander-in-Chief of the China Station, sent reinforcements to Peking, but they were insufficient to defend the Legation. An attempt was therefore made to send more troops from Tientsin, where British ships had been joined by French, German, Russian, American, Austrian, Italian and Japanese. The international naval brigade force of naval marines placed itself under the senior officer present, which was Seymour. After an urgent call for help from the Legation, Seymour set out on 10 June 1900 with 2,000 troops to attempt to break through to Peking in the Seymour Expedition. The force got about half way before abandoning the attempt because the railway line had been torn up. By now rebels had begun destroying the track behind the force, cutting it off from Tientsin.
  On 11 June 1900, Beatty and 150 men from HMS Barfleur landed as part of a force of 2,400 defending Tientsin from 15,000 Chinese troops plus Boxers. On 16 June 1900 the Taku forts were bombarded and captured to ensure ships could still reach the port. Fierce fighting broke out throughout the foreign areas and railway station, and Beatty was injured. He later took part in the successful relief of the naval brigade and was promoted to captain on 8 November 1900. Beatty returned to Britain, where he required an operation to restore proper use of his left arm.
caption: Admiral Seymour returning to Tientsin with wounded men
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