The Enchantress Cruise

In May 1912, Winston Churchill invited Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and a small party to join him on a cruise aboard the Admiralty yacht Enchantress. The three-week journey combined the ease of a Mediterranean holiday with official naval business, taking the party from Genoa to Naples, Malta, Bizerta, and Gibraltar. Those on board included Asquith, Churchill and his wife Clementine, Violet Asquith, Prince Louis of Battenberg, Admiral David Beatty, and senior civil servants; Margot Asquith declined to join them. Beneath its leisurely surface, the cruise was shaped by strategic concerns. Churchill used the voyage to discuss naval policy, consulting Lord Fisher in Naples, meeting Lord Kitchener in Malta, and informally observing the French fleet at Bizerta. His intense focus on naval affairs dominated life on board, even as news of transport strikes reached Asquith from London. Venetia Stanley was absent, though Asquith wrote to her during the journey, and Violet later remembered the cruise as “heavenly.”