The inside story of a spy

Karen Neville

This month author & journalist Michael Smith introduces us to Hector Bywater who talked his way around the dockyards

Regular readers will remember the story of Walter Christmas, that “wonderful man” who spied on the German navy for Mansfield Cumming the first ‘Chief’ of MI6 during the First World War. But Cumming’s first spy inside Germany reporting on preparations for the First World War was another fascinating character albeit not quite so colourful as Christmas.  

Hector Bywater, a 27-year-old British journalist based in Dresden, wrote on ‘naval matters’ for a number of US newspapers and journals. Bywater was recruited in late 1911 and is listed in Cumming’s accounts, now released to the archives, as a “fixed agent abroad” with the designation H.H.O., or sometimes H₂O, a typically Cummingesque joke. He travelled around Germany mapping out defences and using his role as a naval journalist as an excuse for talking his way into the dockyards.  

Bywater described how he managed to get on board the battle cruiser Von der Tann, which was anchored off Hamburg. “I determined to visit her, though the risk was considerable,” he said, resisting any false modesty. “By a stroke of luck, I found that a local shipping man, to whom I had a letter from a mutual friend in Berlin, knew several officers of the ship, and had visited them on board. He was going again, and by very tactful manoeuvring I got him to invite me to accompany him. I remarked to my companion that, being a foreigner, I might not be welcome on board. He spoke to the officer of the watch, who was one of his friends, explained who I was (or, more strictly speaking, who he thought I was), and I was promptly invited to come up. We spent two hours in the ship and saw nearly everything except the inside of the gun-turrets and the engine-room. I memorised all the important details and subsequently wrote an elaborate report on the ship.”  

But Bywater’s greatest claim to fame is arguably that in his 1925 book The Great Pacific War he predicted a Japanese air attack on US warships based in the Pacific leading to war, albeit he said it would occur in the Philippines, rather than Pearl Harbor. Senior Japanese naval officers subsequently confirmed that the book played a key role in their planning. Bywater died in 1940 so was not alive to see his prediction vindicated in December 1941 when the Japanese launched the Pearl Harbor attack bringing America into the war. 

Michael Smith’s latest book The Real Special Relationship: How the British and American Secret Services Work Together is out now in paperback.