Genesis of the Grand Fleet: The Admiralty, Germany, and the Home Fleet, 1896–1914

GENESIS of the GRAND FLEET

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Warship Builders: An Industrial History of U.S. Naval Shipbuilding, 1922–1945

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Studies in Naval History and Sea Power Christopher M. Bell and James C. Bradford, editors

Studies in Naval History and Sea Power advances our understanding of sea power and its role in global security by publishing significant new scholarship on navies and naval affairs. The series presents specialists in naval history, as well as students of sea power, with works that cover the role of the world’s naval powers, from the ancient world to the navies and coast guards of today. The works in Studies in Naval History and Sea Power examine all aspects of navies and conflict at sea, including naval operations, strategy, and tactics, as well as the intersections of sea power and diplomacy, navies and technology, sea services and civilian societies, and the financing and administration of seagoing military forces.

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© 2021 by Christopher M. Buckey

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Buckey, Christopher M., author.

Title: Genesis of the Grand Fleet : the Admiralty, Germany, and the Home Fleet, 1896–1914 / Christopher M. Buckey.

Other titles: Admiralty, Germany, and the Home Fleet, 1896–1914

Description: Annapolis, Maryland : Naval Institute Press, [2021] | Series: Studies in naval history and sea power | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020058511 (print) | LCCN 2020058512 (ebook) | ISBN 9781682475812 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781682475829 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Great Britain. Royal Navy. Home Fleet—History—20th century. | Great Britain—History, Naval—20th century.

Classification: LCC DA89 .B78 2021 (print) | LCC DA89 (ebook) | DDC 359.00941/09041—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020058511

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GENESIS of the

GRAND FLEET

The Admiralty, Germany, and the Home Fleet, 1896–1914

CHRISTOPHER M. BUCKEY

NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS

ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND

For Sarian Grevelle, who always knew this would be published.

Contents

List of Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter One. From Review to Reform, 1897–1905

Chapter Two. Genesis, 1906–1907

Chapter Three. Planning for War, 1901–1909

Chapter Four. Politics, 1907–1909

Chapter Five. Old ’Ard ’Art’s Navy, 1910–1911

Chapter Six. The Churchill-Bridgeman Admiralty, 1911–1912

Chapter Seven. The Serene Sea Lord, 1911–1913

Chapter Eight. The Last Months of Peace, 1913–1914

Chapter Nine. Conclusions

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

One problem with writing a book such as this is simply keeping track of all those who helped with its creation in one way or another. If not comprehensive, I hope my acknowledgments are at least representative.

First and foremost are my parents, Pamela and Captain David Buckey, USN (Ret.), and my doctoral adviser, Prof. Eric Grove, all of whom supported me beyond logic and reason. Equally supportive and patient are my editors, Prof. Christopher Bell, Glenn Griffith, Caitlin Bean, and Aden Nichols.

While I cannot hope to name every historian, naval officer, or scholar I discussed this project with or who inspired me along the way, the following were especially helpful: Annette Ammerman; Dr. Alan Anderson; Commander Benjamin Armstrong, USN; Prof. Emeritus Jonathan Beecher; Prof. John Beeler; Prof. Tim Benbow; Prof. Jeremy Black; Prof. Edmund Burke; Dr. Bradley Cesario; Prof. Mark Cioc; Gordon Corrigan; Alan Dobson; Dr. Richard Dunley; Prof.-Dr. Michael Epkenhans; Prof. John Ferris; Prof. Douglas Ford; Dr. Norman Friedman; Rear Admiral James Goldrick, RAN (Ret.); Dr. Andrew Haeberlin; Dr. Louis Halewood; Simon Harley; Prof. John Hattendorf; Ruth Hoffman; Trent Hone; Kate E. Jamieson; Prof. Emeritus Peter Kenez; Prof. Paul Kennedy; Prof. Andrew Lambert; Dr. Scott Lindgren; Tony Lovell; Lieutenant Martin May-Clingo, RN (Ret.); Stephen McLaughlin; Dr. David Morgan-Owen; Dr. Randy Papadopoulos; Dr. Ryan Peeks; Prof. Emerita Cynthia Polecritti; Commander Chris Rentfrow, USN; John Roberts; Prof. N. A. M. Rodger; Prof. Alaric Searle; Prof. Matthew Seligmann; Dr. Caitlin Silberman; Dr. Lucian Staiano-Daniels; Commander Ninian Stewart, RN (Ret.); Prof. Jon Sumida; Commander Mark Tunnicliffe, RCN (Ret.); Prof. Lynn Westerkamp; Hikaru Yabuki; and the late Prof. Dennis Show-alter. Those familiar with the history department of the University of California, Santa Cruz will note several familiar names. As I am a graduate of that institution (as is Professor Jon Sumida, one of the modern pioneers of the study of the Royal Navy), this is no coincidence.

Equally crucial was the support of the staff of the various archives I visited over more than a decade, notably Alan Packwood and the staff of the Churchill Archive Centre; Andrew Choong Han Lin, Jeremy Michell, Renee Orr, and the staff of the Caird Library and the Brass Foundry at the National Maritime Museum; Captain Christopher Page, RN (Ret.), and the redoubtable Jenny Wraight of the Naval Historical Branch; and the multitudes of others at the places mentioned above and at the National Archives, Kew; the Bodleian Library; the British Library; the National Archives and Records Administration; the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives; and others.

It should, of course, be understood that all errors that follow are my own—and to paraphrase Mark Twain, counting those out, what is left is history.

INTRODUCTION

The British Grand Fleet of November 1918 was the greatest assemblage of naval power yet witnessed. It was an international fleet whose principal strength was forty-five dreadnoughts from three nations, forty cruisers ranging from small scouts to the large light cruisers Courageous and Glorious, and—a sign of things to come—five aircraft carriers. It had been the guarantor of the Allies’ command of the sea since war’s outbreak in August 1914, and the Admiralty recognized that fact in a secret memorandum a month after the Armistice:

The war has been fought and the final decision reached on land; but the land campaign was rendered possible only by reinforcements and supply from overseas. The armies of the Western Front, where the main offensive lay, have to a great extent … depended on the supremacy of the allies at sea—guaranteed by the Grand Fleet—and on the carrying power of the British Mercantile Marine. The Navy and Mercantile Marine of Great Britain have, in fact, been the spearshaft of which the Allied armies have been the point.¹

Victory ashore had depended upon victory at sea, and the Admiralty refused to allow this to be forgotten.

The Grand Fleet’s first wartime commander, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, expressed a similar view: "Our Fleet was the one and only factor that was vital to the existence of the Empire, as indeed to the Allied cause."² Yet there had been no glorious repetition of Trafalgar that so many expected, no great Armageddon at sea.³ The war’s greatest sea fight, the Battle of Jutland, had been an anticlimax to those not present. Such was public disappointment, one midshipman recounted, We heard that our seamen going to hospital had been jeered at and ‘boo’ed’ by some shore folk.⁴ And while Winston Churchill had described Jellicoe as the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon, the less-known paragraph before this also deserves notice: "The standpoint of the Commander-in-Chief was unique. His responsibilities were on a different scale from all others. It might fall to him as to no other man—Sovereign, Statesman, Admiral or General—to issue orders which in the space of two or three hours might nakedly decide who won the war. The destruction of the British Battle Fleet would be fatal. Jellicoe was the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon."⁵

By necessity the Royal Navy had adopted the role of a jailer keeping the German fleet confined but never entering its cell. Hardly dramatic enough a role for those who wished to break out of the strait-jacket of trench warfare in Flanders fields.⁶

The gap between expectations and results has been a driving force of the historiography of the period. Born to Nelson, the British psyche demanded a new Trafalgar. The comparatively dramatic naval campaigns of the Second World War only intensified the assumption that the Royal Navy had somewhere blundered. Only recently has one eminent naval historian provided some nuance: It may be that the contrast between the navy’s performances in the two world wars has been overdrawn since in the First World War the Royal Navy had all the advantages but few of the opportunities.⁷ In fact the Admiralty of the early 1900s has been a constant target for blame, stereotyped as full of senior officers’ old theories on the application of naval force.⁸ One budding scholar practically apologized for his perverse choice in studying British submarine policy for a doctorate thesis.⁹ And from such like a belief has thus persisted that the Navy’s plans for war were puerile, ill-informed, and based on the whims of senior officers.¹⁰ The Admiralty simply could not ever have been at the mercy of events which were out of their control or forces more powerful than they could master.¹¹ In some cases writers’ ideology predisposed them to view the technologically cautious Royal Navy as an unthinking bigoted reactionary institution.¹²

The Royal Navy in the years before 1914 was characterized by rapid change everywhere, many of which were initiated or hurried along by the remarkable Admiral Sir John Fisher, who casts such a shadow over the period that the great Arthur Marder said the entire period from 1904 through 1919 might be called the Fisher Era.¹³ Indeed Fisher and his creations—HMS Dreadnought most notably—are still icons of the prewar period.¹⁴ Yet the creation and evolution of the Grand Fleet’s predecessor, the Home Fleet, has remained out of the historical limelight. A comprehensive study of the Home Fleet’s origins is notable by its absence.

Most studies of the period only reference the Home Fleet tangentially, if at all. Even Jellicoe’s published descriptions were cursory enough for Professor Eric Grove to lament its lack of detail.¹⁵ The next major author to describe the Home Fleet’s creation was Fisher’s cupbearer-turned-biographer Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon, whose account suffers from obvious and probably inevitable partisanship toward Fisher.¹⁶ And while Arthur Marder provided a summary in the first volume of From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, his reputation has come under detailed and sustained criticisms.¹⁷ In part this is because of the inevitable rule of history that no historian escapes criticism.¹⁸ Nor should they. However, the criticisms of Marder’s work have become ever more strident not just in disputing Marder’s interpretations … but also in castigating his research methodology and seeking to subvert his high scholarly standing.¹⁹ One article critically notes how Marder’s analysis in his 1940 work, The Anatomy of British Sea Power, reflected the ‘Merchants of Death’ thesis, which blamed arms and arms races for war.²⁰ In the face of these attacks it is hardly surprising that few historians now accept his analytical framework.²¹ This is in spite of Anatomy, the foundational From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, and his other works remaining essential to the study of the period.²²

Marder’s fall from his former position as Olympian adjudicator of the Anglo-German naval race,²³ is largely due to the influential work of a revisionist school of naval historians, which might be said to have begun with Ruddock Mackay’s great biography of Fisher.²⁴ While preceded in absolute chronology by others such as Ruddock Mackay, Bryan Ranft, and Jon Sumida, in terms of the history of the Home Fleet, the primary revisionist is Nicholas Lambert. Lambert sets the Home Fleet’s birth and subsequent development in the context of Fisher’s decade-long attempt to shift British maritime policy toward flotilla defense. This policy would see British home waters defended by torpedo-armed flotilla craft allowing the fleet to project naval force into distant waters without fear of a ‘bolt from the blue’ from another European power while the surface fleet was on foreign service.²⁵ In Nicholas Lambert’s conception the Home Fleet established in 1907 was centered on flotilla craft and thus peculiarly adapted for sea denial operations in the North Sea. Such a narrative is tempting as it challenges Fisher’s reputation as an enthusiastic but erratic strategist and the Admiralty’s reputation as a hidebound institution. As will be seen, however, the arguments put forward in the flotilla defense thesis are contradicted by surviving Admiralty documentation.²⁶ And where they are not, there is often a simpler explanation than Fisher being compelled to mislead the nation’s political executive as to the true direction of naval policy.²⁷ In many cases, the older works such as Marder’s are closer to the truth than revisionists such as Lambert have pronounced.²⁸

The final notable work to describe the Home Fleet’s origin is David Morgan-Owen’s recent Fear of Invasion, which emphasizes the Navy’s need to make credible defensive preparations against the possibility of a German invasion attempt.²⁹ While most naval officers as well as many politicians and even senior soldiers were doubtful invasion was a realistic danger, it nonetheless had to be faced. For Morgan-Owen, the Home Fleet’s creation was intimately bound up with the invasion question, and this makes sense of the seemingly anomalous addition of the active duty Nore Division to what had initially been a consolidation of reserve forces at the Navy’s three home ports (Chatham, Portsmouth, and Devonport). Unfortunately the Home Fleet is not the central theme of Fear of Invasion, and so aside from its creation and some description of its intended wartime activities little further detail is given. Morgan-Owen’s other work fills in other details of the Home Fleet’s subsequent development and thoroughly undermines the flotilla defense thesis.³⁰

This book’s intention is to show that while Marder’s contention that Fisher’s creation of the Home Fleet in 1907 was a logical development of the policy of concentration at home which had been initiated in December 1904 was broadly accurate, but nonetheless far from complete.³¹ Other factors were at play, notably the Admiralty’s pressing need to cut expenditures to satisfy the Liberal government’s general anti-militarism and to fund their sweeping (and costly) series of social reforms. Further, revisionist claims such as the direction of British foreign policy … after he took office had surprisingly little impact on Fisher’s strategic outlook are unsupportable.³² Although it began before Fisher became First Sea Lord,³³ the Royal Navy’s transition to facing Germany quickened substantially after Russian sea power was destroyed in the Russo-Japanese War, although it seems wise to accept Paul Kennedy’s caution that the pace of this reorganization of British naval policy … should not be exaggerated.³⁴ Finally there were good strategic and organizational reasons for the establishment of the Home Fleet, and perhaps surprisingly they mirrored an earlier 1902 reorganization of the Navy’s home waters reserve forces.³⁵ Nor did the Home Fleet remain static once brought into being. Its evolution into the wartime Grand Fleet was a product of growth and change in British naval strategy, technology, and tactics, as well as the notorious clash between Sir John Fisher and the pathologically insubordinate Lord Charles Beresford.³⁶ Nor were Fisher and Beresford the only people who effected the Home Fleet’s development—also crucial were its commanders-in-chief, their staffs, the officials at the Admiralty, and many others besides.

With so many varied influences, any attempt to follow the Home Fleet’s development requires examination of related issues. Thus, at different points in the narrative, matters such as warship design, interservice rivalries, international diplomacy, war planning, bureaucratic empire-building, party politics, budgetary concerns, the development of naval tactics, and even personal vendettas will have to be examined in various levels of detail. However, limitations of space have made it impossible to give equal time to every part of the Home Fleet’s story, and those interested in the social history of the fleet and its men will likely be disappointed. Although every effort has been made to avoid this book becoming an example of what George Orwell termed unreadable regimental histories,³⁷ a lack of readily accessible source material (the prewar Royal Navy has no equivalent to Petty Officer Charles Fowler of the U.S. Navy’s Asiatic Fleet, whose letters home are more sophisticated than many written by British flag officers³⁸) means the lower deck of the Home Fleet still await their day in the historical limelight.³⁹

CHAPTER ONE

FROM REVIEW TO REFORM, 1897–1905

The almost 150 Royal Navy men-of-war anchored at Spithead for the Diamond Jubilee Naval Review in June 1897 made an impressive sight. Did ever Prince or potentate have better occasion to feel proud than did the Prince of Wales to-day as he steamed through the lines of vessels gathered here to do honor to the noble Queen and himself? wrote U.S. Navy Lieutenant Henry McCrea of the armored cruiser Brooklyn for the Associated Press.¹ Among their captains were three future first sea lords.² This show of strength was such that one journal fretted it would induce a feeling of over-confidence in Englishmen.³ First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Frederick Richards, on the other hand, had been feeling a modicum of optimism,⁴ writing to army theorist Colonel Sir George Clarke: Given three years without complications, I trust that in the great requirements—men, ships, and works, the needs of this Navy for its efficient service will have been met, and the office of the panic-mongers will be gone.⁵ There would be no such respite.

Across the North Sea, Vizeadmiral Alfred Tirpitz was preparing the great Flottengesetz (Naval Law) of 1898.⁶ Farther afield, the growth of the American and Japanese navies promised to complicate British interests even if neither nation was thought a likely threat.⁷ Finally there was Britain’s major adversary, the Dual Alliance. Recently several historians have rightly noted that the threat from early French armored cruisers and the Dual Alliance as a whole has probably been exaggerated.⁸ In some cases this may have been taken to an opposite extreme.⁹ The Admiralty may have been confident of victory in a war with the Dual Alliance, but they were by no means arrogant enough to take this for granted. Fisher’s declaration that it was simple madness to underbuild also held true for under-planning.¹⁰ If the Dual Alliance actually posed a lesser threat to the Empire than its reputation suggested, it could still not be taken lightly. There had to be a margin for misfortune.

The Fashoda Incident had been a victory and vindication for British sea power,¹¹ but within the Admiralty there was recognition of how close-run that victory was. French naval distribution had been such that the Royal Navy’s superiority at home had been razor-thin once the Channel Fleet left for Spanish waters, leaving Britain vulnerable to the intervention of a third power.¹² By the end of 1900, the new first lord of the Admiralty, Earl Selborne was pessimistic: Leaving out of account altogether the rapidly increasing Navies of Germany, Japan, and the U.S., we must keep at least equal to France and Russia combined. Indeed I am inclined to think that we shall be liable to be blackmailed by our ‘friends’ if we give ourselves no margin.¹³

Selborne had cause for a winter of discontent. Germany had just passed a second great naval law and in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War the United States now possessed a foothold in Asia and was accelerating its naval expansion. The latter was largely a theoretical constraint on British freedom of action instead of a direct threat, but the former was a different matter entirely.

With such storm clouds on the horizon, the navy was fortunate to have Selborne as first lord. Young by ministerial standards, he possessed an eye for detail and a businesslike yet open mind. Nevertheless he had no previous naval experience, and thus initially lacked the confidence of the service.¹⁴ Selborne was ably supported by Lord Walter Kerr as first naval lord. Chivalrous, unassuming, and conservative at heart, Kerr was not a natural reformer but was also not averse to change if it was in the navy’s interest.¹⁵ A former first lord described him as the embodiment of accuracy, moderation and reliability. During the latter part of his career … his decision or ruling upon any disputed question … was accepted without cavil by the whole Service.¹⁶ Kerr and Selborne’s thoroughness and practicality were necessary in a time of reform and new technology.

Despite an enduring reputation as a reactionary organization, the nineteenth century Admiralty was technologically dynamic, and adopted a professional approach to the management of change, qualities carried over into the new century.¹⁷ Any reluctance to adopt new weapons came from good reasoning: It is not to the interest of Great Britain … to adopt any important change in the construction of ships of war which might [render] necessary the introduction of a new class of very costly vessels … until such a course is forced up her.¹⁸

It is easily forgotten that the Royal Navy between 1897 and 1904 saw many significant reforms—especially from 1901 onward—even if there was certainly room for improvement.¹⁹ However there were enough driven, passionate men in the service to tackle these issues. Marder described 1901 to 1904 as a great reform era, albeit one overshadowed by the great changes instigated by Jackie Fisher.²⁰ The irony that Marder’s lionizing of Fisher’s accomplishments arguably makes him culpable of the very sin he had just condemned was noted by one perceptive historian.²¹ Not helping was the fact that technological change was so rapid and all-encompassing that most senior as well as many of the junior officers found it difficult to break away from the ingrained principles that had been instilled into them during the dying days of sail.²²

The navy was not alone in its attempts to modernize. Prime Minister Arthur Balfour greatly improved Britain’s warfighting apparatus. His philosopher’s detachment leant him a reputation as an aloof seasoned ditherer.²³ Nevertheless, Balfour probably devoted more energy to geostrategy than any other Edwardian prime minister. He believed Britain could not pay too much attention to the larger problem of strategy, partly military, partly naval, which the defence of the Empire involves.²⁴ Key among this attention was the creation of the Committee of Imperial Defence from the wreckage of the old Cabinet Defence Committee. The CID was meant as an advisory body summoned by the Prime Minister of the day to aid him in the consideration of the wider problem of Imperial defence.²⁵ The Admiralty liked it, taking a keen interest and guiding its early development.²⁶ Balfour’s strategic views largely mirrored the Admiralty’s. While he remained in office he gave a steadying influence to the strategic disputes between the Admiralty and the War Office.

The First Home Fleet

July 1903’s Monthly Review carried an article that declared, Not the least important feature of recent naval administration has been the strengthening and improved organization of the three principal commands [including] the Home fleet, as the old Reserve squadron is now termed.²⁷ Something of a precursor to Fisher’s 1907 creation, this Home Fleet deserves examination.²⁸

The impetus for the 1902 Home Fleet was the curious, not to say inappropriate and parlous, distribution of the naval assets … stationed in Britain’s home waters.²⁹ No effective command structure existed for warships at home, either in commission or in reserve. Instead the admiral superintendent of reserves had charge of nine battleships and four cruisers scattered throughout Britain as district ships manned by partial crews who rarely stayed aboard for long.³⁰ Their officers were overworked, being expected to assist customs officials and train their district’s Royal Naval Reserve men. Many of the ships comprising the reserves were obsolescent, predating 1889’s Naval Defence Act.³¹

These matters might have been less urgent if the Channel Fleet would be on call to protect British waters, however the Channel Fleet’s wartime battleground would probably be the Mediterranean.³² During Fashoda the Channel Fleet had been deployed to Gibraltar in readiness to join Admiral Sir John Hopkins’ Mediterranean Fleet. Now Fisher, Hopkins’ successor as Commander in Chief (CINC) Mediterranean, after consultation with outgoing Mediterranean second-in-command Rear Admiral Noel, pressed for this combination during war with the Dual Alliance to become official policy.³³ Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI) Rear Admiral Sir Reginald Custance recognized that the Channel Fleet’s departure left home defense to a fleet composed of ships inferior in quality, and manned by crews not hitherto kept in the same high state of efficiency as those of the Mediterranean and Channel ships.³⁴ Noel, now admiral-superintendent of Naval Reserves (ASNR), and the assistant DNI, Captain Prince Louis of Battenberg, shared Custance’s concerns and pushed for improvements to the Coast Guard Squadron’s efficiency during 1900. By early 1902 these ships were a coherent enough entity that they were popularly and unofficially termed the Reserve Squadron,³⁵ much to the concern of Noel and others. Noel suggested the name Home Squadron.³⁶

Matters broadened when Selborne suggested a more comprehensive scheme wherein the Channel Fleet would become the Atlantic Fleet and the reserve ships a new Channel Fleet, similar to Fisher’s great 1904–1905 reorganization.³⁷ By May 1902 Noel and Kerr proposed establishing a Home Fleet under the ASNR’s aegis (the ASNR would become CINC Home Fleet with a second in command for administrative work related to the Naval Reserves) centered around a Home Squadron of the four port guard ships, supplemented by the Coast Guard vessels for training exercises.³⁸

After approval Kerr and Noel’s plan was found to need improvement, as Battenberg noted late that year.³⁹ Two points of concern were the tethering of Coast Guard ships to their ports, and the CINC Home Fleet’s unwieldy dual role as both fleet commander and superintendent of Naval Reserves (a measure Noel insisted upon). Noel’s relief by Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson in March 1903 allowed a solution: a new post, the Admiral Commanding Coast Guard and Reserves, was created, freeing the CINC Home Fleet from responsibilities ashore. The Home Fleet’s ships were simultaneously freed from Coast Guard duties.⁴⁰

This reorganization effectively doubled the navy’s strength at home and had welcome effects for war organizations: in wartime the CINC Home Fleet would have under his orders, besides the main fleet, the Bay of Biscay and Milford Squadrons of Cruisers and the Western Squadron of Cruisers and Destroyers.⁴¹ With this force he would watch and bring to action, if they put to sea, the French ships at Brest and in the Biscay ports keeping the Western Approaches clear of the enemy and free for the passage of our merchant ships.⁴² Significantly, the Channel was to be swept by two cruiser-destroyer squadrons. The Admiralty saw nothing to gain by exposing capital ships to the French défenses mobile in those narrow waters, although the Home Fleet’s wartime base was still to be Portland. Admiralty planners recognized French hopes for asymmetric guerre de course operations. By 1904, then, the Home Fleet was on par with the other fleets, evidenced by Fisher’s renaming it the Channel Fleet when the latter moved to Gibraltar as the Atlantic Fleet.

This willingness for major reorganizations shows the classic stereotype of the fin de siècle Admiralty being a shambolic creature with engines running sweetly, and no-one at the helm is not supportable.⁴³ Contemporary observers knew this, none more than the Germans.⁴⁴ Perhaps the best example was Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge’s radical July 1902 proposal regarding obsolete gunboats cluttering up Hong Kong’s naval dockyard. Bridge wanted them sold off immediately, or sunk as targets if no buyers were found!⁴⁵

Some admirals were more zealous than others, and the greatest zealot was undoubtedly Sir John Fisher, who by 1904 had held an impeccable resumé of posts both ashore and afloat—one historian observes Fisher did not so much go to the Admiralty as keep on coming back.⁴⁶ A U.S. Navy attaché, Captain Charles Stockton, called Fisher a man of great ability and force of character … an energetic flag officer, great administrator and ready organizer.⁴⁷ Passionately committed, Fisher believed in drastic means: The 3 Requisites for Success—Ruthless, Relentless, Remorseless.⁴⁸ Politically gregarious but aloof from party politics, Fisher had support from across the political spectrum and among journalists.⁴⁹ Most important was Prime Minister Balfour; his trust in Fisher’s abilities shielded him from opposition criticism once the Liberals took power.⁵⁰

Fisher’s administrative talents were unmatched among his contemporaries. He was certainly Britain’s preeminent naval administrator during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.⁵¹ The breadth of his efforts reached every corner and his attention to detail was astounding, despite the caricatured portrayal of Fisher as obsessed with matériel to the exclusion of all else.⁵² This caricature of Fisher as ancestor of the modern technological huckster is largely based on the views of Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond, whose undoubted intelligence was exceeded only by his personality flaws. Richmond was an unbending advocate of historical precedent overriding technological impact ad absurdum.⁵³

Fisher was by no means perfect. Though gradual reform was modus operandi under Kerr and Selborne, Fisher was never keen to do things step by step, as illustrated by his 3 Rs. Fisher was also deeply unpopular with several important senior officers, although in several cases this was hardly his own fault. Nevertheless he often lacked the tact and patience necessary to win over men who might otherwise support his ideas. More unfortunately these tendencies did not lessen with his appointment as first sea lord.

The Admirals’ Bill

The events that made Fisher first sea lord began many years earlier, and it is here that the so-called historical school have a point about Fisher and strategy. He was not chosen for his strategic ideas, but because he promised to prune back financial expenditures, a task akin to squaring the circle. This fact was always overlooked by the critics in appraising the reforms.⁵⁴ Maintaining the Navy’s ability to safeguard law and order throughout the world—safeguard civilization, put out fires ashore, and act as guide, philosopher and friend to the merchant ships of all nations,⁵⁵ was expensive business at the best of times and the last years of Victoria’s reign were not such times.

The 1889 Naval Defence Act and its renewal of explicit commitment to the Two-Power Standard (a traditional and somewhat elastic benchmark for British naval strength in which the Royal Navy had to be superior to the second- and third-largest naval powers combined) both enhanced the Royal Navy’s strength and ballooned up the Naval Estimates.⁵⁶ Four years later the follow-up Spencer Programme ended Gladstone’s career when he resigned rather than increase defense spending. His successor, Lord Rosebery, had no such qualms.⁵⁷ Meanwhile, 1890 saw the first publication of Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan’s epochal The Influence of Sea Power upon History, which made naval history and naval strategy fashionable.⁵⁸

Nearly simultaneously three new warship types matured: the torpedo boat destroyer, submarine, and armored cruiser. The armored cruiser (a large, swift cruiser with both a protective deck and side belts of armor) proved the most immediately pressing for Britain. Early efforts were qualified successes at best; naval architecture was not yet advanced enough to match the naval architect’s expectations but by the 1890s truly formidable vessels such as the U.S. Navy’s speed record–setting New York and her sequel, Lieutenant McCrea’s Brooklyn, were rapidly increasing in number.⁵⁹ Both these ships were part of an America naval resurgence that left the British North American and West Indies Station less and less capable of operations without Yankee sufferance.⁶⁰

A more clear and present danger to Britain were France’s corsair cruisers. While the first of these, the Dupuy de Lôme, proved a disappointment,⁶¹ subsequent ships were balanced and functional, especially from the Jeanne d’Arc onward. While they lacked the raw firepower of the American ships they were their equals in speed and endurance, possessing belt armor against the guns of existing trade protection cruisers, and ideal for attacking Britain’s greatest weakness: her merchant fleet.⁶² This was the cornerstone of Admiral François-Ernest Fournier’s guerre industrielle, a development of the old jeune école. Fournier was perhaps the best French naval theoretician of his generation.⁶³ Direct confrontation with Britain’s battle fleet would be avoided, the main attack falling instead on British commerce, but using seagoing armored cruisers as corsairs rather than the dubious prospect of attacking merchantmen with flimsy torpedo boats.⁶⁴ The Admiralty had the wit to divine French intentions, First Lord George Goschen telling the Cabinet that so far as … can be gauged, [the French] have begun to recognize that it is by cruisers rather than battleships that they can damage us most.⁶⁵

Despite some skepticism within the Admiralty over the potential effectiveness of the guerre industrielle strategy, there was much for French corsair cruisers to damage.⁶⁶ Population growth and demographic shifts brought about by the Industrial Revolution had turned Britain from an exporter of food in 1750 to an importer by the end of the nineteenth century. In 1882 wheat imports to Britain from Californian ports alone equaled 186 pounds per head and employed more than six hundred merchant ships. Nor did this trend reverse itself with the new century: in 1913 four-fifths of the nation’s wheat and flour came from foreign sources.⁶⁷ Further, these statistics omit the portions of the harvest that arrived in Britain as pork bellies and chilled beef.⁶⁸ Serious interruption of this trade would throw great numbers of people out of employment, thus lowering the rates of wages, while the scarcity of food will cause a rise in the prices.⁶⁹ Higher food prices would fall disproportionately on the working class, and the British establishment feared social unrest or worse as a consequence. Fisher was characteristically blunt: "It’s not invasion we have to fear if our Navy is beaten. It’s Starvation [sic]!"⁷⁰

Matters were made harder since protecting the many bottoms carrying Imperial commerce was not the sole duty of Britain’s cruiser force. Cruisers were the Royal Navy’s maids-of-all-work, having inherited from their sailing predecessors the responsibilities for training, diplomatic showing the flag deployments, colonial and overseas police duties, and supporting the battle fleet as scouts and dispatch vessels.⁷¹ Such was their importance that Senior Naval Lord Sir Frederick Richards wrote in 1893 that more than 106 cruisers of all types would be needed to cover all possible duties in a hypothetical war against the Franco-Russian Dual Alliance.⁷² The resulting strain on the navy’s cruiser strength was counterbalanced somewhat by Britain’s possession and monopolization of the lion’s share of the so-called Victorian Internet: the worldwide oceanic telegraph cable network. This gave a decisive advantage in global communications during any potential conflict.⁷³

The obvious but expensive counter to guerre industrielle was superior armored cruisers built in quantity, and between 1897 and 1905 the Admiralty ordered thirty-five.⁷⁴ Attempts were made to economize through the old chimera of moderate dimensions and the resulting County–class proved to be inferior ships.⁷⁵ Former DNC Sir Nathaniel Barnaby mooted two alternatives to this massive expenditure: treaties to protect seaborne commerce from attack or designing merchantmen for easy conversion to auxiliary cruisers.⁷⁶ None of these steps were politically palatable, but some action was necessary. In 1901 Chancellor Sir Michael Hicks Beach warned that the tide of prosperity was at least slackening.⁷⁷ Behind the scenes, stronger stands were being taken as both deficit spending mounted and the Naval Estimates increased from £20.9 million in 1897–98 to £36.8 million in 1904–1905.⁷⁸ The evergreen conflict between Admiralty and the Treasury, a crucial aspect of peacetime planning, can be summarized by excerpts from two 1901 letters. The first was by Hicks Beach for the newly appointed First Lord Sel-borne: In the present enormous military expenditure … I don’t think I am being unreasonable in asking the Admiralty to remember that for 5½ years, with hardly [any] exception, I have assented to everything … proposed to me in the Navy Estimates … I have proved therefore that I am not unsympathetic, and it is too much to ask me … for a further increase of 2½ millions this year.⁷⁹ The second was from Selborne to Joseph Chamberlain:

Beach of course is absolutely right to say … We cannot afford navy estimates beyond such & such a figure, & I will not consent to more. … What Beach has no right to do, what he is always trying to do, and what I shall steadily resist, is to dictate how the Admiralty is to spend the money allotted to it … Beach has no right to say as he will We have plenty of destroyers. I won’t consent to any more expenditure on Destroyers.⁸⁰

Matters did not improve. In February 1904 Selborne was unable to assure the Cabinet that substantial savings could be made despite the apparent destruction of the Russian First Pacific Squadron at Port Arthur.⁸¹ This was despite his earlier plea to the Board of Admiralty that they must take financial economy to their fireside to sit beside efficiency and not leave the derelict orphan in my sole charge.⁸²

Whoever would replace Kerr had to care for the derelict orphan, and much rode upon this. Selborne wrote to the chancellor (now Austen Chamberlain), I understand the situation to be that the whole character of the Budget, vile or passible, depends on what I can do.⁸³ Despite the controversy Fisher could generate,⁸⁴ Balfour’s government had more important matters to consider so he got the nod.

Schemes, Designs, and Distributions

Fisher began his reforms immediately. Many of these originated before his elevation. He wrote Selborne in the summer of 1904 that his scheme would make the navy Thirty per cent. More fit to fight and … ready for instant War!⁸⁵ Further, the scheme had to be adopted in toto, for all portions of it are absolutely essential—and it is all so interlaced that any tampering will be fatal!⁸⁶

Of all these interlaced pieces, the most famous by far is the case of the Dreadnought. This remarkable ship’s story has been told many times but her role in Fisher’s overall vision demands explication.⁸⁷ Dreadnought was one product of a Committee of Designs that attempted standardization of future British warship building into a few distinct types in accordance with Fisher’s views. Sea power theorist Julian Corbett’s statement that probably no design in naval architecture was ever so frankly sown in the pure soil of theoretical study and practical experiment is perhaps an exaggeration, but certainly not by much.⁸⁸ Few other contemporary British warships compared to Dreadnought in those terms, and abroad her only rivals in this area were the U.S. Navy’s South Carolina and Nevada.⁸⁹

The importance of standardization shines through in the committee’s comment on Fisher’s proposal for scrapping obsolescent warships: No ship is really useful below the strength of a 1st Class Cruiser which cannot keep a seagoing speed of 25 knots in average weather.⁹⁰ The ensuing disposal of various senescent ironclads, gunboats, and others was only the beginning. Fisher felt he had sound reasons to clear away such dead wood, writing later, Courageous scrapping is the whole secret of fighting efficiency. You won’t get new ships at the top if you keep on old ships at the bottom.⁹¹ And Fisher had definite ideas for those new ships.

His 1904 plan included just four broad types: a 15,900-ton battleship, a similar armored cruiser (which became the battlecruiser), a 900-ton 360-knot destroyer, and a 350-ton 14-knot (surfaced) submarine.⁹² The committee of Designs subsequently modified these types slightly, shelving the submarine’s design and splitting the destroyer into two more specialized types.⁹³ Thus Fisher and the committee hoped to reduce future surface warships to five species: a 21-knot all big gun battleship, a 25-knot all big gun armored cruiser, a 33/34-knot 600-ton ocean-going destroyer, a 26-knot Coastal Service destroyer, and an Experimental 36-knot torpedo-armed vessel. These five designs became Dreadnought, Invincible, the Tribal-class destroyers, the so-called coastal destroyers, and the Swift. The latter three reveal an important facet of Fisher’s reorganization, and the evolution of the British destroyer.

While the bifurcation of Fisher’s original destroyer requirement appears to go against the desired standardization, the reasoning was sound. In the committee’s words the coastal destroyers were capable of dealing effectively with the large majority of foreign torpedo craft against which we have to provide … at moderate cost.⁹⁴ Meanwhile the ocean-going destroyers could accompany the fleets in all weathers, anywhere and to any part of the world.⁹⁵ This reflects the rather schizophrenic nature of British destroyer doctrine resulting from the vastly different roles destroyers were expected to perform depending on where they operated. The initial raison d’être of the destroyer as hunter-killer of torpedo craft in home waters gave rise to what can be called the Channel school. By 1904, their quarry included submarines: that year’s maneuvers convinced CINC Channel Wilson that a destroyer screen was "very good protection and in most cases if the