The naval reforms
of Admiral John “Jacky” Fisher and the Battle of Jutland
Sir John “Jacky”
Fisher was appointed First Sea Lord in 1904 where he remained until retiring in
1910. He was reinstated into the role by First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston
Churchill, in 1914 before finally resigning in 1915 in protest at Churchill’s
disastrous Dardanelles campaign. During his tenure as First Sea Lord, Fisher
introduced many controversial reforms in the attempt to overcome the stagnating
effect that nearly one hundred years of peace had on the Royal Navy - “the
long calm lee of Trafalgar”
At the turn of
the century the ships of the Royal Navy were dispersed over the globe looking
after the interests of the British Empire with little concentration of strength
of force in any single location. The Royal Navy had been successful in its
peacetime functions such as in halting the slave trade but the dominance of the
Royal Navy not been seriously challenged or put to the test at any point in
nearly one hundred years. It appeared that the Royal Navy was without rival and
Britannia did indeed rule the waves. All this was to change with the passing of
the First Navy Law in Germany in 1898 and Britain was faced with the prospect
of a genuine and aggressive challenge to her naval supremacy and the distinct
possibility that any challenger would find the Royal Navy as unprepared for
combat as the South African war had found the British Army.
Fisher was
credited as being one of the first to recognise the growing threat of Germany while
the eyes of the Admiralty were on France and her alliance with Russia. The
Admiralty could not rule out the nightmare scenario of a coalition between
France, Germany and Russia which would be more than capable of threatening
Britain’s naval dominance and the increase in naval construction in Germany and
Russia gave rise to the prospect of the Royal Navy being unable to defeat a
combined enemy force in the event of war.
Fisher’s first
step was to concentrate the major portion of the fleet in home waters and away
from the periphery of the British Empire, a move which needed to be carried out
slowly so as not to provoke public opinion at home or in Europe. This new
distribution strategy meant that three quarters of the British fleet would be
readily available against Germany and a presence could be maintained in the
Mediterranean in response to lack of certainty over French and Russian
diplomatic manoeuvring. The redeployment of the fleet presented the strategic
advantage of being able to carry out exercises and manoeuvre where they were
likely to be fighting as Fisher insisted “the battle ground should be the
drill ground”
“Flotilla defence”
comprised of smaller cruisers, torpedo ships and submarines, was the cornerstone
of Fisher’s policy. All of these vessels were cheaper to build than battleships
and would patrol home waters allowing fleets of battleships or cruisers to be
deployed quickly to wherever they were required in the world to counter an
enemy threat to British interests. Wireless communication would be the key to
this centralised form of command. Fisher believed that advances in technology
had radically altered the effect of geography on strategy so that the
concentration of British naval strength in home waters was the best way of
defending the empire. After Fisher’s retirement in 1910 his successors at the
Admiralty abandoned this strategy but it was implemented again by Churchill in
1914 in light of the worsening economic situation in Britain. Britain’s place as a world industrial and
economic power had seen a relative decline and a Liberal Government had been
elected that was more concerned with spending on welfare than warfare. Economy
and efficiency joined the threat from foreign powers in becoming the driving
forces behind Fisher’s naval reforms.
Fisher introduced
the nucleus crew system where ships were either fully manned and in commission
or were in “reserve”. The reserve fleet was reorganised so that reserve ships
were manned by a small nucleus crew of two fifths of the usual strength of a
crew comprised of the full crew minus the unskilled men thus, if there was a
sudden order to mobilise, the full complement of crew could be assembled quickly.
This fulfilled Fishers aim that “readiness for sudden action has to be the
keynote in all we do” as well as improved financial economy.
Obsolete warships
were scrapped freeing up crew to be used in the nucleus crew system, saving on
repairs and maintenance costs and clearing room in over congested harbours. The
training of navy personnel was overhauled under the Selbourne scheme to open
officer training to a wider range of recruits and not just the upper classes.
Training of naval recruits was now to take into account new technology, for
example crews were drilled in the techniques of modern gunnery. Inevitably Fisher’s
policies had many detractors throughout both government and the press as it was
thought that lowering the presence of the Royal Navy throughout the empire
would automatically lead to the lowing of British prestige. There were fears
that the protection of commerce would be compromised as would the safety and
security of British subjects overseas who relied on the protection of the Royal
Navy. There
were of course objections too from those keen to maintain class distinction and
privilege but Fisher was keen to promote ability over privilege.
Although Fisher’s
name is most closely associated with the Dreadnought battleship Fisher was not
in favour of building these “all big gun battleships” What Fisher wanted to
construct was a new type of armoured warship called the “battle cruiser” His
vision was for a fast, light armoured warship, fast enough to bring battleships
to action at long ranges where their gunnery would allow them to strike from a
safe distance. He wanted a ship that
could take on both battleships and smaller cruisers and carry out the role of
two or more of its predecessors which would have freed a vast amount of money
and manpower. “Strategy” he wrote “not tradition, should govern the
types of ship to be designed”
Fisher went to extraordinary
lengths in defending the construction of Dreadnought battleships between 1906
and 1908 in face of strong opposition. The reasons for this were twofold.
Firstly, Fisher’s project to build his preferred battle cruisers had been
refused by the Admiralty and so he saw that it was to his advantage to push for
the construction of Dreadnoughts instead, a project to which the admiralty agreed
to, persuaded by Fisher’s exaggeration of the German threat. Fisher would
remark “half a loaf is better than no loaf” on the subject but it was
his belief that battle cruisers would eventually be adopted – if he could
maintain his construction budget which he could only do by continuing to build
Dreadnoughts. Secondly, Fisher was keen to create a sustainable working
partnership between private ship building industry and armament firms and the
navy. From Fisher’s perspective the priority was to feed the ship building
industry with enough money to keep it solvent. Private companies could build
ships faster than the royal dockyards, employed civilian talent, were not
subject to unionism or strikes (he hoped competition from the private sector
would help to curb militancy) and in a period of conflict could produce new
ships while the royal dockyards repaired damaged ships.
Fisher’s critics
pointed out that the introduction of the Dreadnought “rendered all existing
battleships obsolete” therefore ruining the advantage that Britain held in
terms of numbers of pre-Dreadnought ships and so allowing other countries,
Germany in particular, get on equal terms with Britain. A newspaper of the day
pointed out that the Dreadnought construction deepened the rivalry with Germany
and it deplored the cost of construction of these new battleships. Fisher,
however, knew that these ships were inevitable and that the Russians, the
Japanese and Germans were all known to be planning the construction of “all big
gun battleships” of their own. The Dreadnoughts were constructed with other
technological advances in mind such as long range gunnery and the threat from
torpedoes and it was the advent of long range shooting rather than Dreadnought
herself that rendered other ships obsolete.
Although Fisher
believed in carrying out fleet exercises in the waters in which they were most
likely to face combat, cost was a limiting factor. Fuel economy was of major
concern with HMS Dreadnought, for example, consuming 306 tons of coal per hour.
Fuel consumption depended on various factors such as the speed at which the
ship was travelling and the weather, and the changed location of naval
operations from those of peacetime meant sailing in the hostile and difficult
weather conditions of the North Sea in winter, weather conditions where ships
were likely to sustain damage. These ships were intended to travel at high
speeds and were of the latest and most complex naval technology and so new and
extended facilities were needed in which maintenance, servicing and repairs
could be carried out.
In May 1916 the British fleet was to meet
its greatest challenge in over century at the Battle of Jutland but, rather
than giving the Royal Navy the much desired victory in the style of Trafalgar,
the result of the battle was inconclusive – the German fleet fled the
battlefield and the British fleet under Admiral John Jellicoe failed to give pursuit
so neither side could claim a decisive victory, although both sides did so
initially. The British fleet was superior in numbers and more heavily armed yet
suffered greater losses than the German fleet leading Admiral David Beatty to
comment “There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today”
and, less famously, “something wrong with the system”
Despite Fisher’s
naval reforms, the new technology available to the British fleet and the
training of crew, the overwhelming problem for the British at the Battle of
Jutland was that the German navy did not behave as the Admiralty had predicted
they would. Admiralty planning was based on German intelligence which suggested
that the Germans believed their fleet would be able to win a decisive battle at
medium range. This belief led the Royal Navy to fail to implement gunnery
appropriate to action involving frequent changes of course and long range
shooting or indeed any other variation of tactical conditions, in short, those
real life tactical conditions that were actually faced in battle.
British tactics
can be summed up in the following statement by Naval Historian Jon Sumida -
“In 1912, the
Admiralty adopted a secret tactical system that was supposed to enable a
British battle fleet to destroy a German opponent through five minutes shooting
at medium range. The quick destruction of the Germans was to be followed by a
simultaneous turn away by the British, which would counter the threat of enemy
torpedoes. Belief in this scheme interfered with the development of equipment
and methods suitable to battle fleet action that involved long range and
manoeuvre while shooting, which set the stage for much that went wrong for the
Royal Navy at the battle of Jutland”
It should be
noted though that it was not until Fisher had left office that the focus on
gunnery switched from long range to medium range
Instead of being
a vindicator for Fisher’s naval reforms the Battle of Jutland appears at first
to have been a missed opportunity for the navy and to a certain extent Admiral
Beatty was correct, there were undoubtedly issues with both the British ships
and the system in which they were operating. Fisher had recognised the
opportunities given by new technologies and used his reforms to reorganise the
navy so as to exploit them but unfortunately battle scenarios were based round
the premise that it would be a decisive battle fought in a short war and the
problem of sustained operations was not explored and neither was the
possibility that the German fleet would deviate from what was expected of them.
Despite naval intelligence, Fisher could not have predicted what the German
fleet was going to do any more than Jellicoe could have done on the day of
battle.
Overall Fishers
reforms were to the betterment of the navy. They allowed the navy to maintain
an effective system of defence at an affordable cost where capability was more
important than presence and his
duplicity in promoting the Dreadnought revolution allowed him to maintain his
naval construction budget to fund ship building throughout the long duration of
the war. He made best use of the resources available to him at the time and
embraced new technology. Ultimately the Grand Fleet passed the real test which
was to survive the “long watch” of more than four years of war without
surrendering naval superiority. Although in terms of losses at the battle
of Jutland the Royal Navy came off worse, strategically little had changed in
terms of control of the seas with the Royal Navy remaining pre-eminent.
