The Great War at Sea: 1914-1918 Read online

  This new exercise in conducting Germany’s foreign policy caused amazement in Britain, and King Edward felt impelled to write his nephew a reprimand. The Times expressed outrage: ‘If there was any doubt before about the meaning of German naval expansion,’ it thundered, ‘none can remain after an attempt of this kind to influence the Minister responsible for our Navy in a direction favourable to German interests.’(4)

  In Germany, where the heavy warship building facilities were being expanded at high speed and at great cost, Anglophobia grew apace, too. Ever sensitive to being patronized, watchful for evidence of interference in national affairs, envious of the size and wealth of the British Empire, resentful of Britain’s apparent failure to regard Germany as a great power, anti-British feeling was easily whipped up by the Press, politicians, and the Emperor himself. ‘You English are mad, mad as March hares,’ he declared to an English newspaper correspondent, and made it clear that the great majority of his subjects were hostile to England. The well-informed and percipient British naval attaché in Berlin declared that he doubted now whether the Emperor, ‘much as he might desire it, could restrain his own people from attempting to wrest the command of the seas from Great Britain, if they saw a fairly good chance of doing so’.(5)

  Fisher, always a target for sniping in the Royal Navy’s own internecine war, was also involved in the complex and anxious task of improving the efficiency of the service, protecting it from politicians of radical-Liberal persuasion, and observing from his own Whitehall based fighting top the threatening expansion of the German Navy.

  Fisher had scored a second surprise moral victory over Germany by building and putting into service at great speed a new class of dreadnought-type armoured cruiser, bigger and faster than anything Tirpitz had contemplated, and with an all-big-gun armament twice that of any pre-dreadnought battleship. These formidable men o’war were what Fisher proclaimed to be his ‘New Testament ships’, ‘hares to catch tortoises’, scouting vessels of unprecedented speed (25+ knots) and power that could hunt down any warship anywhere in the world and sink it at leisure with its 12-inch guns. The battle-cruiser was to add a new element in the Anglo-German race, and by 1912 Germany had six built or building against Britain’s ten.

  However exuberant and confident Fisher remained in the strength, numbers, and quality of the British fleets, information from his intelligence department revealed the rapid improvement in the seamanship and gunnery of the Kriegsmarine’s personnel and the excellent design of the first German dreadnoughts.

  In 1909 there occurred the biggest peacetime naval crisis in British history, a ‘navy scare’ which made those of the late nineteenth century (when the French and Russians were the source of anxiety) seem trivial. Towards the end of 1908, when the mood of Germany was clearly more hostile than ever towards France as well as Britain, informed sources in London told of further German acceleration in dreadnought building. The speed of construction of heavy men o’war was conditioned by the months occupied in building the guns and gun mountings. Previously, German shipbuilders had shown that they could build a heavy ship in three years. Now, thanks to increased facilities at Krupp’s for building armour and guns and their mountings, this time had been reduced, it was believed, to little more than two years. Moreover, so rapid had been the increase in building slipways and training new men in the skills of shipbuilding, it was believed possible that Germany now had the capacity to build no fewer than eight dreadnoughts a year, equal to British capacity.

  Statistics quoted to predict the size of the German battle fleets in 1912 or 1914, the speed of construction, and building capacity, all depended on inspired guesswork, and could be juggled to suit the needs of politicians, journalists, and naval officers. As Churchill wrote a few years later, ‘in the technical discussion of naval details there is such a wealth of facts that the point of the argument turns rather upon their selection than upon their substance.(6) But early in 1909 it was believed by Fisher and the Board that Germany would be able to put to sea a fleet of seventeen dreadnoughts by April 1912 against Britain’s eighteen: scarcely the two-keels-to-one standard previously regarded as minimal for the nation’s security.

  The public and private argument that shook the nation early in 1909, leading up to the presentation to Parliament of the naval estimates, was whether four or as many as six new dreadnoughts should be provided for. The radical-Liberal element led by Lloyd George and Winston Churchill (then at the Board of Trade) stated emphatically that the nation could afford only four new ships if the Liberal welfare commitments were to be met, and that the Admiralty was being alarmist in asking for more.

  The Conservatives, the conservative Press, and big-navy members of the Liberal Cabinet, however, kept up a sustained campaign for a minimum of six. There were threats of resignations inside the Cabinet and the Admiralty, and the whole country rapidly became involved with passions running high among extreme ‘patriots’ or ‘panic mongers’ and the ‘pacifists’ or ‘little Englanders’. Lloyd George came in for much abuse. The feeling at Buckingham Palace can be judged by referring to a letter the King’s private secretary wrote to Lord Esher about Churchill: ‘What are Winston’s reasons for acting as he does in this matter?’ he asked. ‘Of course it cannot be from conviction or principle. The very idea of his having either is enough to make anyone laugh.’(7)

  In the end the violent storm abated and the arguments were settled by the wily and ingenious Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith. He proposed to his split and outraged Cabinet that there should be provision for the construction of four dreadnoughts in the 1909-10 financial year, and a further four later if they were deemed essential. In the event, they were wanted, of course; for within months anxiety about German intentions had become even more widespread.

  It was left to Churchill to make the comment: ‘In the end a curious and characteristic solution was reached. The Admiralty had demanded six ships: the economists offered four: and we finally compromised on eight.(8)

  This ‘compromise’ had been reached as much because of news from the Mediterranean as from Germany. On the night of Easter Sunday 1909 a special messenger arrived at the Admiralty from the Prime Minister. Asquith had just learned that Austria, no doubt under pressure from her ally, Germany, was to build three or four dreadnoughts and he wished to know what information Fisher had on this dramatic news. Fisher rapidly learned that this was indeed true, and moreover that Italy, as alarmed as Britain, was about to put in hand her own dreadnought building programme. The anti-navalist view was that the two programmes cancelled each other out as far as Britain’s security in the Mediterranean was concerned. The Prime Minister, the Board of Admiralty, and a majority in the Cabinet remained anxious and unconvinced, and the ‘contingent’ dreadnoughts were authorized. The ships provided for, including the ‘contingent’ ships, were the battleships Colossus and Hercules, four ships of the Orion class, and the battle-cruisers Lion and Princess Royal. All but the first two mounted 13.5-inch guns at Fisher’s insistence. The Germans had nothing larger than 12-inch guns until 1916.

  Fisher’s supporters regarded this unprecedented programme as his culminating triumph. His enemies at home did not see it in this light, and conveniently forgot the fact, five years later when war broke out, that only the four extra ‘contingent’ dreadnoughts gave the Royal Navy its dangerously slim margin of strength over the High Seas Fleet. Instead, these enemies concentrated their considerable forces, which included the Prince of Wales, on ousting Fisher before he could (as they believed) damage the Navy fatally.

  The Beresford pack of hounds, those excluded from the ‘Fishpond’ as they saw themselves, motivated by spite and jealousy, scarred from being passed over or slighted, were relentless in the pursuit of their quarry, and used the most unscrupulous methods, and their wealth and influence with the Press and Society.

  The burden of their argument was that Fisher, by his neglect and starvation of the Navy and refusal to stand up to the politicians, had brought the service to
the brink of disaster and all but destroyed its superiority and magnificence, and the esteem in which the world held it no more than five years ago.

  The closed world of the Navy which occupies so much of its time on shipboard has always suffered from gossip and backbiting. Resentments and divisiveness build up all too readily in wardrooms, where unusual behaviour and ‘braininess’ were discouraged and class divisions were accentuated. The same could be said of London Society.

  Given that Beresford was nearly mad by 1909, his proposed toast to celebrate the day he succeeded in driving Fisher from office is not an exaggeration of the language he used in his struggle against the First Sea Lord: ‘To the death of Fraud, Espionage, Intimidation, Corruption, Tyranny, Self-Interest…’

  A leader of 20 March 1909 is no less typical of the passions expressed in Fleet Street by the ultra-conservative, anti-Fisher Press: ‘The sole responsibility for the fact that in a few months Great Britain will be in a more vulnerable position than she has been since the Battle of Trafalgar belongs to the First Sea Lord… We arraign Sir John Fisher at the bar of public opinion, and with the imminent possibility of national disaster before the country we say again to him, “Thou art the man!"’(9)

  Beresford, seen by the vast mass of the uninformed as the ultimate patriot, was cheered at Portsmouth as a national hero when he was obliged to haul down his flag prematurely in March 1909. He at once went into battle in a final attempt to topple his enemy. The nation was in a highly emotional state over the Navy and the threat from Germany. ‘We want eight and we won’t wait!’ sounded up and down the land at public meetings as the people cried out for more dreadnoughts.

  It was difficult for a politician to ignore a sailor like Beresford with such influential as well as wide popular support. Asquith listened to his complaints, and to the outrage of the Board and Fisher’s supporters, agreed to set up a committee to investigate the charges made by Beresford about the conduct of naval affairs.

  This occurred during the behind-the-scenes fight by Fisher and the Board to increase above four the proposed dreadnought programme. Fisher was in despair and threatened to resign. First Esher, and then the King (who contrary to his eldest son admired and supported Fisher) begged him to remain in office. The King’s letter put new steel into the First Sea Lord. ‘I’m not going till I’m kicked out!’ he wrote, and characteristically underlined every word.

  The committee of four cabinet ministers with the Prime Minister in the chair held fifteen meetings and filled nearly 600 pages with their proceedings and appendices. The main charges against the Board concerned the organization and distribution of the fleets in home waters, the deficiency in small craft due to the concentration on dreadnoughts, and the inadequacy of war plans.

  Fisher and the Board were cleared of all charges, but with one or two provisos which suggested that Asquith, while avoiding a bland conclusion, did not want to be too hard on either admiral. The main criticism was of the lack of trust and cordial relations between Beresford and Fisher, which hardly caused surprise. But there was also a hint that a Naval War Staff with a brief to prepare war plans should by this time have been established.

  Beresford and his supporters persuaded themselves that they had won, and were publicly jubilant, the newspapers and magazines hostile to Fisher renewing their attacks with a lack of restraint unusual even for that time. There was, the National Review claimed, ‘no end to the catalogue of his high crimes and misdemeanours’. And ‘Should it come to hanging, [Fisher] will be entitled to the nearest lamp-post.’ Fisher’s supporters were equally certain they had won. But Fisher himself still outraged that the committee had even been formed, also resented in a typically over-sensitive manner the shadow of censure in the report. Weary and disgusted, disregarding even the King’s congratulations, he determined to resign.

  The date agreed with the First Lord, Reginald McKenna, and others in the Cabinet was 25 January 1910, his sixty-ninth birthday. On the King’s birthday a few weeks earlier Fisher had been raised to the peerage as Baron Fisher, an almost unprecedented honour for a naval officer in peacetime. Beresford was livid.

  There can be no question that Fisher laid the foundations upon which the Royal Navy of 1914 was built and that he did much of the subsequent structural work, too. In his earlier years Fisher had entered upon the Royal Navy scene like some gift from Neptune, performing prodigies on behalf of gunnery, torpedoes, mines, manning and many other departments. Those in the ‘Fishpond’ found themselves thinking more radically and working with a new pace and energy. He was a great inspirer and attracted stalwart loyalty, and his charm could be irresistible. Of medium height and unspectacular appearance, he remained one of those rare people whose presence could be felt in any gathering.

  Fisher’s mind was crisp and deep, his memory prodigious. Such was his dedication to the Navy that his marriage to a worthy but colourless woman faded. But he loved the company of women and they loved him in return, from Queen Alexandra to Pamela McKenna and the Duchess of Hamilton, with whom he shared a deep relationship for the last fifteen years of his life.

  Fisher’s work in Whitehall from 1904 to the end of 1909 stands unique in British naval history. While Tirpitz, starting from scratch, worked wonders in creating a superb fighting force in some fifteen years, Fisher’s task was infinitely more difficult. He had to break outworn traditions, and like Hamlet ‘reform it altogether’. A servant given an hour to clean a house has no time for tenderness with spiders. Fisher’s broom was wielded without restraint. His enemies within the service multiplied with the passing of years and his own certainty in the urgency of his task. There was a touch of waspishness in the man and his enemies’ accounts of his vendettas were mostly true.

  The state of the Navy when he came to supreme power, although improved on what it had been ten years earlier, remained largely inefficient. His reforms in every department, from the fundamentals of warship design, i.e. HMS Dreadnought, and the virtual creation of a submarine service, to the eradication of time-serving sinecurists like the department responsible for the distribution of cutlasses to HM ships in 1905, were swift and complete. (This last reform was shortlived. Cutlasses were retained on board RN ships throughout the 1914-18 war.) Fisher prepared the Navy for modern war in 1914 on the greatest scale. It was not by a wide margin a perfect service. It lacked, for example, the support of an experienced Naval War Staff, which was introduced after his resignation. But, as an unprejudiced admiral remarked as he surveyed the Fleet assembled for review a few days before the outbreak of war, ‘All that is best and most modern here is the creation of Lord Fisher.”(10)

  Winston Churchill was one of his warmest admirers and became one of his closest friends. While opposing Fisher’s demands for increases in expenditure by the Navy, he had been watching him closely and concluded that ‘There is no doubt that Fisher was right in nine-tenths of what he fought for. His great reforms sustained the power of the Royal Navy at the most critical period in its history… After a long period of serene and unchallenged complacency, the mutter of distant thunder could be heard. It was Fisher who hoisted the storm-signal and beat all hands to quarters.’

  Without Fisher’s work Britain could not have survived against Tirpitz’s magnificent High Seas Fleet from 1914. If Britain had lost the war at sea she would have been forced to surrender, succumb to the tide, and become a subservient satellite.

  But Fisher’s departure from the Admiralty was by 1910 essential. The overdose of the purgative was already having damaging effects. ‘He shook them and beat them and cajoled them out of slumber into intense activity,’ concluded Churchill, qualifying his summary: ‘But the navy was not a pleasant place while this was going on. The “Band of Brothers” tradition which Nelson handed down was for the time, but only for the time, discarded.’(11)

  After accepting the necessity for his resignation, Fisher began to understand how tired he was after his arduous campaigns. He told Esher of his ‘relief to be free of having to run the British
Navy all over the world. It makes one think of St. Paul! “And besides all this, there came upon me the daily care of the churches.”(12)

  He had often spoken facetiously of retiring to the country to grow cabbages. He did settle at his son’s home, Kilverstone Hall in Norfolk. But there was no gardening there for him. His interest and active participation in things naval and political was in for a brief hibernation, no more.

  CHURCHILL AT THE ADMIRALTY

  Churchill becomes First Lord following the Agadir Crisis – Admiral Wilson superseded – Churchill’s over-extended travels, lack of tact, and disagreement with the King – The 15-inch gun and Queen Elizabeth class of super-dreadnought – Churchill switches the Navy to oil – His enthusiasum for submarines and aviation – Fisher’s support and guidance – Percy Scott’s director and the opposition to it – Dreyer’s fire control system – The creation of a Naval War Staff – Lower deck reform

  Winston Churchill’s interest in the Royal Navy and his romantic affection for it had been known to his friends for some time. He also entertained a deep sense of admiration and affection for Fisher, which incidentally was not shared by Churchill’s wife, who felt only suspicion and distrust for him.

  On Fisher’s resignation Churchill wrote to him, congratulating him on his elevation to the peerage as well as on the ‘great services you have rendered to British Naval Supremacy’. He also ruefully recounted how, since he had been at the Home Office, he had ‘stretched out several feeble paws of amity – but in vain – & I am only sorry that the drift of events did not enable us to work together… I have deeply regretted since that I did not press for the Admiralty in 1908. I think it would have been easily possible for me to obtain it. I believe it would have been better for us all’(1)

  Asquith had been aware for some time of Churchill’s wish for the Admiralty. and less than two years after Fisher’s resignation he offered it to him. Fisher had been superseded by a sturdy, steady, dour old salt, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Arthur (‘old ‘ard ‘eart’) Wilson, upon whom Fisher relied to sustain his policies and methods. Lacking the fiery stimulus of Fisher as his partner, McKenna did not thrive. On 25 October 1911 McKenna was transferred to the Home Office much against his will, and Churchill crossed Whitehall and exchanged jobs with him. ‘As soon as he [McKenna] had gone,’ wrote Churchill of this crowning moment, ‘I convened a formal meeting of the Board, at which the Secretary read the new Letters Patent constituting me its head, and I thereupon… became “responsible to Crown and Parliament for all business of the Admiralty’. I was to endeavour to discharge this responsibility for the four most memorable years of my life’.(2)