Dreadnought, Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War

by Robert K. Massie

  Personally, Fisher was "instantly acclaimed as the heartiest, jolliest, smartest delegate at The Hague." At a party at the British Legation on the first evening of the conference, Fisher, then fifty-nine, "danced down everyone else in the ballroom." Socially, "by the charm of his manner, the frank heartiness of his conversation and the genuine, unmistakeable earnestness with which he applied himself," he swept all before him. He stayed in Scheveningen in a seaside hotel which was swamped by the conference. "Such a rush always going on," he wrote to his wife. "Band plays at breakfast, and at lunch and at dinner!!! Huge boxes arrive continuously and the portier rushes about like a wild animal." On a day off, he visited Amsterdam, which he thought "detestable and smelly," dined in "a beastly, stuffy little hole over a stinking canal," and went to see Rembrandt's "The Night Watch," the only Dutch painting he decided he liked. Ruefully, he stared at the English naval flags captured by the famous Admiral Michiel de Ruyter in the Anglo-Dutch naval wars of the seventeenth century.

  At public meetings, Fisher said little, but he made his weight felt walking the corridors, talking informally. Here, the dancing charmer became the grim little warrior admiral. Although dressed in white top hat, frock coat, and gray gloves, he created an impression not unlike that produced aboard Renown: that of a dangerous jungle cat or the prowl. In forceful, often luridly exaggerated language, he hammered home his belief that war could only be deterred, not by a limitation of armaments, but by making war too horrible to contemplate. "The humanizing of war? You might as well talk about humanizing Hell!" Fisher said bluntly. "The essence of war is violence! Moderation in war is imbecility!… I am not for war, I am for peace! That is why I am for a supreme Navy… If you rub it in both at home and abroad that you are ready for instant war… and intend to be first in and hit your enemy in the belly and kick him when he is down and boil your prisoners in oil (if you take any)… and torture his women and children, then people will keep clear of you." He derided the idea of granting immunity to neutral ships bound; for enemy ports. "Look," he said to an English journalist walking away from church one morning, "when I leave The Hague I go to take command of the Mediterranean Fleet. Suppose that war breaks out and I am expecting to fight a new Trafalgar on the morrow. Some neutral… [freighters loaded with coal] try to steam past us into the enemy's waters. If the enemy gets their coal into his bunkers, it may make all the difference in the coming fight. You tell me I must not seize these colliers. I tell you that nothing that you, or any power on earth, can say will stop me from seizing them or from sending them to the bottom, if I can in no other way keep their coal out of the enemy's hands; for tomorrow I am to fight the battle which will save or wreck the Empire. If I win it, I shall be far too big a man to be affected about protests about the neutral colliers; if I lose it, I shall go down with my ship into the deep and then protests will affect me still less."

  Fisher's vehemence particularly impressed the German military and naval delegates, Colonel von Schwarzkopf and Captain Siegel. Reporting to Berlin, Siegel gave a concise summary of the principles of British sea power, stripped of pretense and facade:

  I England holds… the fixed conviction that her position in the world, her power and her prosperity, depend on the fleet…

  II. Currently, the fleet has attained a strength that is equal to all demands. It suffices on its own to crush a combination of all states…

  III. England is firmly resolved to employ with all cunning and ruthlessness, the instrument of war which she possesses in her Fleet, according to the principle 'Might is Right.'

  When the debate on extending the rules of the Geneva Convention to naval warfare was over, Sir Julian Pauncefote was able to report to London, "Thanks to the energetic attitude and persistent efforts of Sir John Fisher, all provisions… which were likely in any way to fetter or embarrass the free action of the Belligerents have been carefully eliminated."

  In the end, the conference rejected the Tsar's appeal and refused any general limitation of armaments, although it did ban three methods of warfare which it considered especially pernicious: the use of expanding "dumdum" bullets, the use of poison gas, and the dropping of explosives from balloons. Despite furious opposition from the Kaiser, the conference agreed to a permanent panel of arbitration; this became the International Court of Justice, sited, appropriately, at The Hague. Fisher left to take command of the Mediterranean Fleet, and three months after the peace conference ended, Great Britain went to war with the Boers in South Africa.

  CHAPTER 24 Ut Veniant Omnes

  H.M.S. Renown was not and never had been a first-line battleship of the Royal Navy. Laid down in 1893 and commissioned in 1897, she was one of three "light battleships" specifically built for colonial wars and foreign stations. Her ten-inch guns were insufficient to match European battleships, but would presumably suffice to sink European cruisers or heathen ships in distant waters. It was on such a remote station, North America, that Fisher had found Renown and fallen in love with her. She was his flagship there and he liked her silhouette, her broad teak decks, her high speed (eighteen knots) and sea-keeping characteristics, her captain, her officers, and her crew. And so, when Vice Admiral Sir John Fisher was appointed Commander-in-Chief of Britain's principal battle fleet, he took with him to the Mediterranean as his flagship not one of Britain's principal battleships, but H.M.S. Renown.

  It was highly irregular and tongues wagged. Captain Prince Louis of Battenberg, Assistant Director of Naval Intelligence, observed to a friend, "Renown… should not be the flagship; in fact, she ought to be in China. We want the biggest and best in the Mediterranean; J.F. of course, won't part with his 'yacht' but it is quite, wrong." George, Prince of Wales, an old navy man, shared Fisher's sense of the personality of vessels and supported the Admiral: "I must say your old ship is one of the most beautiful ships I have ever been on board," he wrote. "She is absolutely steady and no vibration whatever at 13 knots."

  Steady underfoot and handsome to the eye, Renown steamed through the Strait of Gibraltar and, on a westerly course, began to plow the blue waters of the Mediterranean. It was early September 1899. For the next three years, the ship would be the post from which a great fleet, the primary instrument of British influence in that ancient sea, would be commanded. Influence in the Mediterranean had been important to Britain since the early eighteenth century; Fisher himself subscribed to Mahan's theory that command of the sea in any European war meant safety of the Home Islands and control of the Mediterranean. Since the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, over a quarter of Britain's imports and 30 percent of her exports had come from or gone to the Mediterranean Basin or passed through the canal. The highway to India and China, the lifeline of the Empire, passed through the Mediterranean. Two great naval bases, at Gibraltar and Malta, sustained the fleet which guarded the lifeline.

  The view from Paris was different. The axis of British interests in the Mediterranean was west-east: Gibraltar-Malta-Suez. France's concerns lay on a north-south axis: between Marseilles and Toulon, in France, and Algiers and Tunis, the gateway ports to her vast North African empire. Beginning in 1888, the French Admiralty had moved its most powerful battleships from Brest and Cherbourg to Toulon. The British Admiralty, taking note, began to follow suit. British admirals in the Mediterranean had also to worry about the Russians. British policy for most of the century had been to support the Ottoman Empire against Russian pressure on the Straits. The instrument of this support was the British Mediterranean Fleet. Since 1894 and the signing of the Franco-Russian Alliance, there was always a chance that the French and Russian fleets would somehow merge to sweep the British Navy out of the inland sea.

  During the years of Fisher's command, 1899-1902, the danger to Britain became immediate. The difficult and humiliating war against the small Boer republics had taken most of the British Army out of England and stretched the navy thin escorting troops and supplies and maintaining sea communications over seven thousand miles. Britain, militarily extended, was also diplomatical
ly isolated. In some circles in Europe, there was talk that the time had come to settle accounts with the proud, insufferable British. Given these factors, during Fisher's tour the safety of the Empire depended heavily on the readiness for war of the Mediterranean Fleet. Fisher's purpose; was to make war with England and confrontation with the British Mediterranean Fleet an uninviting prospect. He was aware of the great difference in the importance of sea power to Great Britain and to its principal potential adversary, France. "If… the whole of the French Fleet were sent to the bottom," he said, "France would still remain a first class power. Her position… depends on her Army and… France is independent of the sea for her supplies… On the other hand, any disaster to the English Fleet would be fatal to the power of England." "Preliminary failure in Naval War means the ruin of the British Empire," he put it another time. "You can replace cavalrymen and artillerymen within a few months, but you can't simply go around to the green grocers, and buy new battleships, cruisers and destroyers."

  With so much dependent on the force he commanded, Fisher was determined not to be taken by surprise. His tactics emphasized getting in the first blow. "Success in war depends upon the concentration of an overpowering force upon a given spot in the shortest possible time," he told his officers. "Our frontiers are the coasts of the enemy and we ought to be there five minutes after war is declared." (Subsequently, he amended this to "five minutes before war is declared.")

  Unfortunately, the stately British Mediterranean Fleet which Fisher inherited was anything but prepared for the role of naval lightning bolt. Fisher arrived determined to jolt the fleet out of its sleepy routine. He began with an inspection of every ship in his command. Within minutes of the Admiral's barge coming alongside and the Admiral's feet touching the deck, the ship involved would be a maelstrom of shouted orders, running men, and clanking machinery. "General Quarters" would sound, then "Out torpedo nets,' then "In nets," "Lower all boats," and "Abandon ship." Sometimes these exercises lapped on top of one another so that wild-eyed officers had to decide which to begin with and which to let go. "When Fisher left the ship," wrote Sir Reginald Bacon, commander of the battleship Empress of India, "she would resemble a wreck, with her upper deck a mass of ropes and debris." The Admiral's eyes, however, had followed everything and everyone. Aboard one destroyer, he saw the sign "ut veniant omnes" in gold letters mounted on the bridge. "What does that mean?" he asked. "Let 'em all come," replied the youthful lieutenant in command. Fisher beamed with pleasure and the story found its way into his talks and letters for months. But the blow could come as quickly as the smile: "As the Commander of one ship did not show the ability to cope with this volcanic inspection, he was discharged from his ship and sent home the same evening, most of his belongings having to follow in a subsequent steamer," Bacon recalled. "At another inspection, a lieutenant in command of a destroyer exhibited gross ignorance of the details of his ship; he left the next day for China." When Fisher discovered incompetence or inefficiency, he was merciless; it did not matter to him that he was ruining a man's career "I am sorry for your wife and children," he said to one departing officer. "But in war I should have had you shot."

  Fisher began a series of lectures at Malta's Admiralty House on naval strategy, fleet tactics, individual ship handling in preparation for battle, gunnery, and the use of torpedoes; all fleet officers, not merely ship captains, were invited. His listeners never forgot these hours, sitting in chairs before him, their bodies bathed in the dampness of ninety-degree heat. He was an electrifying speaker whose fiery language, sparkling wit, and sly digs at naval bureaucracy and tradition kept his audience laughing and applauding even as their starched white uniforms wilted into sogginess. "I went to a lecture by Jacky Fisher on Naval Gunnery and Strategy," said one of his lieutenants. "He used hardly a single note and talked for two hours. Simply magnificent… His smile is irresistible."

  In his lectures, Fisher did not assume superior knowledge and expound from a lofty pulpit of rank. He admitted that he needed information on many points and welcomed ideas and suggestions, however unconventional, from any officer. He was particularly anxious, he said, for any ideas regarding defense of the fleet against attack by torpedo boats. At The Hague, he explained, the German naval delegates had told him that Britain's battleship squadrons were useless as, in war, they would inevitably be sunk by German torpedo boats. More immediately, he reminded his officers, they all had to be concerned with the twenty-two French torpedo boats based at Bizerte, only nine hours away.

  Fisher's energy seemed limitless. He kept paper and pencil by his bed at night and rose every morning at four or five to put into effect the notes he had scribbled to himself during the night. Fisher never played any sort of game, but when the fleet was in port he exercised daily, pacing the ramparts fronting Admiralty House and overlooking his ships moored below in the Grand Harbor. (He preferred to pace back and forth rather than take walks, he once explained, and chose the flattest place he could find so that he would not always have to be thinking about where to put his next footstep; thus he could concentrate his mind on whatever he was wrestling with.) All had free access to him while he was taking his daily exercise and it was I not uncommon to see the Commander-in-Chief walking the ramparts, deep in debate on some point of tactics or technology with a junior commander or lieutenant.

  Besides making himself available, Fisher encouraged original thought by offering cups for prize essays on cruising and battle formations. A special table was placed in a large room on the ground floor; of Admiralty House and on it were different-sized blocks of wood, representing all the ships of the fleet. Officers were invited to come at any hour to work out tactics and play war games. When one young lieutenant brought him a carefully worked-out plan for defending the fleet against torpedo attack, Fisher immediately ordered his captains to practice these tactics at sea the following week.

  Flinging open the door to new ideas and hobnobbing with lieutenants instead of senior captains sent startling messages through the fleet. Fisher's behavior was unprecedented; some found it disgraceful. Heretofore, admirals had consulted no one-or at the very most had looked to a flag captain for a confirming nod of the head. Fisher's behavior, ignoring seniority and showing little interest in the views-or feelings-of senior officers who preferred traditional ways, was alarming to these older men. "It was brought home to them," said Bacon, "that the brains which were to be useful to the Commander-in-Chief were not of necessity to be found in the heads of the most senior of officers." When the older officers began to complain, the seeds were sown for a violent antagonism which would divide the Royal Navy. It was not just what Fisher did; it was how le did it. Looking back, Lord Chatfield, who was in the Mediterranean Fleet in Fisher's era and later became an Admiral of the Fleet and First Sea Lord, tried to see both sides: "Fisher had a practice of consulting young officers which was proper enough in itself" he wrote. "But, regrettably, he spoke to them in a derogatory way about their superiors. It was his ruthless character and his scorn of tact that led to violent criticism and enmities that shook the Service… Fisher's greatness was not then realized. There were many; who hated him and he hated them. His was not the method of leading smoothly, but of driving relentlessly and remorselessly. He prided himself on this policy, and boasted of it and of his scorn of opposition."

  It was exactly this driving, ruthless search for efficiency, this remorseless hounding of the inefficient, which inspired and awed Fisher's young admirers and acolytes. As Bacon remembered: "It is impossible to exaggerate the new ardor and the feeling of relief among younger officers. They felt that the day had dawned when mere peace ideas and maneuvers were about to give way to real preparations for meeting a war when it came." Fisher's credo-"the efficiency of the Navy and its instant readiness for war"-became the watchword of this band of reformers which, within the navy, came to be called the Fishpond. Their argument at the time hinged on dramatic improvements made in the Mediterranean Fleet during Fisher's years of command. Later, the
y believed-and in time the navy and the nation came to agree-that it was because of their idol that the British Navy was ready for the Great War.

  The crux of the debate-past versus present, tradition versus reform, young versus old-was Jacky Fisher. How an officer felt about the navy, which ladder of success he chose to climb, focussed on this one, small, restless figure. Junior officers had to make a choice-and the choosing began during Fisher's galvanic years with the Mediterranean Fleet. His impact, and the change it made in one young officer of the fleet, can be traced through the letters of Captain Maurice Hankey of the Royal Marines, stationed on board Ramillies. Hankey's first mention of the new Commander-in-Chief is made up of general rumor and innuendo: "The new Admiral- Fisher-has just joined the fleet; he is said to be a complete scoundrel… He has got Siamese blood in him." Then Hankey, who himself despaired at the complacency and lethargy he found in the fleet, began to hear interesting things about Fisher: "I fancy the new admiral, of whom the executive branch can say nothing too bad, is going to shake them out of their fool's paradise a bit… [He] is very keen on dancing and in spite of the great heat and the scarcity of ladies is giving a dance next Saturday." Soon afterwards, Hankey got his first look at Fisher: "I had not seen Admiral Fisher before; he is a queer looking cuss, but very affable and he capered about all the evening like a junior… [officer]." And then, before long, Hankey was fiercely defending his new hero: "The present admiral… doesn't care a fig for the Admiralty and tradition and dares to look facts in the face as they are. He has already done incalculable good out here and may do more if he can keep afloat with the awful millstone of naval prejudice trying to sink him."