Jacky Fisher

Father of Dreadnought

"Like a Young Elephant"

by David W. Tschanz, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

Fisher was born in 1841 in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the son of a coffee planter so impoverished that he was forced to ship his seven children back to England to live on the charity of relatives. Fisher, a small man and a smaller child, became a scrapper with a pugnacious nature. Later he would say "Fighting made me what I am." At 13 he joined the navy as a cadet. Working, as he put it, "like a young elephant," he quickly learned seamanship and mathematics. At 20 he turned his attention to gunnery and mastered all the newest techniques so rapidly that within six months he became an instructor aboard the three-decker Excellent, the Royal Navy's principal gunnery school.

His ability and quick mind impressed his superiors. When only 28 he was promoted to commander and given command of the flagship Ocean on China Station. He spent his free time analyzing flaws in the Navy, and penning treatises on gunnery, ammunition, battle tactics and administration. "My heart is full," he wrote, "of things in the Service which appear to want capsizing."

Seamen and young officers regarded him with a mixture of terror and affection. He was pitiless and unrelenting when conducting drills, training or inspections. It was said that he prowled around with the steady rhythmical tread of a panther -- "The quarterdeck shook and all hands shook with it. The word was quickly passed form mouth to mouth 'Look out, here comes Jack.'"

At the same time his martinet streak was tempered by a lively sense of humor and a genuine concern for his men's well-being. Fisher's men fought for him, and strove to excellence because they sensed, beneath his hard exterior, he genuinely cared for them. Fisher introduced knives and forks to the seaman's mess (previously they had been expected to make do with spoons and fingers).

He introduced bakery ovens to prepare bread to replace the hardtack and biscuit. Resplendent in snow white uniform, he thought nothing of clambering into colliers to coax weary seaman through the thankless task of coaling. Officers who refused "to get oil on their hands" didn't last long under him. For an admiral in the Royal Navy of the era to be free from pomposity was extraordinary. If older and stodgier officers looked askance at his unique mixture of behaviors, they could not deny that he was effective.

As Commander in Chief, Mediterranean Fleet from 1899-1902 Fisher replaced the routine cruises that had been the usual practice with tactical and strategic exercises. At the same time the fleet experimented with new fire control techniques that increased the accuracy of their big guns to 7000 yards. He introduced competition between ships for gunnery and seamanship, with prizes for the winners. Under his command the Mediterranean Fleet became the best in the Royal Navy.

In 1904 Fisher's name was submitted, as a matter of courtesy, along with the candidates for First Sea Lord. Edward VII, sensing an opportunity, chose Fisher.

The Fleet that Jack Built

At his own request Fisher took office on October 21, 1904 -- the 99th anniversary of Trafalgar. Fisher threw himself into the task with all his customary vigor. A few days before taking office he presented the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Selborne, with a 120 page summary of his plans for the Royal Navy. Fisher's reforms consisted of four basic components. The first and least controversial was the establishment of the nucleus crew system. Fisher proposed that reserve ships were to be manned at all times with at least 40% of their full complement instead of idling virtually empty as was the current procedure.

This met with wide approval. His second proposal called for the redeployment of the navy into five fleets and reducing the size of forces in such trouble-free areas as India and the Caribbean, and transferring ships closer to home. This scheme, the most radical reorganization of the Royal Navy ever undertaken was designed to transform it from a sprawl of farflung squadrons at the margins of Empire to a rationalized instrument of world power, with at its center, a great striking force based on Britain.

The third proposal was his most dramatic -- Fisher called for the decommissioning of 154 outmoded warships and striking them from the rolls. "Scrap the lot!" he wrote at the bottom of the list he submitted to the First Lord of the Admiralty. When critics, many of whom saw the Royal Navy's strength as one measured solely by numbers protested, Lord Selborne suggested to Fisher that retaining a handful as a reserve might be worthwhile and politic. With his characteristic tact, the First Sea Lord asked why the Royal Navy should retain "a miser's hoard of useless junk" that was of value only "as a floating museum from bygone ages."

The last proposal Fisher submitted was a massive building program to modernize the Navy. Fisher insisted on doing away with the various collection of ship types and building the new Navy around four basic types of ships -- battleships, cruisers, destroyers and submarines. Most particularly he wanted to concentrate on the construction and deployment of a new kind of super-battleship that would be, in his words, "the greatest fighting ship ever built."

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© Copyright 1996 by David W. Tschanz.
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