Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Fisher, John Arbuthnot
FISHER, JOHN ARBUTHNOT, first Baron Fisher, of Kilverstone (1841-1920), admiral of the fleet, born 25 January 1841 in Ceylon, was the elder son of Captain William Fisher, of the 78th Highlanders and 95th Foot, by his wife, Sophia, daughter of Alfred Lambe, of New Bond Street, London. Fisher entered the royal navy on 13 July 1854, on a nomination from Admiral Sir William Parker. He was appointed as naval cadet to the Calcutta and served in the Baltic fleet during the Crimean War. Two years later he joined the Highflyer as midshipman and served in China during the war of 1859–1860, being present at the capture of Canton and the attack on the Peiho forts. He was transferred to the Furious, promoted acting lieutenant early in 1860, and confirmed in November of that year, after winning the Beaufort testimonial, while still on the China station. Having qualified in the gunnery school Excellent he joined the Warrior, the first ‘ironclad’, in 1863, and a year later was appointed to the staff of the Excellent, where he remained till November 1869; he was promoted commander in August of that year. Then came another three-year commission in the flagship on the China station, and in 1872 he was again appointed to the Excellent, this time for experimental work on the torpedo, a new weapon then being tested. He remained on instructional and experimental work at Portsmouth for the next four years, and devoted himself to the development of the torpedo. He was chiefly responsible for establishing a separate torpedo school which was developed out of the gunnery school and finally placed in the Vernon. In 1874 he was promoted captain at the age of thirty-three, and at the end of 1876 he came for the first time to the Admiralty to serve on a torpedo committee and to go out to Fiume to study experiments with the Whitehead torpedo. He was then at sea for six years—in command of the Pallas, under Sir Geoffrey Hornby, in the Mediterranean; as flag captain to Sir Cooper Key in the Bellerophon and Hercules in the North America and particular service squadron; then again commanding the Pallas in the Mediterranean; and from September 1879 to January 1881 in the Northampton as flag captain to Sir Leopold McClintock on the North America and West Indies station; finally being brought home specially to fit out and command the Inflexible, the greatest battleship of the day. In her he was present at the attack on the Alexandria forts (July 1882), under Sir Beauchamp Seymour (afterwards Lord Alcester), and did signal service in fitting out an armoured train and commanding it in action against Arabi Pasha. For this he was awarded the C.B. He returned from Egypt with fever and was ill for nine months.
Fisher now began a period of fourteen years’ service ashore, only broken by a few weeks in command of the Minotaur in the evolutionary squadron of the summer of 1885. He was for three years captain of the gunnery school at Portsmouth, for four years director of ordnance and torpedoes at the Admiralty, being promoted rear-admiral in 1890; for one year superintendent of Portsmouth dockyard; and for three years third sea lord and controller of the navy. In the ordnance department he secured, after a long fight with the War Office, in which Lord Salisbury as prime minister was called in to arbitrate, the transfer of the control of naval guns from the army to the Admiralty. At Portsmouth dockyard he superintended the building of the new battleship Royal Sovereign. As controller he was responsible for the execution of the great programme of shipbuilding authorized by the Naval Defence Act (1889), and carried the adoption of the water-tube boiler in the face of great opposition. He had long been a marked man, noticed for his outstanding ability and originality by all first lords from Mr. Ward Hunt to Earl Spencer. He was promoted K.C.B. in 1894.
Mr. (afterwards Viscount) Goschen, on coming to Whitehall as first lord for the second time in 1895, found Fisher a member of the board, and appointed him commander-in-chief, North America and West Indies station, in 1897, after he had been promoted vice-admiral in May 1896. On that station Fisher showed his diplomatic quality by his friendly relations with the American Admiral Sampson during the Cuban War. As British naval delegate he attended the first Hague Conference in 1899, and was one of the outstanding figures in that gathering of diplomatists, international lawyers, seamen, and soldiers of the principal nations of the world. His grasp of realities and of the essential principles of modern warfare did much to keep the conference on reasonably sound lines. He was then transferred to the Mediterranean with his flagship Renown to take command of the greatest fleet England then possessed. His tenure of that command was remarkable for his determination to ensure in every department and detail complete naval efficiency and the instant readiness of the fleet for war. He encouraged his officers of all ranks to study for themselves the problems of modern warfare. He visited every part of his station with his mind alert to seize every opportunity of making his fleet ready for any emergency that might arise. He introduced longer ranges for firing, and insisted on the need for constant training and practice in gunnery and in testing and developing every new device, from the control of firing to the newly invented wireless telegraphy, for making his ships and squadrons more effective in action. It was typical of him that, whereas other commanders-in-chief had given cups for boat-pulling and sailing, he offered one for tactical essays. He was immensely popular on the lower deck and was an inspiration to the younger officers, who admired his dislike of routine and contempt for any customs and precedents which were not warranted by sound reason. He inspired officers to enthusiasm by personal lectures on all manner of subjects connected with the future development of their profession, couched in a language as fresh and as invigorating as it was unconventional. The preparation of these lectures was the starting-point in his own mind of a great scheme of administrative reform to fit the navy for defending the Empire, under the new conditions of modern science and the changing aspect of foreign relations. The Earl of Selborne, who had become first lord of the Admiralty at the end of 1900, paid a visit to Malta and the Mediterranean fleet in the summer of 1901. Fisher laid before him an outline of his projected reforms; and after returning home Lord Selborne invited Fisher to rejoin the Admiralty board in the following summer as second sea lord with charge of the personnel of the fleet. This post had usually been filled by the appointment of a rear-admiral, and the fact that Fisher reached the rank of full admiral in November 1901 served in itself to indicate that an unusual task was expected of him.
Fisher, who was promoted G.C.B. at King Edward’s coronation (August 1902), lost no time on his arrival in Whitehall in formulating the first, and in some ways the most striking, of his proposed changes. This was the new scheme of entry in training of officers, under which executive officers, engineers, and marines were all to be entered at the early age of twelve and trained together under one common system for four years in colleges on shore before going to sea, specializing later in the particular branch of the service they were to adopt. The scheme was promulgated in a memorandum published on Christmas Day 1902. Both the naval and the civil members of the board were unanimous in its favour, and Lord Selborne, who took a personal hand in framing it, secured the sanction of the Cabinet for its issue. The novelty of training all officers in engineering for four years on shore aroused considerable hostility among many naval officers, especially of the older school, and there was abundant criticism in detail. Fisher devoted the next nine months, with a buoyant enthusiasm and indomitable energy, to carrying the reforms into immediate effect. The sudden drop of three years in the age of entry made it necessary to carry on the old scheme of entry for three years so as to prevent a gap in the flow of new officers to the fleet. A college at Dartmouth was already under construction to replace the old Britannia training ship; but a second college was wanted at once to accommodate the larger number of officers of the new entry system for the longer course of four years. As the navy was undertaking the entire education of the boys from the early age of twelve, a staff of masters on the public-school system, as well as of officers responsible for instilling naval training and traditions, was necessary. To prevent the evils of competitive examination for lads of such tender years, a new system of selection, after interview, was adopted; and a new college, constructed and completely equipped in nine months, was opened in September 1903 in the grounds of the Osborne House property belonging to the King. This device of selection after interview, tempered by a qualifying examination, has by its proved merit lived down much initial criticism, has been permanently adopted, and has since been imitated, with suitable modifications, in other branches of the public service. The scheme of common entry has been subjected to certain changes; the inclusion of officers intended for the Royal Marines has been abandoned, and the age of entry has been slightly raised to correspond with the normal age at which boys leave preparatory schools for public schools; but in all the main essentials it has so far stood the test of time, and seems likely to be a permanent feature of the royal navy. Alterations in the organization and training of all branches of the lower ranks in the service occupied Fisher’s attention during this annus mirabilis. At the end of it, in September 1903, he went to Portsmouth as commander-in-chief, where he was able to superintend the birth and early growth of the college at Osborne. Before the end of the year, while still at Portsmouth, he was appointed by Mr. Arnold Forster, the secretary of state for war, to be a member of a committee, with Viscount Esher and Sir George Clarke (afterwards Baron Sydenham), which was instructed to recommend reforms in the organization of the War Office. Sir George Clarke was thousands of miles away when the committee was appointed, and Fisher, with characteristic energy, had written out the first draft of the report before the three members could meet. The chief points of Fisher’s draft were adopted by the committee, and, as a result, the organization of the Army Council on the lines of the Admiralty Board, in place of the former dual control of secretary of state and commander-in-chief, was approved by the government. Fisher knew that Lord Selborne and the prime minister (Mr. Balfour) intended him to return to the Admiralty on the retirement of Lord Walter Kerr in the following October (1904), and he devoted part of his untiring energy during his remaining months at Portsmouth to working out in draft the second part of his great scheme of reforms: the redistribution of the fleet on the new alignment required by the substitution of Germany for France as England’s leading naval rival, and a reconstruction of the matériel of the navy itself to meet the most modern fighting conditions.
Fisher took a pride in the selection of Trafalgar day, 21 October, for his entry upon the office of first sea lord, though in fact he joined the board a day earlier. Throughout his life Nelson was his hero and model. Reference to the great sailor’s sayings and actions was never long absent from his conversation and writings. By the end of 1904 Lord Selborne published his memorandum on the redistribution of the fleet. Fisher had realized that the country was growing restless under increased expenditure on armaments, and that severe economies in all non-essentials would be required if the construction of new fighting weapons, the necessity for which he foresaw, was not to be hindered. During the long peace since the Crimean War the types of ships of the royal navy had completely changed; but the naval stations and dockyards throughout the world had been little altered, and many of the ships, particularly on foreign stations, would have been of little fighting value against a well-equipped and determined foe. The principles of the redistribution of the fleet were the concentration of the main fighting strength of the navy in the North Sea, the ruthless abolition of small ships of little fighting value, and the closing down of various small foreign dockyards. Halifax, Jamaica, Esquimalt, and Trincomalee were closed down; Ascension and Bermuda were reduced; and 150 of the older ships were, as Mr. Balfour said, with one stroke of the pen struck off the list of the navy. The personnel set free from these ships enabled Fisher to carry out another cherished scheme which enormously increased the efficiency of the war fleet without increasing the number of men voted by parliament. Hitherto ships not in commission had been paid off and lay in the dockyards and harbours with small care and maintenance parties. Fisher devised and carried out a nucleus crew system under which the more important ships in reserve that would be required to join the fleet on the outbreak of war had the active service part of their crews permanently on board, the balance being provided from the naval reserves when these were called up. By these measures the strength, both actual and potential, of the navy in home waters vis à vis the growing menace from Germany was vastly enhanced.
Fisher had long been meditating the creation of an ‘all big gun’ fast battleship and the use of the turbine engine, and early in 1905, at his request, Lord Selborne appointed a new designs committee to advise the board on new types of ships of war. The result was the production of the design of the famous Dreadnought type of battleship and battle cruiser, which, by combining great speed, produced by powerful turbine engines, with immensely increased gun power, made a revolution in warship construction throughout the world. Fisher at the same time encouraged the building of destroyers of greatly increased speed and power as well as the development of the submarine, with its torpedo weapon, particularly for coast defence purposes. At the same time a committee was appointed to examine the organization of the dockyards and the reserve of stores of all kinds kept in them, in order that all non-essentials. many of which had accumulated on principles unrevised for many years, might be got rid of.
In April 1905, when Lord Selborne left the Admiralty to become governor-general of South Africa, Fisher found in Earl Cawdor a new chief no less enthusiastic in support of his reforms. These changes had proceeded with great rapidity for such a conservative service as the royal navy, and a storm of criticism arose both in parliament and in the press. Nothing daunted, Fisher determined that, before the conservative government, which was visibly tottering to its fall, went out of office, a general statement of the Admiralty’s naval policy in the many fields of its operation should be published. Lord Cawdor readily agreed, and after a wise revision by that able statesman’s hand, a statement of Admiralty policy, commonly called the Cawdor memorandum, was issued to parliament, with Cabinet approval, in November 1905, just before the fall of Mr. Balfour’s government. The reforms and economies introduced at Fisher’s instigation made it possible to reduce the navy estimates by £3,500,000 in 1904–1905 and by £1,500,000 in 1905–1906, while the fleet under his creative hand was becoming a more powerful weapon than it had been for generations. The Dreadnought was laid down in October 1905, launched in February 1906, and completed in December 1906, a triumph of rapid work and organization.
In the new and not very friendly atmosphere of the liberal government of 1906, Fisher thought it prudent to consent to a diminution of the programme of four capital ships a year which had been laid down in the Cawdor memorandum, and to postponing the construction of the proposed new great dockyard at Rosyth. At this time he had to meet the unabated hostility of the critics of his reforms and the insistent demands of a considerable ‘little England’ party in the House of Commons. He found in Lord Tweedmouth, his new chief, as loyal, if not so enthusiastic, a supporter of the principles he advocated as Lord Selborne and Lord Cawdor. The development on sound lines of the numerous schemes and reforms he had inaugurated required his unremitting attention. He never gained the sympathy of the new prime minister (Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman) in the same degree as he possessed that of Mr. Balfour and later of Mr. Asquith; but he was encouraged by the constant sympathy and close personal friendship of King Edward, to whom he was first and principal naval A.D.C. from 1904 to 1910. He felt that he was fighting not only for his official career but for the life of the new navy that he was building up. It was an anxious time, and feeling himself with his back to the wall, he began to show towards his opponents, particularly those who belonged to his own profession, a vindictiveness which tended to foster personal rancour and division among the personnel of the great sea service, hitherto singularly free from these evils. In 1907 Lord Charles Beresford [q.v.] was appointed commander-in-chief of the Channel fleet. That great and popular commander had been on cordial terms with Fisher, when his second in command in the Mediterranean, and had at first been an enthusiastic supporter of the common entry scheme of 1902; but from the date of his taking command of the Channel fleet he found himself continually at variance with the Admiralty on points both of detail and principle. Fisher was in no mood to welcome criticisms from the principal admiral afloat, and an unfortunate estrangement began which continued until Fisher’s retirement. In April 1908 Lord Tweedmouth was succeeded at the Admiralty by Mr. Reginald McKenna, who soon made up his mind that Fisher’s naval policy was in essentials right, and determined to give him the fullest support. Early in the following year, they both reluctantly became convinced that Germany, so far from responding to the slowing down of the shipbuilding programme decided on by Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman’s government, was secretly accelerating her own to an extent which would soon place the naval supremacy of this country in jeopardy. The result, after a bitter contest in the Cabinet, was the famous programme of eight battleships of 1909–1910 and the hastening of the deferred construction of the Rosyth dockyard. Lord Charles Beresford’s continued differences with the Admiralty resulted in the termination of his command of the Channel fleet in January 1909. He subsequently addressed a communication to the prime minister criticizing the Admiralty policy in various directions. These criticisms were examined at great length by a committee of the Cabinet, whose conclusions, though expressing anxiety at the differences of opinion revealed, were generally favourable to Mr. McKenna’s and Lord Fisher’s policy. At the end of the year Fisher, on whom King Edward had conferred the order of merit in 1904 and the G.C.V.O. in 1908, was raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Fisher, of Kilverstone, a Norfolk estate which had been bequeathed to his son Cecil by his old friend, Mr. Joseph Vavasseur.
In January 1910 Fisher resigned office and was succeeded as first sea lord by his old friend, Sir Arthur Knyvet Wilson [q.v.], who had followed him as controller in 1897, and was in general sympathy with his naval policy. In 1912 Fisher became chairman of the royal commission on oil fuel, the importance of which, both in saving of personnel and in rapidity of re-fuelling, he had been urging for the past ten years. The commission’s report resulted in the adoption of oil-fuel for all new ships. For the next four years Fisher maintained an unabated interest in naval affairs and was in constant communication with Mr. McKenna and with Mr. Winston Churchill who became first lord in October 1911.
In October 1914, after the outbreak of the War, Mr. Churchill invited Fisher to return to the Admiralty as first sea lord, on the resignation of Prince Louis of Battenberg [q.v.]. Fisher obeyed the call with alacrity, and a period of intense activity ensued in Whitehall. At first all went well. Fisher had for years past been urging that Sir John Jellicoe was the officer to command the fleet when the threatened war with Germany broke out. The officer of his own choosing held the command, and in Mr. Churchill he found an enthusiastic chief with an activity of mind and fertility of imagination not inferior to his own. Fisher’s first work was to redress the loss of Sir Christopher Cradock [q.v.] and his squadron at Coronel by sending Sir Doveton Sturdee with two battle cruisers from the grand fleet to intercept Admiral von Spee, whose squadron was met and destroyed at the Falkland Islands. The complete success of this operation was made possible by Fisher’s instant grasp of the situation and his insistence on the hastened preparations which brought Sturdee’s squadron on the scene of action just in time with only a few hours to spare. The battle cruiser—his own conception—was more than justified. He then devoted his energies to the building on a great scale of all types of vessels in which the navy was deficient, especially submarines and monitors, and to his long-projected scheme for securing the command of the Baltic and landing a military force on the German flank in Pomerania. A large number of specially constructed barges were ordered for immediate building, but before they were completed the attention of the government was diverted to the Dardanelles, and Fisher saw his cherished design gradually excluded in favour of an operation in which he never believed. In deference, however, to the wishes of his chief and of the Cabinet he assented to the naval attempt to force the passage of the Dardanelles and to the allocation of a considerable portion of the fleet for this purpose, although he had no faith in a purely naval attack upon fortifications which was not combined with military operations. As the operations of the spring of 1915 at the Dardanelles proceeded, Fisher grew more and more discontented, until at last, becoming convinced that the Cabinet’s policy of persisting in the attack upon the Dardanelles despite the naval losses suffered and the further risks incurred, jeopardized the success of the major naval strategy of the war, he resigned office as first sea lord. The fall of the government followed almost immediately, and Mr. Balfour became first lord in the new coalition ministry. Fisher, however, was not invited to return to the Admiralty. He became chairman of the Admiralty inventions board, but his career as a naval administrator was finished. His wife, Frances, only daughter of the Rev. Thomas Delves Broughton, his devoted companion for fifty-two years, died in July 1918. After the armistice at the end of that year he diverted himself by publishing two volumes of reminiscences: compilations of a most informal character consisting chiefly of copies of letters and documents and notes dictated to a shorthand writer. His continued interest in public affairs was shown in a series of letters to The Times urging the necessity of cutting down expenditure on the services once the War was won. He died 10 July 1920, and was accorded a public naval funeral in London at Westminster Abbey; he was buried at Kilverstone.
Fisher was one of the most remarkable personalities of his time, and one of the greatest administrators in the history of the royal navy. Belonging to a traditionally conservative service, he offended many susceptibilities by his absence of reverence for tradition and custom; but he had a singular clarity of vision and grasp of essentials, combined with a burning patriotism and belief in the destinies of the English race. He was quick to recognize ability in every grade of the service or department of life, and he won the enthusiastic support and co-operation of most of those whose help he invited by treating them as his personal friends. In later years, when his policy aroused serious opposition, he tended to treat those who did not respond to his advances, or found themselves in direct antagonism, with a hostility that left bitter feelings behind. He accepted help from every conceivable quarter whence he thought the end in view could be promoted. He possessed a daemonic energy combined with a gaiety and charm which few of his associates could resist. His conversation was sparkling, and his voluminous correspondence was full of pithy sayings and arresting phrases couched in vigorous English, and pointed by frequent quotations, particularly from the Bible, of which he was a devoted reader. Behind all lay his constantly quoted motto: ‘The fighting efficiency of the fleet and its instant readiness for war.’ Fate never allowed him to command a fleet in action, but it was his creative genius that reformed the ships and personnel of the royal navy and forged the weapon which finally brought Germany to her knees in the War, the date of which he had predicted with the instinct of genius.
Fisher was succeeded in the peerage by his only son, Cecil Vavasseur, who was born in 1868, and married in 1910 Jane, daughter of Randal Morgan, of Philadelphia. His three daughters, Beatrix, Dorothy, and Pamela, all married naval officers, viz., Rear-Admiral R. R. Neeld, Captain Eric Fullerton, and Captain Henry Blackett.
Fisher’s portrait was painted by Sir A. S. Cope in 1903 (Royal Academy Pictures, 1903).
[Lord Fisher’s Memories, 1919, and Records, 1919; private information; personal knowledge.]