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
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