RICHARDS, Sir FREDERICK WILLIAM (1833–1912), admiral, was born at Ballyhally, co. Wexford, 30 November 1833, the second son of Captain Edwin Richards, R.N., of Solsborough, co. Wexford, by his wife, Mary Anne, daughter of the Rev. Walter Blake Kirwan [q.v.], dean of Killala. After education at the Naval School, New Cross, he became a naval cadet in 1848. He served for several years on the Australian station and was promoted acting mate, H.M. sloop Fantome, on the same station in January 1854. He was promoted lieutenant in October 1855, and on returning home in 1856 went on half-pay for a year, after which he was appointed to the Ganges, flagship on the China station. The commander-in-chief, Rear-Admiral R. L. Baynes, appointed him flag lieutenant in April 1859, and in February 1860 he was promoted commander in command of the paddle-sloopVixen on the China station. He brought home and paid off this vessel in 1861. From March 1862 to January 1866 he commanded the Dart, a gunboat, on the west coast of Africa, and on his return was promoted captain in February 1866.
After four and a half years on half-pay Richards commanded the Indian troopship Jumna till June 1873, and was then selected to command the Devastation, the first steam turret battleship designed without any sail power. This command was of much importance, as the loss in 1870 of the Captain, a sailing turret ship of special design, had caused great anxiety as to the stability of such vessels. Richards's conduct of the exhaustive steam trials and his able reports on them completely satisfied the authorities and allayed public anxiety. In 1874 he took the Devastation to the Mediterranean and remained her captain till June 1877. The following January he became captain of the steam reserve, and in October 1878 he was appointed commodore and senior officer on the west coast of Africa, H.M.S. Boadicea. When he arrived at the Cape the disaster at Isandhlwana in the Zulu War had just occurred (22 January 1879), and he promptly proceeded up the east coast outside the limits of his station, and landed in March 1879 with a small naval brigade and commanded it at the battle of Gingihlovo (2 April) and in the relief of Echowe (3 April). For these services he was gazetted and made a C.B. (1879). He remained as commodore in South Africa until June 1882, having taken part in the battle of Laing's Nek (28 January 1881) in the Boer War, and being promoted K.C.B. for this service the same year.
After promotion to flag rank in June 1882 Richards was appointed junior naval lord at the Admiralty under the second Earl of Northbrook. In May 1885 he received the command of the East Indies station with his flag in H.M.S. Bacchante. In the course of this three years' command he organized and equipped the naval brigade in the Burmese War and was officially thanked by the government of India for his services. After his return to England in 1888 he was appointed, with Admirals Sir William Montagu Dowell and Sir Richard Vesey Hamilton, to report on the lessons of the naval manœuvres of that year. Their report, most of which was acknowledged to be due to the hand and brain of Richards, presented a most convincing discussion of the conditions of modern warfare and a clear statement of the vital importance of sea power to the existence of the British Empire, and set forth what became known as the two-power standard as the principle on which the British shipbuilding programme should be based. This able report, though challenged at first by official naval opinion, made a great impression, and may be regarded as one of the determining causes of Lord George Hamilton's Naval Defence Act of 1889, which in effect recreated the royal navy. Richards was also the naval representative on the royal commission on naval and military administration (1890), in the proceedings of which and in the drafting of its conclusions he bore a leading part.
Richards was promoted vice-admiral in 1888, and in 1890 went as commander-in-chief to the China station until June 1892, when he rejoined the Board of Admiralty under Lord George Hamilton as second naval lord. He was promoted admiral in September 1893, and in November of that year was selected by the fifth Earl Spencer to succeed Sir Anthony Hiley Hoskins as first naval lord, a position which he retained for nearly six years. His career as first naval lord was of great importance in the history of naval administration. Richards had a clear understanding of the needs of the navy, and he had the entire confidence of his political chiefs, Lord Spencer and Mr. (afterwards Viscount) Goschen. This period was marked by a great development of the shipbuilding programme begun under the Naval Defence Act of 1889, and, at Richards's particular instigation, by a series of big naval works
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