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Subject: Excerpt Of History
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 21:37:40 EST
John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Jackie_Fisher.jpg)
John Arbuthnot Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher (January 25, 1841 – July 10, 1920),
commonly known as "Jackie" Fisher, was a British admiral known for his
efforts at naval reform. He had a huge influence on the Royal Navy in a career
spanning more than 60 years, starting in a navy of wooden sailing ships armed
with muzzle-loading cannon and ending in one of battlecruisers, submarines and
the first aircraft carriers.
Early life and career
Fisher was born in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) to an English family, the eldest
of eleven children. His father was Captain William Fisher, an army officer and
aide-de-camp to the governor of Ceylon.
Fisher was sent to England to join the navy in 1854. After completing his
training at HMS Britannia he was assigned as a cadet to HMS Calcutta, an old
ship of the line which was sent to assist in blockading Russian ports in the
Gulf of Finland during the Crimean War. A few months later the ship returned to
the UK where he was assigned to Agamemnon, which arrived at Constantinople
(now Istanbul) just as the war ended. Promoted to midshipman, he served on a
corvette, Highflyer, then the steam frigate Chesapeake and finally the paddle
sloop Furious in the China Wars of 1859–1860.
He studied at Excellent, the naval gunnery school, for 14 months before
being transferred as gunnery officer to Warrior, the first all-iron sea-going
armoured battleship. He returned to Excellent in 1864 as an instructor where he
remained until 1869. Whilst there he married Frances Broughton.
Early reform efforts
Following two and a half years as commander (i.e., second in command) of
Ocean, flagship of the China Station he returned to Excellent again in 1872,
this time as head of torpedo and mine training, during which he split it off as
Vernon. From 1876 until 1883 he served as a captain, commanding five ships in
succession, the last being Inflexible. Inflexible was a very prestigious
appointment, the most powerful warship of her day, although in practice the four
huge muzzle-loaded guns took so long to load that she was almost useless for
naval warfare. Nevertheless she was assigned to the Mediterranean fleet
where she took part in the Egyptian War of 1882, bombarding the port of
Alexandria as part of Admiral Seymour's fleet.
During this time he became a close friend of the future King Edward VII and
Queen Alexandra.
Fisher returned to the UK to become commanding officer of Excellent in April
1883. He was Director of Naval Ordinance from 1886 until 1890, where he met
with limited success in trying to wrest the design of naval guns from the War
Office.
At the Admiralty
Fisher was superintendent of the dockyard at Portsmouth for a few months in
1891–1892 after which he became Third Sea Lord, the naval officer with overall
responsibility for provision of ships and equipment. He presided over the
development of torpedo boat destroyers, later shortened to destroyers for
countering torpedo boats. Torpedo-boats had become a major threat as they were
cheap but able to sink the largest battleships, and France had built large
numbers of them. Torpedo-boat-destroyers were small, fast warships equipped with
the then novel water-tube boilers and quick-firing small calibre guns.
Fisher was knighted in 1894 and put in charge of the North Atlantic and West
Indies station in 1897 before heading the British delegation to the First
Hague Peace Convention. Following this he was made chief of the Mediterranean
station from 1899 until 1902. Unlike the North Atlantic station, it was a vital
British operational command because of the line of communication between
India and the UK which passed through the Suez Canal and which was felt to be
under continuous threat from France.
In 1902 he returned to the UK as Second Sea Lord, in charge of personnel and
in 1903 became commander in chief of Portsmouth dockyard. In October 1905 he
was appointed First Sea Lord, the overall operational commander of the Navy.
By then France had become a close ally whilst Germany and Britain were
embarking on a naval arms race. Fisher determined to build up a hugely powerful
Home Fleet (renamed to Channel Fleet, the old Channel Fleet becoming the
Atlantic Fleet) at the expense of overseas stations. Amidst massive public
controversy, he ruthlessly sold off 90 obsolete and small ships and put a further 64
into reserve, describing all these vessels as "too weak to fight and too slow
to run away", and "a miser's hoard of useless junk". This freed up crews and
money to increase the number of large modern ships in home waters.
He was a driving force behind the development of the fast, all big-gun
battleship, and chairman of the Committee on Designs which produced the outline
design for the prototype, Dreadnought. His preferred model was a version where
speed was substituted for armour, this became the battlecruiser, the first
being Invincible. He also encouraged the introduction of submarines into the
Royal Navy, and the conversion from a largely coal fueled navy to an oil fueled
one. He had a long-running and public feud with another admiral, Charles
Beresford.
He was made a baron in 1909 (taking the motto "Fear God and dread nought" on
the coat of arms as a reference to Dreadnought) just before his retirement
in 1910.
The First World War, and Fisher's last years
On the outbreak of the First World War he was recalled as First Sea Lord,
after Prince Louis of Battenberg had been forced to resign because of alleged
German ties. Fisher resigned on May 15, 1915 amidst bitter arguments with the
First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill over Gallipoli, causing
Churchill's resignation too. Fisher had opposed to the campaign from the outset,
preferring an amphibious attack on the German Baltic Sea coastline, even having
shallow draft battlecruisers such as Furious and Courageous constructed for
it. As the Gallipoli campaign failed relations with Churchill had become
increasingly acrimonious.
Fisher was made chairman of the Government's Board of Invention and Research,
serving in that post until the end of the war. He died of cancer in 1920.
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