John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher
John Arbuthnot Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher, , commonly known as Jacky or Jackie Fisher, was a Royal Navy officer. Fisher was chiefly recognised as an innovator, strategist, and architect of naval reform rather than as an operational admiral, although he held combat commands throughout his career. Appointed First Sea Lord in 1904, Fisher played a critical role in the Anglo-German naval arms race, helping to modernise the British navy ahead of the First World War.
Fisher saw the need to improve the range, accuracy and rate-of-fire of naval gunnery, and became an early proponent of the use of the torpedo, which he believed would supersede big guns for use against ships. As Controller of the Navy, he introduced torpedo-boat destroyers as a class of ship intended for defence against attack from torpedo boats or from submarines. As First Sea Lord he drove the construction of, the first all-big-gun battleship, but he also believed that submarines would become increasingly important and urged their development. He became involved with the introduction of turbine engines to replace reciprocating engines, and with the introduction of oil fuelling to replace coal. He introduced daily baked bread on board ships, whereas when he entered the service it was customary to eat hard biscuits, frequently infested by biscuit beetles.
He first officially retired from the Admiralty in 1910 on his 69th birthday, but became First Sea Lord again in November 1914. He resigned seven months later in frustration over Winston Churchill's Gallipoli campaign, and then served as chairman of the Government's Board of Invention and Research until the end of the war.
Character and appearance
Fisher was five feet seven inches tall and stocky with a round face. In later years, some suggested that Fisher, born in Ceylon of British parents, had Asian ancestry due to his features and the yellow cast of his skin. However, his colour resulted from dysentery and malaria in middle life, which nearly caused his death. He had a fixed and compelling gaze when addressing someone, which gave little clue to his feelings. Fisher was energetic, ambitious, enthusiastic and clever. A shipmate described him as "easily the most interesting midshipman I ever met". When addressing someone he could become carried away with the point he was seeking to make, and on one occasion, King Edward VII asked him to stop shaking his fist in his face. He was considered a "man who demanded to be heard, and one who didn't suffer fools lightly".Throughout his life he was a religious man and attended church regularly when ashore. He had a passion for sermons and might attend two or three services in a day to hear them, which he would "discuss afterwards with great animation". However, he was discreet in expressing his religious views because he feared public attention might hinder his professional career.
He was not keen on sport, but he was a highly proficient dancer. Fisher employed his dancing skill later in life to charm a number of important ladies. He became interested in dancing in 1877 and insisted that the officers of his ship learn to dance. Fisher cancelled the leave of midshipmen who would not take part. He introduced the practice of junior officers dancing on deck when the band was playing for senior officers' wardroom dinners. This practice spread through the fleet. He broke with the then ball tradition of dancing with a different partner for each dance, instead adopting the scandalous habit of choosing one good dancer as his partner for the evening. His ability to charm all comers of all social classes made up for his sometimes blunt or tactless comments. He suffered from seasickness throughout his life.
Fisher's aim was "efficiency of the fleet and its instant readiness for war", which won him support amongst a certain kind of navy officer. He believed in advancing the most able, rather than the longest serving. This upset those he passed over. Thus, he divided the navy into those who approved of his innovations and those who did not. As he became older and more senior he also became more autocratic and commented, "Anyone who opposes me, I crush". He believed that nations fought wars for material gain, and that maintaining a strong navy deterred other nations from engaging it in battle, thus decreasing the likelihood of war: "On the British fleet rests the British Empire." Fisher also believed that the risk of catastrophe in a sea battle was far greater than on land: a war could be lost or won in a day at sea, with no hope of replacing lost ships, but an army could be rebuilt quickly. When an arms race broke out between Germany and Britain to build larger navies, Kaiser Wilhelm II commented, "I admire Fisher, I say nothing against him. If I were in his place I should do all that he has done and I should do all that I know he has in mind to do".
Personal life
John Arbuthnot Fisher was born on 25 January 1841 on the Wavendon Estate at Ramboda in Ceylon. He was the eldest of eleven children, of whom only seven survived infancy, born to Sophia Fisher and Captain William Fisher, a British Army officer in the 78th Highlanders, who had been an aide-de-camp to the former governor of Ceylon, Sir Robert Wilmot-Horton, and was serving as a staff officer at Kandy. Sophia's father Alfred Lambe was a wine merchant and Purveyor of Mineral Water to the King. She was brought up New Bond Street in Mayfair, London. Fisher commented, "My mother was a most magnificent and handsome, extremely young woman....My father was 6 feet 2 inches..., also especially handsome. Why I am ugly is one of those puzzles of physiology which are beyond finding out".William Fisher sold his commission the year John was born, and became a coffee planter and later chief superintendent of police. He incurred such debt on his two coffee plantations that he could barely support his growing family. At the age of six John was sent to England to live with his maternal grandfather, Alfred Lambe, in London. His grandfather had also lost money and the family survived by renting out rooms in their home. John's younger brother, Frederic William Fisher, joined the Royal Navy and reached the rank of admiral, and his youngest surviving sibling Philip became a navy lieutenant on before drowning in an 1880 storm.
William Fisher was killed in a riding accident on 5 May 1866 when John was 25. John's relationship with his mother Sophia suffered from their separation. However, he continued to send her an allowance until her death. In 1870, when Sophia suggested a visit, Fisher dissuaded her as strongly as he could. Fisher wrote to his wife: "I heard from my mother... She contemplates coming to see me... I am in a horrid fright of my mother turning up some day unexpectedly; I am sure we couldn't live together. I hate the very thought of it and really, I don't want to see her. I don't see why I should as I haven't the slightest recollection of her."
Fisher married Frances Katharine Josepha Broughton, known as "Kitty", the daughter of the Rev. Thomas Delves Broughton and Frances Corkran, on 4 April 1866 while stationed at Portsmouth. Kitty's two brothers were both naval officers. According to a cousin, she believed that Jack would rise "to the top of the tree." They remained married until her death in July 1918. They had a son, Cecil Vavasseur, 2nd Baron Fisher, and three daughters, Beatrix Alice, Dorothy Sybil, and Pamela Mary, all of whom married naval officers who went on to become admirals: Beatrix Alice married Reginald Rundell Neeld in 1896; Pamela Mary married Henry Blackett in 1906; and Dorothy Sybil married Eric Fullerton in 1908.
Early career (1854–1869)
Fisher's father ultimately aided his entry into the navy, via his godmother Lady Anne Wilmot-Horton, widow of the governor of Ceylon to whom William Fisher had been Aide-de-camp. She prevailed upon a neighbour, Admiral Sir William Parker, to nominate John as a naval cadet. The entry examination consisted of writing out the Lord's Prayer and jumping naked over a chair. He formally entered the Royal Navy on 13 July 1854, aged 13, on board Nelson's former flagship,, at Portsmouth. On 29 July he joined, an old ship of the line. She was built of wood, in 1831, with 84 smooth-bore muzzle-loading guns arranged on two gun decks, and relied entirely on sail for propulsion. She had a crew of 700, and discipline was strictly enforced by the "hard-bitten Captain Robert Stopford". Fisher fainted when he witnessed eight men being flogged on his first day.Calcutta participated in the blockade of Russian ports in the Gulf of Finland during the Crimean War, entitling Fisher to the Baltic Medal, before returning to Britain a few months later. The crew was paid off on 1 March 1856.
File:Second Opium War-guangzhou.jpg|thumb|right|Combat at Canton during the Second Opium War
On 2 March 1856, Fisher was posted to, and was sent to Constantinople to join her. He arrived on 19 May, just as the war was ending. After a tour around the Dardanelles picking up troops and baggage, Agamemnon returned to England, where the crew was paid off.
Promotion to midshipman came on 12 July 1856 and Fisher joined a 21-gun steam corvette,, part of the China Station. He was to spend the next five years in Chinese waters, seeing action in the Second Opium War, 1856–1860. The Highflyer's captain, Charles Shadwell, was an expert on naval astronomy and he taught Fisher much about navigation, with spectacular later results. When Shadwell was replaced as captain following an injury in action, he gave Fisher a pair of studs engraved with his family motto "Loyal au Mort", which Fisher was to use for the rest of his life.
Fisher passed the seamanship examination for the rank of lieutenant, and was given the acting rank of mate, on his nineteenth birthday, 25 January 1860. He was transferred three months later from the steam frigate to the screw corvette as an acting lieutenant. Shortly afterwards, Fisher had his first brief command: taking the yacht of the China Squadron's admiral—the paddle-gunboat —from Hong Kong to Canton, a voyage of four days.
He was transferred, on 12 June 1860, to the paddle-sloop where he saw sufficient action to add the Taku Forts and Canton clasps to his China War Medal. Furious left Hong Kong and the China Station in March 1861 and, after a leisurely voyage home, paid off her crew in Portsmouth on 30 August. Captain Oliver Jones of the Furious was entirely different from Shadwell: Fisher wrote there was a mutiny on board within his first fortnight, that Jones terrorized his crew and disobeyed orders given to him. For his part, by the end of the tour, Jones was impressed by Fisher.
In November 1861, Fisher sat his final lieutenant's examination in navigation at the Royal Naval College at Portsmouth, passing with flying colours. He had already received top grades in seamanship and gunnery, and achieved the highest score then attained under the recently introduced five-yearly scheme, with 963 out of 1,000 marks in navigation. For this, he was awarded the Beaufort Testimonial, an annual prize of books and instruments; but in the meantime he had to wait around, unpaid, until his appointment came through officially.
From January 1862 to March 1863, Fisher returned to the payroll at the navy's principal gunnery school aboard, a three-decker moored in Portsmouth harbour. During this time, Excellent was evaluating the performance of the "revolutionary" Armstrong breech-loading guns against the conventional Whitworth muzzle-loading type. During free afternoons Fisher would walk the downs, shouting to practise his command voice. He spent 15 of the next 25 years in four tours of duty at Portsmouth concerned with development of gunnery and torpedoes.
In March 1863, Fisher was appointed Gunnery Lieutenant to, the first all-iron seagoing armoured battleship and the most powerful ship in the fleet. Built in 1859, she marked the beginning of the end of the Age of Sail and, coincidentally, was armed with both Armstrong guns and Whitworth guns. Fisher noted he was popular amongst his brother officers because he frequently stayed on board when others went ashore and could take duty for them.
Fisher returned to Excellent in 1864 as a gunnery instructor, where he remained until 1869. Towards the end of his posting he became interested in torpedoes, which were invented in the 1860s, and championed their cause as a relatively simple weapon capable of sinking a battleship. His expertise with torpedoes led to his being invited to Germany in June 1869 for the founding ceremony of a new naval base at Wilhelmshaven, where he met King William I of Prussia, Otto von Bismarck and Helmuth von Moltke the Elder. Perhaps inspired by the visit, he started preparing a paper on the design, construction and management of electrical torpedoes, the cutting-edge technology of the time.