| THE BATTLE FLEET | ||
| 19 | battleships (2 as material reserve). | |
| 8 | armoured coast defence vessels. | |
| 6 | large cruisers. | |
| 16 | small cruisers. | |
| FOREIGN SERVICE FLEET | ||
| Large Cruisers | ||
| For East Africa | 2 | |
| For Central and South America | 1 | |
| Material reserve | 3 | |
| Total | 6 | |
| Small Cruisers | ||
| For East Asia | 3 | |
| For Central and South America | 3 | |
| For East Africa | 2 | |
| For the South Seas | 2 | |
| Material reserve | 4 | |
| Total | 14 | |
| 1 | Station ship. | |
This dramatic departure in German naval policy aroused hardly a ripple of interest in England. Then occurred the South African War, the seizure of the “Bundesrat,” and other incidents which were utilised by the German Emperor, the Marine Minister, and the official Press Bureau, with its wide extending agencies for inflaming public opinion throughout the German Empire against the British Navy. The ground having been well prepared, in 1900 the naval measure of 1898, which was to have covered a period of six years, was superseded by another Navy Act, practically doubling the establishment of ships and men. This is not the time, nor does space permit, to trace the evolution of German naval policy during subsequent years or to analyse the successive Navy Acts which were passed as political circumstances favoured further expansion. The story—and it is a fascinating narrative in the light of after events—may be read elsewhere. The fact to be noted is that the British peoples generally viewed the early indications of German naval policy without suspicion or distrust. Most men found it impossible to believe that any Power could hope to challenge the naval supremacy which had been won at such great sacrifice at the Battle of Trafalgar, and which the British people had continued to enjoy virtually without challenge throughout the nineteenth century.
Happily, the hour when preparations had to be made, if made at all, to maintain in face of any rivalry our sea command, produced the man. In the autumn of 1901 Lord Selborne, then First Lord of the Admiralty, paid a special visit to Malta to discuss the naval situation with a naval officer with whose name not a thousand people in the British Isles were then familiar. Sir John Fisher had, as recently as 1899, taken over the command of the Mediterranean Squadron; he had already made a great name in the service as a man of original thought and great courage, possessing a genius for naval politics and naval administration. He had represented the British Navy at the Hague Peace Conference, but he might have walked from end to end of London, and not a dozen people would have recognised him. In the following March, thanks to Lord Selborne, he became Second Sea Lord, and a naval revolution was inaugurated. Elsewhere I have recapitulated the remarkable Navy of the renaissance of British sea power.[2]
[2] Fortnightly Review, September, 1914.
First, attention was devoted to the personnel. New schemes of training for officers and men and for the Naval Reserve were introduced. A new force—the Royal Fleet Reserve—was established, consisting of naval seamen and other ratings who had served afloat for five years or more; a Volunteer Naval Reserve was initiated; steps were taken to revise the administration of the naval establishments ashore, and to reduce the proportion of officers and men engaged in peace duties, freeing them for service in ships afloat. On the anniversary of Trafalgar in 1904, after a short period in command at Portsmouth in order to supervise personally the reforms in training and manning policy already introduced, Sir John Fisher—Lord Fisher as he is now known—returned to the Admiralty as First Sea Lord. Instantly, with the support of Lord Selborne and Mr. Balfour, then Prime Minister, to whom all honour is due, the new Board proceeded to carry into effect vast correlated schemes for the redistribution of the fleets at sea and the more rapid mobilisation of ships in reserve, the reorganisation of the Admiralty, and the re-adjustment of our world naval policy to the new conditions in accordance with a plan of action which the new First Sea Lord had prepared months in advance.
Our principal sea frontier has been the Mediterranean. It was necessary to change it, and the operation had to be carried out without causing undue alarm to our neighbours—at that time we had no particular friends, though the foundations of the Entente were already being laid. Without asking your leave from Parliament, the great administrative engine, to which Lord Fisher supplied fuel, proceeded to carry out the most gigantic task to which any Governmental Department ever put its hand. Overseas squadrons which had no strategic purpose were disestablished; unimportant dockyards were reduced to cadres; ships too weak to fight and too slow to run away were recalled; a whole fleet of old ships, which were eating up money and adding nothing to our strength, were scrapped; the vessels in reserve were provided with nucleus crews. With a single eye to the end in view—victory in the main strategical theatres—conservative influences which strove to impede reform were beaten down. With the officers and men taken out of the weak ships, and others who were wrenched from comfortable employment ashore, a great fleet on our new frontier was organised.
In the preamble to the German Navy Act of 1900 it had been stated:
“It is not absolutely necessary that the German Battle Fleet should be as strong as that of the greatest naval Power, for a great naval Power will not, as a rule, be in a position to concentrate all its striking force against us. But even if it should succeed in meeting us with considerable superiority of strength, the defeat of a strong German Fleet would so substantially weaken the enemy that, in spite of the victory he might have obtained, his own position in the world would no longer be secured by an adequate fleet.”
Lord Fisher had not studied the progress of the German naval movement without realising that in this passage was to be found the secret of the strategic plan which the German naval authorities had formed. With the instinct of a great strategist, he reorganised the whole world-wide machinery of the British Navy, in order to suit the new circumstances then developing.
The war in the Far East had shown that changes were necessary in the design of British ships of all classes. The First Sea Lord insisted that the matter should have immediate attention, and a powerful committee of naval officers, shipbuilders, and scientists began its sittings at the Admiralty. The moment its report was available, Parliament was asked for authority to lay down groups of ships of new types, of which the “Dreadnought” was the most famous. In the preceding six years, sixteen battleships had been laid down for Great Britain, while Germany had begun thirteen; our sea power, as computed in modern ships of the line, had already begun to shrink. Secretly and rapidly, four units of the new type—the “Dreadnought,” with her swift sisters, the “Indomitable,” “Inflexible,” and “Invincible”—were rushed to completion. No battleship building abroad carried more than four big guns; the “Dreadnought” had ten big guns, and her swift consorts eight.[3] Thus was the work of rebuilding the British Fleet initiated. Destroyers of a new type were placed in hand, and redoubled progress was made in the construction of submarines, which Lord Fisher was the first to realise were essential to this country, and were capable of immense development as offensive engines of warfare. We gained a lead of eighteen months over other Powers by the determined policy adopted.