During the same month, Mr. William White, Chief Constructor to the Admiralty, read a paper at the Mansion House dealing with the design of modern men-of-war, which marked an era in shipbuilding. Sir William White restored to the ship of war that symmetry and beauty of design which had been lost during the transition from sails to steam. The transition vessels were nightmares. Sir William White designed ships. A man of genius, of a refined and beautiful nature, a loyal servant of the Admiralty, to which he devoted talents which, applied outside the Service, would have gained him wealth, his recent death was a great loss to his country. The later Victorian Navy is his splendid monument: and it may yet be that history will designate those noble ships as the finest type of steam vessels of war.
About the same time, I brought forward another motion in the House of Commons, to abolish obsolete vessels, of which I specified fifty-nine, and to utilise the money saved in their maintenance, in new construction. The scheme was carried into execution by degrees.
In June of 1887, I invited a large party of members of the House of Commons to visit Portsmouth, where they were shown something of the Navy.
In December of the same year, speaking in public, I affirmed the following principles: that in time of war our frontiers were the ports of the enemy; that our main fleets could be required to watch those ports; and that the strength of the Fleet required should be calculated upon the basis of the work it would be required to perform. I also urged that the line of communications should be instituted, by means of establishing a system of signalling between the ships of the Navy and the ships of the mercantile marine, and between all ships and the shore. At that time there was no such system.
The Press and the public received the exposition of these elementary principles of organisation for war as a complete novelty; by many they were welcomed like a revelation; circumstances which exemplify the general ignorance prevailing at the time.
Of even more significance were the official declarations on the subject. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord George Hamilton, had publicly stated in November, 1886, that this country had more ships in commission than the three other European Naval Powers next in order of strength. The statement was correct; but among the ships in commission were included many vessels of no fighting value, such as the Indus, Asia and Duke of Wellington. As an estimate of comparative fighting strength, the statement, like many another official statement before and since, required qualification; as I remarked in the House of Commons in the course of my reply to Lord George Hamilton.
In December, 1886, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Randolph Churchill, suddenly resigned. He afterwards explained that his resignation was a protest against extravagance and waste in the administration of the Services. There were extravagance and waste; but, in my view, which I represented to Lord Randolph, it would take several years to reform the administration, and it was far more important to set right our defences, even if their administration cost more in the meantime.
I recall these things because they serve to illustrate the trend of events. On the one side were the Government and their official advisers at the Admiralty, convinced that all was very well as it was. On the other side, were the rapid development of the fighting ship in all countries, which owing to Mr. W. H. White, was particularly marked in this country; the greatly increased public interest in naval affairs; and the constant representations of a number of naval officers, myself among them, to the effect that great reforms were urgently required.
We believed that there existed at the Board of Admiralty no system of direct responsibility; that Parliament and the nation had no means either of ascertaining upon what principle the money was expended upon our defences or of affixing responsibility whether it were expended ill or well; that there existed no plan of campaign at the Admiralty; that the Navy and the Army had no arrangement for working together in the event of war; and that, in point of fact, the Navy was dangerously inadequate. And in attempting to achieve reform, we were confronted by a solid breastwork, as though built of bales of wool, of official immovability. Had it been a hard obstacle, we might have smashed it.
Towards the end of 1887, the Admiralty did a very foolish thing. They decided to cut down the salaries of the officers of the new Intelligence Department by £950. In my view, this proceeding both involved a breach of faith with the officers concerned, and would be highly injurious to the efficiency of the department for whose success I felt peculiarly responsible. My protests were, however, disregarded; the First Lord asserted his supreme authority; and the thing was done.