[The following account of Lord Fisher’s Naval Reforms is extracted from The Review of Reviews for February, 1910.]
I briefly summarise Lord Fisher’s four great reforms:
1. The introduction of the nucleus crew system.
2. The redistribution of the fleets in accordance with modern requirements.
3. The elimination of inefficient fighting vessels from the Active List of the Navy.
4. The introduction of the all-big-gun type of battleship and battleship-cruiser.
To these four cardinal achievements must be added the system of common entry and training for all executive officers and the institution and development of the Naval War College and the Naval War Staff.
By the nucleus crew system all our available ships of war are ready for instant mobilisation. From two-fifths to three-fifths of their complement, including all the expert and specialist ratings, are on board, so that they are familiar with the ship and her armament. The rest of the crew is held in constant readiness to come on board. Fisher once aired, in after-dinner talk, the daring idea that the time would come when the First Lord of the Admiralty would be supreme over the War Office, and would, as in the days of the Commonwealth, fill up deficiencies in ships’ crews by levies from the territorial forces. Landsmen can serve guns as well as sailors.
The second great revolution was necessitated by the alteration in the centre of international gravity occasioned by the growth of the German Navy. Formerly the Mediterranean Fleet ranked first in importance. Now the Home Fleet concentrates in its four divisions all the best fighting ships we possess. It is hardly too much to say, as M. Hanotaux publicly declared, that Admiral Fisher had, by concentration and redistribution, magnified our fighting naval strength by an amount unparalleled in a hundred years. That the fighting efficiency of the Fleet has been doubled under Fisher’s régime is to understate the facts. To say it has been trebled would hardly be over the mark. And what is the most marvellous thing of all is that this enormous increase of efficiency was achieved not only without any increase of the estimates, but in spite of a reduction which amounted to nearly five millions sterling—three and a half millions actual and one and a half millions automatic increase checked.
This great economy was largely achieved by the scrapping of ships too weak to fight and too slow to run away. One hundred and fifty obsolete and useless ships were removed from the effective list; some were sold, others were broken up, while a third class were kept in store for contingencies. They were lame ducks, all useless in war, costly in peace, consuming stores, wasting the time of officers and men. The obsolete ships were replaced on foreign stations by vessels which could either fight or fly....