Records, by Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Fisher

by Baron John Arbuthnot Fisher Fisher

So let us be grateful—adequately grateful—to the officers and men of the Navy for their splendid loyalty during the introduction of reforms, some of which have hit them very hard, notably the sudden bringing home and paying off of the large number of vessels that were wiped out of the Navy as not being up to the required standard of fighting efficiency. And there was also the redistribution of the Fleet, which deprived many officers of advantageous appointments and seriously disturbed domestic arrangements.

But the fact is that the Navy sees the fighting advantages we have gained, and so has loyally responded to the demands on its sense of duty.

As an excellent writer in the “North American Review” for June so aptly expresses it, the Navy saw that it was steam-manship that was wanted, and so, as a body, they welcomed the new scheme of training both of officers and men. They saw also that to have every vessel of the Navy, large and small, mobilised and efficient to fight within three hours in the dead of night, as practically exemplified in the recent Grand Manœuvres, is a result which justifies all the drastic measures of the Board of Admiralty.

The Navy also recognises the incomparable fighting advantages of the new era in giving us an unparalleled gunnery efficiency, as exemplified in the fact that before that new era there were 2,000 more misses than hits in the annual gunlayers’ competition, while in the year after there were 2,000 more hits than misses! In the new order the best ship is the one that can catch the enemy soonest, and hit him hardest and oftenest; under the old system these considerations were certainly not the primary ones.

The Navy sees also that, while the fighting efficiency of the British Fleet and its instant readiness for war has become a household word amongst the Admiralties of the world, at the same time vast economies—to be reckoned in many millions—have been effected; for instance, our harbours, docks, and basins are ridded of obsolete vessels and thus made adequate for the accommodation of our fighting fleet, for which there was no room previously, and no less a sum than 13 millions sterling was at one time contemplated as necessary to give the required accommodation. The whole of that 13 millions in proposed works has been cancelled.

Nor have the officers and men been forgotten. The men have had a quarter of a million sterling practically added to their pay; one item alone is £75,000 a year for increase of pensions to petty officers, and another £47,000 a year in giving them their food allowance when on leave, and other similar and just concessions make up the balance. Further improvements in the position of the lower deck are now under consideration and will shortly be ready for announcement, i.e., Ratings Committee.

The officers, again, no longer pay for the bands out of their own pockets, and the system of Nucleus Crews gives them an amount of Home Service combined with sea-time, with all its domestic advantages, beyond anything ever before obtaining in the Navy.

Again, it is recognised by all but a few misguided misanthropes that the new shipbuilding policy is a magnificent departure in fighting policy. We ask the officers who are going to fight, what they want, and we build thereto. Formerly vessels were simply belated improvements on their predecessors. Admirals had to make the best use they could of the heterogeneous assemblage of vessels which the idiosyncrasies of talented designers and Controllers of the Navy had saddled us with, to the embarrassment of those whose business it was to use them in battle, and to the bitter bewilderment of types in the brain of the Board of Admiralty! Theory was entirely divorced from practice, with the lamentable result that when the two were recently brought together, and the “Dreadnought” was evolved, it was found that the whole Navy had practically become obsolete!

“First catch your hare” is the recipe in Mrs. Glasse’s Cookery Book for “jugged hare,” and so speed has been put in the forefront in every class of vessel from battleship to submarine, and as it’s no use having the speed without the wherewithal to demolish the enemy, the armament of our new ships, as so fully exemplified in the “Dreadnought,” has received such a development that that vessel is equal to any two and a half battleships at present existing.

The efficacy of the Nucleus Crew system has also been obvious to the whole Fleet in the unprecedented exemptions from machinery defects, and the unexampled gunnery efficiency, coupled with a saving of about 50 per cent. in repairs of ships, which incidentally has led in a large measure to the reduction of 6,000 Dockyard workmen. And it must never be forgotten that every penny not spent in a fighting ship or on a fighting man is a penny taken away from the day of battle!