2. Proposals should also be made to accelerate Royalist, Cleopatra, Champion, and Carysfort, Conquest, and Calliope, so as to obtain deliveries in February. This will only be possible by working night and day in three 8–hour shifts on all these vessels, arranging with other firms not concerned in their construction to lend the necessary men.
3. All the “M” Class destroyers to be delivered in August, 1915, should be pushed forward into April and May. There is surely no reason why this cannot be done. Firms who will undertake to complete their vessels by this date could be immediately given another order for a repeat ship, so that there would be no fear of dislocation of their business. Let me have proposals on this.
4. Submarines F2, F3, G6, G8, G15, G9, G7, G10, to G13, and G1, to G5, all ought to be delivered before the end of 1915. There is an extraordinary gap after G4, when for 6 months we do not receive a single new submarine, and in 12 months we only receive 2. This is shocking, and must be bridged at all costs.
Pray let me have further proposals after such conferences as may be necessary with the firms concerned.
W. S. C.
Lord Fisher hurled himself into this business with explosive energy. He summoned around him all the naval constructors and shipbuilding firms in Britain, and in four or five glorious days, every minute of which was pure delight to him, he presented me with schemes for a far greater construction of submarines, destroyers and small craft than I or any of my advisers had ever deemed possible. Mr. Schwab was at that time passing through England on his return to the United States. We invited him to the Admiralty; and he undertook to build twenty-four submarines—twelve in Canada and twelve in the United States—the bulk of which were to be completed in the hitherto incredibly short period of six months. I arranged a system of heavy bonuses for early delivery. These large negotiations were completed and the subsequent work was carried out with wonderful thoroughness and punctuality by the immense organisation of the Bethlehem Steel Company. One evening, as Lord Fisher, Mr. Schwab and I sat round the octagonal table in the Admiralty, after a long discussion on the submarine contracts, we asked Mr. Schwab, ‘Have you got anything else that will be of use to us?’ He thereupon told us that he had four turrets carrying two 14–inch guns each which had almost been completed for the Greek battleship Salamis then building in Germany for Greece. We set our hearts on these; and I had an idea. The reader will remember the three small monitors building for Brazil, which although no one could see any use for them at the time, I had decided to take over at the outbreak of war. The operations on the Belgian Coast had shown their value. I suggested to Lord Fisher that we should buy these 14–inch turrets and build monitors to carry them. The Admiral was delighted with the plan, and in a few hours he was closeted with his constructors designing the vessels. In all our correspondence we referred to them as the Styx class.
Secretary.
First Sea Lord.
December 11, 1914.
We ought without delay to order more ‘Styx’ class for heavy inshore work. There are, for instance, the four reserve 13.5–inch guns of the Audacious, which should certainly be mounted in new monitors. It should also be possible to draw from the reserve of 15–inch guns, and to make in a short time 15–inch or 18–inch howitzers. We require now to make ships which can be built in 6 or 7 months at the outside, and which can certainly go close in shore and attack the German Fleet in its harbours. These are special vessels built for a definite war operation, and we must look to them in default of a general action for giving us the power of forcing a naval decision at the latest in the autumn of 1915.