The advantages conferred by liquid fuel were inestimable. First, speed. In equal ships oil gave a large excess of speed over coal. It enabled that speed to be attained with far greater rapidity. It gave forty per cent. greater radius of action for the same weight of coal. It enabled a fleet to refuel at sea with great facility. An oil-burning fleet can, if need be and in calm weather, keep its station at sea, nourishing itself from tankers without having to send a quarter of its strength continually into harbour to coal, wasting fuel on the homeward and outward journey. The ordeal of coaling ship exhausted the whole ship’s company. In war-time it robbed them of their brief period of rest; it subjected everyone to extreme discomfort. With oil, a few pipes were connected with the shore or with a tanker and the ship sucked in its fuel with hardly a man having to lift a finger. Less than half the number of stokers was needed to tend and clean the oil furnaces. Oil could be stowed in spare places in a ship from which it would be impossible to bring coal. As a coal ship used up her coal, increasingly large numbers of men had to be taken, if necessary from the guns, to shovel the coal from remote and inconvenient bunkers to bunkers nearer to the furnaces or to the furnaces themselves, thus weakening the fighting efficiency of the ship perhaps at the most critical moment in the battle. For instance, nearly a hundred men were continually occupied in the Lion shovelling coal from one steel chamber to another without ever seeing the light either of day or of the furnace fires. The use of oil made it possible in every type of vessel to have more gun-power and more speed for less size or less cost. It alone made it possible to realise the high speeds in certain types which were vital to their tactical purpose. All these advantages were obtained simply by burning oil instead of coal under the boilers. Should it at any time become possible to abolish boilers altogether and explode the oil in the cylinders of internal combustion engines, every advantage would be multiplied tenfold.
On my arrival at the Admiralty we had already built or building 56 destroyers solely dependent on oil and 74 submarines which could only be driven by oil; and a proportion of oil was used to spray the coal furnaces of nearly all ships. We were not, however, dependent upon oil to such an extent as to make its supply a serious naval problem. To build any large additional number of oil-burning ships meant basing our naval supremacy upon oil. But oil was not found in appreciable quantities in our islands. If we required it we must carry it by sea in peace or war from distant countries. We had, on the other hand, the finest supply of the best steam coal in the world, safe in our mines under our own hand.
To change the foundation of the Navy from British coal to foreign oil was a formidable decision in itself. If it were taken it must raise a whole series of intricate problems all requiring heavy initial expense. First there must be accumulated in Great Britain an enormous oil reserve large enough to enable us to fight for many months if necessary without bringing in a single cargo of oil. To contain this reserve enormous installations of tanks must be erected near the various naval ports. Would they not be very vulnerable? Could they be protected? Could they be concealed or disguised? The word ‘camouflage’ was not then known. Fleets of tankers had to be built to convey the oil from the distant oilfields across the oceans to the British Isles, and others of a different pattern to take it from our naval harbours to the fleets at sea.
Owing to the systems of finance by which we had bound ourselves, we were not allowed to borrow even for capital or ‘once for all’ expenditure. Every penny must be won from Parliament year by year, and constituted a definite addition to the inevitably rising and already fiercely challenged Naval Estimates. And beyond these difficulties loomed up the more intangible problems of markets and monopolies. The oil supplies of the world were in the hands of vast oil trusts under foreign control. To commit the Navy irrevocably to oil was indeed ‘to take arms against a sea of troubles.’ Wave after wave, dark with storm, crested with foam, surged towards the harbour in which we still sheltered. Should we drive out into the teeth of the gale, or should we bide contented where we were? Yet beyond the breakers was a great hope. If we overcame the difficulties and surmounted the risks, we should be able to raise the whole power and efficiency of the Navy to a definitely higher level; better ships, better crews, higher economies, more intense forms of war power—in a word, mastery itself was the prize of the venture. A year gained over a rival might make the difference. Forward, then!
The three programmes of 1912, 1913 and 1914 comprised the greatest additions in power and cost ever made to the Royal Navy. With the lamentable exception of the battleships of 1913—and these were afterwards corrected—they did not contain a coal-burning ship. Submarines, destroyers, light cruisers, fast battleships—all were based irrevocably on oil. The fateful plunge was taken when it was decided to create the Fast Division. Then, for the first time, the supreme ships of the Navy, on which our life depended, were fed by oil and could only be fed by oil. The decision to drive the smaller craft by oil followed naturally upon this. The camel once swallowed, the gnats went down easily enough.
A decision like this involved our national safety as much as a battle at sea. It was as anxious and as harassing as any hazard in war. It was war in a certain sense raging under a surface of unbroken peace. Compare it with the decision to attempt to force the Dardanelles with the old surplus vessels of a fleet which had already proved its supremacy. The oil decision was vital; the Dardanelles decision was subsidiary. The first touched our existence; the second our superfluities. Having succeeded in the first, it did not seem difficult when the time came to attempt the second. I did not understand that in war the power of a civilian Minister to carry through a plan or policy is greatly diminished. He cannot draw his strength year by year from Parliament. He cannot be sure of being allowed to finish what he has begun. The loyalties of peace are replaced by the jealous passions of war. The Parliamentary safeguards are in abeyance. Explanation and debate may be impossible or may be denied. I learnt this later on.
I shall show presently the difficulties into which these decisions to create a fast division of battleships and to rely upon oil led me into during the years 1913 and 1914. Nor can I deny that colleagues who could not foresee the extra expense which they involved had grounds of complaint. Battleships were at that time assumed to cost two and a quarter millions each. The Queen Elizabeth class of fast battleships cost over three millions each. The expenditure of upwards of ten millions was required to create the oil reserve, with its tanks and its tankers, though a proportion of this would have been needed in any case. On more than one occasion I feared I should succumb. I had, however, the unfailing support of the Prime Minister. The Chancellor of the Exchequer whose duty it was to be my most severe critic was also my most friendly colleague. And so it all went through. Fortune rewarded the continuous and steadfast facing of these difficulties by the Board of Admiralty and brought us a prize from fairyland far beyond our brightest hopes.
An unbroken series of consequences conducted us to the Anglo-Persian Oil Convention. The first step was to set up a Royal Commission on Oil Supply. Lord Fisher was invited and induced to preside over this by the following letter:—
Mr. Churchill to Lord Fisher.
June 11, 1912.