by Matthew Wright
There is no question that Admiral Sir John Fisher, Britain’s First Sea Lord from 1904 to 1910 and the effective head of the Admiralty, was instrumental in driving a sea-change in the nature of heavy warships. What has puzzled historians, though, is precisely which heavy warship he had in mind. He is always associated with HMS Dreadnought – whose nature, as a revolution or otherwise, has been explored in previous articles. But he also became a relentless champion of another type, the battlecruiser.
The historical question is whether he envisaged this as his true revolution? The issue has puzzled historians for years, driven partly by the fact that – as we explored in the previous article – available data is somewhat vague. One outcome has been a series of arguments ranging from the ‘dreadnought-revolution’ vision of Arthur Marder, in the mid-twentieth century, to more radical suggestions proposed by so-called ‘revisionist’ historians, arguing that Fisher variously tried and failed to generate ‘battlecruiser’ and ‘submarine’ revolutions. Participants in the debate have included Jon Sumida, Charles Fairbanks,[1] Nicholas Lambert,[2] and others. The argument has been tied in with the strategic vision of the Admiralty and a parallel argument over the timing by which Germany was perceived as an enemy.[3]
History is always a discussion, and doubtless the academic argument will continue as time goes on, as occasional new material emerges, and as new questions are posed. The only certainty is that, if Fisher did have a ‘battlecruiser revolution’ in mind, he was foiled both by political constraints and by pressure from other lines of thought within the Admiralty. Still, it is an interesting question.
One of the keys to understanding all of this is that none of those involved knew the future. Their thinking was shaped by the late nineteenth century technological revolution, promising improved battle ranges, better armour and heavier guns, all backed by improved propulsion technologies. But nobody knew exactly how to best exploit the potential – in practice, meaning nobody knew which mix of characteristics would best work.
Furthermore, while Fisher liked portraying his concepts as emerging full-blown from his mind, his thinking actually evolved over time. He had mercurial interests, was one of the ‘techophile’ school of the late nineteenth century – the officers who leaped upon new technologies, and often drew inspiration from others.
This last becomes obvious if we look at what happened when his 1904-05 Committee on Designs began considering the ‘dreadnought armoured cruiser’. Fisher went to them with an idea for a 25-knot cruiser mounting 9.2-inch guns, something he stuck to even after Dreadnought was armed with 12-inch weapons. He was only persuaded to give the new cruisers 12-inch guns after an argument.[4] But this seems to have triggered a new line of thought. Later in 1905 he had two of their names changed to more prestigious ones, Inflexible and Indomitable.[5] And such ships, he now told Arnold White, were ‘stronger than dreadnoughts’.[6]
Fisher soon began calling these 12-inch gunned cruisers his ‘new testament’ ships – revealing the place they now held in the mind of this deeply devout Admiral. But that was not where his thinking ended – not by any means. And that is without considering the primary reason he had been appointed First Sea Lord by Cabinet in 1904: he was there to slash naval costs at a time when the economy was in difficulty.
What was going on? Fisher fascinated by the tactical potential of speed, picking the fast second-class battleship Renown for his flag when Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet from 1899. There is some evidence that Fisher saw good potential in armoured cruisers because they were even faster. Into this came the fact that by the late nineteenth century they were also mounting guns – such as the British 9.2-inch – capable of besting most known armour at the battle ranges of the day.[7] The armoured cruiser, Fisher declared in 1902, was a ‘swift battleship in disguise’;[8] although, as John Brooks has shown, he tempered that by noting the same year that battleships and armoured cruisers each had a ‘distinct mission’.[9] Setting aside the point that a handful of written words – which is often all that historians have to work from – cannot carry the nuance of thought and speech expressed in the day, it does seem his thinking was evolving.
Fisher was not alone in such ideas. Vickers were peddling large and aggressively armed cruisers – which they dubbed ‘cruiser battleships’ – for the export market at the same time. Across the Atlantic, the United States was also producing powerful armoured cruisers that bore state names, hinting at an elevated standing. The potential such that ships offered in fleet action were explored at the Naval War College Summer Conference of 1904.[10]
Fisher continued to explore his own concepts, working with William Gard in 1903 to develop ideas for large battleships and armoured cruisers – all characterised by high speed. He took this thinking with him into the Admiralty when he became First Sea Lord. Naval technology was changing, and by the time his Committee on Designs met at the end of 1904 to discuss the 1905 building programme, the question was not whether new designs were needed, but what they might comprise. Here, there is circumstantial evidence that Fisher was leaning towards armoured cruisers. The fact that, ahead of this Committee, he nudged Cabinet into authorising one battleship and three armoured cruisers for the 1905-06 building programme – leveraging the fact that the Royal Navy was judged under-strength in armoured cruisers – is one piece of the jigsaw.
Again, though, Fisher was not alone. The idea of giving heavy ships a uniform main armament – among other things, in response to the rise in expected battle-ranges – was being bandied about in naval circles across all the major industrial powers. By late 1904 there was talk in the Admiralty of modifying the new Minotaur class armoured cruisers – developed for the 1904-05 programme – to a uniform main armament.[11] The upshot, of course, was the work of Fisher’s Committee on Designs which produced turbine-driven, 12-inch gunned ‘dreadnought’ armoured cruisers.
What followed has never been given the attention it deserves. The role of the three 12-inch armoured cruisers was somewhat vague – another issue that has drawn significant attention from historians. Broadly they were intended to overwhelm armoured cruisers that might raid Britain’s merchant marine in wartime; but there was also potential for their use with the fleet, both as scouts and to bring pressure to bear on the enemy van in battle. This was much the same ill-defined mix of roles already identified for armoured cruisers. There was also unease within Admiralty circles over the balance of the design; by the standards of the day they presented as fast but somewhat over-gunned armoured cruisers, and there was talk of reducing subsequent ships to the 9.2-inch weapon.[12]
Late in 1905, Fisher appointed a further committee to look into heavy ship designs for the 1906-07 programme. Neither Dreadnought nor the ‘dreadnought armoured cruisers’, it seemed, were the end-point. The committee came up with plans for a ‘fusion’ vessel – Design X4 – with the armour and armament of Dreadnought and the speed of the new ‘dreadnought armoured cruisers’. Such vessels would have orphaned both Dreadnought and the three cruisers of the 1905-06 programme, reducing them to a further ‘intermediate’ step away from the broad design formula devised by William White at the end of the 1880s.
The first problem was that at an estimated 22,500 tons these ‘fusion’ ships were going to be expensive – only three could be built for the price of four Dreadnoughts.[13] That was politically awkward. Nor did Fisher get much support even from his own committee, who thought Britain should focus on the fire-power of the fleet in general, meaning sticking with the step they had already taken by introducing Dreadnought.[14] The message was clear: a navy built of designs that each obsoleted the last on an annual basis – as had been happening since the Lord Nelson design broke Sir William White’s classic pattern in the 1904-05 programme – was not going to happen. Fisher’s technophile leanings were not going to get free reign.
The point gives perspective to the notion that Dreadnought was a one-ship revolution. In fact, Fisher and some of his supporters had even more revolutionary ideas in mind – the ‘fusion’ fast battleship – but the Admiralty was not prepared to entertain such construction at a time of spending constraint and significant political pressure against large-scale naval development.
More crucially, we can see from this that British naval design thinking was in a state of considerable churn on the back of ongoing technical developments that were revolutionising technology afloat. Unknowns then in question included the expected role of armoured cruisers – whether of the turbine-driven ‘dreadnought’ type or otherwise. They were variously seen as commerce protectors, fleet scouts and – though this took time to develop – as a force able to bring pressure on elements of an enemy battle line. Exactly what they might do, however, remained somewhat fuzzy; and in this context the trope that battlecruisers traded armour for speed has to take due place. An armoured cruiser intended to outclass earlier cruisers – including when scouting in force during a fleet action – needed protection only against their guns. In these period terms – as already noted – the Invincibles presented to contemporary Admiralty critics not as under-armoured, but as over-gunned. Ten or a dozen 9.2-inch weapons could have done the same job. Ships intended for the main battle-line, however, clearly needed to be properly protected.
Even Fisher seems to have viewed things that way, because – apart from his initial objection to 12-inch guns for his new cruisers – he then went for the ‘fusion’ design that brought the best characteristics of his thinking together, combining heavy armour with 12-inch guns and 25 knot speed. In short, when it came to the battle-fleet, armour was not to be compromised. If Fisher had prevailed, the Royal Navy would have had ‘fast battleships’ in the 1906-07 programme. The problem was cost and the fact that Fisher couldn’t get support even within the Admiralty. Indeed, he could not even get more ‘dreadnought armoured cruisers’ beyond the first trio. The 1906-07 programme authorised by Cabinet instead consisted of three near-repeats of Dreadnought.
Fisher was not satisfied and soon latched on to his ‘dreadnought armoured cruisers’ as an affordable expression of his ideal. However, his political efforts to push what then became his ‘new testament’ ships had only mixed results before his 1910 resignation as First Sea Lord. We shall explore this in the next article.
Meanwhile, check out my book The Battlecruiser New Zealand: A Gift to Empire (USNI Press/Seaforth). Order now from Amazon.
Copyright © Matthew Wright 2021
[1] See, e.g. Charles H. Fairbanks, Jr., ‘The Origins of the Dreadnought Revolution: a historiographical essay’, The International History Review, Vol. 13, No. 2, May 1991.
[2] See, e.g. Nicholas A. Lambert, ‘British Naval Policy, 1913-14: financial limitation and strategic revolution’, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 67, No. 3, September 1995.
[3] See, e.g. Scott M. Lindgren, ‘The Genesis of a Cruiser Navy: British first-class cruiser development 1884-1909’, PhD thesis, University of Salford, 2013, pp. 310-312.
[4] Ruddock F. Mackay, Fisher of Kilverstone, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1973, p. 324.
[5] Lindgren, p. 290.
[6] Fisher to Arnold White, 8 January 1907, in Arthur Marder (ed), Fear God and Dread Nought, Vol. II, Jonathan Cape, London 1956, p. 112.
[7] For discussion see Lindgren, pp. 265-267
[8] Quoted in Mackay, p. 270.
[9] John Brooks, ‘”Dreadnought”: Blunder, or Stroke of Genius?’, War in History
Vol. 14, No. 2 (April 2007), p. 160.
[10] William M. McBride, ‘Nineteenth century American warships: the pursuit of exceptionalist design’, in Don Leggett and Richard Dunn (eds), Re-inventing the Ship: Science, Technology and the Maritime World, 1800-1918, Routledge, London, 2012 p. 202.
[11] Norman Friedman, British Cruisers of the Victorian Era, Seaforth, Barnsley, 2012 p. 266.
[12] Noted in Lindgren, p. 313.
[13] For discussion see Christopher M. Buckley, ‘Forging the shaft of the spear of victory: the creation and evolution of the Home Fleet in the pre-war era, 1900-1914, PhD thesis, University of Salford, June 2013, p. 173.
[14] Ibid, p. 174.