The Sea Lords’ response was not everything Fisher had hoped. They authorized the Warrior and Minotaur classes, big ships with 9.2-inch guns and a speed of 23 knots, two knots beneath that which Fisher had demanded for “Perfection.” Meanwhile, other admiralties were experimenting. Towards the end of 1904, word reached London that Japan was laying down two large, 21-knot armored cruisers, each carrying four 12-inch guns and twelve 6-inch. In Italy, four Cuniberti-designed ships carrying two 12-inch and twelve 8-inch guns and capable of 21 knots were on the ways. Foreigners were creeping up on Perfection.
In February 1905, once Fisher’s design committee had completed the plans for the Dreadnought, Perfection appeared. No longer did Fisher have to urge his projects on the Admiralty; now he was the Admiralty. And in the Fisher era, he immediately made clear, British commerce was to be protected not by scattering armored cruisers around the world, but by building a few, immensely fast, powerful ships which could hunt down and destroy enemy cruisers wherever they fled—if necessary, “to the world’s end.”46
By then, of course, the potential threat had changed nationality; it was not French cruisers that worried the Admiralty, but German ocean liners, the huge, swift, blue-water greyhounds, of the North German Lloyd and Hamburg-America lines, being constructed with a capacity to carry 6-inch guns. Designed to whisk passengers across the North Atlantic in five or six days, they could easily outrun any existing British cruiser.
Speed, then, was the preeminent requirement; speed to overtake the enemy and speed also for the new ship’s own defense: she must be able to keep out of range of battleship guns. Fisher fixed the minimum absolute margin at four knots and, since he was building the Dreadnought to steam at 21 knots, H.M.S. Perfection must be able to steam at 25 knots.
Fisher also wanted maximum firepower. The biggest guns available were 12-inch, already being installed on new armored cruisers and fast battleships by the Italians and Japanese. Having successfully argued the case for the all-big-gun battleship, Fisher now demanded an all-big-gun armored cruiser. Once again, the faithful and imaginative Gard gave the Admiral what he wanted. Perfection, which was to become the Invincible-class battle cruiser, came off the drawing board with eight 12-inch guns in four twin turrets. Fisher was overjoyed. With 25-knot speed and eight 12-inch guns, here was a warship capable of destroying any vessel fast enough to catch it, and fast enough to escape any vessel capable of destroying it. She could “mop up” a whole squadron of enemy cruisers with the greatest of ease, using her speed to establish the range and her long-range guns to sink the enemy without exposing herself to return fire.
She had only a single flaw: her armor was too light. Like Sleeping Beauty, for whom life was serene as long as she stayed away from spindles, the Invincible and her sisters could lead happy lives as long as they stayed away from battleships. Her speed was a precious, expensive commodity and had been purchased at a heavy price. The three vital characteristics of a warship—guns, speed, and armor—are interrelated. A designer could not have everything: if heavy guns and heavy armor were required, then speed had to be curtailed; this was the compromise built into most battleships. If a higher speed was demanded and heavy guns retained, armor had to be sacrificed. This was the case with the Invincible and her sisters. To gain four precious knots of speed, the Invincible gave up one turret and two twelve-inch guns of Dreadnought’s armament. This saved two thousand tons, which could be invested in propulsion machinery. A more dangerous sacrifice was made in armor. The Dreadnought, intended to steam through a cataclysm of shell bursts, was fitted along her belt amidships with armor plate eleven inches thick, enough to stop a plunging heavy shell. Over the Invincible’s vital midships spaces, the belt armor was only seven inches thick. If the battle cruiser’s mission was to scout or to engage enemy cruisers, seven inches of armor would keep her safe. But if she were to be deliberately taken within range of enemy battleships, seven inches was not enough.
What was responsible for the catastrophe that lay ahead for Britain’s battle cruisers? The design flaw was their thinness of skin, but it was compounded by confusion of purpose and even confusion in nomenclature. The purpose of the battleship was always clear: to sink enemy battleships and dominate the ocean surface. But the purpose of the battle cruiser was never so clear, even from the beginning. She had the original mission of the frigate: to scout for the battle fleet. Fisher had enthusiastically endorsed the second mission acquired in the 1890s: to hunt down and destroy enemy commerce raiders. Once the ships had been given 12-inch guns—the basic armament of battleships—a third possibility began to creep into Admiralty thinking: they should be prepared to participate in a general fleet engagement. Instead of remaining as inactive as frigates, battle cruisers could form a fast auxiliary squadron operating in the van or to the rear of the main battle fleet. Possessing the same heavy long-range guns as battleships, they could reinforce the dreadnoughts by adding to the weight of metal raining down on enemy decks. Fisher described this as a fullfillment “of the great Nelsonic idea47 of having a squadron of very fast ships to bring on an action or to overtake and lame a retreating foe.”
A shift in nomenclature added to the confusion. Originally, the Invincible class had been announced as “large armored cruisers,” a more accurate designation than the subsequent “battle cruiser.” In fact, the ships were very large, very heavily gunned, very fast, armored cruisers. But because of their size and armament, naval authorities began almost immediately to count them as capital ships along with dreadnoughts, and by 1912, when the term “battle cruiser” was coined, the impression of equality was firmly fixed. If they had remained “large armored cruisers,” perhaps the Admiralty and many admirals and the naval press would not have permitted thinking to drift towards the belief that battle cruisers were intended to stand up against battleships.
Some naval experts saw the potential danger. Brassey’s Naval Annual said: “[The problem with] vessels of this enormous size48 and cost [is that] an admiral having Invincibles in his fleet will be certain to put them in the line of battle where their comparatively light protection will be a disadvantage and their high speed of no value.” In short, because she looked like a battleship and carried a battleship’s guns, sooner or later Invincible would be expected to fight like a battleship.
In time, Germany began to construct similar ships. Fisher’s certainty that his battle cruisers could hunt down and destroy enemy armored cruisers was valid only as long as the enemy did not also build and send out battle cruisers. Once German construction was under way, the value of the Invincible and her sisters deteriorated and the threat to them increased. Given the nature of war, admirals on both sides could be expected to employ their battle cruisers on similar missions. Thus the great ships were likely to find their way to each other. Under those circumstances, two large vessels, each one firing heavy shells capable of penetrating the light armor of its opponent, would be locked in a deadly embrace. Neither, given the high speed of both, would be able to escape. The decision would likely be quick; accurate gunnery and luck guiding a 12-inch shell into an opponent’s propulsion spaces or powder magazines would end the battle suddenly.
Lord Cawdor, Selborne’s successor as First Lord, announced the first three British battle cruisers in the House of Commons in March 1905. In addition to the new Dreadnought, Lord Cawdor declared, construction would begin on “three large armoured cruisers... to49 be delivered in thirty months.” In the spring of 1906, six months after the Dreadnought, the three keels were laid, Invincible at Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Inflexible and Indomitable along the Clyde near Glasgow. Fisher hovered over all three and, not surprisingly under this surveillance, they were completed on schedule and joined the fleet in 1908. Visually, they were impressive, and their speed exceeded Fisher’s most extravagant dreams. In sea trials, Invincible reached 26.2 knots and later surged to 28 knots.
The appearance of these ships provoked more frustration in Berlin. The First Sea Lord had announced the three Invinci
bles to the Commons without details as to their armament, saying only that they would be large, fast, armored cruisers. The Blücher, the Kaiser’s first battle cruiser, was intended as the German response. She was big—at 15,500 tons, much bigger than the Deutschland-class battleships. With a speed of 25 to 26 knots, she was fast enough. But to the London circle of naval attachés, naval correspondents, and other interested parties, Fisher had leaked the false information that the Invicibles would mount the same 9.2-inch guns which the Warrior and Minotaur classes had carried. Accordingly, Tirpitz armed his Blücher with twelve 8.2-inch guns, a match, it was felt, for the British 9.2-inch. While this unfortunate ship was still up on blocks, the three British Invincibles went to sea and their massive armament of eight 12-inch guns was revealed. Tirpitz once again had been outfoxed. Blücher was obsolete two years before she reached the water.
When intelligence of the Invincibles’ true capability arrived in Berlin, Tirpitz set grimly to work. The German battle cruiser Von der Tann, 19,400 tons (2,000 heavier than the Invincibles) with eight 11-inch guns and 25 knots’ speed, was laid down in October 1908. Britain replied in February 1909 with the Indefatigable, a bigger Invincible with the same armament and speed, but additional tons of armor spread over her sides and decks. Tirpitz came back in April and July 1909 with the Moltke and the Goeben, each 23,000 tons, with ten 11-inch guns and 27 knots’ speed. Seydlitz—25,000 tons, with ten 11-inch guns and 26.5 knots’ speed—and Derfflinger and Lützow—each 28,000 tons, with eight 12-inch guns and 27 knots’ speed—followed. Britain’s reply to Moltke and her sisters was the four “Cats,” Lion, Princess Royal, Queen Mary, and Tiger, 27,000 tons, with eight 13.5-inch guns and 28 knots’ speed. (The Lion exceeded 31 knots in her trials.) All of these ships, although laid down only three to five years after the Invincibles, were a hundred feet longer and 10,000 tons heavier than the earlier vessels. Most of this weight went into more propulsion machinery and bigger guns; armor was increased only marginally.
The first thunderous use of battle cruisers was exactly as Fisher had envisaged. At the Battle of the Falkland Islands, December 8, 1914, two British battle cruisers, Invincible and Inflexible, engaged a squadron of smaller German cruisers under Admiral Count von Spee. Using his greater speed and the greater range of his larger guns, the British Admiral stayed mostly out of reach of the lighter German guns, while, in a textbook application of Fisher’s “hunt down and mop up” theory, his ships methodically blew the German ships to pieces. At Jutland, the opposite tactics were applied and opposite results achieved. Rather than using his speed to stay out of range of enemy heavy guns, Beatty led the five ships of his Battle Cruiser Squadron in a cavalry charge straight at the German battle cruisers and, behind them, the seventeen dreadnoughts of the High Seas Fleet. Two of Beatty’s ships, the Indefatigable and the Queen Mary, penetrated by heavy shells, blew up with the loss of almost everyone on board. Two and a half hours later, in another phase of the battle, the Invincible herself blew up. One thousand twenty-six men of her company were drowned; five were saved. A naval expert eulogized the battle cruisers at Jutland: “Their speed... should have kept50 the ships out of range of battleships and heavy guns... but when occasion arose for gallant leadership in the face of the enemy, dictates of design were brushed aside and the Invincible steamed at full speed into annihilation.”
fn1 Ironically, the one enemy ship sunk by H.M.S. Dreadnought was the German submarine U-29, which she rammed and sank in the English Channel on March 18, 1915.
fn2 The first Dreadnought, a vessel of 400 tons carrying 200 men, was launched in 1573 and sailed against the Spanish Armada. Queen Elizabeth I chose its name “to infuse her own dauntless17 spirit into the hearts of her subjects and to show... Europe... how little she dreaded, and how little such a people could dread, the mightiest armaments of their enemies.” The fifth Dreadnought, a three-decker of 98 guns, fought with Nelson at Trafalgar.
fn3 Later it was said that forcing the Germans to spend time and money widening and deepening the Kiel Canal was part of the brilliance of Fisher’s scheme. Fisher himself subsequently saw the advantages and exulted that Germany had been “paralyzed by the Dreadnought31 which had halted all German construction for a year and converted the Kiel Canal into a useless ditch,” but this was after the fact. There is no evidence that Fisher or his design committee were thinking about the problems Tirpitz would face with the Kiel Canal; if they were thinking of Germany when they designed the Dreadnought, it was of sinking German battleships on the high seas.
fn4 In February 1910 the Dreadnought, lying with the Home Fleet in Weymouth Bay, received word that the Emperor of Abyssinia with a small suite was on his way to visit the ship. The telegram was signed “Hardinge” (Sir Charles Hardinge was Permanent Under Secretary of the Foreign Office). The Emperor’s party—four Abyssinians, a young man from the Foreign Office, and a European translator—were met by a red carpet and a saluting naval officer at Weymouth Station. Escorted to Dreadnought, they found the battleship dressed with flags, lines of marines drawn up on deck, a band playing, and the admiral and his staff in gold-laced uniforms waiting to greet them. The visitors inspected the ship and saw the sick bay, the wireless room, the officers’ wardroom, and one of the gun turrets, which was rotated and its guns elevated and depressed. The admiral wanted his explanations translated, but the translator had difficulty. Told the difference between the marines in red uniforms and the marines in blue, he said, “I am afraid it will be rather hard40 to put that into Abyssinian, sir. However, I’ll try.” He turned to the Emperor: “Entaqui, mahai, kustufani.” The Emperor nodded. “Tahli bussor ahbat tahl aesque miss,” the translator continued. “Erraema...” The Emperor repeated a few of the words, nodding that he understood. The British officers were excellent hosts; one young lieutenant was particularly delighted at the astonishment of the native visitors when he switched on an electric light. At the end of the tour, the admiral invited his guests to remain for a meal, but the translator replied that “the religious beliefs41 of Abyssinia made it impossible for the Royal family to touch food unless it was prepared in special ways.” With salutes, bows, and smiles all around, the Imperial party left the ship and returned to London.
A few weeks later, the Daily Mirror got wind of the story and the truth emerged. The “Emperor” was a young man named Anthony Buxton, disguised with greasepaint, a false beard, a turban, and robes. His suite, similarly costumed, was made up of friends, including the painter Duncan Grant. The language employed, after the first three words of impromptu Swahili, were the translator’s adaptation, suitably mispronounced, of the Fourth Book of the Aeneid, which he had memorized in school. The navy reddened with embarrassment; questions were asked in Parliament; the hospitable admiral was followed through the streets by boys shouting “Bunga-Bunga!”42 When the hoaxers called on the First Lord and offered to apologize, Mr. McKenna frowned and bundled them out of his office. It was particularly mortifying that one of the costumed Abyssinians had been a woman. This was Virginia Stephen, who was to become Virginia Woolf.
Chapter 27
Lord Charles Beresford
As First Sea Lord, Jacky Fisher had roughly two years (from the autumn of 1904 to the autumn of 1906) before his critics mustered sufficient strength to challenge the reforms he was bringing to (they would have said “inflicting on”) the navy. There had been murmurs and grumbles, although they were directed at different issues. “One complains1 of the new scheme of naval education, but approves the distribution of the fleet and the present types of the ships,” McKenna explained to Asquith. “Another likes Osborne [which became the new cadet-training school] but hates dreadnoughts. A third likes both Osborne and dreadnoughts but wants a fleet double the size and reviles the policy of scrapping old vessels.” What most critics, particularly those within the navy, had in common was a dislike of Fisher’s methodology: “Ruthless, Relentless, and Remorseless!... Never2 explain! Never apologize!” Nevertheless, for twenty-four months, at least as far
as the world could see, the First Sea Lord had his way.
Even during the first two years, however, Fisher had had to fight, threaten, and compromise to get what he wanted. In March 1905, when Lord Selborne left the Admiralty to become High Commissioner to South Africa (Fisher wrote reproachfully to Selborne, “I wish South Africa3 was at the bottom of the sea!”), the Prime Minister seemed about to appoint Walter Long, a Conservative politician whom Fisher detested, to be First Lord. Fisher informed both Balfour and the King that, coincidentally, he had just had a visit from Sir Andrew Noble, chairman of Armstrong, Whitworth, & Company, who was about to form “an immense combination4 of the greatest shipbuilding, armor plate, and gun-making firms in the country.... [They] are willing to unite under my presidency (and practical dictatorship!), and I fancy I should have about £20,000 a year....” Fisher, whose navy pay was about one fifth that amount, dangled the idea long enough to alarm the King and the Prime Minister, and the Earl of Cawdor, not Walter Long, became First Lord. In November 1905, Lord Cawdor issued the Cawdor Memorandum, declaring it to be British government policy that four dreadnoughts be laid down every year.
On December 5, the short-term Earl of Cawdor, along with the rest of the Balfour Cabinet, stepped down from office. The incoming Liberal government of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman had sterner views on defense spending: in the election campaign, severe cuts had been promised. Although on first taking office, the new government endorsed the Naval Estimates prepared by the Earl of Cawdor, including construction of four new dreadnoughts, this decision rapidly was overturned. By May 1906, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, H. H. Asquith, was demanding that at least one of the proposed four ships be dropped. “Nothing that Sir John Fisher could say5 would affect” his thinking, Asquith proclaimed. Lord Tweedmouth, the new First Lord, preferred to compromise, and Fisher conceded. One ship was dropped from the 1906 Estimates, one from the 1907 Estimates, and two from the 1908 Estimates. Over the three years, eight new dreadnoughts were authorized for the navy rather than the twelve envisaged by the Cawdor Memorandum. In 1909, the country would suddenly decide that a mistake had been made and in the ensuing panic, eight additional dreadnoughts were authorized in a single year.