20 Ibid.
21 Jellicoe, ‘New Battleship Design. Anti-Torpedo Boat Guns.’, 12 March 1907, G.1196/07, f. 5-5A, Ships Cover
225 (Design F), D.N.C. MSS.
177
Very late in the day Design ‘F’ was abandoned. Cold feet at the Admiralty over the new triple turret were likely responsible. The D.N.C. was instructed to replace it with a lengthened
Bellerophon, and the result was the St. Vincent class, which amongst other minor improvements had the 4-inch battery increased to eighteen guns.23
Flotillas
The initial hope for the 1906-1907 Programme was four armoured ships, twelve submarines, and seventeen destroyers—twelve Coastals and five Tribals.24 By 1907 it was clear that the previous ‘high-low mix’ of Tribals and Coastals was no longer practical. During the June 7th meeting of the Sea Lords and principal department heads to discuss the details of the 1908-09 Estimates it was decided that a new type of destroyer should be built ‘of a type embodying superior endurance and sea-keeping qualities to the most recent German Destroyer.’25 The meeting suggested ordering twelve such ships, but by November the number had risen to sixteen. The Estimates Committee felt that ‘a large number of our older destroyers will become obsolescent before long, and that in modern boats, after 1910, we shall scarcely be holding our own with Germany.’26 They were also careful not to deprecate the value of the previous programmes:
‘It has not been forgotten in making this calculation that the new coastal destroyers … are not only equal to a considerable portion of the German destroyers … but are even better adapted than the bigger and more powerful ocean- going destroyers for certain specific services of an offensive nature … chiefly owing to their lighter draft of water and greater invisibility.’
23 McBride, op. cit., pp. 106-107.
24 Admiralty, ‘Report of Naval Estimates Committee’, 16 November 1905, F.P. 4709, p. 46, FISR 8/6, Fisher MSS. 25 Admiralty, ‘Notes of Discussion Relative to New Vessels to be Laid Down in 1908-09.’, in F.P. 4724, Admiralty,
‘Navy Estimates Committee. Report upon Naval Estimates for 1908-9’, November 1907, p. 13, FISR 8/11, Fisher MSS.
26 Admiralty, ‘Navy Estimates Committee. Report upon Naval Estimates for 1908-9’, November 1907, F.P. 4724, p.
178
Having made that disclaimer, however, the Committee admitted ‘we must be prepared for a large destroyer programme twelve months hence.’27 The earliest British destroyers were now close to being worn out, and ordering sixteen destroyers in the current year’s programme would avoid a much larger order (more than two dozen) in the 1909-10 Estimates. This increase in destroyer procurement was obtained with no addition to the shipbuilding estimate by sacrificing one of the year’s planned armoured cruisers, with the remaining balance of the savings funding another small, fast cruiser intended to support flotilla work.28
The resultant design marked a retreat from the extremes of the Tribal class back to something that was in essence an improved River type; an early sketch specification even referred to the design as a 30-knot River.29 The Home Fleet got a chance to influence the design of the new ships when Admiral Bridgeman forwarded a paper by Commodore (T) Lewis Bayly to the Admiralty, sections of which were relayed to the D.N.C.30 Bayly felt the duty of British destroyers were ‘[m]ost emphatically to destroy Enemy’s T.B.D.s. and T.Bs.’ To this end Bayly felt British destroyers should devote themselves entirely to this duty, and that attacks by them on enemy capital ships ‘would be criminal … because the enemy’s ships are doing exactly what the British Admiral wants[.]’31 Simply put, Bayly thought a Mahanian fleet action had a better chance of securing the destruction of the enemy battlefleet than a flotilla ambush. Bridgeman generally concurred with Bayly’s analysis, but at the Admiralty D.N.O. Bacon condemned the
27 Ibid., p. 7.
28 Admiralty, ‘Notes of Discussion Relative to New Vessels to be Laid Down in 1908-09.’, 12 June 1907, in
Admiralty, ‘Navy Estimates Committee. Report upon Naval Estimates for 1908-9’, November 1907, F.P. 4724, p. 13, FISR 8/11, Fisher MSS.
29 Unsigned, ‘H.M.S. 30 Knot T.B. Destroyer (River Class). Statement of Dimensions, Estimate of Weights, &c.’,
n.d., f. 8, Ships Cover 242 (Beagle Class Destroyer), D.N.C. MSS.
30 Bridgeman, ‘Duties of Torpedo Craft in War.’, 10 November 1907, No. 1687/030, f. 11a, Ships Cover 242 (Beagle
Class Destroyer), D.N.C. MSS.
31 Bayly, ‘Destroyers’, n.d. [Summer 1907], in Bridgeman, ‘Duties of Torpedo Craft in War.’, 10 November 1907,
179
submission as one ‘which if concurred in would, I submit, do much harm in the service.’32 D.N.I. Slade thought Bacon too alarmist, though he also thought Bayly went too far in deprecating destroyer attacks on enemy heavy units.33
By June of 1908, the new specifications were ready. The resulting Beagle class were the last destroyers built by individual yards to a broad Admiralty specification. They were to be of roughly 850 tons displacement, to burn coal instead of oil (a step which increased their unit cost substantially), and make 27 knots speed.34 The Beagles set the basis for Royal Navy destroyer designs throughout the rest of the Prewar Era, with a notable and abortive exception in 1914.
Return of the Small(er) Cruiser
The controversy surrounding Fisher’s creation of the Dreadnought and the Invincibles is well known and often cited by historians. However, the interrelated abandonment of cruiser construction, which had provoked an equal storm of controversy at the time, is often overlooked. In fact the lapse in the Navy’s construction of cruisers—or ships not initially designated as cruisers but which would later be designated as such—was shorter than the controversy may make it appear. Only the 1905 and 1906 programmes saw no such ships ordered, and if the three
Invincibles and the Swift are included in the totals, there was no cessation at all. An Admiralty report from 1905 shows that more Swifts were to ordered, one in the 1907 programme and two more in 1908.35 Furthermore, an improved edition of the Sentinel type scouts was under preparation for the 1905-6 Estimates before being abandoned.36
32 Bacon minute, 9 December 1907, on Bridgeman, ‘Duties of Torpedo Craft in War.’, 10 November 1907, No.
1687/030, f. 11a, Ships Cover 242 (Beagle Class Destroyer), D.N.C. MSS.
33 Slade minute, 12 December, on Bridgeman, ‘Duties of Torpedo Craft in War.’, 10 November 1907, No. 1687/030,
f. 11a, Ships Cover 242 (Beagle Class Destroyer), D.N.C. MSS.
34 D.K. Brown, Grand Fleet, pp. 68-69; Friedman, British Destroyers, pp. 114-118; March, op. cit., p. 103.
35 Admiralty, ‘Preliminary Statement for Preparation of Naval Establishments Enquiry Committee’, July 1905, in
‘Naval Establishments Enquiry Committee’, July 1905, F.P. 4708, p. 13, FISR 8/6, Fisher MSS.
180
Neither of these proposals came to be, however there was a resumption of cruiser construction beginning in with the 1907-8 Estimates. At the same meetings where battleship Design ‘F’ was approved it was decided to build a single fast ‘Parent Ship for Destroyers’ at the Pembroke Royal Dockyard. Officially designated as an ‘Unarmoured Cruiser’, it was to be laid down in April 1907 for completion in 21 months.37 Fisher entrusted D.N.I. Ottley to produce a justification for such a ship. Ottley, doubtless under Fisher’s guidance, set out the ship’s raison d’être as follows:
‘Those who would urge Great Britain to forthwith embark on a heavy expenditure for unarmoured cruisers of moderate speed appear oblivious of the fact that, even to-day, in her numerous flotilla of fast craft (scouts, destroyers, and torpedo-boats) this country already possesses the nucleus of a mosquito fleet, which … will at all events be able to press home its investigations off enemy’s ports fronting upon the
Narrow Seas and German Ocean, with a well grounded confidence that, if chased, it may show a clean pair of heels to an enemy in superior force. This our existing unarmoured cruisers for the most part could not do, and consequently since they can neither fight nor run away, they would apparently be fulfilling a better destiny on the scrap heap than in the war fleet.’38
The new unarmoured cruiser was to be a further addition to this ‘mosquito fleet’, capable of performing as a mother ship for the new Tribals and ‘suitable also for many of the multifarious duties’ currently undertaken by the older unarmoured cruisers Fisher had been campaigning against since he took office.
The design chosen for building at Pembroke had been under development since April 1906.39 In November 1907, work began in earnest on a ‘New Boadicea’ design to be built under
37 Admiralty, ‘Board Minutes. Tuesday and Wednesday, 11th and 12th December 1906.’, 26 December 1906, in
Admiralty, ‘Designs of Armoured Ships to be Laid Down in November 1907.’, mid-1907, F.P. 4723, p. 2, FISR 8/10, Fisher MSS.
38 Ottley, ‘The Strategic Aspect of Our Building Programme, 1907.’, 7 January 1907, in Admiralty, ‘Designs of
Armoured Ships to be Laid Down in November 1907.’, mid-1907, F.P. 4723, pp. 34-35, FISR 8/10, Fisher MSS.
39 Constructor W.H. Whiting to Assistant Constructor C.W. Knight, 21 May 1906, f. 1, Ships Cover 231(Boadicea
Class), D.N.C. MSS. Friedman mentions Fisher giving the initial requirements to D.N.C. Watts in January 1906. Friedman, British Destroyers, p. 111. See also Admiralty, ‘Report of Committee appointed to consider the Questions of the Provision of a Parent Vessel for Coastal Destroyers, the Utilisation of Mercantile Cruisers, and the Fusion
181
the forthcoming 1908-9 Estimates. Early on, it had been decided that the new design should be larger than previous scouts owing to the continued German construction of small cruisers superior to existing British ships.40 Initial sketch specifications were for a 4,000 ton, 25 knot ship with a protective deck, armed with twelve 4-inch guns and carrying ‘50% more total of oil & coal than in Boadicea’.41 The growth in size, and especially the large provision of fuel, suggests that from the start the Admiralty wanted ships closer to the classic long-range cruiser type which had gone into abeyance in favour of cruisers designed for flotilla support duties. By January 1908 additional suggestions from the Board had resulted in four designs named ‘A’ through ‘D’.42 None satisfied the Board so a fifth design was drawn up, intermediate between Designs ‘B’ and ‘C’. The new Design ‘E’ displaced 4650 tons and carried two six-inch guns and ten four-inch guns plus a Maxim gun.43 This design was considered acceptable and became the Bristol class, and the increase in size and gunpower resulted in the type being redesignated as second-class protected cruisers.44 The Bristol design became the template for a long series of cruisers built for the Navy throughout the remainder of the Prewar Era.45
Battles for the Estimates
The kaleidoscope’s worth of designs described above were all predicated on the Admiralty receiving sufficient funds to actually build them. This rather obvious fact should once Design of Armoured Vessel.’, n.d. [late 1905?], in Admiralty, ‘Navy Estimates Committee, 1906-7.’, 10 January 1906, F.P. 4711, pp. 18-19, FISR 8/6, Fisher MSS.
40 Norman Friedman, British Cruisers: Two World Wars and After (Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing, 2010), pp. 18-19. 41 Unsigned, ‘Re C.N. 9183/07’, 2 November 1907, f. 1, Ships Cover 240 (Bristol Class), D.N.C. MSS.
42 Unsigned, ‘Comparative Statement of Dimensions, Estimate of Weights, &c. for Cruiser Designs ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’,
‘D’’, January 1908, f. 18, Ships Cover 240 (Bristol Class), D.N.C. MSS. Of interest is Design ‘C’, which carried two 6-inch guns in single turrets fore and aft.
43 Unsigned, ‘Comparative Statement of Dimensions, Estimate of Weights, &c. for Cruiser Designs ‘B’ & ‘E’’, 23
January 1908, f. 21, Ships Cover 240 (Bristol Class), D.N.C. MSS.
44 Unsigned, ‘H.M.S. New 2nd Class Protected Cruiser. Comparative Statement of Dimensions, Estimate of Weights,
&c.’, 30 May 1908, f. 22, Ships Cover 240 (Bristol Class), D.N.C. MSS.
45 David Lyon, ‘The First Town Class 1908-31 Part I’, in Antony Preston (ed.), Warship, vol. i (London: Conway
182
again, if Fisher’s maxim that repetition is the key to success,46 underline the importance of matters financial. It has already been demonstrated how in 1906, for example, pressure for economies in naval expenditure were a major—perhaps the major—motive force behind the creation of the Home Fleet. From 1907 through 1909, however, the eternal war between the Admiralty and the economists entered a new and vicious stage.
Having received First Lord Tweedmouth’s proposed Naval Estimates for 1907-1908, Chancellor Asquith wrote to the Prime Minister that they left him ‘much disquieted’ because they offered a further reduction from the previous Estimates of only £450,000. Asquith groused that ‘this is a very poor & inadequate fulfilment of our pledge in regard to reduction of expenditure on fighting services.’47 Furthermore,
‘I confess that, after a year's experience, I have very little confidence in the present lot of Sea Lords, who chop & change as the whims suit them.
‘Our naval supremacy is so completely assured—having regard to the sketchy paper programmes & inferior shipbuilding resources of the other Powers—that there is no possible reason for allowing ourselves to be hastily misled into these nebulous & ambitious developments.’
In reply, and possibly remembering his experience during the 1884 ‘Truth about the Navy’ imbroglio,48 Campbell-Bannerman assured Asquith that ‘I entirely share your dislike & suspicion of the Navy prospects.’ He confessed, however, that there was ‘desperately little sound standing ground in all this!’49 David Lloyd George later floridly recalled that he fellow radicals felt
46 ‘You must keep on telling the people the same thing, and of course this is the secret of advertisement – Pears’ soap,
etc.!’ Fisher to Arnold White, 17 July 1900, in Marder, FGDN, i, p. 157.
47 Asquith to Campbell-Bannerman, 30 December 1906, f. 273-276, Add MS 41210, Campbell-Bannerman MSS. 48 Campbell-Bannerman had been Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty at the time. John Wilson, CB, pp. 63-65.
For a new perspective on this much-discussed incident and Campbell-Bannerman’s part in it, see John F. Beeler,
British Naval Policy in the Gladstone-Disraeli Era, 1866-1880 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 265-278; and Idem, ‘In the Shadow of Briggs: A New Perspective on British Naval Administration and W. T. Stead’s 1884 “Truth about the Navy” Campaign’, International Journal of Naval History 1, no. 1 (April 2002).
49 Campbell-Bannerman to Asquith, 4 January 1907, f. 220-221, MS.Asquith 10, H.H. Asquith MSS, Bodleian
183
dreadnoughts ‘a piece of wanton and profligate ostentation.’50 Tweedmouth, however, was nonetheless prepared to stand by the Admiralty, and he rebuffed an overture from Campbell- Bannerman to devise a new and more economical alternative to the Two-Power Standard. Such a move would ‘be sadly misunderstood’ since every government ‘for at least twenty-one years have accepted and acted up to the Two Power Standard and it is not to be lightly abandoned now.’51
The Admiralty and Fisher especially were prepared to join battle on the issue. Fisher recruited Julian Corbett to the cause of defending the Dreadnought and Admiralty policy in general.52 The resulting works were only partially successful: ‘Corbett’s articles silenced the Admiralty’s loudest critics they did not convince their most dangerous foe, Chancellor Asquith.’53
The problem simmered through the spring and summer, but in autumn it boiled over. Towards the end of the year a group of 138 backbenchers constituting a ‘Disarmament Committee’ presented a demand for heavy reductions in military and naval expenditure to the Prime Minister.54 Apparently in response to this, Sir George Murray, the Permanent Secretary of the Treasury, produced a memorandum for the Cabinet in which he pointed out that ‘unless some substantial reduction is made in the combined total of naval and military expenditure the
50 David Lloyd George, War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, i (London: Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1933), p. 6. I
strongly concur with Nicholas Lambert’s comment on this quote: ‘[W]hatever that meant.’ Nicholas Lambert, JNFR, p. 137.
51 Tweedmouth to Campbell-Bannerman, 21 November 1906, f. 135, Add MS 41231, Campbell-Bannerman MSS. 52 Jon Sumida, ‘The Historian as a Contemporary Analyst: Sir Julian Corbett and Sir John Fisher’, in Goldrick and
Hattenborf (eds.), Mahan Is Not Enough, pp. 125-140.
53 Nicholas Lambert, op. cit., pp. 137-138.
54 Howard Weinroth, ‘Left Wing Opposition to Naval Armaments in Britain before 1914’, Journal of Contemporary
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Government may be exposed to a serious attack by a considerable section of their own followers.’55
Murray’s paper appeared just in time to frustrate Tweedmouth, who had been writing his own memorandum in response to the news that the German government had adopted a modification to their Navy Act which reduced the replacement period of their battleships from twenty-five years down to twenty.56 ‘I have just read Sir George Murray’s Paper’, Tweedmouth wrote testily, ‘I do not quite know what is the intention of the… Naval portion of the Paper.’57 Although he did not deign to critique Murray’s paper in detail, Tweedmouth objected to Murray’s assumption that future construction would be undertaken along the lines of Dreadnought’s rapid and costly building time: ‘Except as a feat, it has nothing to recommend it.’58 Furthermore he declared that the Admiralty ‘may be relied on not to propose a new construction programme larger than is absolutely required to maintain our naval supremacy[.]’ 59 Nevertheless, although the destruction of the Russian battle fleet had left the Royal Navy with ‘full possession of a two- Power standard strength for the next year or two,’ in the longer term the picture was less favourable. To maintain the Two Power Standard, defined by Tweedmouth as 10% superiority over the French and German fleets in 1920,60 would require the ordering and construction of forty-seven battleships between 1909 and 1920. If, as Tweedmouth felt was probable, the United States possessed the second largest battleship fleet in 1920 after Britain, even more than forty- seven new battleships would be required.61 Although the Admiralty was content to include only a single new dreadnought in the upcoming 1908-9 Estimates, Tweedmouth’s calculations for the
55 G.H. Murray, ‘Naval and Military Expenditure’, 20 November 1907, p. 2, CAB 37/90/98. 56 Tweedmouth, ‘Future Battleship Building’, 21 November 1907, CAB 37/90/101.
57 Ibid., p. 2. 58 Ibid., p. 3. 59 Ibid.
60 This combination was selected because the Admiralty possessed ‘fairly reliable data’ on their future naval
programmes.
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needs of 1920 were a warning to his colleagues of ‘a need for a much increased programme of new construction in future years.’62
The Admiralty, meanwhile, had been hard at work drawing up their programme for the 1908-9 Estimates. Aside from the single battleship, the initial plans drawn up in June 1907 comprised two small armoured cruisers carrying eight 9.2-inch guns, five improved Boadiceas, twelve destroyers and a half-million sterling worth of submarines.63 Shortly afterwards the programme was rearranged, sacrificing one of the armoured cruisers for a sixth Boadicea and four additional destroyers.64 As Nicholas Lambert notes, neither the Chancellor nor the rest of the