4: Fisher's Reforms

Description

This is Part 4 of the new Great War Revisited project. This episode is an expanded, rewritten, and rerecorded version of the Member Episode released in 2019. It was a time for change, and the agent of that change was Sir John “Jackie” Fisher. His views on the future of naval warfare would result in drastic reforms for the Royal Navy and for its future.

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Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Great War Revisited Number 4 - The Anglo-German Naval Arms Race - Fisher’s Reforms. Last episode we discussed the challenges faced by the Royal Navy during the late 19th century. Most of those challenges revolved around how to adapt to the new technologies and the ever shifting geopolitical situation. This episode we will discuss the massive reforms that were put in place during the reign of Admiral Sir John Arbuthnot Fisher as First Sea Lord starting in 1905. It would be under Fisher’s leadership that the Royal Navy as it would be in 1914 would be created. Fisher’s reforms would drastically change both the Royal Navy and then every other navy in the world due to their reaction to his changes. The most well known of these changes would be the creation of the HMS Dreadnought, which was of course a very big deal, but many of Fisher’s reforms were far less flashy, and often more controversial. Among these less flashy changes were his attempts to address the economic problems that the Royal Navy was facing, his efforts to change how the Royal Navy treated its more technical officers, and a shift in where the power of the Royal Navy was positioned in peacetime. To try and attack the budgetary problems of the Royal Navy he targeted older ships that the Royal Navy had been holding onto for many years. He believed that there were too many ships, many of them hopelessly obsolete, scattered around the world that existed purely to show the flag of the Royal Navy, which was all well and good, albeit expensive, during a time of peace but it would make the navy less prepared for a period of war. A good way to describe the Fisher era reforms, and the reason that they were needed, comes from Fisher himself who would say “There is only so much money available to the Navy-if you put it into chairs that can’t fight, you take it away from ships and men who can.” The removal of these ships from the Navy was just one of many reforms. The rapid pace of technological change also required an important rethinking of how technical engineers were treated in the Royal Navy. For decades they had been a set of officers that were looked down upon by the more traditionally trained naval officers. This would change and engineering officers would be given the same powers and privileges of the executive officers making engineering a more attractive specialty for a new generation of Royal Navy officers. Fisher would also reposition the strength of the Royal Navy around the globe, recognizing that the demands being placed on the fleets were different than they had been in previous generations and this meant that the Royal Navy needed its strength in different areas around the globe. In their book The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command Andrew Gordon and Paul Wilderson have this excellent piece of info to emphasize the pace and scale of change during Fisher’s time in the Royal navy that began in 1854. Fisher would be a part of a unique generation of naval leaders who had started their career in the age of sail and would live to see the massive Dreadnoughts of the First World War. As Gordon and Wilderson would say: “he was nominated for the Navy in 1854 by the last of Nelson’s captains still on the Active List (Admiral Sir William Parker, C-in-C Plymouth), and the last of the great ships he built (HMS Renown) was in front-line service in the year of the atomic bomb.” The rate of technological change in the navy during this period would surpass anything from the previous centuries, and Fisher would be the one to try and force the Royal navy to adapt.

Fisher’s path to affecting change would start in the Mediterranean when he took command of the fleet in that Sea in 1899. He would be in command in the Mediterranean for 3 years, and during this time he was focused on one thing, preparing the fleet for war. His reformist tendencies were present right from the very moment that he took over command and would be showcased in his very first act as fleet commander. The tradition among the fleet was that when a new commander arrived each captain of the ships of the fleet to visit the flagship individually, then the fleet commander would visit that captain’s ship individually before meeting with the next captain. Instead of this process, which could take days and even weeks, Fisher just invited all of the captains to his flagship, had a single meeting, then that was done and he could get to work. One of the forward looking changes would be the introduction and emphasis on long range gunnery practice. Often gunnery practice was done at short range and against stationary or slowly towed targets. Fisher would change this, pushing the range out to 6,000 yards, which at the time was an extremely long range. This drastically cut the success rate of the firing, but Fisher believed that it presented a far more realistic battle scenario. Wartime experience would prove that this theory was correct, and very often ships would engage one another at the maximum possible distance, making long distance gunnery practice essential. He would also follow in the footsteps of Tryon in his disdain for many of the changes that had been made in the Royal Navy in the preceding years. Fisher believed that the most important thing that could be done during peacetime was to accurately prepare for war. Instead, so much of the time of the captains and crews of the Royal Navy were spent on making things look good, or exercises that were not realistic. Fisher would change this. These changes would cause friction with many other naval leaders at the time, but Fisher had a group of generally younger officers under his command that supported his ideas. After three years as the head of the Mediterranean Fleet Fisher would go back to London to take up the post of Second Sea Lord, and during his year in the position his ideas and plans for his leader reforms began to solidify. One of these ideas would become the HMS Dreadnought and the battlecruisers that would be build alongside it. The concept of these new classes of ships would then be detailed during Fisher’s stint as the Commander and Chief at Portsmouth. Along with all of the planning for the future he would also create a new naval college at this time at Osborne. All of these actions and postings were leading up to his time as the First Sea Lord, a position that he would assume on October 21, 2014.

Before we discuss what Fisher would be doing during his tenure as First Sea Lord, we have to talk just briefly about an event that occurred less than a day after he took over the position. This would be an event that would almost lead the Royal Navy to start a war with Russia. The Russo-Japanese War was ongoing, and the Russian Pacific Fleet had been destroyed. The Russians believed that their only option to continue the war was to send their Baltic Fleet all the way around the world to take its place. This was a very bad decision, for enough reasons that it would take a whole episode to describe them, but trust me it was a very bad call. Part of this journey meant sailing through the North Sea. The Russians were very concerned that there might be Japanese torpedo boats in these waters, which would be present with the knowledge and permission of the Royal Navy. These concerns were so acute that when some spotlights found some ships near Dogger Bank, the Russian ships opened fire. They were not in fact Japanese torpedo boats but instead British fishing ships. This almost caused an international incident, just a few hours after Fisher took over the navy. Nothing would come of this tension, other than the destruction of the Russian Baltic Fleet as soon as they arrived in the Pacific. The total destruction of the Russian fleet did represent a major shift in naval geography, with Russia seen as one of the major possible enemies for the Royal Navy. With its removal the number of possible enemies for the navy was reduced, and Germany began to grow in focus, a focus that would play a role in many of Fisher’s decisions. This shift was only amplified by the continued good relations with France that would feature heavily in British foreign policy during the first 10 years of the 1900s. France had the second largest fleet in the world, and its large colonial empire made it the traditional rival of the British. With the improvement in relations between the two empires, even more focus could be placed on Germany.

Fisher’s years as the First Sea Lord would see a large list of reforms but in this episode we will be covering three of Fisher’s main reforms: his changes to the personnel in the navy, the changes to the policies around the retention and upkeep of older ships, and the strategic positioning of the Navy’s resources. One reform that will not be discussed during this episode was the design and construction of the HMS Dreadnought, that deserves a lengthier discussion which will occur next episode. If Fisher wanted to enact wide ranging reforms he believed that it was essential that he not only address the ships in the Royal navy but also the men aboard those ships. It would all start with the officers, which Fisher tried to address by reforming officer training. Some of the changes in this area would begin when Fisher was still the Second Sea Lord under Admiral Selborne. During his tenure as Second Sea Lord Fisher would be given the task of working on what was referred to as the Engineer Question, or the problem with the increased emphasis on engineering on naval vessels that were just getting more and more complicated. A new system of training was introduced for all new officers in an attempt to create officers that were more prepared for the realities of modern naval operations. This meant studies on new technologies, like steam engines, radios, and long distance gunnery. Every officer was not expected to be an expert on all of these systems, but it was essential that they have some passing level of familiarity with all of the important systems on the ship. Along with this more basic training there would also be a new emphasis on continuing education. This involved topics like naval history, strategy, tactics, and international law all of the things that officers needed not just so that they knew how to do their job but also to make the correct decisions while at sea. While this increased emphasis on training was a good idea, and would make the officers better at leading their ships, it could not completely solve the problems around engineers. When the first Royal navy ships had received their steam engines, experts on steam engines had been recruited to work with them aboard ship. Then as more and more technology was brought on board, and the overall care and maintenance of the ship got more complicated there were more engineers on board to keep things going. The problem was that engineering officers were treated quite different when compared to non-engineering officers and there was a real limit on how far an engineer could go in the navy, even though engineering skill and knowledge was more important that ever. The changes that would be put in place during Fisher’s years of leadership would see this change, with a separate track of promotion for engineering officers, but with each rank being equal to that of non-engineering officers. This meant that those engineers could eventually rise to quite high ranks, which was really good for their individual career prospects and helped the navy retain the most talented engineers. Some of the old school executive officers were not big fans of this change, but they mostly just saw it as an attack on their privilege and prestige which Fisher did not care about in the slightest.

Along with an emphasis on the training of officers for their current jobs and responsibilities Fisher also supported innovators who wanted to improve the ability of those officers to lead their ships. One example of this was Captain Percy Scott, who was supported by Fisher in his attempts to increase the accuracy of the guns. Up until this point the guns on the ships had often been using very rudimentary gunnery methods, often involving a lot of missing and then slow adjustments. Scott developed a system that almost tripled the accuracy of the guns, and even had ways to account for the ever present roll of the ship. The topic of gun laying, range finding, and actually hitting targets that were thousands of meters distant will the focus of Episode 8 of this series, but just know that during Fisher’s tenure such problems were investigated and real progress was made in solving some of them. With all of these changes, Fisher was trying to prepare the Royal Navy not just to be a navy, but also to fight. Admiral Sir Sydney Fremantle would describe Fisher’s actions like this “His great claim to fame is that he succeeded in making us think. Before he asserted himself, the spirit and discipline of the Navy were excellent, but we were in a groove in which merit was decided and rewards given for smartness in drills, in appearance of ships, and in handling them in close order. Fisher got us out of that groove and made us realize that the object of our existence was fighting, and that our training, our habits, our exercises, and our thoughts must always have that in view.” While the officers were the primary focus of many of these changes there was also an effort to make their time aboard ship better for the sailors on board the ships. Fisher would enact several long overdue reforms to life aboard ship that were almost universally welcomed by those on the lower decks. Many of these were easy changes like making sure that there were bakeries on all of the ships so that nobody had to eat hard tack, improving the overall quality of the food, and then providing paths for career advancement for the men. These were items that today would be considered the bear minimum, and by instituting them Fisher became very well liked among the sailors.

Along with improving the skills and knowledge of the officers, Fisher also wanted to better utilize the talent that the navy did have, while also utilizing them in an economic way. This was done through the introduction of the nucleus crew system. Before the introduction of this new system the Royal Navy had an active fleet and then a fleet reserve. These reserve ships, or at least the lowest level of reserve ships, were kept far from in fighting shape, with the most skeleton of skeleton crews tasked with keeping them afloat while they were in long term storage. It was understood that the schedule to get these ships ready to fight was measured in many months and so they would only be activated in the case of a large war. Fisher’s nucleus crew system tried to make the reserve fleet more than just a bunch of rusty hulls sitting in harbor. Instead of being far from ready to fight the Fleet Reserve would instead be manned by a nucleus crew, which would be about two-fifths of the ship’s full complement. Critically this nucleus crew included all of the most important specialty officers, the ones whose knowledge was absolutely critical to ensuring that the ship was ready to sail. If the fleet was mobilized these nucleus crews would then be augmented by reserve and trainee sailors, but because all of the most important men were already aboard the ships these new sailors did not need extensive training. Fisher also mandated that these reserve ships participate in annual maneuvers, which gave both the ships and the men a chance to shake off the rust and for new trainees to get a bit of on the job training. This was a complete shift in how the ships of the Reserve Fleet were viewed, and made them far more capable of being used in a wartime scenario and more capable when they were called upon. Fisher believed that this change, the nucleus crew system, was the most important of his changes but there was a problem, the men did not exist within the navy to create these nucleus crews, and Fisher could not expand the naval budget just to accommodate them. Fisher did have a plan for this problem though, because another reform, that went hand in hand with the nucleus crew system was a brutal culling of the Navy’s ships.

This brutal culling was required by the pace of technological advancements in the last 2 decades of the 19th century, although the Royal Navy was in a denial about the need for drastic changes. Since the Napoleonic War, and into the modern day, naval technology has been cyclical, there have been periods of very rapid technological advancement like the beginning of the 20th century and before World War 2, and there have been long periods of relative stagnation like the decades after the 1880s or the years after World War 2. For example at the time of Trafalgar Nelson’s flagship was 40 years old, and at that point there was not much difference between his ships and new ones coming out of port. This level of longevity would not be possible during the middle decades of the 19th century due to the pace of technological advancement, however these advances would slow during the 1880s, at a time when all ships were steam powered and had armor plating. For the Royal Navy these periods of slow technological change were a welcome development because the Navy had a large number of ships spread around the globe and the slower technology changed the longer those ships could be kept in service. These were particularly true for older cruisers that were used for trade defense which would be generally categorized by the navy as Second and Third Class cruisers. For large fleet actions these ships were mostly worthless, however they were thought to be valuable for two reasons. The first was just the simple fact that it allowed the Royal Navy to show the flag all over the world, this was mostly a political function but did serve to provide an ever present reminder that the Royal Navy was present to protect British commerce. The second reason was that it was believed that other nations, like the French or the Russians, would use similar ships against British merchant ships around the world. Fisher attacked both of these reasons in his quest to purge the naval rolls of the older ships. From a military perspective he believed that they were, basically, worthless. They could not fight ships larger or newer than themselves, and Fisher believed that they would not be called upon to fight older slower ships like they themselves were, but instead newer and faster ships. These ships would completely destroy the older ships that the British were using. Here is Fisher’s evaluation in his own words ‘The most demoralising and expensive and inefficient thing in the British Navy is the mass of small, isolated vessels which are known as the “snail” and the “tortoise” classes, which can neither fight nor run away … the chief calamity is the deterioration of the men who serve in them, and the frightful anxiety of every Admiral to get them hauled up on the beach or sunk before the enemy take them!’ From the political, show the flag perspective, well Fisher believed that the entire concept was based on a false premise, and that nobody would miss the ships once they were gone. Again his own words here “Out of 193 ships at present in commission organised in fleet, 63 only are of such calibre as not to cause an Admiral grave concern if allowed to wander from the protection of larger ships. There are among these several ships which should be paid off as soon as possible, being absolutely of no fighting value. […] Of course objections will be raised, and it will be shown that the Navy cannot be run without them, but wipe them out, and in a year no one will remember that they ever existed.” To get some idea of what needed to happen each ship was give one of four grades and I want to emphasize that I am using Fisher’s words here. The grades were: A being prime fighting ships, B being ships of doubtful value, C being ships that were utterly useless ships for fighting purposes, and D for ships that were absolutely obsolete. These grades provided a framework for the ships that could then be stricken from the lists and offered up for scrap.

While Fisher was concerned about the abilities of the ships, his primary concern was around how much they were costing the Navy every single year. Even some of the smallest ships on station around the world cost 12,000 pounds per year just in maintenance. Larger ships like some of the old and obsolete battleships were upwards of 100,000. That is just the cost of keeping the ships afloat and mobile and did not account for the cost of the crews. Fisher wanted to get rid of all of them to free up money and men for his nucleus crew system. The total number of ships that he submitted to be scrapped was 154, and while this entire list was not immediately accepted, a very large percentage of them were. This included many smaller ships, but also some much larger ships like those of the Nile class battleships that had been launched in 1887. Many of these ships were old and slow, but also some of them were just, not good. During the previous decades of technological advances, not every single concept and theory that the Royal Navy came up with was a winner, and there were many ships that were built on these theories that were found to be just bad naval vessels for one reason or another. Often these ships were kept in the reserve fleet, eating away at the budget while providing very little value. While the overseas squadrons were hit the hardest, many of the ships were also stuck in dockyard reserve in the home Isles, these ships were theoretically available for activation for defense, but Fisher considered them worse that useless. Along with the removal of the ships from the lists, this action freed up 950 officers and 11,000 men all of which were available for the manning of new, more capable ships, and could be used in the nucleus crew system. There were, of course, many men who did not feel that scrapping all of these ships was the correct move. They all seemed to use roughly the same four arguments to try and make their case as for why. The first reason revolved around British prestige around the world, with the older ships being used for police actions removing them was felt to be a blow to the Navy’s global presence. The second reason was put forward by those who did not believe that Fisher was right about the future state of commerce warfare, believing instead that enemy navies would use similar old ships for that purpose, which Fisher disagreed with. The third reason was based around the idea that all of these smaller and older ships would be required to all of the various jobs that the Royal Navy would call upon them to do during a war, jobs that were outside the tasks of confronting the enemy fleet. The fourth reason was probably the most valid, and it was that they believed that the Navy was not planning to build enough small cruisers to replace those that were being removed. Fisher’s answer to the third and fourth reasons were basically that the ships were useless, and useless ships were useless and so it was better to take the money saved and build a smaller number of newer more capable ships rather than continuing to pour money into the existing fleet.

While many leaders could argue and raise concerns about the reasons for the cuts, the finances of the Navy were greatly improved by these moves. In the 1905 Naval Estimates Fisher would cut 3.5 million pounds from the previous year’s expenses, the next year it would drop another 1.5 million, and then a further 450,000 in 1907. In just three years that was a reduction of 5.4 million in the Naval estimates out of the 36 million that it had been in 1904, a significant shift. 845,000 of the annual saving were just from what had been used to repair the old ships, without including provisioning, supplying, or manning them. Scrapping so many older ships also had other advantages, it freed up physical space in the Royal Navy harbors, and more importantly for Fisher’s plans it freed up the officer and men to use in the nucleus crew system.

Along with the changes to the men and the scrapping of old ships the third set of changes were around the strategic purpose and positioning of the Royal Navy. One of this plans was based on the general belief that large, heavily armored battleships would not be the primary focus of navies in the future. This is of course an odd view to be held by one of the primary people responsible for the introduction of the Dreadnought, however before Fisher came to the Admiralty he had a very specific view of what the future of naval warfare looked like, and it was based around the torpedo. There would be an important moment around the year 1900 when the torpedo would experience some very quick innovations that would greatly extend its range, explosive power, and consistency. At the same time the Royal Navy, and every navy around the world, was having serious problems extending gun ranges in the same way. The problem was not the guns themselves, they could fire tremendous distances, the problem was actually hitting anything. This forced large ships to get quite close together, maybe a few thousand meters, and on such short distances the power of torpedoes were very deadly. The exact advances in torpedo technology and gunnery would continue for the next several decades. However, when Fisher was formulating his opinions and pushing for reforms both were very actively changing. This velocity of change meant that naval leaders had to not just work with what was available at any given moment, they also had to guess how things would develop in the future. To best utilize the power of torpedoes Fisher was an advocate for a thing called flotilla defense, which was around around the idea that it was much better to have a whole host of smaller destroyers, cruisers, and submarines for the defense of the home islands. Fisher believed that these types of ships were the ideal type sof ships to protect the home islands because they were cheaper and could inflict massive damage on an invading fleet with masses of torpedos for larger ships and their smaller guns against things like troop transports. For this denial the smaller ships would depend on torpedoes, which would make it impossible for the larger slower battleships to operate in the area. Complementing these smaller ships, which would be used to control the North Sea and surrounding areas, would be small groups of battle cruisers. The goal for the battle cruiser was to combine the big guns of a battleship with the speed of a cruiser. In ship designs of this period there was a three sided triangle of design that involved speed, armor, and armament. To greatly increase the speed and armament required the sacrifice of the third side of the triangle, armor. Fisher believed that this was acceptable because these battlecruisers would be larger than anything that matched them in speed, allowing them to use their guns effectively against anything they might meet on the seas, and if there was something that was too big and heavily armored for them to deal with then they could simply run away. Fisher even proposed ending the construction of dreadnoughts altogether in 1909, and instead focusing strictly on battlecruiser construction at that point. The primary purpose of these battlecruisers would be for commerce raiding. But at the same time that Fisher was pushing for a greater focus on these massively powerful commerce raiders, there were also international developments that might make them less necessary during a war. From the perspective of British trade the greatest threat was from other empires that had a global presence from which commerce raiders could base their operations. For example France was a huge concern around commerce raiding because French commerce raiders would have a worldwide reach with a worldwide collection of ports that they could take advantage of. But by 1909 when Fisher was able to really push for battlecruisers, war with France seemed very unlikely. If Germany was the most likely enemy, its ability to launch a commerce raiding campaign seemed very small. This would prove to be completely correct during the First World War, other than a few commerce raiding actions like the adventures of Admiral Maximilian von Spee and the RMS Emden there was not much of a German commerce raiding campaign. But even in the more confined waters of the North Sea Fisher believed that large battleships were not the answer, because they were too vulnerable to the torpedo. Now, of course, these views of flotilla defense would not go on to completely change the makeup of the Royal navy, there would still be large ships in Fisher’s navy, the torpedo was just not at a point where it could shoulder the complete burden and so his views on flotilla defense would not come to pass. Even if he was not allowed to pursue his full vision, he would still subtly begin to nudge things towards his ideas on flotilla defense, for example in late 1904 he would change the type of destroyers being built, and instead of fleet destroyers designed to work with a battle fleet built around large capital ships he would instead build smaller destroyers with a shorter range but were much cheaper. This would be the first change of a growing set of changes of what types of ships the Royal Navy was building, and by 1909 about 20% of the total construction budget was being used to build the smaller ships that fit within Fisher’s flotilla defense concept. Fisher was benefitted by the fact that the types of ships he wanted to build for flotilla defense were cheaper, so it was easy to get political support for these cheaper ships.

Another important key to Fisher’s reforms was the repositioning of the Royal navy’s fleets around the world. The distribution of ships, as it was in 1905, had been determined during the age of sail. At that point the overall speed of ships had been much lower, and this had required a much wider distribution of the fleet’s strength around the globe to be prepared to deal with any problems that might erupt, and to protect trade. However, in the age of steam these same constraints did not exist. Even before Fisher came to power there were already discussions taking place about a possible reorganization of these fleets to better account for modern threats and modern capabilities. Fisher would join in these discussions from the Mediterranean, writing to the Admiralty with his ideas of a proper organization stating that ‘our fleets should be so groups and so disposed during peace to be ready for instant war.’ The primary target for these reorganizations was the exact size and structure of the Royal Navy ships in home waters, which had for many years been a secondary concern. Until a reorganization in 1902 the primary force in home waters was the Channel Squadron, which usually had some of the latest and most powerful ships in the fleet, but the assumption was that these new ships would have to be dispatched to the Mediterranean during war. This would leave the defense of the home islands to just the ships of the Reserve Fleet, which was the exact opposite of the latest and most powerful vessels, but instead older ships that were on the verge of retirement. In 1904 there were 9 main Royal Navy fleets, and Fisher would reduce them to 5. When this was combined with the scrapping of all of the older ships it represented a total redistribution of the Navy’s power. The five new fleets would be stationed around the five key areas, as defined by Fisher, Singapore, the Cape of Good Hope, Alexandria, Gibraltar, and the home islands. The situation for the fleets around the home islands very rapidly became confusing. Before Fisher’s reforms the Mediterranean had been the primary point of Royal Navy strength in the world. It had the 12 newest and most powerful battleships, while the second fleet, the Channel fleet only had 8 older battleships. Fisher wanted to flip this distribution, with the strongest ships being in home waters. At the same time Fisher also created his nucleus crew system, and a more well structured reserve, and these were also made into fleets while the transition occurred. This meant that during Fisher’s tenure there were two fleets in home waters, the Channel and Home Fleets. There would also be a major fleet based in Gibraltar, which could flex between the Mediterranean and the home islands based on the requirements of the situation. Along with the fleet structure, there was also a restructuring of the exact responsibilities of the Commander of the Channel Fleet. Previously the commander of the Channel fleet also had responsibility for the Reserve Fleet and the Coast Guard. These responsibilities generally involved a lot of administrative shore work, which resulted in the commander spending far less time at sea. These shore based responsibilities were removed to allow the commander of the Channel Fleet to be a primarily seagoing command, much like the commander in the Mediterranean. All of these changes resulted in some confusion which was kind of inevitable during the reorganization, but was one of the many things that those who disagreed with Fisher would use to attack his policy.

With such wide ranging reforms, Fisher made many enemies. Part of the problem was that, just like Fisher himself, the oldest and most senior commanders in the Navy had been born in the middle of the 19th century. They had started their careers in the navy when it was sail powered, and some of them simply could not adjust to the new reality. In previous centuries the traditions of the Royal Navy had worked in its favor, by the time of Trafalgar naval technology had not meaningfully changed in centuries which meant tradition provided experience. However, that tradition was now working against the Navy, and some commanders were simply unable to move forward. This group was not all encompassing though, there were many naval leaders who were more than willing and able to jump head first into the new technological world. There were some that made good arguments about why certain policies of Fisher’s were not correct, but there was also a group of officers that simply did not like that Fisher was trying to so drastically change the navy. These concerns would eventually lead to a confrontation between Lord Charles Beresford and Fisher which would see Fisher removed from his position at the Admiralty. But before that would occur Fisher would oversee the introduction of the HMS Dreadnought, which would completely change the landscape of capital ships design forever.