The early twentieth-century naval reforms of Sir Jackie Fisher are a favorite topic of contemporary political scientists and defense policy wonks, alike. Fisher’s personal story and the drama around his relationship with his great rival, Lord Charles Beresford, are less well known or understood. At first glance, I was doubtful that a century-old bureaucratic political squabble warranted a full-length book treatment, but Richard Freeman delivers here a fascinating story along with impressive scholarship.
Born the first of eleven children to a middle-level army officer in Sri Lanka, Jackie Fisher lacked many things required for success in Victorian British society, money and social status foremost among them. But what he lacked in material wealth and aristocratic heritage he more than made up for in ambition, intelligence, and indefatigability. His rise through the ranks of the Royal Navy was steady and impressive, achieving admiral’s rank and the important command of the Mediterranean Fleet at the age of 59 in 1900. His second in command was Lord Charles Beresford, the opposite of Fisher in many ways: independently wealthy, well-born, politically active and well-connected, dangerously impetuous and insubordinate
Overall, Freeman writes, the two men got along surprisingly well on Malta despite their enormous personal differences. Indeed, Beresford professed admiration for his reform-minded superior, although on at least two occasions Fisher humiliated his second-in-command publicly over indiscretions in the naval protocol. They would be slights that evidently left lasting bitterness.
In 1904, Fisher was promoted to First Sea Lord and introduced a number of sweeping and controversial reforms. He unified the education system so that traditionally lower born members of the engineering corps would be treated as equals to the usually higher born line officers. (As trivial as this sounds to twenty-first century Americans, it was evidently a big deal in the Edwardian era Royal Navy.) Fisher also scrapped over 150 ships that, in his words, “could not fight and could not run away,” while consolidating the fleet into four central stations. Those that supported the reforms, which included future leaders such as John Jellicoe and Louis Battenberg, were known as members of the “Fishpond.” Those that resisted Fisher’s sweeping changes, led by Charles Beresford, were the so-called “Syndicate of Discontent.”
Freeman writes that four factors played a prominent role in the developing feud: “money, attitude to authority, politics, and the battle between aristocracy and meritocracy.” In short, Beresford was independently wealthy whereas Fisher was utterly dependent on his Navy salary to support his wife and four children; Fisher respected authority whereas Beresford flouted it; Fisher was politically well-connected to King Edward but Beresford was an active and rambunctious member of Parliament; Fisher achieved everything he did in life on merit while Beresford leveraged his family and political connections to advance professionally, and despised playing second fiddle to a man he considered socially beneath him.
Freeman positively loathes Beresford, a man he describes as an irascible, lying, dim-witted, conniving, pompous, professionally incompetent megalomaniac. “His behavior was to reach depths of despicability that are hard to accept in a sane individual,” Freeman writes bitterly. What Beresford had in heart (he was a national hero from his days fighting in Alexandria) he lacked in brains, Freeman says. “Thinking did not come naturally to him, and when he did think, he often indulged in confused and contorted explanations that neither he nor his listeners could follow.” Indeed, the man Freeman describes is mentally unbalanced. How or why he remained so popular with the British populace and, to a lesser degree, in high society, is never adequately explained.
What’s more, Beresford’s grievances against Fisher and the Admiralty, as explained by Freeman, were largely without substance. The primary impetus behind the rift was that Beresford wanted to be First Sea Lord and Fisher stood in his way. It was as simple as that. Freeman presents little to any substantive claims against Fisher’s sweeping reforms. “What exactly Beresford planned to do if he were able to usurp Fisher or the First Lord was never clear,” Freeman writes.
Fisher’s character, on the other hand, is much less developed. His many reforms are addressed only cursorily. Charges that he was cliquish and autocratic are generally waved away by Freeman as baseless. Fisher surprisingly never really comes into focus in this book. He is very much a second tier character in the narrative. The cover, it seems to me, should show Beresford front-and-center with Fisher in the background, as that is how Freeman essentially tells the story.
Beresford was diplomatically relieved of command of the all-important Channel Fleet after his signaling during maneuvers nearly repeated the tragic collision of the Camperdown and Victoria (his tenure in the leadership position was reduced from three to two years, enabling the Admiralty to usher Beresford into retirement without officially sacking him). Beresford used all of his political might to open an enquiry into the performance of the Admiralty in April 1909. His most specific charge was that the Channel Fleet he commanded “has never, even for one day, been equal to the force which it might have to encounter in home waters.” In other words, the country was not organized for war. It was to my surprise that none of Fisher’s reforms beyond fleet distribution were under any scrutiny. In fact, at one point, according to Freeman, Beresford actually took credit for many of Fisher’s daring changes.
The committee was made up of five experienced Cabinet members (Asquith, Crewe, Morley, Grey, and Haldane), “bookish men, reserved, used to quiet conversation on great issues and much averse to bombastic display.” But bombastic display is precisely what Beresford would give them over fifteen sessions of testimony between April and July 1909. It was, Freeman writes, “brains versus brashness.” Interestingly, Freeman fails to fully set the context for the inquiry, never discussing the Naval Scare of 1909 that gave such added impetus to the hearing.
The sitting First Lord of the Admiralty, Reginald McKenna, a talented former barrister, tore Beresford to shreds, according to the author. Not a single accusation stood up to McKenna’s relentless questioning and Beresford’s subsequent prevarications. There was, simply put, nothing to the charges that the British Isles were exposed to mortal danger from the German High Seas Fleet due to the negligence of the Admiralty and its leadership. Nor did Beresford ever furnish any alternative war plans or fleet distribution. The enquiry was, more or less, a farce. The committee’s basic conclusions, according to Freeman, were “(1) there was not one iota of truth in Beresford’s allegations; (2) Beresford and the Board did not get on with each other; and (3) the Naval War Staff needed beefing up.”
The tone of the final report, however, was restrained or “supine” as Freeman calls. “Nowhere was there any resounding, overt support for Fisher.” Within three months of the report’s publication, Fisher would be pushed out of office, retiring on his sixty-ninth birthday. The enquiry was, in the end, neither the decisive defeat of the Admiralty Beresford yearned for nor the ringing vindication that Freeman clearly believes Fisher deserved.
For a more balanced and concise take on the Fisher/Beresford feud, see volume 1, chapters 5 and 8 of Arthur Marder’s classic “From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow.”
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