First published in 1961, Arthur Marder’s “From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow” set the standard on scholarship of the Royal Navy in the First World War era for over a generation. To this day, no commentary on the period can be presented without noting its relationship to Marder and his classic multi-volume work.
Part one of volume one focuses on the reforms of First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher during the period 1904 to 1910. The Royal Navy at the turn-of-the-century was “a drowsy, inefficient, moth-eaten organization,” according to Marder. A century of peace and a deeply conservative culture made the Royal Navy resistant to change despite radical technical advancements in naval warfare – iron-clad, steam-powered ships with wireless communications and long range, super heavy guns facing the novel threat of submarines with torpedoes. Marder argues it was the genius of Jackie Fisher along with the threat of the “young, alert, and ambitious” German navy, which, unlike the British, “placed a premium on initiative and new ideas” that would change everything.
Fisher was in effect, if not in fact, the Board of Admiralty between October 1904 and January 1910. Marder praises Fisher’s intelligence, pertinacity, energy, prodigious memory, and bureaucratic acumen. “The efficiency and strength of the Navy, one ready for war at a moment’s notice, was his megalomania.” To that end, he introduced sweeping reforms to naval education, the naval order of battle, the distribution of the fleet, and the design of future capital ships. “A frightened service found itself being hustled out of the lethargy of a prolonged peace routine into a strenuous preparation for war which flouted practically all the accepted doctrines of the Navy.”
Marder stresses that Fisher’s reforms were sincere and apolitical, more or less siding with him in Fisher’s notorious rivalry with Lord Charles Beresford. Marder denies that the fleet was ever dangerously undersized in home waters. Rather, he says, Fisher was trying to slowly concentrate British forces in the North Sea but doing so in a way that would not alarm or provoke the Germans. The author also denies that the reforms were hastily thought out. He does, however, concede that Fisher was “no angel” and “not entirely innocent.” Famously prickly, Fisher did not suffer fools gladly and made little effort to conciliate his opponents. As coarse and off-putting his style might have been Marder maintains that Fisher’s motivations were purely patriotic and at no time did he deliberately undermine the careers of officers opposed to him and his reforms, the so-called “Syndicate of Discontent.” As to charges of favoritism – the protected supporters of Fisher’s reforms known as the “Fishpond” – Marder writes that Fisher promoted officers based on merit and nothing else.
Concerning the famed Dreadnought, Marder says that only strategic and technical considerations influenced the design. It was not designed specifically to deter the Germans nor was it simply a product of Fisher’s megalomania. Rather, its impetus was the lessons of the Russo-Japanese War and the understanding that other world navies were pursuing a similar design. Marder emphasizes that it was really advances in long-range armaments that made existing ships obsolete, not the Dreadnought itself.
After the dismissal of Beresford from command and the Navy Scare of 1909 over fears of accelerated German naval production, an inquiry was launched against the Admiralty, accusing it (but mainly Fisher) of incompetence and failing to adequately protect the home islands. Marder dismisses Beresford’s charges as reckless and baseless, while championing Fisher and his controversial reforms. “In the teeth of ultraconservative traditions,” he writes, “he revolutionized the Navy, cramming in a few years the reforms of generations and laying foundations that can never be destroyed.” That is not to say that Fisher was without faults. For instance, Marder claims that Fisher may have been too aggressive in his ship scrapping policy and should have been more amenable toward the creation of a Naval War Staff. Worse yet, Fisher’s style combined with the depth and breadth of his changes had torn the navy apart. Gone were the days when the Royal Navy was a brotherhood. By the time he left, Marder says, Fisher had as many enemies in his beloved navy as he had friends. Nevertheless, Marder’s verdict is clear and unapologetic, calling Fisher “A man truly great despite his idiosyncrasies and truly great despite his violence.”
Part two explores the Churchill years at the Admiralty leading up to the First World War. He came to the Admiralty from the Home Office in 1911 at the age of 36 after the Agadir Crisis exposed issues with the navy’s preparedness for war. Many in the navy lamented the reorganization given Churchill’s reputation as one of a “determined, cheese-paring, niggardly economist.” He would prove to be perhaps the most hands-on First Lord in history and an aggressive reformer in the spirit of Jackie Fisher. He introduced an Admiralty War Staff in 1912, an advisory body focused on the operational side of naval warfare. The upshot was that “war plans were no longer locked up in the brains of the First Sea Lord.” Churchill continued and expanded Fisher’s policy of awarding commissions and promotions on the basis of merit alone. He also made the vital and controversial decision to move the navy from British coal to foreign oil for its primary fuel source.
During this period the British worked assiduously to reach an agreement with Berlin to freeze or reduce the production of capital ships. The Germans, however, wanted a political settlement in advance of any naval agreement. Namely, the Germans insisted that the British agree to a policy of strict neutrality in the event of any future war. London was simply unwilling to go that far. Furthermore, the Germans proposed a 2:3 ratio in naval production; the British wanted a 16:10 (i.e. 60%) advantage in dreadnoughts in home waters, while maintaining a one-power standard in the Mediterranean, a once vital theater of operations that was sacrificed in support of better defending the home islands. Marder says that there was little hope for accommodation under the circumstances. Churchill clashed relentlessly with Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, as the naval budget ballooned past 50 million pounds, up over 30% since the war scare year of 1909. The naval arms race was breaking Britain’s bank with no relief in sight.
Marder concludes volume one with an excellent review of British strategy, tactics, order of battle, and estimates on the eve of the First World War. It is remarkable how little the Admiralty and War Board got right about the impending conflict. They correctly foresaw that the navy could ensure the safe passage of the British Expeditionary Force across the English Channel and that an extended close blockade of the German coastline would be impossible due to mines, torpedoes, submarines, long-range coastal ordnance, and airship observation, not to mention the problem posed by constant refueling. Little else played out as the British had expected. Before the war, one thing was never in dispute, according to Marder: the German High Seas fleet would seek battle at the outbreak of hostilities. When that failed to occur, the Grand Fleet was left with little to do but wait and hope that the enemy battle fleet would emerge from its coastal sanctuary. That said, the Admiralty was equally surprised how thoroughly the distant blockade throttled the German economy. But perhaps the greatest failure of British pre-war planning was the inability to foresee the German policy of unrestricted submarine warfare and the havoc it would wreak on the British war economy. The Admiralty simply refused to believe that the civilized Germans would undertake an action so barbaric. “To the end the Admiralty, the Navy, and naval journalists tended to follow Mahan in assuming the indecisiveness of the guerre de course.”
According to Marder, a glaring weakness of the Royal Navy in the pre-war years was strategy and tactics. “Strategy, tactics, the principles of war, played a secondary role … the stress was upon the technical and mechanical aspects of the profession: gunnery, torpedoes, ship-handling, and so on.” The navy clung to the “twin fetishes” of the rigid line of battle and centralized command with the main objective of crossing the enemy’s “T.” Little was done in the pre-war years to experiment with different tactical deployments or flexibility of command. “The system of signaling every movement from the fleet flagship,” according to one contemporary admiral, “tended to develop an acute kind of tactical arthritis.” Marder suggests that these shortcomings, including an almost visceral disdain for naval history, were perhaps the worst of the Fisher era.
Marder bemoans the quality of British senior flag officers at the outset of the war. He agrees with Churchill that the Royal Navy had "more captains of ship than captains of war." That said, the author claims that the junior officers and able seamen were of excellent quality and benefited from the confidence borne of centuries of British naval accomplishments. On the material side, the British had made a deliberate trade-off sacrificing armor for larger armament; the typical British Dreadnought, while less armored than its German counterpart had a broadside throw weight substantially greater. The rub was that British shells were highly inefficient and lacked the penetrating power they should have possessed. It could be argued that the inefficiencies of British ammunition completely undermined the entire Fisher revolution. Nevertheless, the British were almost successful in achieving the 60% superiority in capital ships that naval policy had sought, possessing 20 Dreadnoughts to the German 13 in 1914 (53% advantage) and 9 battle cruisers to the German's 5 (80% advantage).
In closing, volume one of “From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow” is phenomenal history. There are many other capable authors covering the period (Massie, Lambert, Sumida), but none should be read without first consulting Marder’s masterpiece.
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M. A. Burgess
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Indispensable volume for those interested in naval history in the decade prior to the Great War
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