Tempestuous Genius: The Life of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher by Richard Freeman

Author:Richard Freeman [Freeman, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2020-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

Submarines ‘Lord Fisher’s child’ 1903

Admiral of the Fleet Roger Keyes, in his memoirs, recalled that submarines were ‘Lord Fisher’s child’. This claim to paternity lies partly in his work with submarines in the Mediterranean, but also with his activities as Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth. Whilst Fisher had been at the Admiralty, Bacon had been testing submarines with a view to establishing their potential in the Navy. In May 1903, his report Submarine Boats concluded that ‘Sufficient experience has been obtained with these boats to assign them to a definite role in the armaments of the Navy.’ He was convinced that any ship that approached a defended harbour was bound to be hit by a least one submarine. He continued, ‘The risks of allowing a large ship to approach such a port are so great that I unhesitatingly assert that in war time it should never be allowed.’ From this he concluded that, ‘No ship will, in Naval wars of the future, be at sea without some definite purpose in view.’ However, ‘submarines are daylight craft only. At night time owing to the loss of light, their one great attribute “invisibility” due to submersion, vanishes’, which meant that they were complementary to destroyers. As he concluded: ‘Submarines by day, Destroyers by night.’

This paper must have strongly influenced Fisher when, in October 1903, he wrote a paper Invasion and Submarines ‘to make clear that the Submarine Boat has made Invasion impracticable, and this being so, that it follows the Army requires to be reconstituted because Invasion has apparently been hitherto a governing condition in arranging its strength’. This followed a torpedo trial of the previous month that had particularly impressed him:

the ironclad Belleisle, having had several extra bottoms put on her and strengthened in every conceivable manner that science could suggest or money accomplish, was sent to the bottom of Portsmouth Harbour by … [a] … Whitehead automobile torpedo in seven minutes.

The trial demonstrated the power of the torpedo, he said, which could ‘be carried with facility in Submarine Boats’ so that, ‘due to the marvellous adaptation of the gyroscope’ a submarine possessed ‘a greater ratio of power of vitally injuring a ship in the line of battle than does the most accurate gun’. Since a torpedo travelled below the water, he argued, ‘all its hits are vital hits’ whereas ‘only in a few places are gun hits vital’. Added to that, ‘the Submarine Boat … is … absolutely unattackable’. Fisher concluded that the Navy ‘must revolutionise Naval Tactics’ because ‘the present battle formation of ships in a single line presents a target of such a length that the chances are altogether in favour of the Whitehead torpedo hitting some ship in the line even when projected from a distance of several miles’. There were also implications for the Army ‘because, imagine even one Submarine Boat with a flock of transports in sight loaded with some two or three thousand troops! … Even the bare thought makes invasion impossible!’

He also noted the implications

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