Castles of Steel (57 page)

It was only a matter of weeks before the oceans were entirely clear. Early in March, the armed merchant cruiser
Prinz Eitel Friedrich,
which had captured ten vessels in the preceding two months, arrived at Newport News, Virginia, with a number of prisoners to put ashore. The ship claimed the right of refit and engine repairs, but while she was in port it became public knowledge that one of her victims had been an American vessel. The American government interned her. This left only the German armed merchant cruiser
Kronprinz Wilhelm
still at large. She gave up in April and voluntarily came in to Newport News to be interned.

During the search for
Dresden,
the British were also hunting for
Karlsruhe,
last reported in October off the coast of Brazil. In her raids along the South Atlantic trade route,
Karlsruhe
sank sixteen British ships before she met a sudden end off the coast of Barbados. Her fate was shrouded in mystery until March 1915. The first clue came when some of her wreckage washed ashore 500 miles away. Her survivors eventually found their way back to Germany and reported that on November 4, 1914, she had suffered an internal explosion and foundered with the loss of 261 officers and men. This German disaster occurred three days after Coronel, but for the next four months, the British Admiralty did not know.

CHAPTER 15
Fisher Returns to the Admiralty

The extended infatuation between Jacky Fisher and Winston Churchill originated in April 1907, in Biarritz, where both were staying as guests of a mutual friend. Fisher, a shining eccentric of sixty-six, was First Sea Lord and at the height of his power; Churchill, although a blue blood and the maverick grandson of a duke, was then merely the thirty-two-year-old under secretary for the colonies. But that Churchill would go far—unless he self-destructed—no one doubted. “He is a wonderful creature,” said H. H. Asquith, the prime minister, “with a curious clash of schoolboy simplicity and what someone said of genius: ‘a zigzag streak of lightning in the brain.’ ” From the beginning, Fisher and Churchill recognized each other’s qualities. “We talked all day and far into the nights,” Churchill remembered. “He told me wonderful stories of the navy and of his plans—all about dreadnoughts, all about submarines . . . about big guns and splendid admirals and foolish, miserable ones and Nelson and the Bible. . . . I remembered it all. I reflected on it often.” Fisher, for his part, “fell desperately in love” with Churchill and was “perhaps the first to be told” of the young Cabinet minister’s engagement a few weeks later to Clementine Hozier.

In April 1908, when Asquith succeeded the failing Henry Campbell-Bannerman as Liberal prime minister and was reshuffling the Cabinet, Fisher hoped that Churchill would become First Lord of the Admiralty. Churchill, however, accepted the presidency of the Board of Trade, which he felt offered more scope for exercising independent authority. By 1910, Churchill was ready to move and requested Asquith to give him either the Admiralty or the Home Office; Asquith chose to make him home secretary. Fisher retired on his sixty-ninth birthday, January 25, 1910. Nevertheless, neither the old admiral nor the rising politician forgot their Biarritz conversations and in March Fisher wrote to Churchill, “My dear Winston: Now that I am absolutely free of the Admiralty I suppose I may venture to ask to be welcomed once more into your arms unless in the meantime you’ve got to hate me.” Churchill’s reply came the next day: “My dear Fisher: I am truly delighted to get your letter. I stretched out several feeble paws of amity—but in vain. I like you very much indeed. . . . I have deeply regretted since that I did not press for the Admiralty in 1908.” Thereafter, their correspondence became frequent. Fisher’s letters were couched in his flamboyantly affectionate style, usually beginning “My beloved Winston” and concluding with “Yours to a cinder,” or “Yours till Hell freezes,” or “Yours till charcoal sprouts.” Churchill’s replies were more respectfully sedate. On October 25, 1911, he finally went to the Admiralty and that morning, before leaving the Home Office, he wrote: “My dear Lord Fisher: I want to see you very much. When am I to have that pleasure? You have but to indicate your convenience and I will await you at the Admiralty.” Three days later, they met at a country house and again talked far into the night. “I plied him with questions and he poured out his ideas,” said Churchill. “It was always a joy to me to talk to him on these great matters, but most of all he was stimulating in all that related to the design of ships. He also talked brilliantly about admirals, but here one had to make a heavy discount on account of the feuds. My intention was to hold the balance even and, while adopting in the main the Fisher policy, to insist upon an absolute cessation of tahe vendetta.” During these days, the new First Lord began to think about bringing the former First Sea Lord back to the Admiralty. “I began our conversations with no thought of Fisher’s recall,” Churchill said later. “But by Sunday night, the power of the man was deeply borne in upon me and I had almost made up my mind to do what I did three years later and place him again at the head of the Naval Service. . . . All the way up to London the next morning I was on the brink of saying, ‘Come and help me.’ ” But Churchill was deterred by Fisher’s age and by his fear that the pernicious intraservice feuding would resume. Even so, Fisher was pleased. “I think Winston Churchill will do all I’ve suggested to him,” he wrote to his son. “He’s very affectionate and cordial.”

Over the next three years Fisher remained in retirement, but he had Churchill’s ear and much of what Churchill did at the peacetime Admi-ralty was on Fisher’s advice. It was Fisher’s encouragement that spurred Churchill to the adoption of 15-inch guns for the five
Queen Elizabeth
–class dreadnoughts. Fisher’s old animosities surfaced when Churchill appointed Admirals Sir Hedworth Meux and Sir Berkeley Milne to high commands and he lashed out that Churchill had “betrayed the navy.” This storm quickly passed and Churchill next persuaded Fisher to take control of a matter critical to the navy: the conversion to fuel oil. Fisher had long been obsessed by the idea of using fuel oil for turbine propulsion; oil was cleaner, safer, and more efficient than coal; it would drive the new 15-inch-gun battleships at 25 knots. Churchill now wished to turn this obsession into reality. “My dear Fisher,” he wrote, “The liquid [oil] fuel problem has got to be solved. . . . No one else can do it so well. Perhaps no one else can do it at all. You have got to find the oil; to show how it can be stored cheaply; how it can be purchased regularly and cheaply in peace and with absolute certainty in war. Then . . . develop its application in the best possible way to existing and prospective ships.” Churchill argued that Fisher must do it for his own sake, not just the navy’s. “You need a plough to draw. Your propellers are racing in the air.” Fisher agreed and become chairman of the oil commission.

For three years, the honeymoon continued. Churchill and Fisher both enjoyed and profited from their relationship. On January 1, 1914, Churchill wrote to Fisher, “Contact with you is like breathing ozone to me.” On February 24, the First Lord’s private secretary wrote to Fisher, “Winston is quite cross with you for not coming to see him. He says he wants to talk to you badly about many things.” On July 15, Winston wrote to Clementine, “Tomorrow old Fisher comes down to the yacht with me. This always has a salutary effect.” Once war began, Fisher came often to see Churchill at the Admiralty. As Prince Louis’s health deteriorated and he retreated to the seclusion of his room, Churchill yearned for Fisher’s sparkling, irreverent dynamism. During these weeks, Churchill studied the seventy-three-year-old admiral,

[watching] him narrowly to judge his physical strength and mental alertness. There seemed no doubt about either. On one occasion, when inveighing against someone whom he thought obstructive, he became so convulsed with fury that it seemed that every nerve and blood vessel in his body would be ruptured. However, they stood the strain magnificently and he left me with the impression of a terrific engine of mental and physical power burning and throbbing in that aged frame. . . . I therefore sounded him [about returning] in conversation without committing myself and found that he was fiercely eager to lay his grasp on power.

On October 19, when the Cabinet knew that a change at the Admiralty was necessary, Haldane suggested to Churchill that the restoration of Fisher would “make our country feel that our old spirit of the navy was alive and come back.” The following day, Churchill went to Asquith and asked for approval to bring Fisher back, declaring “that I could work with no one else. I was well aware that there would be strong, natural and legitimate opposition in many quarters to Fisher’s appointment, but, having formed my own conviction, I was determined not to remain at the Admiralty unless I could do justice to it. So in the end, for good or for ill, I had my way.”

Not without opposition from the highest in the land. Churchill went to see the king on October 27 to warn him of what was coming and to inform him that he proposed to nominate Fisher as Battenberg’s replacement. King George had long detested Fisher (who for his part disliked the monarch) and mistrusted many of the reforms the admiral had initiated. He argued that Fisher was too old and too untrustworthy and that his return to the Admiralty would reopen old wounds. The king preferred almost anyone to Fisher and, during the interview, suggested alternatives. He proposed Sir Hedworth Meux; Churchill declared that Meux lacked the necessary technical expertise. The king suggested Sir Henry Jackson; Churchill conceded Jackson’s scientific and intellectual attainments but said that he was colorless and lacked the energy to do the work. The king mentioned Sturdee; Churchill shook his head. Jellicoe, whom both men liked, was irreplaceable in the Grand Fleet. The interview broke up with the king and the First Lord in complete disagreement; Churchill went back to Asquith to say that if he did not get Fisher he would resign.

Unable to persuade Churchill, the king appealed to the prime minister. Asquith came to the palace on the afternoon of October 29 and fully supported his First Lord: Meux would not inspire confidence in the navy, Jackson lacked personality, Sturdee was more suited to command a fleet than to remain in Whitehall. Then Asquith warned the king that if Fisher were not brought back, Churchill, whose knowledge of the navy was unique and whose services could not be dispensed with, would resign. Faced with this threat, George V had no choice. Constitutionally, he could not oppose his ministers, but he felt it his duty to record his protest. He would approve Fisher’s appointment, he wrote to Asquith after the meeting, but he did so “with some reluctance and misgivings. . . . I hope that my fears may prove to be groundless.” The following morning, the thirtieth, the new First Sea Lord spent an hour in audience with the king at Buckingham Palace. The visit was a success and King George, who had not seen Fisher for six years, confessed to his diary, “He seems as young as ever.” The monarch and the admiral agreed to meet once a week and, when Fisher returned to Whitehall, Churchill wrote jubilantly to Asquith, “He is already a Court Favourite!”

The public hailed Fisher’s return, reacting as it had three months earlier to the appointment of Kitchener when it found comfort and reassurance in the presence of a legendary British hero. Fisher’s age was overlooked, as were his cantankerous moods and the methods that had roiled and divided the navy. The press gave a cautious blessing: “Undoubtedly the country will benefit,” said the
Times,
expecting that Fisher would restore public confidence in the navy through a more aggressive strategy while at the same time restraining Churchill’s impetuosity. From the navy, the response was mixed. “They have resurrected old Fisher,” Beatty wrote to his wife on November 2. “Well, I think he is the best they could have done, but I wish he was ten years younger. He still has fine zeal, energy and determination, coupled with low cunning which is eminently desirable just now. He also has courage and will take any responsibility. He will rule the Admiralty and Winston with a heavy hand.” A few admirals expressed dismay: Rear Admiral Rosslyn Wester Wemyss called it a “horrible appointment” and predicted a falling-out between Fisher and Churchill. “They will be thick as thieves at first until they differ on some subject, probably as to who is to be No. 1 when they will begin to intrigue against each other.”

Fisher, on returning to the Admiralty, assumed that he had come to take command of the great naval weapon he had forged during his previous dramatic term as First Sea Lord. At once, he swung into action. “Everything began to move. Inertia disappeared. The huge machine creaked and groaned. . . . He was known, feared, loved, and obeyed,” wrote his friend, protégé, and biographer, Admiral Reginald Bacon. Fisher’s first task was to reinvigorate the Admiralty itself. He made new appointments; he swept away deadwood. Churchill had followed up on Haldane’s suggestion and asked a retired former First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Arthur Wilson, to return to the Admiralty as Chief of Staff. Wilson had refused to accept any official position, since he did not relish having to side with either Fisher or Churchill against the other should they disagree. But he agreed to come back in an unofficial and unpaid capacity, giving advice when asked and being available to work on a variety of special tasks. Sturdee, the incumbent Chief of Staff, had to go. Fisher, it may be remembered, detested Sturdee, a prominent member of Beresford’s camp, and Fisher also suspected him of being responsible for the flawed dispositions that had brought about the Coronel disaster. Churchill, who knew that the faulty dispositions were as much his doing as Sturdee’s, was unwilling to sack him and, instead, sent him to the South Atlantic to find and destroy Admiral von Spee.

The workaholic Henry Oliver was appointed Chief of Staff in Sturdee’s place. Oliver had been Director of Naval Intelligence before the war, supplying the First Lord and the Admiralty with facts and numbers related to comparative British and German naval strength. On October 14 he became naval secretary to the First Lord. Now, only a few weeks later, Fisher proposed that he be made Chief of Staff with the rank of acting vice admiral. Thereafter, Oliver, dedicated, unruffled, and inexhaustible, worked fourteen hours a day, Sundays included, and never took leave. He had broad common sense and sufficient self-confidence to stand up to both Churchill and Fisher. His method was simple: if he could not get either to see his point of view, he would agree with them and then quietly go away and do as he thought best. If he was found out, he was rarely overruled. In the months ahead, this combination of Churchill, Fisher, Wilson, and Oliver, known as the War Group or the Cabal, met at least once a day—often many times in a day.