ABSTRACT
The opening years of the twentieth century are now a controversial period for historians of the Royal Navy; but this was not always so. In the traditional canon of naval history, as first articulated in scholarly fashion by E. L. Woodward in 1935 and by Arthur Marder in 1940, the story was a straightforward one.1 The appointment of Rear Admiral Alfred Tirpitz as state secretary at Germany’s Imperial Navy Office, leading as it did to the passage of the First and, more especially, the Second German Navy Laws – the latter of which was passed in a blaze of highly revealing and very noisy Anglophobia – alerted both the British people and the nation’s naval authorities to the hostility and ambition on the other side of the North Sea. The consequences of this revelation were tremendous. Slowly but surely, as the German navy increased in size and importance, the British Admiralty refocused its gaze away from those places that had previously occupied its attention, such as the dockyards of Brest, Cherbourg, Toulon, Kronstadt, Sevastopol and Vladivostok – the main ports of its traditional rivals, France and Russia – and instead gave serious thought, for the first time, to the build-up that was taking place in Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, the principal centres of the new, burgeoning and deeply threatening naval power of the Second Reich. In this shift of emphasis, the seeds of the Anglo-German naval race were sown. Although little changed immediately, this new focus ultimately bore significant fruit. In particular, with the elevation of Admiral Sir John Fisher to the post of First Sea Lord in October 1904, the impetus was created, courtesy of Fisher’s forceful and determined personality, for a series of wholesale reforms designed to ready Britain to face down the German challenge. Foremost amongst these was the reorganisation of Britain’s naval assets. At that point, the Royal Navy’s various fleets and squadrons were scattered across the globe with a view to protecting a diverse collection of imperial interests; but with Germany now identified as the main threat
and with the locus of that threat placed directly adjacent to the British Isles, a relocation of British forces that positioned more units closer to the domestic heartland became essential. This redistribution of the fleets, promulgated in late 1904, was, in Marder’s view, designed to achieve just that: a concentration of force against Britain’s new enemy in what had just become the main theatre. Although merely one of many radical reforms introduced under Fisher, this gathering of battleships in home waters symbolised like no other the recasting of Germany into the ranks of Britain’s potential enemies, a recasting that by the close of 1904 was complete. The consensus established by Woodward and Marder lasted a long time – over thirty years, in fact – and was reaffirmed by many notable and distinguished historians across a range of key texts,1 but inevitably it was ultimately subject to challenge. The first historian to offer a critical revaluation was R. F. Mackay.2 Looking afresh at the redistribution scheme advanced by Fisher in late 1904 and analysing just where its Schwerpunkt lay, he argued that the measure was not aimed at countering the expansion of German maritime power, as Marder and others had supposed, but was actually a reflection of Britain’s ongoing and continuing preoccupation with and need for security against France and Russia. After all, here was a scheme that allowed Britain to bring its naval force to bear either in the Mediterranean or the Channel; it was not principally concerned with the North Sea. Hence, Mackay concluded that, if the Admiralty was looking to reshape its force structure with the German threat in mind, this was not evident from Fisher’s reforms. Mackay’s analysis was taken up with much enthusiasm by two other revisionist historians – Jon Sumida and Nicholas Lambert – both of whom were also convinced that, at the commencement of the Fisher era as at the start of the twentieth century, France and Russia rather than Germany continued to be the main drivers of British naval policy.3 This conclusion was based upon an evaluation of the strategic thinking of Fisher himself. As Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet (1899-1902), Fisher had continually emphasised the threat posed to Britain by the navies of the Dual Alliance (i.e. France and Russia). In particular, he had repeatedly
warned about the French ability to strike Britain at its most vulnerable point, namely its maritime commerce. Britain imported a large proportion of its food and raw materials and, thus, a determined assault on the ships that carried these goods could conceivably both close down the country’s major industrial enterprises – the source of much national wealth – and also starve the population into submission. Could France achieve this? Possessing a long coastline, numerous overseas bases and a large number of fast armoured cruisers seemingly designed with commerce raiding in mind, France seemed well equipped for such a strategy and it was no surprise to Fisher, therefore, that numerous French naval thinkers argued forcefully for the adoption of this mode of warfare in the event of a conflict with Britain. To Fisher, this was deeply threatening. By contrast, the German navy, which, it is generally argued, possessed no such capability, seemed relatively unmenacing. Its fleet of battleships could mount no such assault on British shipping and could be easily blockaded in their ports and rendered harmless. Hence, for Sumida and Lambert, it was the need to counter the French and Russian threat rather than any concern about the German battle fleet that exercised Fisher and drove his reforms, including the redistribution scheme of 1904. The paradigm established by Sumida and Lambert was elegantly presented and was grounded in apparently innovative research; so it was not surprising that over the years it gained ever greater traction among historians. However, in recent years, it, too, has started to be challenged. To begin with, historians have looked again at the matter of maritime threat perception and the way in which this influenced British naval policy. On closer and more detailed inspection, the issue does not seem as straightforward as it is sometimes presented. France and Russia may well have seemed menacing to Fisher as Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, but this is hardly surprising: it was, after all, the job of the head of this station to worry about France and Russia. However, it does not follow that the level of anxiety expressed by Fisher between 1899 and 1902 was shared by the rest of the British naval leadership. Indeed, recent research has shown that, once accurate intelligence on these two navies began to flow into London, contempt quickly displaced anxiety as the core response, especially towards the Russian navy, the many and serious failings of which were more than obvious to the Admiralty’s Naval Intelligence Department (NID).1 Additionally, it must also be stressed that, just because France and Russia were Fisher’s main concerns when
he led the Mediterranean Fleet, this does not mean that these navies were also the ones that preoccupied him when he was promoted to other posts. On the contrary, his emphasis shifted both with the passage of time and with the particular preoccupations of the positions he held. As a result, his strategic thinking between 1899 and 1902, which undoubtedly saw a concentration on France and Russia, is no guide to his thinking after October 1904 when he became First Sea Lord and had to consider Britain’s position in all its dimensions.1
