John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher

Admiral John "Jacky" Fisher

John Arbuthnot Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher GCB , OM , GCVO (born January 25, 1841 in British Ceylon , † July 10, 1920 in London ) was a very influential British admiral in the Royal Navy during the First World War . As the First Sea Lord (1905-1910 and 1914-1915) he shaped the Royal Navy and introduced the capital ships ( dreadnoughts ) there. He became generally known under the nickname "Jacky Fisher".

Life

Fisher was born in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka , as the oldest of eleven children in a British family. His father was Captain William Fisher, an officer in the British Army . In 1854 he began his 60-year career in the Royal Navy in England, where he served on traditional wooden sailing ships .

After his basic training on the HMS Britannia he was assigned as the youngest crew member of the HMS Calcutta , which was sent to block the Russian sea ​​route in the Gulf of Finland during the Crimean War . A few months later the ship returned to Great Britain, Fisher was then assigned to the HMS Agamemnon , which was sent to Constantinople (now Istanbul ) at the end of the war . In 1882 he took part as a captain as a member of the Mediterranean fleet under the command of Admiral Seymour in the bombing of Alexandria in Egypt.

In 1890 Fisher was named Rear Admiral . Between 1891 and 1892 he was the Third Sea Lord responsible for the condition and equipment of the entire British fleet. From 1897 he was Commander in Chief of the North Atlantic and Caribbean Fleets . In 1902 he was appointed second and in 1904 first sea lord . As such, he accompanied King Edward VII on the royal yacht on the state visit to Cartagena and contributed to the conclusion of the Cartagena Agreement (1907) . Fisher's tenure was heavily overshadowed by his conflict with Admiral Lord Charles Beresford , who kept the Royal Navy busy internally at the beginning of the 20th century. Fisher and Beresford were seasoned naval officers, but had different views on the reform of the fleet and the future of the Royal Navy. In addition, class differences between the social climber Fisher and the aristocratic Beresford played a role, which also came about that Beresford wanted to become First Sea Lord himself and Fisher viewed as a career obstacle. The rivalry ended when Beresford returned to the House of Commons in 1909 and Fisher retired in 1910. In 1909 he was raised to hereditary nobility as "Baron Fisher of Kilverstone" . He chose "Fear God and dread naught" (Fear God, and shudder at nothing) as motto , an allusion to the Dreadnoughts .

When the First World War broke out in 1914, Lord Fisher was recalled as the First Sea Lord. In 1915 he criticized the Battle of Gallipoli and shortly thereafter resigned from office in protest . He died in 1920 in London to cancer .

Act

After the outbreak of the First World War: Churchill brings Fisher back from retirement. Caricature from Punch (1914).

During his time as senior admiralty officer, Fisher feverishly pursued the development of capital ships . Both the introduction of the battleship and the battle cruiser can be traced back to his initiative and determined the development of other navies, which quickly adapted to the new standard. Fisher clearly favored the concept that later became the first battle cruiser: a ship with very heavy guns with a long range, superior speed and only weak armor. The concept was based on the fact that the ship should stay out of range of the enemy with the help of its high speed and destroy him with its own long-range armament from a safe distance. In the event of an encounter at a shorter distance, the high speed should protect the ship from damage, which was in line with the fire control theories of the time. His motto in this regard was: Speed ​​is the best protection (speed is the best armor) . In this class of ship, he successfully passed the arms race with the deep-sea fleet under Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz .

The development of the slow and heavily armored battleship met with his resistance, but he could not prevail. After all, the new battle cruisers were built according to his specifications and at the beginning of the First World War they proved themselves quite well in the hunt for German cruisers , which is why the Admiralty pushed ahead with the construction of new battle cruisers, which were seen as the new trump card in naval warfare . The Renown-class ships were the result of these successes, and they were designed according to Fisher's preferences. They reached an unprecedented speed of 32 knots, carried six 15-inch guns, and were poorly protected. The ships of the Courageous class , originally designed as light battle cruisers and laid down as part of a planned British landing operation on the German Baltic Sea coast ( Fisher's Baltic Sea Plan ), were similar . They were also very fast, barely armored and armed with completely oversized weapons, in one case two 18-inch guns, which, however, were primarily intended for coastal fire. Unfortunately the formations of the ships could not withstand the heavy blowback of these giant guns. Structural damage occurred after just a few shots. The ships did not prove their worth, also because the planned venture was called off after the Gallipoli fiasco , and later found their final destination as aircraft carriers .

At the latest in the Battle of the Skagerrak it became clear that Fisher's concept could not be successful against an equal opponent. The British battlecruisers got into action with better-protected German capital ships, and despite the high speed of the British units, the Germans scored numerous hits, which had devastating effects due to the inadequate armor. The further development went away from the battle cruiser towards the " fast capital ship ".

literature

• Sil-Vara : English statesmen . Ullstein, Berlin 1916, pp. 127-139
• Fisher, John Arbuthnot Fisher, 1st Baron . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 10 : Evangelical Church - Francis Joseph I . London 1910, p. 428 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).

Web links

Commons : John Fisher  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

• John Fisher at Hansard (English)
• Newspaper article about John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher in the press kit 20th Century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 27448, HMSO, London, June 24, 1902, p. 4189 ( PDF , accessed August 12, 2010, English).
2. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 27811, HMSO, London, June 27, 1905, p. 4549 ( PDF , accessed August 12, 2010, English).
3. ↑ London Gazette . No. 28148, HMSO, London, June 16, 1908, p. 4404 ( PDF , accessed August 12, 2010, English).
4. ↑ John Arbuthnot Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher Biography . Biography.com
5. ↑ London Gazette . No. 28317, HMSO, London, December 14, 1909, p. 9514 ( PDF , accessed August 12, 2010, English).

predecessor	Office	successor
Walter Kerr	First sea lord 1904–1910	Arthur Wilson
Ludwig von Battenberg	First sea lord 1914–1915	Henry Jackson
New title created	Baron Fisher 1909-1920	Cecil Vavasseur Fisher