From family to empire no association of human beings can dispense with discipline.—Sir Ian Hamilton.
THE controversy between Lord John Fisher and Lord Charles Beresford occupies an important place in the recent history of the British Navy. It involved some of the most notable personalities in the service and exerted a profound effect on discipline. In some of its ramifications and certainly in its consequences the incident is of interest to all the navies in the world. Lessons which bear upon the problems of discipline or upon the relation of superior and subordinate are of universal application.
The facts concerning the remarkable career of Lord John Fisher of Kilverstone are familiar to many American readers. With a relentless, remorseless stride he had advanced in the service until he became first sea lord in 1904. His contemptuous disregard for “sycophants and jellyfish,” his headlong manner, his tendency for exaggeration, his breath-taking program of reform, disturbed the more conservative sea officers, and gave the opponents of Fisher abundant opportunity for attacking him. As Winston Churchill said:
He (Fisher) gave the Navy the kind of shock which the British Army received at the time of the South African War. After a long period of serene and unchallenged complacency, the mutter of distant thunder could be heard. It was Fisher who hoisted the storm signal and beat all hands to quarters. He forced every department of the naval service to review its position and question its own existence. He shook them and beat them and cajoled them out of slumber into intense activity. But the Navy was not a pleasant place while this was going on.
Fisher’s sea lords during the first four years of his tenure were not strong enough to give him the support needed, and he became hardened by constant struggles against obstacles. Although he was probably “right in nine-tenths of what he fought for,” the inertia of the service led Fisher to employ violent methods and still more violent expressions. Since it was manifestly impossible to ignore him, there came a time when a great many of the officers in the service could be classified as pro- or anti-Fisher.
The opposition to Lord Fisher, however, did not find a leader until Admiral Lord Charles Beresford became its spokesman. Charles William De La Poer Beresford was a charming Irishman with all the wit and pugnacity of that race. He entered the Britannia in 1859 and rose to the command of H.M.S. Thunderer in 1877. At the bombardment of Alexandria he distinguished himself by engaging Fort Marabout with his small ship, winning the signal “Well done Condor." He was an extremely popular officer and was held in esteem by his men for his ready hospitality and open-handed manner. He served as fourth sea lord in 1886-88, and as Member of Parliament from East Marylebone, York, and Woolwich. In 1903 he left political life in order to join the fleet in the Mediterranean as second in command under Admiral Sir John Fisher. Beresford had an unhappy faculty for getting into the newspapers, and his entrance into the Mediterranean Fleet was unfortunately made with a journalistic flourish which declared that he was going to teach the fleet some tactics. Naturally, when he undertook to act on this proposal, Admiral Fisher quietly told him what was expected of a second in command.
Sir Reginald Bacon’s recent Life of Lord Fisher leads the reader to feel that the Fisher-Beresford controversy would not have taken its violent and destructive course had not Beresford coveted Fisher’s position. There were, of course, differences of opinion such as their divergent views on the value of the Dreadnought; but these were not serious. The year 1905 found Fisher appointed to be an additional admiral of the fleet and this assured him four or five more years at the Admiralty. It seemed that his prolonged tenure might effectively bar Beresford from office and the latter honestly felt that “he would make a better first sea lord than Fisher.” Beresford came into possession of a considerable fortune when his brother died; this enabled him to entertain freely and made him at once a formidable opponent of Lord Fisher.
The opening guns of the controversy were sounded in 1907 when Sir Arthur Wilson retired from command of the Channel Fleet. Lord Charles Beresford had frequently been mentioned as a possible successor to Sir Arthur Wilson and had demonstrated a lively interest in the dispositions of the Channel and Home Fleets. Knowing something of Lord Beresford’s habits, Fisher was careful before making the appointment to secure Beresford’s approval of the dispositions of the fleet. This approval was made in writing on January 20,1907. Beresford’s interest was a legitimate one since the Home Fleet would automatically be placed under his command in time of war. His attitude, as described by Fisher in a letter to Mr. George Lambert, seems to have been somewhat haughty:
I had three hours with Beresford yesterday, and all is settled, and the Admiralty don’t give in one inch to his demands, but I had as a preliminary to agree to three things: Lord Charles Beresford is a greater man than Nelson; no one knows anything about naval war except Lord Charles Beresford; the Admiralty haven’t done a single damned thing right!
A short time after this meeting Lord Charles felt inclined to assure Fisher of his cordial agreement with the Admiralty. He wrote in part:
There is not the slightest chance of any friction between you and me; or between me and anyone else. When friction begins, I am off. If a senior and a junior have a row, the junior is wrong under any conceivable conditions, or discipline could not go on.
This handsome promise was unfortunately not to be fulfilled. Friction soon developed between the Admiralty and the new commander in chief of the Channel Fleet. It arose when Beresford requested that the Admiralty send him war plans. Now it was the traditional policy of the Admiralty to provide war orders not war plans. War orders contained general principles upon which the executive officer was to act in event of hostilities, and the commander in chief concerned was expected to draw up his own war plans. When Beresford requested war plans, the Admiralty naturally
declined to forward them. They went as far, however, as to ask Sir Arthur Wilson to draw up some plans for Beresford; but he replied by saying that any plan drawn up in advance of hostilities would probably be worthless.
Beresford later used this incident in his campaign against Fisher by declaring that, when he took over the command of the Channel Fleet, there were no war plans and that the Admiralty had never prepared any. This sort of declaration did not impress those who knew the real state of affairs, but it made a strong appeal to the uninformed.
In spite of the fact that he had agreed to the arrangements of the Home and Channel Fleets in writing, Lord Charles soon felt obliged to raise the question of their constitution and disposition. He made the alarming charge that with the Channel Fleet as it was constituted, a sudden attack by the German fleet would have a good prospect of inflicting a crushing reverse upon England. He followed up this charge by a letter to the first lord of the Admiralty in which he described the Home Fleet as a “fraud and a danger to the state.” In the face of this serious charge against Admiralty policy and against a fleet under the executive control of another officer, the Board of Admiralty acted with somewhat unwise restraint. Instead of asking Beresford to haul down his flag, they attempted to satisfy the wishes of this popular officer. At a meeting in the Admiralty rooms on July 5, 1907, Lord Tweedmouth, First Lord of the Admiralty, and Sir John Fisher asked Beresford to state exactly what he wanted for the Channel Fleet. An extract of the record of the meeting showed that Beresford was unprepared to state what he wanted without taking counsel. But when Fisher and Tweedmouth offered him a definite schedule of re- enforcements, the meeting ended with the strong assurance from Beresford: “This gives me the force I am hallooing for. You may depend on it; the cordiality between us exists. There is no want of cordiality on my part.”
Unfortunately this pleasant impression was shattered within a fortnight when in another letter to the first lord, Beresford repeated his view that the Home Fleet was a fraud and a danger to the state. When this action was sharply resented, Beresford had the audacity to write:
I note that their Lordships consider that the admiral who in war is responsible for the fleet in the home waters should not express his opinion as to its efficiency in time of peace.
At this juncture the controversy began to involve other personalities. Captain Doveton Sturdee, a post captain under Beresford, was appointed to command a battleship. This was routine procedure since all captains had to command battleships in order to reach the rank of rear admiral. Beresford, however, looked upon this as an attempt to take away his assistant. He viewed the case of the relief of Rear Admiral Montgomerie in the same light. Soon after this he heard unofficially that Vice Admiral Custance was to be transferred. Custance was second in command of the Channel Fleet, and is said to have “supplied Beresford with most of his brains.” Once again Beresford boldly took the Admiralty to task. He wrote:
It has come to my notice that a feeling has arisen in the service that it is prejudicial to an officer’s career to be personally connected with me on service matters. This may not be a fact, but the impression I know exists. It is certainly borne out by the late procedure.
The removal of three such important officers from my command at or about the same time will add enormously to my exceptionally hard work. . . .
It may not have been intended, but it most certainly has the appearance of a wish to handicap and hamper me in carrying out the responsibilities connected with by far the most important appointment with the Empire.
Although such language from a subordinate to the Board of Admiralty is without parallel in English history, the board did not feel able to take adequate disciplinary steps. This in itself was a triumph for the offending admiral.
In June, 1908, Mr. McKenna relieved Lord Tweedmouth as First Lord of the Admiralty, and he at once took a strong stand in support of the first sea lord. After some correspondence between the first lord and the commander of the Channel Fleet, it was decided to relieve Beresford at the end of two years service instead of the usual three. By this time, however, the famous “signal incident” had occurred. It involved Admiral Sir Percy Scott and threw another aspect upon the whole question of Beresford’s tenure of command.
The signal incident occurred on July 1, 1908, when the Channel Fleet was cruising. Beresford had taken Scott’s First Cruiser Squadron under his own command, and when H.M.S. Argyl and H.M.S. Good Hope were in a position exactly abeam, Beresford raised a signal which if obeyed would have caused the two ships to collide as in the case of the Victoria and Camperdown. The signal was plainly seen by hundreds of officers and men; it was copied by the officers of both ships who later attested the positions of the vessels. Regulations demanded that Beresford keep his signal flying until Scott answered, “I see your signal and quite understand it,” or “Do not understand your signal.” Scott flew the latter signal but did not make the fatal turn to port; instead he turned to the starboard. Beresford then gave himself completely away by signaling: “Did Good Hope take in signal to turn to port? If Good Hope took in signal to turn to port and rear admiral thought Good Hope was too close to Argyl, rear admiral was right in turning to starboard.” Sir Percy Scott had been at sea too long to think that the Good Hope was too close to the Argyl; he knew it. When the fleet was docked the news of the incident was communicated somehow to the London Times, and an accurate account of what had happened together with a sketch of the positions of the vessels appeared. The incident raised grave doubts as to the competence of the commander in chief of the Channel Fleet.
Lord Charles Beresford’s account of the incident is given in his book, The Betrayal (King, London, 1912). He quotes Mr. McKenna as saying in the House of Commons, “the signal was not dangerous,” but he then makes the blunder of quoting the whole speech verbatim in his own appendix and it reads, "the maneuver was not dangerous.” The maneuver as Scott executed it was not dangerous, but had the signal been obeyed, fatal consequences would have ensued. After his retirement Sir Percy Scott answered Beresford’s allegations in an article in the British Review, April, 1913, entitled “A Reply to Lord Charles Beresford.” I do not believe that anyone can read The Betrayal and the “Reply” without feeling that Beresford made a bad case of it. Scott leaves him with scarcely a shred of professional prestige.
On March 24, 1909, Lord Charles Beresford hauled down his flag and the controversy took on a political aspect. Beresford capitalized upon his political associations and made his appeal to men in high station. He wrote directly to Prime Minister Asquith saying:
During the whole of my tenure of the command of the Channel Fleet proper, that force, owing to the number of vessels constantly withdrawn from it for purposes of refit, has never, even for a day, been equal to the force which it might have to encounter in home waters. During the period the fleets in home waters have not been organized in readiness for war, and they are not organized in readiness for war now, today.
This bold course of action shook the confidence of the government; and Beresford, instead of finding himself at once on the retired list, had the satisfaction of seeing the Admiralty submit to an investigation. Thus for the first time in history the Board of Admiralty was placed on trial to “defend itself against the charges of an undisciplined subordinate,” and the sea service was treated to the unusual spectacle of seeing an important officer violate the fundamental tenets of discipline with impunity.
The investigation soon disclosed the weakness of Beresford’s case. He was opposed to having Sir Arthur Wilson as a member of the board, although every civilian and naval officer knew that Sir Arthur’s impeccable honesty and unrivaled knowledge uniquely fitted him for the position. In this matter the Prime Minister again deferred to Beresford saying that even if Sir Arthur Wilson was not a member of the board, “they could submit all evidence to him, call him as a witness, and attach greatest weight to his opinion.” Vice Admiral Custance directed Beresford’s case, while Mr. McKenna ably upheld the cause of the Admiralty. The affair dragged through seventeen sittings. In the later stages of investigation Beresford greatly harmed his own cause by bringing in material supplied by henchmen at the Admiralty in order to extend the charges to include Admiralty plans for trade protection. This was such an obvious attempt to bring in extraneous matter that the Prime Minister felt obliged to speak sharply with him.
The report of the committee of the cabinet ran in part as follows:
In the opinion of the committee, the investigation has shown that during the time in question no danger to the country resulted from the Admiralty’s arrangements for war, whether considered from the standpoint of the organization and distribution of the fleets, the number of ships, or the preparation of war plans.
They feel bound to add that the arrangements, quite defensible in themselves, though not ideally perfect, were in practice seriously hampered through the absence of cordial relations between the Board of Admiralty and the Commander in Chief of the Channel Fleet. The Board of Admiralty do not appear to have taken Lord Charles Beresford sufficiently into their confidence as to the reasons for the dispositions to which he took exception; and Lord Charles Beresford, on the other hand, appears to have failed to appreciate and carry out the instructions of the board, and to recognize their paramount authority.
Since the report was in the nature of a compromise, it did not give the Admiralty sufficient strength to place Beresford on the retired list. King Edward’s sympathies throughout the investigation were with Lord Fisher, and the King took the trouble shortly after to command his presence at Buckingham Palace, saying that Fisher’s conduct throughout the “whole disgraceful affair was dignified and courageous.”
Fisher’s position at the Admiralty was nevertheless greatly weakened. To add to his difficulties there were such vexatious affairs as the “Bacon letter” incident. After having made certain that Sir Arthur Wilson would succeed him as first sea lord, Fisher resigned his position in January, 1910.
The lessons of the controversy are clear. The less a civil government meddles with the administration of the navy, the better. One of the most serious offenses which a naval officer can commit is to make a frivolous complaint against a superior. If a government accepts the word of a subordinate against his superiors, discipline is bound to suffer. The effect of the whole Beresford-Fisher affair on the discipline of the British Navy was unfortunate. Admiral Bacon says:
The discipline of the Navy was badly injured by the condonation of insubordination by the cabinet. Unquestioning obedience no longer was looked upon as essential. Criticism of seniors was introduced; and the effect of the finding of the cabinet committee and their subsequent inaction was noticeable in the recent Royal Oak affair.