Henry Jackson becomes First Sea Lord

At the end of May 1915 Admiral Sir Henry Jackson became First Sea Lord, that is, the most senior officer and professional head of the Royal Navy. He succeeded Lord John Fisher, who had walked out of the Admiralty on 15 May. The British chronology of the war records the appointment under 28 May, and some lists give 27 May as the start of his tenure. Jackson took his place beside the new First Lord of the Admiralty, Arthur Balfour.

The appointment came as a surprise to many. After Fisher’s departure his duties were temporarily taken over by Admiral Arthur Wilson, who had already been First Sea Lord in 1910–1911. Wilson, however, declared that he would serve only under Winston Churchill, and when it became clear that Churchill was leaving, he could not be persuaded to change his mind. On 21 May Churchill wrote to the Prime Minister that in this situation he advised appointing Jackson. The proposal was accepted.

The scholar admiral

Jackson was 60. He was born in 1855 in Barnsley in Yorkshire, into the family of a linen manufacturer, and joined the navy as a cadet in 1868. As a young officer he fought on land in the Zulu War of 1879, and then specialised in the torpedo. His fame, however, came from his experiments with wireless communication. In the mid-1890s, as commander of the torpedo school, he carried out trials of wireless telegraphy, in parallel with the work of Guglielmo Marconi. According to some sources he was the first to establish radio communication between two ships, and he later worked with Marconi on building a wireless system for the fleet. In 1901 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society, the most prestigious British scientific society.

He then held a series of important posts: in 1905–1908 he was Third Sea Lord, responsible for shipbuilding, from 1911 he headed the Royal Naval War College, and in 1913 he became Chief of the Admiralty War Staff. After the outbreak of war he planned the expeditions against the German colonies. The British official history of the naval war called his work in directing the overseas operations “masterly” and regarded him as Fisher’s natural successor.

A voice of caution

From the start Jackson took a sober view of the Dardanelles expedition. In a memorandum of 15 February 1915 he wrote that a bombardment from the sea could not be recommended as a sound operation unless a strong military force was ready to support it or at least to move in immediately after the forts had been silenced. His warning did not stop the attack by the fleet alone. At the beginning of May 1915 he represented Great Britain in the talks in Paris that led to the naval convention with France and Italy.

As First Sea Lord Jackson worked well with Balfour, but dealt above all with administrative matters. His position weakened when, in the autumn of 1916, German destroyers began to venture into the English Channel. At the end of 1916 he was replaced by Admiral John Jellicoe, and Jackson became President of the Royal Naval College at Greenwich.