Resignation of Lord Fisher

On the morning of Saturday 15 May 1915 Admiral Lord John Fisher, the First Sea Lord, that is the most senior officer of the Royal Navy, wrote a short letter to his civilian superior, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. In it he declared that after further reflection he had come to the conclusion that he could no longer remain his colleague. He found it increasingly difficult to adjust himself to the increasing requirements of the Dardanelles. “As you truly said yesterday, I am in the position of continually vetoing your proposals,” he wrote. He announced that he was leaving for Scotland at once so as to avoid all questionings. Then he simply walked out of the Admiralty.

The last straw

The day before there had been a meeting of the War Council at which Fisher declared that he had been opposed to the Dardanelles expedition from the start. The meeting showed that the government had no intention of abandoning it and that the operation was turning into a long land campaign which the fleet would have to support. In the evening Churchill prepared notes on sending new monitors and other ships to the Dardanelles to replace the super-dreadnought Queen Elizabeth, which was being recalled home. He came with them to Fisher’s room and, according to his memoirs, the conversation was friendly. Fisher did not protest. Churchill, however, later added two submarines to the list, and during the night, without waking the First Sea Lord, approved the speeding up of the dispatch of four light cruisers to Italy, where Salandra’s government had just resigned and Italy’s entry into the war hung in the balance. On the papers he wrote, as many times before: “First Sea Lord to see after action.” Fisher, who began work at about four in the morning, found these papers on his desk. Churchill himself later believed that this was the spark.

The causes, however, went deeper. For months Fisher had looked with growing reluctance on the operation which he had accepted in January after long resistance. He had his own plan: a great programme of building special ships, including monitors, which were to be used for an offensive in the North Sea and the Baltic. The British official history of the naval war says that when it turned out that the new ships would go to the Dardanelles, Fisher considered his plan buried and no longer wished to be responsible for the conduct of the war at sea.

The fugitive from the Admiralty

At first Churchill did not take the letter seriously. Fisher had threatened to resign many times before, and Prime Minister Herbert Asquith is said to have remarked that “Fisher is always resigning”. This time, however, the admiral was neither in the Admiralty building nor at home. Asquith sent his secretary after him with a written order to return to his post in the King’s name. When Fisher was found after several hours, he refused. He let himself be persuaded only to talk to the Prime Minister, but in the end he did not change his mind. Churchill wrote to him the same day, recalling their six months of working together and warning that their break would harm the army fighting at Gallipoli. Fisher replied the next day with a letter in which he wrote in capital letters: “YOU ARE BENT ON FORCING THE DARDANELLES AND NOTHING WILL TURN YOU FROM IT – NOTHING.”

The departure of the 74-year-old admiral, who to the public embodied the fighting spirit of the fleet, struck the government at the worst possible moment. The day before, “The Times” had revealed the shortage of ammunition in France, and the opposition Conservatives were close to breaking the political truce. Fisher’s resignation gave the Conservative leader Andrew Bonar Law an argument he could not ignore. Within two days talks on a coalition government had begun.

Fisher did not return to the Admiralty. The duties of First Sea Lord were temporarily taken over by Admiral Arthur Wilson, who had already been First Sea Lord before the war, after Fisher’s first departure in 1910. A few days later Fisher sent the Prime Minister a letter setting out the conditions for his return, demanding in practice sole authority over the fleet, its commanders and shipbuilding. Asquith took this as proof that the admiral had lost his balance and accepted his resignation. Fisher played no further important part in the war. In the summer of 1915 he became head of the government’s Board of Invention and Research, which dealt with new technical ideas for the navy.