British Cruisers of the Victorian Era. Norman Friedman
change, DNC’s position had to include considerable advice to the Board as to what sorts of ships were needed, because no one on the Board had anything like the technical knowledge to translate policy into ships (though several senior naval officers tried, as will be seen). Watts retired in 1863, and Robinson chose 33-year-old Edward C Reed, who had gained prominence by publishing several ship designs in an engineering journal he edited. That Reed was a professional engineer (naval architect) rather than a product of the dockyard system (like the earlier chief shipwright, Isaac Watts) was held against him (and, presumably, against Robinson, too).
Alongside DNC was the Director of Naval Ordnance (DNO).52 Under the 1832 reorganization, Second Naval Lord was responsible both for personnel and for artillery, including the work of the gunnery establishment HMS Excellent. The guns themselves were provided by the army.
The post of Engineer-in-Chief (EinC), responsible for ships’ machinery, lapsed some time before 1870.
In December 1868 William Ewart Gladstone became Prime Minister. He was determined to cut naval spending by 10 per cent, partly by curtailing the building program. Having become First Lord, Childers pushed through the reform Robinson had advocated: Robinson became Second Naval Lord. The naval part of the Board was reduced to First Naval Lord, Second Naval Lord (Controller), and Junior Naval Lord, the latter only a Captain (previously a Rear Admiral). The Parliamentary Secretary (who became, in effect, a Board member) was responsible for finance. The Civil Lord became his assistant. Childers represented Gladstone, and neither man seems to have taken professional naval advice very seriously. In effect Childers simply dictated his reorganization (and other plans) to the Board, which met only rarely when he was First Lord. To contemporaries, the professional views of the navy, normally reflected by the Naval Lords, were being swept aside. Gladstone and his creature Childers were the enemies of British sea power. It happened that Gladstone’s long-term adversary Benjamin Disraeli was not much more anxious to raise the naval budget.
Childers enthusiastically supported Captain Cowper Coles, who proposed a new kind of ironclad (built as HMS Captain) in the face of Reed’s disapproval. The fight wore down Reed, who resigned in July 1870. He became both a commercial warship designer and, eventually, a Member of Parliament. His bitterness probably explains his public criticism of the designs produced by both Barnaby and Barnaby’s successor Sir William H White. As for Coles, Reed was vindicated when HMS Captain, Coles’s ship, capsized on 7 September 1870 (with Coles aboard). The key issue had been the ship’s stability under sail. Childers blamed Robinson and Reed, but a full parliamentary inquiry into British warship design (which survives as a useful account of designs, including that of the new large cruisers) vindicated both.53 The report was not published until 1872, and Reed’s post as Chief Constructor was left empty. By that time Robinson had left, his position impossible given Childers’ attacks. Childers left at about the same time, exhausted. The extent of Robinson’s downfall is evident in his replacement by a Captain (Robert Hall), who remained as Controller until his post was removed from the Board the following year (May 1872).
A Select Committee of the House of Lords reviewed Admiralty procedures. Childers’ successor George Goschen (appointed in March 1871) could not simply undo Childers’ reorganization, because that would have been an admission that Gladstone himself had failed. Robinson was seen by many naval officers as an interloper on the Board. His position became the obvious victim; Goschen split off the Controller from the Second Naval Lord position and dropped it from the Board. That increased senior naval representation on the Board; Goschen also created the position of Naval Secretary. It was probably far more important that he stipulated regular Board meetings and also very frequent informal meetings including the Controller (to exchange views but not to take formal decisions). He recognized that he was no Childers.
Goschen appointed a new Chief Constructor: Reed’s brother-in-law Nathaniel Barnaby, who had been running the department in Reed’s absence. Barnaby was initially styled Chief Naval Architect, and some of Reed’s powers were given to two other officers: a new Surveyor of Dockyards and a revived Engineer-in-Chief. For a time the three formed a Council of Construction, with Barnaby as chairman, but in 1875 Barnaby was appointed Director of Naval Construction (DNC). The other two offices remained, Engineer-in-Chief advising DNC and working with him.
Goschen’s First Naval Lord was Sir Alexander Milne, who had already served as Senior Naval Lord in 1866-68.54 He survived the change of administration in 1874. The new First Lord G Ward Hunt asked Milne and other senior officers for advice as to the proper size and shape of the fleet. Neither Childers nor Goschen seems to have done so; the senior officers wrote as though this was an entirely new issue. Like Gladstone, Disraeli was interested in economy, so his First Lord asked what sort of fleet Britain needed in a time of profound and protracted peace. His naval officers rather more realistically estimated what sort of fleet the country would need in war, which they assumed meant war against France. That made sense: soon after 1874 it became clear that the world was becoming considerably more dangerous. The surprise, if indeed there was one, was that the immediate threat was Russian.
Until well into the 1880s, any Royal Navy ship intended to cruise for long periods had to rely on sail much of the time. This was not simply a question of steaming endurance. A ship on a foreign station for months at a time would use up her coal no matter how efficient her engines. Until there were plentiful coal supplies throughout the world, the ship would be unable to remain at sea under steam. Much the same consideration affected the shift from coal to oil fuel (it explains why the First World War Hawkins class cruisers, conceived for distant service against raiders, were designed with both coal- and oil-burning boilers, well after the Royal Navy shifted to all-oil-burning in cruisers designed to work with the main fleet. The cruiser was very different from a steamer making a point-to-point voyage of limited duration. The need for excellent sailing qualities much affected all design decisions, such as the restriction to single screws and usually to two-bladed screws (so that they could be raised). This photograph of the corvette (cruiser) HMS Calypso was taken by Cdr Robinson (HMS Active) when the Training Squadron was ‘chasing’ down the Trade Winds between the Canary Islands and Barbados. The squadron consisted of HMS Active, Volage, Calypso, and Ruby. Calypso was unique in the squadron for having a disconnecting propeller (which revolved when the ship exceeded 4kts); the others all had lifting screws. (National Maritime Museum, photograph courtesy of Mrs Craig-Waller, whose husband was a midshipman in Calypso from December 1889 to June 1891).
(National Maritime Museum L5403)
The change to a more modern Admiralty, with a war planning staff, began with the embarrassments of the Anglo-Russian crisis of 1877-78: mobilization problems and the absence of a vital intelligence report on Russian Baltic defences, prepared shortly before the war, which could not be found. A Mobilization Committee and a Foreign Intelligence Committee (FIC) were formed after the crisis ended.55 The crisis made evident the global threat the Russians posed both to British trade and to isolated British colonies. Former First Naval Lord Admiral Milne was appointed to head a Colonial Defence Committee (CDC), which in turn led to the formation of the investigative Carnarvon Committee. In its wake the CDC was revived; among its successors was the Committee on Imperial Defence formed in 1902.
Key, who had commanded the 1878 Baltic fleet, became First Naval Lord on 15 September 1879, serving until 1 July 1885. The experience of botched mobilization (i.e., poor staff work) and poor intelligence support undoubtedly led him to turn the FIC into the Naval Intelligence Division and to entrust it with staff as well as pure intelligence duties. The need for intelligence was further emphasized when the Royal Navy found itself bombarding Alexandria in 1882 without sufficient information on the defences of the port.
The Controller once again sat on the Board (as Third Naval Lord) from 1882 on, perhaps also as a result of the lessons of the 1877-78 crisis. This was the final major change to the Board during the period covered by this book.
The most important thing did not change at all. The First Lord accepted the advice of the Naval Lords, but he was responsible to the Cabinet, which could and did veto proposed programs (such as an 1875 proposal for six