British Cruisers of the Victorian Era. Norman Friedman

public opinion which had swept in the 1889 Act was still potent. Spencer felt compelled to prove that his fleet was sufficiently more powerful than the French. The French announced a large program, including four new battleships ordered in January 1893. Spencer asked DNC White to prepare a statement listing new ships which might be laid down over the next five years to match the French. White considered six new battleships the absolute minimum to avoid critical weakness in 1896-97. When Spencer defended the existing fleet as adequate, the naval members of the Board threatened to resign as a body. Spencer found himself proposing a large program for 1893-98 (8 December 1893): 7 battleships, 2 large cruisers (Powerfuls), 6 first-class cruisers (Diadem class), 12 second-class cruisers (Talbots), 4 third-class cruisers (Pelorus class), 6 ram cruisers (Arrogants), 7 torpedo gunboats, 2 sloops, 82 destroyers, 30 torpedo boats, and one torpedo depot ship. The cruisers were reduced, the Diadems being deferred and only nine Talbots being built. The program for ram cruisers seems to have been dropped, the Arrogants having been bought before the Spencer Program began. The torpedo depot ship was also dropped. This program was financed at least partly by fiscal reform, the death duties being readjusted.

      The multi-year approach did not quite capture the effect of headlong changes in technology. For example, in 1891 the Royal Navy had not one effective cruiser completed before 1878-79, and at least fifteen of the twenty built between 1879 and 1884 would be obsolete in 1894. Ships became obsolete long before they wore out. To make matters worse, the unit size, hence the unit cost, of ships continued to rise; what had paid for an adequate first-class cruiser in 1890 could hardly pay for a second-class cruiser in, say, 1898. Ships’ machinery was a particular problem. Guns could be replaced by better ones, but it was entirely impractical to re-engine (and re-boiler) a ship in order to maintain her speed relative to more modern ships. The speed issue particularly affected cruisers.

      Battleships did not grow very much over the decade following the Naval Defence Act, but cruisers did. Once battleships also began to grow the Royal Navy felt increasing financial pressure. Until 1909 there was, moreover, no corresponding change in British finances to relax that pressure. Admiral Sir John (‘Jacky’) Fisher was appointed First Sea Lord in 1904 specifically to solve the problem. In the Mediterranean he had shown that he could prevail over the French and the Russians with limited forces, relying on fast striking forces directed by intelligence rather than on the blocking concepts of the past. In the Admiralty Fisher sought to cut costs by ending the focal area cruiser strategy, substituting a limited number of large fast cruisers working with smaller ones. Fisher also sought deep cuts in the smaller deployed ships which were used mainly to police the Empire and to deal with peacetime threats to shipping, such as pirates. He was certainly aware that these roles mattered, but he also probably felt that they should have been paid for out of the Foreign Office budget.

      Fisher’s savings on cruisers made capital ships the single largest item in the British naval budget. They followed the same trajectory as the cruisers. Successive classes grew larger and much more expensive, so that by 1913 the Royal Navy again faced crisis, despite changes in its financing. The attempts to resolve this problem are beyond the scope of this book.