Naval innovation: from coal to oil - Cover Story

Joint Force Quarterly, Winter, 2000 by Erik J. Dahl

One requirement, Fisher told Churchill, was that the Queen Elizabeth-class battleships be built as a fast division, able to outmaneuver and cross the T of the German fleet. In 1912, Fisher wrote to Churchill, "What you do want is the superswift--all oil--and don't fiddle about armour; it really is so very silly! There is only one defence and that is speed!" (9)

The war college was asked how much speed a fast division would need to outmaneuver the German fleet. The answer was 25 knots, or at least four knots faster than possible at the time. Churchill concluded, "We could not get the power required to drive these ships at 25 knots except by the use of oil fuel." This was enough for him.

Queen Elizabeth-class battleships were built to burn oil only. Once this decision was made, Churchill wrote, it followed that the rest of the Royal Navy would turn to oil:

   The fateful plunge was taken when it was decided to
   create the fast division. Then, for the first time, the
   supreme ships of the navy, on which our life depended,
   were fed by oil and could only be fed by oil.
   The decision to drive the smaller craft by oil followed
   naturally upon this. The camel once swallowed, the
   gnats went down easily enough. (10)

But building oil-fired ships was only part of the exercise; it was also necessary to secure a supply and solve storage and transport problems. To meet these challenges Churchill established a royal commission. With Fisher as chairman, the commission eventually published three classified reports confirming the benefits of oil. It judged that ample supplies of oil existed but urged that a storage capacity be built in peacetime to ensure sufficiency in time of war.

The final step was finding a source, and toward that end a delegation went to the Persian Gulf to examine oil fields. Two companies were the likely choice of supply: the powerful Royal Dutch Shell Group and smaller Anglo-Persian Oil Company. After considerable maneuvering, and largely through Churchill's encouragement, the government decided to maintain competition in the oil industry and ensure supplies by investing directly in Anglo-Persian. The government acquired 51 percent of company stock, placed two directors on its board, and negotiated a secret contract to provide the Admiralty with a 20-year supply of oil under attractive terms.

Military-Oil Complex

Other factors were involved in the switch to oil beyond the efforts of Fisher and Churchill. Private industry helped develop ships and engine designs. As Hugh Lyon wrote, "The use of oil fuel would not have been possible without the pioneering work of such British firms as Wallsend Slipway on the design of suitable and economic burners. The Admiralty did do some research itself, but the main bulk of the investigations that were conducted in Britain were the work of private industry." (11) This argument is similar to that advanced by William McNeill, who described the period from 1880 to World War I as a "runaway technological revolution." It was largely the result of "command technology" in which government planners urged industry to innovate. In the case of the Royal Navy, for example, the Admiralty--largely due to Fisher--set specifications for engineers but did not actually design the ships and guns.