Naval innovation: from coal to oil - Cover Story

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

The transition from coal to oil in the Royal Navy came about through a variety of factors. Fundamentally, it was a technological phenomenon waiting to happen. Britain, the United States, and a few other nations had been experimenting with oil, and its advantages were generally known. In the event, Britain and the United States made the change at about the same time. But in Britain the strategic risks were great enough to require the skill of both Fisher and Churchill to accomplish the change. The Anglo-German naval race--particularly reports that Germany was developing oil as fuel more quickly--provided the final impetus.

NOTES

(1) Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, Vol. 1 (New York: Scribner's, 1923), p. 134.

(2) Ibid., pp. 133-36.

(3) P. K. Kemp, ed., The Papers of Admiral Sir John Fisher, Vol. 1 (London: The Navy Records Society, 1960), p. 81.

(4) Arthur J. Marder, ed., Fear God and Dread Nought: The Correspondence of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher of Kilverstone, Vol. 1 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1952), p. 220.

(5) John Fisher, Records (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1919), p. 202.

(6) Marder, Fear God, p. 235.

(7) Ibid., p. 430.

(8) Ibid., p. 402.

(9) Ibid., p. 426.

(10) Churchill, The World Crisis, pp. 133, 136.

(11) Hugh Lyon, "The Relations Between the Admiralty and Private Industry in the Development of Warships," in Technical Change and British Naval Policy 1860-1939, edited by Bryan Ranft (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1977), p. 49.

(12) Peter Padfield, The Battleship Era (New York: David McKay, 1972), p. 203.

(13) Fisher, Records, p. 201.

(14) Marder, Fear God, p. 426.

(15) Ibid., p. 332.

(16) Michael Handel, War, Strategy and Intelligence (London: Frank Cass, 1989), p. 21.

(17) Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London: The Ashfield Press, 1976), p. 234.

Commander Erik J. Dahl, USN, teaches at the Naval War College and previously was assigned as chief of the indications and warning branch at Headquarters, U.S. Forces Korea.