page_title: Naval warfare of World War I
section_title: Fisher's reforms
hierarchical_section_title: Naval warfare of World War I / Prelude / Fisher's reforms
caption_attribution_description: English: Diagrams depicting HMS Dreadnought, Royal Navy battleship, as she was in 1911. 1/450 scale.
context_page_description: Naval Warfare in World War I was mainly characterized by blockade. The Allied Powers, with their larger fleets and surrounding position, largely succeeded in their blockade of Germany and the other Central Powers, whilst the efforts of the Central Powers to break that blockade, or to establish an effective counterblockade with submarines and commerce raiders, were eventually unsuccessful. Major fleet actions were less decisive.
context_section_description: When he became First Sea Lord, Fisher began drawing up plans for a naval war against Germany. "Germany keeps her whole fleet always concentrated within a few hours of England," he wrote to the Prince of Wales in 1906. "We must therefore keep a fleet twice as powerful within a few hours of Germany." He therefore concentrated the bulk of the fleet in home waters, with a secondary concentration in the Mediterranean Fleet. He also had dozens of obsolete warships scrapped or hulked. The resources thus saved were directed to new designs of submarines, destroyers, light cruisers, battlecruisers and (most notably) dreadnoughts. Fisher proclaimed, “We shall have ten Dreadnoughts at sea before a single foreign Dreadnought is launched, and we have thirty percent more cruisers than Germany and France put together!”.
caption: Design of the revolutionary battleship HMS Dreadnought.
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