page_title: John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher
section_title: Early career (1854–1869)
hierarchical_section_title: John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher / Early career (1854–1869)
caption_attribution_description: Admiral John Fisher (1841-1920) pictured as a midshipman.
context_page_description: John Arbuthnot Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher, GCB, OM, GCVO, commonly known as Jacky or Jackie Fisher, was a British Admiral of the Fleet known for his efforts at naval reform. He had a huge influence on the Royal Navy in a career spanning more than 60 years, starting in a navy of wooden sailing ships armed with muzzle-loading cannon and ending in one of steel-hulled battlecruisers, submarines and the first aircraft carriers. The argumentative, energetic, reform-minded Fisher is often considered the second most important figure in British naval history, after Lord Nelson.
  Fisher is primarily celebrated as an innovator, strategist and developer of the navy rather than a seagoing admiral involved in major battles, although in his career he experienced all these things. When appointed First Sea Lord in 1904, he removed 150 ships then on active service which were no longer useful and set about constructing modern replacements, creating a modern fleet prepared to meet Germany during the First World War.
context_section_description: Fisher's father ultimately aided his entry into the navy, via his godmother Lady Horton, widow of the governor of Ceylon to whom William Fisher had been Aide-de-camp. She prevailed upon a neighbour, Admiral Sir William Parker (the last of Nelson's captains), to nominate John as a naval cadet. The entry examination consisted of writing out the Lord's Prayer and jumping naked over a chair. He formally entered the Royal Navy on 13 July 1854, aged 13, on board Nelson's former flagship, Victory, at Portsmouth. On 29 July he joined HMS Calcutta, an old ship of the line. She was built of wood, in 1831, with 84 smooth-bore muzzle-loading guns arranged on two gun decks, and relied entirely on sail for propulsion. She had a crew of 700, and discipline was strictly enforced by the "hard-bitten Captain Stopford". Fisher fainted when he witnessed eight men being flogged on his first day.
  Calcutta participated in the blockade of Russian ports in the Gulf of Finland during the Crimean War, entitling Fisher to the Baltic medal, before returning to Britain a few months later. The crew were paid off on 1 March 1856.
  On 2 March 1856, Fisher was posted to HMS Agamemnon, and was sent to Constantinople (now Istanbul) to join her. He arrived on 19 May, just as the war was ending. After a tour around the Dardanelles picking up troops and baggage, Agamemnon returned to England, where the crew were paid off.
  Promotion to midshipman came on 12 July 1856 and Fisher joined a 21-gun steam corvette, HMS Highflyer, part of the China Station. He was to spend the next five years in Chinese waters, seeing action in the Second Opium War, 1856–1860. The Highflyer's captain, Charles Shadwell, was an expert on naval astronomy (subsequently being appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1861) and he taught Fisher much about navigation, with spectacular later results. When Shadwell was replaced as captain following an injury in action, he gave Fisher a pair of studs engraved with his family motto 'Loyal au Mort', which Fisher was to use for the rest of his life.
  Fisher passed the seamanship examination for the rank of lieutenant, and was given the acting rank of mate, on his nineteenth birthday, 25 January 1860. He was transferred three months later to the steam frigate HMS Chesapeake as an acting lieutenant. Shortly afterwards, Fisher had his first brief command: taking the yacht of the China Squadron's admiral—the paddle-gunboat HMS Coromandel—from Hong Kong to Canton (presently Guangzhou), a voyage of four days.
  He was transferred, on 12 June 1860, to the paddle-sloop HMS Furious where he saw sufficient action to add the Taku and Canton clasps to his China service medal. Furious left Hong Kong and the China Station in March 1861 and, after a leisurely voyage home, paid off in Portsmouth on 30 August. Captain Oliver Jones of the Furious was entirely different from Shadwell: Fisher wrote there was a mutiny on board within his first fortnight, that Jones terrorised his crew and disobeyed orders given to him. Nonetheless, by the end of the tour he also was impressed by Fisher.
  That November, Fisher sat his lieutenant's examination and passed with flying colours. He received top grades in seamanship and gunnery, and achieved the highest score ever—963/1000—for navigation. For this, he was awarded the Beaufort Testimonial, an annual prize of books and instruments; but in the meantime he had to wait around, unpaid, until his appointment came through officially. He was one of the last Royal Navy officers to receive basic training entirely at sea.
  From January 1862 to March 1863, Fisher returned to the payroll at the navy's principal gunnery school aboard HMS Excellent, a three-decker moored in Portsmouth harbour. During this time, Excellent was evaluating the performance of the "revolutionary" Armstrong breech-loading guns against the traditional Whitworth muzzle-loading type. During free afternoons Fisher would walk the downs, shouting to practice his command voice. He spent 15 of the next 25 years in four tours of duty at Portsmouth concerned with development of
caption: Fisher as Midshipman 1856–1860
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