Account of Morgan Singer of the Great War
I joined the Admlty on 5th Aug & heard that I was appointed to relieve Tudor as D.N.O. Tudor being appointed 3rd Sea Lord in place of Moore who was to go to sea. Accordingly I took over in the next few days, making arrangements for a room in Jermyn Street & to live at the Club [Army and Navy].
During the first month we were busy arming & equipping some 30 merchant ships as armed cruisers, fortunately we had plenty of 6" & 4.7" Q.F. guns available having kept large numbers of these guns when many cruisers & old battleships were scrapped some years ago. We sent 8 4.7" guns and 24 Maxims to Antwerp with a naval contingent under Lieut-Comdr Littlejohns where they did good work organising armoured trains &c.
Towards the end of August, Churchill determined to organise a Naval Division from Reservists (R.N.R., R.F.R. & R.N.V.R.) at the Depôts, there were naturally large numbers of these who were not required for sea at the moment, there was much opposition to this scheme on the part those responsible for manning the Fleet, it being pointed out that every man would be required for the Fleet in course of time; however the 1st Lord as usual had his way & large numbers of these valuable men, seamen & stokers were formed into a Naval Division & an attempt made to turn them into soldiers; the equipment of the Division had to be undertaken by my Dept. & gave an enormous amount of work & trouble as we were naturally not adept at this sort of work, we were besides up against the W.O. [War Office] at every turn as they were starting to equip very large forces in the face of great difficulties.
The Fleet were only fairly well off for reserves of ammn; owing to economy in peacetime many ships had considerable number of shell of old type on board & large orders had to be placed at once.
The 1st Lord in August announced that the Admlty would be responsible for the Aerial defence of the U.K.; as only 2 ships had A.A. guns mounted at the time this meant depriving the Fleet of guns for service ashore & the creating of an A.A. Corps for London Defences & as we could not provide men, however as will be seen we were not troubled with aerial attack in London at any rate for over a year.
The 1st Lord started also the following "side-shows" as they may be called, manufacture of 15" howitzers to be manned by Marines, the formation of an A.A. Brigade of Marines to man 16 2pdr pom pom guns on lorrys [sic], armoured cars [2] manned by Air Service ratings with 3pdr & maxims &c. All of these "extras" hampered supplies of guns & mountings for the Fleet. There [sic] utility was very doubtful & they gave everyone a vast amount of extra work. Eventually they were all taken over by the War Office in the course of a year or so. During the early months of the war we were called upon to supply guns to S. Africa, Servia & Belgium the W.O. could do little to assist; we supplied the W.O. also with all our reserve older 9.2" guns for shore mountings.
Prince Louis of Battenberg left the Admlty in Oct.. 14 much to everyone's relief; he had not been a success, was entirely in Churchill's hands, the latter doing exactly as he liked. Lord Fisher arrived & immediately got to work, he did some good things, amongst others causing "Repulse" & "Renown" two B-Ships just laid down to be re-laid down as Battle cruisers of 30 knots, it being increasingly apparent that speed was essential. Lord F. & Churchill decided in November to build monitors for operations on Belgian Coast &c. taking the guns from old Battleships & cruisers, American sources & a couple of 15" turrets set free when armaments of "Repulse" & "Renown" were altered. These monitors were pushed on very hurriedly, in consequence of which they proved to be of very poor speed & sea going qualities, 7 knots & very unhandy; however the 14" & some of the 12" & 9.2" were sent to the Dardanelles & were useful where it was inadvisable to use battleships on account of the submarine menace.
The hurried building of all these craft no doubt retarded our battleship building considerably.
All this kept my Dept. very busy, also the decision to fit all "Dreadnought" ships & cruisers with Director firing gear, all the actions so far fought up to action on 24 Jan.. 15 pointing to very long range actions being probably.
Very large building programmes of T.B.D.s, submarines, patrol craft were started early in the war & immense numbers of trawlers, yachts &c. taken up for anti submarine work, all these craft had to be armed & our large stocks of light guns 6 & 3pdr were soon used up & great efforts had to be made to produce more; as the Army requirements were enormous for field guns & howitzers we had to go outside the gun making firms & get many engineering firms to take on guns, which, as they had no experience caused much difficulty & delay.
During the early part of 1915 much friction occurred between Churchill [3] & Fisher on the Dardanelles policy, no doubt the latter did not approve of it but did not officially disapprove & let Churchill go his own way; Lord F. should undoubtedly have tendered his resignation or backed up the 1st Lord.
