- Author
- A.N. Other
- Subjects
- Biographies and personal histories, Ship design and development, History - WW1, Influential People
- Tags
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- RAN Ships
- None noted.
- Publication
- September 2023 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)
Prepared from inspiration provided by our Queensland member and mining engineer Colin Randall.
William Knox D’Arcy and John Arbuthnot Fisher both came from families with prominent distant relatives but they were outsiders, poor relations with limited prospects. Despite this both men were clever, ambitious and energetic, and used these attributes to great effect. Their lives became intertwined in the arid Middle East in the search for oil.
To build any large additional number of oil-burning ships meant basing naval supremacy upon oil. But oil was not found in appreciable quantities in British islands. If it was required in peace or war it must be carried by sea from distant countries. Britain had, on the other hand, the finest supply of the best steam coal in the world, safe in mines under their own land. To commit the Navy irrevocably to oil was indeed to ‘take arms against a sea of troubles.’ Yet, if the difficulties and risk could be surmounted, ‘we should be able to raise the whole power and efficiency of the Navy to a definitely higher level; better ships, better crews, higher economies, more intense forms of war power’ – in a word, ‘mastery itself was the prize of the venture.’ Winston Churchill in The Prize.
The Queensland Mining Magnate
William Knox D’Arcy, born on 11 October 1849, was the only son of an Irish solicitor from a prominent Anglo-Irish family who had settled in Newton Abbot, Devon. In seeking the best of education for him, William was enrolled at the exclusive Westminster School but two years later was withdrawn owing to his father’s impending bankruptcy. In 1866 the family did a moonlight flit as far away as possible and re-established themselves in the small but growing town of Rockhampton on the central Queensland coast. Here William continued his studies and followed his father’s footsteps into the legal profession. He prospered and began to speculate in land and gold stocks.
William married Elena Birkbeck on 23 October 1872 at an elaborate Catholic wedding in Sydney. Elena’s parents were from the United States, and her father managed a silver mine in Mexico.
In 1882 the brothers Edwin, Frederick and Thomas Morgan were prospecting in a desolate stony valley inland fromRockhampton when they struck a rock which gleamed.
Unknowingly they had discovered one of the greatest individual gold strikes in history. Needing capital to operate a mine they approached the local bank manager Thomas Hall, the grazier/politician William Pattison and the solicitor William D’Arcy, who formed a syndicate which would become the Mount Morgan Gold Mining Company and which remained in operation for 80 years. The business was later expanded by further gold mining in the Otago district of New Zealand. When the brothers eventually sold out William D’Arcy became the largest shareholder and a multi-millionaire when the initial shares issued at £1 reached more than £17 each.
Armed with his substantial fortune, D’Arcy and his family moved to England in 1889 where their arrival was noticed, acquiring a modest mansion called Stanmore Hall in Middlesex, a town house in London’s fashionable Grosvenor Square, and a lease over a country estate in Norfolk.
But all was not well in this new-found Edwardian paradise, largely led by an aristocratic elite with lax morals. In 1893 D’Arcy lost money when there was a run on Australian banks and the value of his shares in Mount Morgan declined. Two years later his 23-year marriage to Elena, an ardent Catholic and mother of his five children, collapsed which led to an unusual and bitter annulment. In 1897 William married Nina Boucicault who was the daughter of an Australian newspaper proprietor, and Nina knew how to entertain. The extravagance of their lifestyle was not helped by elaborate horse racing and shooting parties, interests shared with his Norfolk neighbour King Edward VII.
Seeking further opportunities to help achieve a turnaround in his diminishing wealth, in 1900 D’Arcy agreed to fund a speculative search for oil and minerals in Persia. Although D’Arcy never visited Persia he invested large sums of money into this enterprise. He was supported by talented onsite officials including mining engineer George Bernard Reynolds and, surprisingly for those days, a female political adviser named Gertrude Bell.
George Reynolds, the son of a naval officer, was a graduate of the Royal Indian Engineering College and had worked briefly on the subcontinent before transferring to the Dutch East Indies oil fields; in 1901 he joined D’Arcy, leading his Persian exploration.
Gertrude Bell’s father was a wealthy baronet, which allowed her to move freely in society. She was the first woman to graduate in modern history from Oxford, with first class honours. With a passion for the Orient she became fluent in Arabic and Persian and was invited to join the British Middle East delegation at the same time as T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia). Her advice on cultural and political issues was considered sound and trustworthy.
Striking it rich in Persia c1908
‘The D’Arcy Concession’ negotiated with Iranian officials provided a 60-year lease to explore for oil over the entire country, excepting the five northern provinces (to placate the Russians with their adjoining territories). In return, the Iranian government would receive 16% of the oil company’s annual profits. While the validity of this document may be questionable it was accepted and highly prized by British authorities.
Drilling commenced in 1902 and some oil was discovered but this dried up a few days later and further funds were needed. By this time D’Arcy was overdrawn and so a syndicate was established with the Burmah Oil Company to inject further capital. Exploration continued over several sites but with D’Arcy now almost bankrupt they were obliged to cease work, dismiss staff and begin dismantling anything worthy of transporting to the coast and shipping it home. At the last minute, with one last deep drilling roll of the dice on 26 May 1908, oil was struck and the rig was drenched in high grade oil. The persistence of George Reynolds had encountered the most extensive oil reserve thus far known to man. With this news Winston Churchill is quoted as saying: ‘Fortune brought us a prize from fairyland beyond our wildest dreams.’
With further financial support by Burmah Oil and the British Admiralty, in April 1909 D’Arcy was appointed a director of the newly formed Anglo-Persian Oil Company which would become British Petroleum (BP). The task was now to build a pipeline to Abadan where a refinery would be constructed at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a mere 30 miles from the Persian Gulf. This was not far from ancient Babylon which some regard as the birthplace of modern civilisation.
William Knox D’Arcy died of broncho-pneumonia in London on 1 May 1917, aged 67. His immense service to Australia, Britain and Persia was never fully recognised and lesser men have received far greater honours. Possibly the failure of his marriage denied him a knighthood. He played an important part in world history, the political impacts of which are still felt to this day. Churchill called the Anglo-Iranian oil concession ‘a great enterprise which contributed to our national prosperity in peace and our safety in war’, and in his Story of British Petroleum Longhurst says D’Arcy must go down in posterity as the father of the entire oil industry in the Middle East.
An Ambitious Admiral
John (Jacky) Arbuthnot Fisher was the first of eleven children, only seven of whom survived infancy, born on 25 January 1841 to Sophie and William Fisher on a plantation at Ramrod in the hill district of central Ceylon. His mother Sophie Lambe, the daughter of a London vintner, was a fine looking woman and his father was a handsome six foot two-inch Scot, so it was rather surprising that young John (always known as Jacky) turned out to be short and stocky with pugnacious features, and there was some suspicion of a touch of mixed blood.
The Fisher family came from ambitious but poor clergy. Captain William Fisher of the 78th Highlanders had served as ADC to the former governor of Ceylon Sir Robert Wilmot-Horton and later to the General Officer Commanding in Ceylon General Sir Robert Arbuthnot. Shortly before his first child was born William sold his commission and started a coffee plantation.
After several years Fisher lost his crop to disease, and found new employment with the Ceylon Police where he became a Chief Superintendent. At the age of six Jacky was sent to England for schooling and lived with his maternal grandparents. Shortly afterwards,
with his grandfather’s business in decline they were forced to rent out rooms in their house to survive. Jacky was never tosee his parents again, his father dying in Ceylon in 1866, and his mother, to whom Jacky later sent an allowance, also dying in Ceylon in 1895.
At age 13, using connections through his godmother Lady Wilmot-Horton, the young Fisher was able to secure entry into the Royal Navy. It is said part of his entrance examination included writing out the Lord’s Prayer and jumping naked over a chair. This was the rather inauspicious start to one of the most successful careers in the Royal Navy which spanned sixty years. On inviting the up-and-coming Captain to meet her at Osborne House, Queen Victoria observed: ‘Fisher entered the Navy penniless and unknown’ but this introduction proved fruitful, leading to a friendship with the future King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra.
Fisher moved confidently through the junior ranks of the navy but first found his niche in 1862 when appointed to HMS Excellent, the naval gunnery school at Portsmouth. Here he became an instructor, spending much of his career promoting the development of guns and torpedoes. There must have been time for social activities as Jacky Fisher, a devoted Christian and an excellent ballroom dancer, met and married Frances Katharine (Kitty) Broughton, thedaughter of the Reverend Thomas and Frances Broughton of Portsmouth. Two of Kitty’s brothers were naval officers, as were two of Jacky’s brothers.
At age 33 Fisher was promoted to Captain and given command of HMS Vernon, another Ports-mouth training ship specialising in mines and torpedoes. After this long run ashore it was time to return to sea and he was given command of five capital ships, including the newly built 16-inch battleship HMS Inflexible. He became Director of Naval Ordnance from 1886 to 1890, responsible for weapons and munitions.
HMS Dreadnought fitting out in Portsmouth c1906
With his career now on an upward trajectory he was promoted Rear Admiral in 1890 as Superintendent of the Portsmouth dockyard, where he was known for improving productivity. Next it was as Third Naval Sea Lord with overall responsibility for the provision of ships and equipment. Fisher was knighted in 1894 and promoted Vice Admiral in 1896 becoming C-in-C of the North American & West Indies station and later the important position of C-in-C of the Mediterranean Fleet. All this time Fisher was concerned with the efficiency of his ships, and officers that did not measure up to his demanding standards were removed.
He was promoted Admiral and in 1902 became Second Sea Lord in charge of personnel. He revolutionised training with the inclusion of engineers into the general stream of officers, thereby opening up greater opportunities for their abilities, and he changed the syllabus at the naval college to include science and technology. In 1903 he became C-in-C Portsmouth and in October 1904 reached the pinnacle of First Sea Lord, a position he held until retirement on 25 January 1910.
Fisher had been instrumental in reshaping the Royal Navy with larger and more powerful ships and modernising them with the change from coal to oil fuel. The D’Arcy Concession was the cornerstone of this change, providing long-termsupplies of low-cost oil during both the First and Second World Wars. The Admiralty provided funds to kick-start the ailing oil company and was its first major customer.
The Dreadnought Project
Jacky Fisher will be forever remembered for his close association with the Dreadnought project. At this time the Royal Navy was forever fiddling with ship designs; for example, the King Edward VII class of eight battleships built between 1904 and 1906, were also known as the ‘Wobbly Eight’ as they rolled a lot, and between them had four different boiler engine configurations. The American historian Arthur Marder asks the question: Was the Dreadnought Fisher’s greatest blunder or a stroke of genius? Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in between, although it was the design chosen by the Admiralty and imitated by all other great naval powers.
HMS Dreadnought was christened at Portsmouth Dockyard on 10 February 1906 by King Edward VII using a bottle of Australian wine. At over 18,000 tons and fitted with the latest technical marvel of steam turbine engines and electrical generators, she had a speed of 21 knots, and with her main armament of 12-inch turret mounted guns, augmented by range finders and fire control systems, provided a deadly weight of armour-piercing shells with long-range accuracy. Her greatest drawback was that she remained a coal burner with a large crew required to man her coal-fired boilers.
The first of the Queen Elizabeth class 15-inch battleships known as Super Dreadnoughts were brought into service in 1912, with their boilers fully oil fired. By the outbreak of the Great War the Royal Navy was proceeding with the change from coal to oil.
The Dreadnought made all previous ships of this type obsolete and became the model that started an arms race that ultimately led to the economic downfall of both Britain and Germany. Dreadnoughts were therefore not universally welcomed and Lloyd George, the radical prime minister who nursed Britain through most of the Great War, called them a ‘wanton and profligate ostentation’ which intensified naval competition with Germany, and substantially reduced funds that could be devoted to social services, then considered necessary to secure domestic harmony.
Meeting of Like Minds
William D’Arcy and Jacky Fisher both enjoyed relaxing in the warm waters of health spas and in July 1903 they met by accident at the fashionable Bohemian spa resort in Marienbad (also favoured by King Edward VII), now in the Czech Republic. They found a common interest in oil, with D’Arcy determined to find oil and remake his fortune and Fisher needing to secure supplies of this precious commodity for his navy.
Another prominent character that came on the scene at the time was the up-and-coming politician Winston Churchill, who was only half Fisher’s age. Both pocket dynamos (standing just five feet seven inches tall), they were flamboyant with a similar sense of humour; the two got on famously, becoming great friends. Fisher stepped down as First Sea Lord in 1911 when he was aged 70 and his friend took over as First Civil Lord of the Admiralty. Churchill then reappointed Fisher to head up a Royal Commission on ‘Fuel and Engines for the Royal Navy’, with predictable results.
Shortly after taking over as First Sea Lord in 1904 Fisher helped negotiate a contract with the Burmah Oil Company and was able to bring pressure to bear on the company to lend assistance to D’Arcy in the development of his Persian oil concession. It was through Fisher’s efforts that the government took a long-term contract of 20 years with D’Arcy for the fuel needs of the navy at secured prices, and through a subsequent investment of £2.2 million gained a controlling interest in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.
The strategic value of this investment was of immense importance. As the world moved from coal to oil as a source of industrial power generation, a cartel formed under the Shell banner between American-owned Standard Oil and Dutch interests controlling Far Eastern oil reserves. Now having another reserve in the Middle East, Britain demanded and won a place at this exclusive table.
The Finale
Fisher’s successors had short-lived careers, finding life uncomfortable in working with their political counterpart and First Civil Lord, Winston Churchill. With the start of the Great War Churchill’s political interference began to unravel the effectiveness of the Royal Navy and in October of that year the 73-year-old aging Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher was brought back into harness to provide stability. However, the disastrous Dardanelles campaign demanded accountability which brought about the downfall of both Churchill and Fisher.
Admiral of the Fleet Lord John Fisher died in London on 10 July 1920, aged 79. Given a state funeral, his coffin was drawn on a gun-carriage through the streets of London to Westminster Abbey by bluejackets, with six admirals as pall-bearers and an escort of Marines, their arms reversed, to the slow beat of muffled drums. His legacy continues, and to this day rumblings of unrest in the Middle East emanate from the efforts of the enterprising William Knox D’Arcy and John Arbuthnot Fisher.
References
Boyd, A.A., A History of Mount Morgan, from a lecture by Mr A.A. Boyd recorded in The Morning Bulletin, Rockhampton, 19 August 1939.
Carment, David, D’Arcy, William Knox (1849–1917), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/darcy-william-knox-5882/text10009, published in hardcopy 1981, accessed online 25 March 2023.
Coohoon, Melinda, The Imperial Frontier: Tribal Dynamics & Oil in Qajar, Persia, 1901-1910 – MA thesis in International Studies: Middle East, University of Washington, 2017.
Custer, Benjamin S. Portrait of a Progressive: Lord Fisher, Admiral of the Fleet, United States Naval Institute Proceedings, March 1947.
Harris, Paul Ashford, Love, Oil and the Fortunes of War, Ventura Press, Sydney, 2023.
Longhurst, Henry, Adventure in Oil: The Story of British Petroleum, Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1959.
Marder, Arthur J., Fisher and the Genesis of the Dreadnought, United States Naval Institute Proceedings, December 1956.
Yergin, Daniel, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1990.