In 2011, a company specialising in organising London events planned to erect a large marquee and hold a series of banquets and parties, presumably for people working in the City, on the run up to Christmas, in Trinity Square Gardens, Tower Hill, London. On one side of these gardens lies Sir Edwin Lutyens’s memorial to 35,000 fishermen and merchant seamen killed in the Great War, who have no grave but the sea. Behind it is the sunken garden, which records the names of those seafarers who died during the Second World War on Atlantic and Antarctic Convoys, and nearby is a memorial to sailors lost in the more recent Falklands conflict. The idea of using such a place as a site for drinking and entertainment created a degree of controversy and indignation in the press and amongst some sections of the public, and was eventually abandoned. That it was ever mooted tells us something of the way in which the contribution of fishermen and indeed many other non-mainstream seafarers who served in one way or other outside of the mainstream Senior Service has been to such a great extent forgotten. One cannot imagine such plans would ever have even been mooted for somewhere like the Cenotaph in Whitehall, the Commonwealth war grave cemeteries in France, or many other national war memorials.

This collective amnesia when it comes to the role of the fishermen and other groups was not initially evident. Immediately after the war and in the first years which followed, the crucial role that the fishermen played was often acknowledged by key figures in the country's political and military establishment. Moreover, a small number of books highlighting their activities in the Great War were published, which told much of the scale and scope of their contribution. The new navy known as the Auxiliary Patrol had been created very quickly: in no more than a few months at the beginning of the war. It also was dispersed and disbanded very rapidly after the return of peace. Few fishermen of the day later put pen to paper to reflect on their wartime experiences.

The First German Minefield off the British Coast

On 29 July 1914, with Europe in the inexorable grip of a deepening and rapidly deteriorating crisis, Winston Churchill ordered the vessels of what was soon to be known as the Grand Fleet northwards from the south coast of England to take up their war station at the remote anchorage of Scapa Flow.

They left in darkness, 18 miles of heavy warships, dreadnoughts, battlecruisers, and their escorts, an immensity of armour plate; sailing at high speed through the Straits of Dover and into the North Sea, northwards, towards their new base in the Orkney Islands, just beyond the top of the Scottish mainland, passing through waters newly swept by the only flotilla of minesweeping gunboats the Royal Navy then possessed. By the time this huge fleet reached Scapa on 2 August, Germany was already at war with Russia and would declare war with France the next day. Within two days of the fleet's arrival in Orkney, Germany would invade Belgium, and Britain would have been drawn into the conflict.

In theory, the giant anchorage at Scapa was well positioned to enable the Royal Navy's fleet of dreadnoughts to command the North Sea and anticipate threats from its somewhat smaller German counterpart, the High Seas Fleet. But although plans to use the anchorage had been in place for some years they had not been backed by the requisite protective expenditure, and this expensive array of dreadnoughts, soon under the command of Admiral Jellicoe, found themselves in a base blessed with very little, indeed almost nothing, in the way of modern defence works.

At 7.30 p.m. on 4 August 1914, just a few hours before Britain formally declared war on Germany, Commander Biermann on the Konigin Luise, a small Hamburg America Line excursion steamer, received orders by wireless to proceed to sea from the River Ems. Although the height of the summer, this was to be no excursion trip: no tourists thronged the little steamer's decks. Far from it: the vessel was packed with mines. Captain Biermann had orders to head for the Thames at top speed and dispose of this deadly consignment as close as possible to the shipping lanes that stretched along the neighbouring east coast of England.

Dardanelles, Gallipoli, and the Eastern Mediterranean

The international conflagration that the Great War became soon carried fishermen to conflicts on coasts far removed from the shores of the British Isles: not least, and from quite early on, the waters of the eastern Mediterranean. In January 1915, as British and French plans for a naval assault on the Dardanelles were being formulated following Turkey's entry into the conflict on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary in late October 1914, an initial flotilla of 13 Auxiliary Patrol trawlers was sent out from England. By 21 February, 21 trawlers had reached Malta, and some of the vessels with their fishermen crews had already embarked on the next stage of the voyage to the Dardanelles.

The initial allied strategy involved forcing a passage through the Dardanelles, the narrow straits that divide Europe from Asia, by reducing Turkish defences at the entrance to the passage. The trawler minesweepers were required to clear a way for large warships to move in and bombard the enemy's coastal positions, the outer defences of which included two forts on the Dardanelles Peninsula and two others on the Asiatic side, as well as several minefields. The whole strategy depended heavily on the creation of a swept and marked channel for the warships to close in.

The first trawlers arrived and commenced sweeping on 19 February, working to within 5,000 yards of Gaba Tepe, and they managed to buoy a channel after encountering no mines. Bad weather then prevented operations for nearly a week, but on the night of the 25th the minesweepers renewed their efforts, sweeping the entrance to the Straits, cover being provided by a couple of battleships and a number of destroyers. Once again, no mines were encountered, and the battleships entered the Straits the next day and began bombarding the forts. After dusk fell, the trawlers entered the Straits once more and made a four-mile sweep, but again found no mines. Then bad weather disrupted the task once more; but on the moonlit evening of 1 March, the trawlers renewed their efforts, managing to sweep to within 3,000 yards of Cape Kephez. They came under fire from Turkish batteries once abreast of the Suandere River and had to withdraw under the protection of a smokescreen made by accompanying destroyers.

The First Months of Peace

In early 1919, the demobilisation of Auxiliary Patrol vessels and fishermen began. By this juncture, the bases from which the force had operated were already beginning to be run down, and many were completely closed during the following twelve months. The dismantling of this new navy was a major task involving thousands of people and vessels, and took some considerable time to organise and carry through to fruition.

Fishing vessels and crews eventually returned to their home ports from bases around the British Isles and beyond, and for those based overseas this was at times something of a trek. Skipper William Oliver, for example, who had been stationed in Malta for more than three years, during which time he had commanded the minesweeping trawlers Marion and then Kymric, was amongst the first to return from the Mediterranean, being given charge of the Grimsby Auxiliary Patrol trawler Moravia for the voyage back to England. On 12 December, just over a month after the Armistice, this minesweeper left Valetta Harbour for the final time, part of a flotilla of six trawlers and four drifters, their crews finally embarking on their homeward voyage. They were given what Oliver described as ‘a wonderful send off, every ship in the harbour, blowing their whistles to which the homeward bound vessels responded in kind’.

Progress across the Mediterranean was painfully slow: some of the drifters taking tows from the trawlers at various times in an attempt to maintain speed. It was not until nine days later, at noon on 21 December, that Moravia sighted the Rock of Gibraltar. After a short stay until the 24th, mainly for coaling and taking on stores, the flotilla sailed northwards. Despite this being the first December without war since 1913, the vessels were destined to spend Christmas Day at sea, season's greetings being sent to all ships from the flotilla’s commanding officer aboard the trawler Lemberg. A day later the ships arrived in the River Tagus and anchored off Lisbon to snatch a brief sojourn, but a little more than 24 hours later they resumed their homeward voyage, finally sighting Lizard Point in heavy seas on the last day of 1918. Here the flotilla split: while the drifters headed into Falmouth, the six trawlers proceeded in convoy along the Channel and by the morning of 2 January they were anchored in Portland Harbour.

On 21 October 1904, on the eve of the 99th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, warships from the Baltic fleet of the Imperial Russian Navy, under the command of Admiral Rozhestvensky, entered the North Sea. They were on a war footing, and later, in the evening of the same day, the Russians bore down on the trawlers of Hull's Gamecock fishing fleet. Powerful searchlights illuminated the seas and the warships opened fire. For 20 minutes, the unarmed fishing vessels were subjected to an unrelenting bombardment. The steam trawler Crane received the heaviest hits: skipper George Smith and mate John Leggott were decapitated by the shells which smashed into their vessel. The Crane eventually sank, and the rest of the crew were rescued by the trawler Gull, but two other fishing vessels, Mouleim and Mino, which were also subject to heavy fire, were badly damaged yet stayed afloat. The order to cease fire came just a few minutes before 1 a.m. and the Russian warships hurried off into the night towards the English Channel without pausing to inspect the carnage they had created. Meanwhile, the stunned crews of the Gamecock trawler fleet gave up fishing, stowed away their gear, and steamed off in great haste, heading for the Humber and their home port of Hull.

The Dogger Bank incident, or ‘Russian Outrage’, as it became known, was a tragic mistake. Russia was not at war with Britain but with Japan. Russia’s Baltic fleet, consisting of 42 warships of varying age and size, was on the first leg of what was to be an 18,000 mile voyage to the Far East, the intention being to reinforce the navy vessels already there that had endured a series of serious setbacks in their nation's vicious conflict with Japan. To that date the Japanese had surprised and outwitted the Russians in many actions and Rozhestvensky and his command – expecting attack at almost any time on their voyage, despite the great distances involved – had mistaken these civilian trawlers for Japanese torpedo boats.

The repercussions of the attack were immediate and global, the British media were incensed; there was talk of declaring war on Russia and of the Royal Navy attacking this fleet, but in the event Rozhestvensky and his ironclad armada were left to continue their convoluted cruise to the Far East.

The Structure of Industry between the Wars

In truth, apart from 1919 and 1920, when order books were full to replace vessels lost in the war, the period up to 1935 was mostly a struggle for the private shipbuilding industry. The experience of the naval race with Germany before the Great War had created a set of circumstances that could not last forever and certainly could not be matched in the post-war world. The Scottish shipyards on the River Clyde alone launched one-quarter of the world's tonnage in 1913, a figure which owed much to its strong warship sector. Thus, after the war, the Royal Navy possessed a large, young, and expensive fleet, but faced no obvious enemies following the collapse of the Imperial German Navy. Moreover, the British public had been shocked by the horrors of the Great War and now demanded that elected representatives turn their attention to arms limitation and international treaties to ensure there would be no repeat. As such, continuing the high levels of expenditure on the Royal Navy was not a priority for successive British (or other) governments. Industry was left to face the 1920s with only a fraction of the orders it had previously enjoyed.

In private, the government's thinking was guided by the so-called “Ten Year Rule.” Adopted secretly in 1919, the rule assumed that because no major conflict was likely within the next decade there would be no need for a major construction programme. This was renewed annually until 1932, when it was revoked following events in the Far East. But within just five years of its repeal, events in China and later in Germany and Italy set in motion the largest armaments drive in British history, an enterprise in which the Royal Navy played a major part. The problems by 1937 were very different for the British government and industry. After a period of uncertainty when the government feared the political and financial consequences of rearmament, it soon found that it could not move quickly enough: shortages of skills and plant were holding up the effort to put the country's defences in a state of readiness, while severe bottlenecks – large guns were a problem, armour plate another – persisted.

The three politically tumultuous years that followed the formation of the National Government in 1931 fundamentally transformed the nature of defence planning and the relationship between government and industry. Between 1922 and 1931, the debate between Admiralty and Treasury had been comprehensively won by the latter's view on spending limitations. The Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) and its subcommittees had not been called upon to work on pressing matters of national security, but spurred by the changes in the political situation after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, it adopted a far more central planning role and contributed a great deal towards understanding British defensive deficiencies by 1934. Thus, it was the CID, comprised of all three fighting services, and not just the Admiralty, which became the vehicle for articulating Britain's defence needs to the Cabinet.

This resulted in industrialists playing a key role in advising, and then shaping, defence policy for the first time. On the other hand, by 1934 the Admiralty also began competing more intensely with the developing Air Force for a share of the defence budget. Thus, while the narrative to this point has stressed the private industry's existence outside of the state planning framework and consequently has focussed on industry's responses to the crises in the 1920s and the Admiralty-Treasury disputes, from 1931 onwards the increasing importance of the CID warrants a more detailed examination of the process that gave new meaning to defence planning and that subsequently led to approaching industrialists for assistance.

Overview: Constraints and Pressures

Between Washington and Manchuria, support for the navy had been occasionally vocal but rarely consistent. Winston Churchill argued in favour of increased naval expenditure almost as often as he argued against it before and between 1918 and 1931, first supporting expansion of the fleet before slashing naval estimates and finally implementing the Ten Year Rule for perpetuity. This sort of behaviour was not unique to him: past, present and future Prime Ministers Stanley Baldwin, David Lloyd George and Ramsay MacDonald had periods on both sides of the divide, at times supporting the centrality of the navy to British defence, at others angrily being described by Admiralty figures as “dangerously imperilling everything for which the Royal Navy stands.”

Naval arms manufacturers were in a depressing position at the beginning of 1926, and this suffering prompted the radical action that followed. It was against the backdrop of the cruiser crisis and the naval treaties in the mid-1920s that the WSBC was formed. The committee grew out of other unsuccessful attempts to assist private industry in 1925 and 1926 which drove shipbuilding firms towards collaboration rather than competition. Unable to count on the Admiralty's ability to win increases from the Treasury or Cabinet in the medium term, the individual yards soon realised that the process of competitive tendering was unsustainable and could even drive most of them out of business.

By 1926, it was time for action. The situation was becoming acute: the Coventry Ordnance Works had closed altogether, while Beardmore, Scott and Yarrow had completely run out of profitable work, naval or otherwise, and Palmer and others had fared little better. Sir Alexander Kennedy, the Chairman of Fairfield, summed up the mood of firms in a similar position to his own when he noted despondently that “today private firms [find] themselves burdened with resources and equipment capable of meeting naval requirements far beyond any programme that might for some years to come – if not for ever – likely to be laid down.” His words could have come as easily from the First Lord, who after all was providing the hard evidence which supported Beatty's and D'Eyncourt's worst fears.

Admiralty Responses II: Bending Rules

The Admiralty for its part had long been a champion of state funding to provide a minimum level of orders to ensure firms’ survival, even if this would still be a long way from providing an opportunity for the private industry to maintain the world primacy it had enjoyed before Washington. On top of the heated discussions with the Treasury, the Admiralty had also devised several schemes to preserve capacity of key items where few alternative sources of supply existed, but these plans were often poorly conceived and for the most part did not work well.

It has been asserted elsewhere that the Admiralty's concerns about naval gun capacity forced them to give Vickers a “virtual monopoly of contracts” for the rest of the 1920s.