Memories, by Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Fisher — Reading Companion

(1 User reviews) 321

In Category - Letters Recollections

Authors: Fisher, John Arbuthnot Fisher, Baron, 1841-1920 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2022 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Admirals -- Great Britain -- Biography; Great Britain. Royal Navy; Fisher, John Arbuthnot Fisher, Baron, 1841-1920 Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 82,460

Reading time 359 min

Text sections 28

Memories, by Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Fisher — Reading Companion can be approached with a clearer sense of reading commitment from its source measurements: 82,460 words, 5 hr 59 min estimated reading time, and 28 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 19.4 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Admirals -- Great Britain -- Biography,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #68034

Lord Fisher's memoirs, dictated in 1919, defy chronology by beginning with his later years and ending with his birth. The book's structure mirrors his impulsive, spoken style, with digressions on prayer, Satan, and naval life, all tied together by his forceful personality.

Editorial Edition Score 4.9/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

How this score is calculated

Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg68034

Read the Text

Therefore, in view of the known steadfast German purpose, as always unmitigatedly set forth by the German High Authority that it was Germany’s set intention to make even England’s mighty Navy hesitate at sea, it seemed to me simply a sagacious act on England’s part to seize the German Fleet when it was so very easy of accomplishment in the manner I sketched out to His Majesty, and probably without bloodshed. But, alas! even the very whisper of it excited exasperation against the supposed bellicose, but really peaceful, First Sea Lord, and the project was damned. At that time, Germany was peculiarly open to this “peaceful penetration.” A new Kiel Canal, at the cost of many, many millions, had been rendered necessary by the advent of the “Dreadnought”; but worse still for the Germans, it was necessary for them to spend further vast millions in deepening not only the approaches to the German Harbours, but the Harbours themselves, to allow the German “Dreadnoughts,” when built, to be able to float. In doing this, the Germans were thus forced to arrange that thirty-three British pre-“Dreadnoughts” should be capable of attacking their shores, which shallow water had previously denied them. Such, therefore, was the time of stress and unreadiness in Germany that made it peculiarly timely to repeat Nelson’s Copenhagen. Alas! we had no Pitt, no Bismarck, no Gambetta! And consequently came those terrible years of War, with millions massacred and maimed and many millions more of their kith and kin with piercèd hearts and bereft of all that was mortal for their joy.

QUEEN ALEXANDRA, LORD KNOLLYS, and SIR DIGHTON PROBYN.

At the end of these short and much too scant memories of him whom Lord Redesdale rightly calls in the letter I printed above

“_The best friend you ever had_,”

I can’t but allude to a Trio forming so great a part of his Glory. Not to name them here would be “King Edward--an Unreality.” I could not ask Queen Alexandra for permission either to print her Letters or her Words, but I am justified in printing how her steadfast love, and faith, and wonderful loyalty and fidelity to her husband have proved how just is the judgment of Her Majesty by the Common People--“the most loved Woman in the whole Nation.”

And then Lord Knollys and Sir Dighton Probyn, those two Great Pillars of Wisdom and Judgment, who so reminded me, as they used to sit side by side in the Royal Chapel, of those two who on either side held up the arms of Moses in fighting the Amalekites:

“And Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, The one on the one side, and the other on the other side; And his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.”

Yes! King Edward’s hands were held steady till the setting of his sun on May 6th, 1910, and so did he “discomfit his enemies by their aid.”

For over forty years Lord Knollys played that great part in great affairs which will occupy his Biographer with Admiration of his Self-Effacement and unerring Judgment. Myself I owe him gratitude inexpressible.

For myself, those Great Three ever live in my heart and ever will.

There are no such that I know of who are left to us to rise in their place.

“THE MOON SWAYS OCEANS AND PROVOKES THE HOUND.”

The hound keeps baying at the moon but gets no answer from her, and she continues silently her mighty influence in causing the tides of the earth, such a mighty influence as I have seen in the Bay of Fundy, and on the coast of Arcadia where the tide rises some 40 feet--you see it like a high wall rolling in towards you on the beach! It exalts one, and the base things of earth vanish from one’s thoughts. So also may the contents of this book be like-minded by a mighty silence against baying hounds! I hope to name no living name except for praise, and even against envy I hope I may be silent. Envy caused the first murder. It was the biggest and nastiest of all Cæsar’s wounds:

“See what a rent the _envious_ Casca made.”

My impenetrable armour is Contempt and Fortitude.

Well, yesterday September 7th, 1919, we completed our conversations for the six articles in _The Times_, and to-day we begin this book with similar talks.

My reluctance to this book being published before my death is increasingly definite; but I have put my hand to the plough, because of the overbearing argument that I cannot resist, that I shall be helping to

(_a_) Avoid national bankruptcy.

(_b_) Avert the insanity and wickedness of building a Navy against the United States.

Continue Reading →

Lord Fisher opens his memoirs with a declaration that there is “no plan nor sequence,” and he keeps that promise. The book begins not with his birth but with his later reflections, moving backward through his life. The text is presented as nearly verbatim dictation, preserving what an editor calls the “aroma” of Fisher’s spoken word. Readers encounter abrupt shifts—from a meditation on Satan’s appearance before the Almighty to a leaky wooden battleship squirting water inboard. These jumps are not errors but the book’s deliberate method: Fisher values the “first impulse of the heart” over polished prose.

A Backward Life

Fisher announces that he will “begin my life backwards and leave my birth and being weaned till the end.” This inversion is the book’s governing structure. Instead of a steady chronological march, the narrative loops and backtracks, mirroring how memory actually works. The editor notes that Fisher cared “little for the past and much for the future,” which explains why the early chapters dwell on his mature career and opinions. Only late in the book does the reader encounter his childhood. This arrangement forces attention on the man’s ideas and actions rather than on a simple life story. The effect is disorienting but intentional: Fisher wants the reader to experience his mind in action, not a tidy biography.

The Spoken Word Preserved

Fisher distrusted the printed word. The editor explains that the book is a compromise between Fisher’s wish for no book at all and the public’s desire for an autobiography. The text was dictated during September 1919 and left largely unamended. Fisher’s voice comes through in short, punchy sentences and sudden exclamations. He describes a nickname for his youngest daughter—“The last straw”—and a rule posted over the mantelpiece that it was “défendu” to kiss her. Such details are not polished anecdotes but raw recollections. The editor has added some chapters from Fisher’s private printed papers and letters to Lord Esher, but the core remains Fisher’s unvarnished talk. This gives the book the feel of a long, energetic monologue.

Recurring Images: Leaks, Pumps, and Fountains

One of the most vivid recurring images in the excerpts is that of water leaking into a ship. Fisher describes the old battleship Ocean, whose timbers opened and shut with the sea, “squirted the water inboard” and kept “many fountains playing in the bottom of the ship.” The crew had to man the chain pumps constantly. This image appears not as a metaphor but as a concrete memory, yet it recurs in different contexts—once when a bishop’s sermon on wandering thoughts is interrupted by the sight of a pump handle overhead. The leaky ship becomes a touchstone for Fisher’s style: immediate, physical, and slightly chaotic. It also hints at the constant labor required to keep a vessel—or a life—afloat.

Digressions on Prayer and Providence

Fisher repeatedly returns to the subject of prayer, often through anecdotes. He recalls a bishop in Zanzibar who gave an extempore sermon on wandering thoughts during prayer, using a pump handle as his text. He also quotes a Norfolk parson who told his congregation that praying for rain was useless while the wind was east. Fisher’s own view is pragmatic: prayer must be “absolutely unselfish,” and he cites Dr. Chalmers’s preferred collect. These digressions are not theological treatises but conversational asides. They reveal a man who thinks through stories, not abstractions. The same impulse leads him to remark on Satan’s appearance in the Book of Job, calling it “the most subtle innuendo I ever came across.” The book’s structure allows such tangents to stand without apology.

Readers should expect a memoir that resists easy navigation. Fisher’s backward chronology and digressive style reward those who accept the book on its own terms—as a dictated record of a forceful mind. The index and chapter headings offer some guidance, but the real pleasure lies in following Fisher’s leaps from a leaky ship to a sleeping child to a theological insight. Approach it as a conversation, not a reference work.

It’s funny how some books feel less like reading and more like sitting with someone who talks in spirals. Lord Fisher’s Memories did that to me—starting at the end, wandering through prayer and spite, held together by sheer personality. I found the same lingering warmth in the companion notes for Memories and Adventures — Reading Notes, almost like an old friend’s voice caught mid-thought.