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00:00En octubre de 1843, 100,000 personas se reunieron en la calle de Londres.
00:09Una gran memoria para su gran heroina era about a ser anunciado.
00:15Nelsons Column, construyendo con donaciones de un adorado público,
00:19su donación a un hombre que pagó por la victoria con la muerte.
00:23Nelsons Column was the totem of the british state,
00:26and a clear expression of the death of his death.
00:29His gran figure stands 50 metres up,
00:31facing south towards the site of his last and greatest victory, Trafalgar,
00:35the turning point in the titanic struggle against France,
00:39a war from which Britain had emerged as the world's only superpower.
00:43But this was so much more than just a statue.
00:46Situated here in the heart of London, between Parliament, Buckingham Palace and the city,
00:50of the British state, and a clear expression of the central role of the Royal Navy within it.
00:57After Trafalgar, the navy took control of the world's sea lanes,
01:02driving Britain's pursuit of trade and empire.
01:07New technologies extended its lead over other navies.
01:12And more than ever, British ships and sailors were the symbols of the nation.
01:20But Britain's dominance would not go uncontested forever,
01:24and by 1914, she faced her greatest challenge yet.
01:29Once again, Britain found herself vying for global supremacy,
01:33this time against a backdrop of unprecedented upheaval
01:37and the emergence of a dangerous new enemy.
01:40The navy, which had been the instrument of Britain's success,
01:44now took her to the very brink of defeat.
01:46Early one January morning in 1841,
02:0812 British warships sailed up to the mouth of the Pearl River,
02:12gateway to the southern Chinese port of Canton.
02:16As the 19th century unfolded, the navy had built on Nelson's legacy.
02:24They had pushed British interests further afield than ever before.
02:29Algeria, Egypt, Burma, New Zealand.
02:32Now it was China's turn.
02:40The Royal Navy was here to open up China for business.
02:44But this was no polite trading mission.
02:46This was war.
02:47For years British merchants had been buying Chinese tea and paying with opium.
02:56They smuggled in six million kilograms a year.
02:59The Chinese authorities had been appalled by the devastating effect of the drug on their people.
03:04They clamped down on the trade and threw the British out of China.
03:10Retribution was to be brutal and effective.
03:13The navy was sent to reopen the Chinese market by force.
03:22Among the fleet that day, there was a new ship.
03:24She hadn't yet been tested in battle.
03:26She was called Nemesis for the Chinese.
03:30That's what she turned out to be.
03:32Nemesis went into action against 15 war junks.
03:36As soon as she opened fire, she immediately set one alight.
03:40From the deck, her captain, William Hall, viewed the scene.
03:44The smoke and flame and thunder of the explosion, he said,
03:48were enough to strike awe, if not fear, into the stoutest heart that looked upon it.
03:55Armed with antiquated guns and spears, the junks were no match for the Nemesis,
04:00medieval weapons in a modern world.
04:04They turned and fled up narrow river channels.
04:10At this point, the large traditional sailing ships the Royal Navy would have had to give up the chase.
04:18But the Nemesis was able to set off after the junks in hot pursuit,
04:23because deep within her hull roared a steam engine.
04:27Revolutionary new technology that drove a ship through the water,
04:31no matter what the wind, tide or currents were doing.
04:34And every single junk the Nemesis chased, she captured or destroyed.
04:40Revolutionary new technology that drove a ship through the sea.
04:47Never before had a steam-powered ship played such a decisive role.
04:55The astonished Chinese called her a demon ship.
04:58Britain was shaping the future of warfare, and China, the world's oldest empire, suffered a crushing defeat.
05:10In the past, people put the extraordinary success of the British Empire in this period down to divine favour,
05:22or racial superiority, or even a particular kind of valour.
05:26But none of this was true.
05:27It was Britain's industrial lead that lay at the heart of this triumph.
05:32The navy, once dominant, had now become untouchable.
05:41But the British didn't claim huge swathes of mainland China as their spoils of war.
05:46Instead, she merely demanded the right to trade through Chinese ports.
05:51And the navy took its own prize.
05:55A Chinese island with a deep, sheltered harbour.
05:59Hong Kong.
06:00It's hard to believe this was once the quiet beachfront of Hong Kong.
06:16And this road here was actually a tow part that was used by the crews of Junks.
06:20Beyond it was the sea.
06:22In January 1841, British naval officers disembarked, landed at this very spot.
06:27They planted the flag in the ground and drank a toast to Queen Victoria.
06:31And then with three cheers, took possession of Hong Kong.
06:38The mastermind behind the occupation of Hong Kong was Royal Navy Captain Charles Elliott.
06:43He was Britain's chief superintendent for trade in China, and he had grand plans for the island.
06:50He had grand plans for the island.
06:52Elliott didn't just see Hong Kong as a naval base, but as the perfect place
06:56from which British merchants could conduct all their trade with China.
07:02Within months, Elliott started selling small plots of land and invited merchants into trade.
07:09But back in London, the British government didn't see it the navy's way.
07:15Hong Kong was dismissed as a barren island with hardly a house upon it.
07:20Elliott was sacked.
07:26But despite his departure, Elliott's plans had a momentum of their own.
07:31A small fleet of six Royal Navy vessels was kept anchored in the harbour.
07:35With the security of knowing their warehouses and cargoes were protected, British merchants kept investing.
07:41Captain Elliott's successor predicted within six months of Hong Kong being declared a permanent colony,
07:48it will be a vast emporium of commerce and wealth.
07:53In 1842, Hong Kong was formally ceded to the British Empire in perpetuity.
07:59From then on, the warships stationed in the harbour became a potent sign of the force that would come crashing down on the Chinese if they reneged on the deal.
08:11It was the advent of what became known as gunboat diplomacy, British interests secured down the barrel of a gun.
08:25This was central to the so-called Pax Britannica, peace enforced by worldwide naval domination.
08:32By 1848, 129 British warships were posted on 55 foreign stations.
08:43The Navy's bases on Gibraltar, Malta and Aden guarded the key routes to India.
08:54The Falklands protected British interests in South America.
09:00And in the middle of the world's oceans, supply stations on islands like Ascension kept naval ships steaming from port to port.
09:07World trade flowed like never before, nearly doubling in the 1850s alone.
09:14Riding high on the back of her dominant navy, Britain had the lion's share, twice as much as her nearest rival, France.
09:27People always think that Britain was rich and powerful because of her vast empire,
09:31but actually you could forget the big open spaces of southern Africa, Australia and Canada.
09:35The source of her wealth was control of the territory that really mattered, the sea.
09:56Back at home, the navy was celebrated like never before.
10:00Over the summer of 1863, the best family day out was a trip to see the navy's ships as they went on a tour around Britain.
10:16One and a half million people, seven percent of the population, turned out to see their splendid fleet.
10:22It was all part of an elaborate PR exercise designed to highlight the central role of the navy in public life.
10:32This was the star of the show, HMS Warrior, the largest, fastest, most powerful battleship anywhere in the world at the time.
10:47She's famous for being Britain's first ironclad. In fact, she's more than just clad in iron,
10:52she's ironed throughout, making her one of the most revolutionary ships of all time.
11:01The warrior was the embodiment of the industrial revolution, at sea.
11:06Inside, people could marvel at some of the greatest inventions of the era.
11:13The engine room. 240 tonnes worth of machinery down here.
11:30It's when you come right down here into the bowels of the ship, away from the masts and rigging up there,
11:35that you realise just how far we are now from Nelson's navy of wood and sails.
11:43This new navy needed men with different skills.
11:53The crew included 12 engineers to operate the engines and up to 66 stokers to shovel coal.
12:00At full pelt, they could make the warrior go faster than any sail-powered battleship.
12:09The Armstrong guns were a brand new design.
12:11The first thing we do when we come to fire something like this, a 110-pounder,
12:15is we need to slacken off the breech crew.
12:22The 110-pound breech loader could propel shells over a range of two and a half miles.
12:28They were laid out in a single gun deck within an armoured citadel.
12:36The most powerful guns of the day couldn't pierce these iron walls, even at point-blank range.
12:41There were no set visitor hours, so people could pretty much just drop by any time of day.
12:49But that meant that they saw whatever was going on on board at the time.
12:54On this deck alone, 450 sailors might be taking their lunch at these tables, or cleaning the decks,
12:59or repairing parts of the ship. Or if they were off-duty, perhaps they'd just be fixing up their uniforms,
13:05or just reading the newspaper. It was a unique opportunity for the public
13:09to gain a glimpse of the realities of life on board.
13:12And they were amazed by it. Not just the weapons, but the state-of-the-art domestic touches.
13:23Bathing was a rare event for many Victorians, but the warrior had private bathroom facilities.
13:31And ladies were astonished by the first-ever on-board washing machines.
13:35The Admiralty had pulled out all the stops to show the navy in the best possible light.
13:45It reassured the public that Britain still ruled the waves.
13:52Because warrior had been built in response to a terrifying new reality.
13:58For the first time in over 100 years, another nation had stolen a march on Britain's technological lead.
14:05The really surprising thing about the idea for this kind of ship is that it didn't come from Britain at all,
14:12but from her oldest enemy, France. It was the French who had launched the world's first ironclad
14:19battleship in 1859, called La Gloire. Now this was a wake-up call to everyone at the Admiralty,
14:26a reminder that the French threat was still alive and well.
14:30La Gloire had been a crushing blow to national pride. Prince Albert had fumed,
14:39the war preparations of the French are immense. Ours are despicable. What have we got to meet this new
14:46engine of war? The answer was warrior. One and a half times bigger and twice as powerful as La Gloire.
14:57No ship in the world could compete with the warrior. Britain had yet again established its naval supremacy.
15:06But the shipbuilding revolution did not stop here. Instead, it accelerated. Britain and France both
15:12desperately strove to outdo each other and produce new and more powerful ships. A new term was coined to
15:19describe this intense rivalry. An arms race. And the pace was incredibly fast. Ships were outdated
15:27as soon as they were launched. Ten years after the warrior, the most powerful ship on earth,
15:32was commissioned, it was obsolete.
15:39The building of warrior marked the start of a battle between Britain and her rivals that would be decided
15:45not by combat, but through a never-ending game of technological one-upmanship. And over the next 20
15:52years, it was Britain's navy which appeared to be winning the arms race. The question was,
15:58could the men inside the navy keep up?
16:03In October 1881, the navy's latest ship arrived in Malta, home to the Mediterranean fleet,
16:19the largest and most important fleet in the navy.
16:27In command, her newly appointed captain, Jackie Fisher.
16:33When Fisher entered this harbour, he must have thought that he'd arrived. He'd been given his
16:39most prestigious posting yet, command of HMS Inflexible, the most advanced, powerful battleship
16:46in the Royal Navy. He would have known that all the eyes in the fleet were on him and his new ship.
16:54Jackie Fisher was enthralled by the latest inventions of his age. He'd made a name for himself,
16:59pioneering a new type of weapon, the torpedo. For him, the Inflexible was a wonder,
17:05with the thickest armour, the biggest guns, the largest of everything, beyond any ship in the world.
17:15Above all else, she was modern. As well as two colossal steam engines to drive the propellers,
17:22there were 39 smaller engines to power electric lighting, ventilation, steering gear and hydraulic pumps.
17:32Captain Fisher immediately set to work, making Inflexible ready for the Admiral's inspection.
17:42Fisher did everything he could to get the Inflexible up to a full state of battle readiness,
17:46but despite all his hard work, he didn't receive any official credit, and the reason for that
17:50was very simple. Fisher and his men were no good at sailing.
17:56Well, they were good sailors, but they just couldn't use the sails.
18:03Incredibly Inflexible, which was state-of-the-art in every other way,
18:07had masts, rigging and hundreds of feet of canvas sails.
18:16Although traditional sailing skills were now irrelevant to modern warfare,
18:20the top brass at the Admiralty still believed that sailors were nothing without sails.
18:26The old guard clung to their traditions. They regarded the use of the engine as unseaman-like,
18:35and there could be no greater insult.
18:39But Fisher said that sails had as much effect upon the Inflexible in a gale of wind
18:44as a fly would have on a hippopotamus.
18:50He was alienated by what he called the bow and arrow party in the Admiralty.
18:56He saw that future battles would be decided by the speed of engines and the power of guns.
19:08But the modern machines Fisher celebrated were despised. Those who operated them,
19:13the engineers and stokers with their dirty uniforms and technical know-how,
19:18were treated as interlopers. Even when masts and sails were gradually phased out,
19:25sail drill was replaced by an obsession for cleanliness. There were even reports of ammunition
19:30being dumped overboard to avoid the mess caused by gun practice.
19:35Battleships were becoming showpieces, not weapons of war. Appearance was more important than function.
19:41The old guards were failing to get to grips with the new technologies that were revolutionising war
19:46at sea. There was an expression around at the time to describe this attitude.
19:50It said that when the ships were wood, the men were iron. Now that the ships were iron, the men were wood.
19:58Fisher was convinced that in the hands of the traditionalists,
20:02the navy was lagging dangerously behind in the arms race.
20:08When he returned to London in 1884, he fought back.
20:12His tactics would be instantly recognisable today. He leaked sensational stories of arms shortages to the press.
20:29He found an ally in W.T. Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette and pioneer of a new kind of shock
20:37journalism. Dramatic exposés designed to whip his readers up into a storm of indignation.
20:48All right, here we go. Front page. Headlines will get everybody reading.
20:51The truth about the navy by one who knows the facts. Britain is short of everything
20:57from battleships to torpedo boats. There are not enough trained men able to fight.
21:03And the guns aren't good enough. Our guns actually fitted in theory, both in weight and in power,
21:08to those of France and Italy. And the conclusion is very simple. I have shown that on almost all
21:15important points, the truth about the navy is that our naval supremacy has almost ceased to exist.
21:25But the Victorians, this would have been absolutely shocking. They were raised on the idea of
21:29British maritime invincibility. Fisher's propaganda played on the nation's fears and had exactly the
21:38impact he wanted. The suggestion that Nelson's heritage had been squandered was a horrifying concept,
21:46one that was picked up by the national newspapers. The public went up in arms. The Daily Telegraph called
21:54it a cry of patriotic anxiety to which no minister can close his ears. The Pall Mall Gazette articles
22:02prompted a new sense of fear and insecurity. And the British people reacted by seizing on to a new,
22:08more aggressive form of nationalism. As one popular music hall song put it at the time,
22:14we don't want to fight, but by jingo if we do, we've got the ships, we've got the men,
22:18we've got the money too. Jingoism was born, a response to the British anxiety about losing
22:25their dominant world position. And what was the symbol of this new mood? Well, the navy of course.
22:32The navy was used to advertise everything from mustard to chocolate. Sailors were emblazoned
22:38across cigarette packets and ironclad became the brand name of choice for anything British made.
22:48Eventually, the government crumbled under public pressure. In 1889, they invested an astonishing
22:54£21 million in the navy, enough to make it more than twice the size of her two greatest rivals,
23:02France and Russia.
23:05This was such an important victory for public opinion in what was fast becoming a modern democratic
23:11society. A society with mass circulation newspapers and journals,
23:16their column inches filled by talk of the navy, the commanders, its weapons and its men.
23:27The navy may have secured more money for its fleet, but it had yet to deal with another problem.
23:33Since Trafalgar, its men had had little experience of full-scale conflict.
23:38The skills that had made Nelson's navy great were slowly being lost.
23:49Henry Capper joined a training ship in 1869, aged 14. He started on the very bottom rung of the ladder
23:57as a rating. A uniform was introduced for the first time to the lower ranks in 1857 and it hasn't changed
24:06much since. The square collar was copied from the sailor's suits worn aboard the royal yacht and it's still
24:13in use. Despite their smart appearance, Capper thought these uniforms reinforced what he described
24:22as a caste system. He said that nothing could more clearly indicate the wide gulf that existed between
24:28himself and the officers. And Capper noticed this gulf because his lifetime ambition was to become an
24:35officer. Keep going, not far to go now. Come on Fraser then, take over him. Do not want to lose us guys.
24:42Stretch it, you can reach that now. Off you get. Next one, let's go.
24:50Today, ratings can advance through the service based on individual merit.
24:54In Capper's time, the only way men could prove themselves was through acts of gallantry in battle.
25:06With no major wars to fight, these opportunities were so rare that in 80 years, only two men from
25:13the lower ranks made it into the officer class.
25:16Capper wrote this account of his life in the navy and he describes all the snubs and humiliations he
25:27was forced to endure during his attempts to become an officer. Summed up by this passage here, when
25:33a mother of a lieutenant says to him, you've chosen the wrong service. The navy belongs to us. And if you
25:39were to win the commissions you asked for, it would be at the expense of our sons and nephews,
25:43whose birthright it is. The message here is clear. If you began life as a rating,
25:49you had no chance of reaching the top.
25:51Capper called the lack of incentive soul deadening.
26:00The navy was beginning to stagnate and it was losing what had always been one of its greatest
26:04strengths, a rough and ready meritocracy where anyone could get ahead.
26:08In wartime, it had been easy for talented men to shine. In peace, the entrenched hierarchy
26:16was everything. The class system and rule book were smothering any spark of initiative.
26:26The flaws of this mindset were about to be revealed with tragic consequences.
26:31Admiral Sir George Tryon was one of the most famous commanders of his era. Charismatic,
26:41larger than life, the embodiment of an old sea dog.
26:47In 1893, he held that most prized role in the navy, commander of the Mediterranean fleet.
26:54Trion liked to test his crews by ordering them to carry out intricate manoeuvres.
27:10On one evening in June, he was leading 11 of his finest warships off the coast of Tripoli in
27:16southern Lebanon. In order to get his fleet into a position where they could anchor for the evening,
27:27Trion decided to carry out a particularly complicated manoeuvre. But he didn't tell anyone what it was.
27:33He just sent out a series of flag signals from the deck of his ship.
27:39First, Trion, aboard HMS Victoria, instructed his fleet to form two columns steaming parallel
27:45to each other. Then he ordered the two columns to turn inwards so they would end up heading in the
27:52opposite direction.
28:00The problem was that big ships like this need a huge amount of space to turn. Trion's two lines of
28:07ships needed to be about a kilometre and a half apart in order to carry out the manoeuvre safely,
28:12but they weren't. Admiral Markham, who was leading the second column, knew this and he hesitated. But Trion sent
28:19him another order saying, what are you waiting for? Markham decided to follow his orders and turned his ship.
28:26Markham forged forward towards Trion's flagship.
28:40At the last minute, both desperately tried to reverse, but it was too late.
28:45With sickening inevitability, the two ships ploughed into each other.
28:56Markham's battering ram pierced the side of Trion's ship.
29:03Within just a few minutes, the foredeck was submerged. Even though their ship was sinking under them, many of the 600 men
29:10on board fell in to their neat ranks waiting for orders. Only when they were commanded to do so, did they jump overboard.
29:21From a nearby ship, one eyewitness reported what happened next.
29:26As HMS Victoria went, the boats and waits on her port side fell over to Leeward with a terrible crash.
29:32The ship then turned keel up, and something after a minute after this, she sank out of sight.
29:42Half the crew, 358 men, were drowned. Some trapped on board, some dragged under, others couldn't swim.
29:54Trion went down with his ship. His last reported words were, it was all my fault.
30:02The news that HMS Victoria had been sunk by another ship in Her Majesty's Navy was received with shock and amazement.
30:27It was the worst naval disaster in decades.
30:32With the death of Trion, Britain had lost a national hero.
30:38As one newspaper put it, the angel of sorrow hovered over the land.
30:44Key officers involved in the accident were to be court-martialed.
30:48To get away from the media spotlight, the trial was held out here in Malta.
31:05There was an old three-deck wooden warship called HMS Hibernia, which was moored up just there, on the other side of Valletta Harbour.
31:11The question at the heart of the inquiry was whether Trion was to blame for issuing a dangerous command,
31:19or whether it was Markham's fault for blindly obeying an order that he knew could lead to disaster.
31:24And that was an issue that split not just the Royal Navy, but public opinion back in Britain.
31:29On the third day of the court-martial, Markham appeared in the witness stand.
31:38Markham tried to defend himself.
31:40He claimed that he'd been convinced that Trion would have something else up his sleeve in order of further change, of course.
31:46But for many people, this was an inadequate excuse.
31:55Markham was a rear admiral, with 40 years of experience in the Navy.
32:00He was second in command of the Mediterranean fleet,
32:03responsible for some of Britain's finest ships and thousands of her men.
32:09Surely he should have realised how dangerous Trion's signal had been, and disobeyed the order.
32:16The Victorian sailors had been indoctrinated by a culture that placed enormous emphasis on discipline.
32:27Orders must be obeyed.
32:28For many, Markham had simply been doing his duty.
32:34Commenting on the trial, the Queen herself wrote in her private journal
32:37that to say that inferior should disobey in the event of anything very dangerous taking place would never do.
32:46After ten days, the verdict was delivered.
32:54This is a copy of the conclusion of the trial,
32:57and it says that the court finds, with the deepest sorrow and regret,
33:01that the collision was due to an order given by Sir George Trion,
33:04clearly placing the blame for the loss of the Victoria on his shoulders.
33:08Now, at Markham, it says that it would be fatal to the best interests of the service
33:13to say he was to blame for carrying out the directions of the commander-in-chief,
33:17letting him off the hook.
33:19The sinking of the Victoria could have been an opportunity to fix some of the problems that afflicted the Victorian Navy,
33:30but this verdict showed that obedience was valued higher than thinking for yourself.
33:36From now on, it was even more important to do what you were told than to do what was right.
33:40Nothing could have been more different to the career of the man who naval officers regarded as an icon,
33:47Horatio Nelson, whose name they remembered,
33:50but whose qualities for risk-taking and initiative they had forgotten.
33:57Nowhere was this blind worship of Nelson more apparent than at an important new barracks back at home.
34:03They were built in Portsmouth in 1903.
34:28This is the mess, the officer's mess, the canteen, if you like,
34:31where all the officers that lived and worked in Portsmouth would have eaten.
34:36And sitting here amongst your brother officers,
34:39there was no doubt as to what was expected of you.
34:50It certainly does not feel like a canteen.
34:52It feels like a religious space, a shrine to Britain's naval greatness.
34:56I mean, take the ceiling, for example, these massive oak beams.
34:59That is actually the shape of HMS Victory's hull, the most famous battleship in British history.
35:10And then on the walls, these incredible murals on an epic scale,
35:14depicting all the greatest moments in British maritime history.
35:19Of course, down here, we have Nelson, the greatest admiral of them all.
35:24This room tells you so much about the Royal Navy at the start of the 20th century,
35:32the way its officers were surrounded by images of a glorious past.
35:35But the problem was these victories were 100 years old, and the world had moved on.
35:42Britain was no longer the only modern industrial power.
35:46The technological lead that the country had enjoyed for so much of the 19th century had been lost.
35:54As the Industrial Revolution spread, a new era of aggressive national rivalry dawned.
36:00As a boy, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany had dreamt of one day building a fleet
36:08to match that of his grandmother, Queen Victoria.
36:15By the turn of the century, Germany had a fleet of 38 battleships planned.
36:20To the British, this could mean only one thing.
36:30As the First Lord of the Admiralty wrote in 1902,
36:34the new German navy is being built up for war with us.
36:40A radical overhaul of the navy was now an urgent matter of national security.
36:45And the man the admiralty turned to in this crisis was acting as commander-in-chief down here in Portsmouth.
36:51The man of the moment was Admiral Jackie Fisher.
36:59Fisher had come a long way since his days on the inflexible.
37:03He'd tirelessly worked his way up to the rank of admiral,
37:06and in 1904, he landed the top job in the navy, First Sea Lord.
37:15Fisher was well aware of the magnitude of the task that he faced,
37:19and he spent the months before taking up office down in Portsmouth writing this,
37:23a manifesto of everything he hoped to achieve.
37:26He had it bound up and called Naval Necessities, and this is a copy here.
37:32It's a wonderful document because it's a direct transcription of Fisher's actual handwriting,
37:37and they've replicated all the underlinings, the capitalisations, the italics,
37:42and particularly exclamation marks, and the entire text is littered with them.
37:46You really get a sense of Fisher the man.
37:48His enthusiasm, his eccentricity, and above all, his energy and his passion for the navy.
37:54There's one essential passage here that I think really gets the heart of Fisher's worldview.
38:00He writes,
38:01The British Empire floats on the British navy,
38:04so we must have no doubt whatever about its fighting supremacy and its instant readiness for war.
38:11He wants to call back all of Britain's obsolete ships from every corner of the empire and sell them for scrap.
38:18And there's a raft of other measures like defending naval ports
38:21and a complete shake-up in the way that ships signal to each other at sea.
38:26Fisher called this the scheme.
38:28This was nothing less than a root and branch reform of the navy.
38:33And he writes here,
38:35We must have the scheme, the whole scheme, and nothing but the scheme.
38:40It's easy to see why some people thought that Fisher was a bit of a warmonger.
38:54I mean, one of his favourite expressions was,
38:56Hit first, hit hard, and keep hitting.
39:01But actually, he saw himself as a man of peace.
39:05His guiding principle is carved here above the door.
39:08His idea was to build the navy up into such an unassailable force that no one would dare to take it on.
39:24It was peace through deterrence.
39:26Fisher also had a plan to build a ship.
39:35It would be the largest ever produced in one of Britain's dockyards.
39:38It would be the centrepiece of what he liked to call the fleet that Jack built.
39:51And he warned people to get ready for a shock.
39:58These plans are actually very beautiful.
40:07I love all the different colours they've used to shade in the different compartments and boats.
40:12The Admiralty used the scale of a quarter inch to one foot for all its plans.
40:16And with brilliant consistency, they never changed this.
40:19So as the ships got bigger, the plans got bigger as well.
40:21This one's absolutely gigantic.
40:22This wonderful profile here allows us to see what was so revolutionary about the ship,
40:29and that was its firepower.
40:30It was appropriate that the British, that had done so much to develop the use of guns on ships,
40:35should now bring it up to this great crescendo.
40:38No other ship in the world had more than four 12-inch guns.
40:41This one mounted ten of them in five turrets here.
40:47When this ship fired its broadside,
40:49it sent over three tonnes of steel and high explosives towards the enemy.
40:55These thick black lines along the outside of the hull are actually armour plates.
41:00This ship had 5,000 tonnes of armour, 800 more than any other ship in the world.
41:06The hull was divided up into all these compartments here, which were watertight.
41:10In fact, they're even called watertight compartments here.
41:14This ship really was intended to be unsinkable.
41:17It's the culmination of around a century of unprecedented innovation in ship design.
41:25Fisher chose the name of this new ship with great care.
41:29He wanted something that would evoke the glorious tradition of the Royal Navy.
41:33And he decided on Dreadnought.
41:35Elizabeth I had named one of her ship's Dreadnought and had fought against the Spanish Armada.
41:43There'd been a Dreadnought with Nelson at Trafalgar.
41:46Now, there was a new Dreadnought.
41:51It was a name with history.
41:53Construction began on the 2nd of October 1905.
41:59Under top-secret conditions, 3,000 men worked 11 hours a day, six days a week, in the Portsmouth Royal Dockyard.
42:08With record-breaking speed, the first Dreadnought was completed just a year and a day later.
42:14Dreadnought was designed to give Britain an unassailable lead over her enemies.
42:23But in a world where other nations now had the shipbuilding capacity to match Britain,
42:29one radical new ship was no longer enough to guarantee the Navy's advantage for long.
42:35The problem was that the Dreadnought was so powerful that it made every other battleship in the world obsolete.
42:43Britain had effectively wiped out its own naval advantage by creating a new level playing field.
42:48Now, all a rival had to do to overtake Britain was start building its own Dreadnoughts.
42:54One nation seized on this opportunity.
42:57Germany.
42:58The Dreadnought, far from deterring the enemy, actually ignited a new arms race.
43:04And this time, the stakes would be higher than ever before.
43:12The Germans could build six Dreadnoughts a year.
43:17Not to be outdone, Fisher drove a vigorous campaign to double Britain's construction from four to eight Dreadnoughts per year.
43:25The Liberal government under Herbert Asquith had been determined to reduce naval expenditure in favour of social reform.
43:37But in 1909, he caved in to Fisher's demands for eight Dreadnoughts because Europe was in the grip of Dreadnought-building fever.
43:45Austria was planning three of the mighty battleships, Italy, four.
43:56The threat was seen as so dangerous that by 1910, a quarter of all public expenditure was going to the Admiralty.
44:04Fisher finally retired after five tumultuous years at the very top of the Navy, but he'd won his battle.
44:15As the last of the Dreadnoughts that he'd planned rolled off the slipway, it was clear that Britain had trumped Germany.
44:21By 1914, Britain had 42 Dreadnoughts built or planned to Germany's 26th.
44:31The Germans gave up on their plans of overtaking Britain.
44:36Fisher's policy of peace through deterrence seemed to be working.
44:40On the 20th of June, 1914, a fleet of British Dreadnoughts headed to Germany.
44:54The Royal Navy had been invited to attend a sailing regatta on the north German coast.
45:00The event, called Kiel Week, is still held today.
45:04Kiel Week is yet another example of the Kaiser's obsession with all things British.
45:10Having borrowed the design of ships and uniforms from the Royal Navy,
45:14he even imported a week-long sailing regatta modelled on Cows Week,
45:18the highlight of the British sailing calendar.
45:21But things here were a bit different, because Kiel was the home of the Imperial German Navy.
45:27And unlike relaxed cows, this event was a bit more formal, a bit more militaristic.
45:34The arrival of the Royal Navy's ships caused a sensation.
45:41Flotillas of boats sailed out to greet the fleet.
45:52The German Navy laid on a week-long programme of entertainments,
45:56banquets, dances, garden parties and football.
46:01By the right!
46:04One German officer observed everyone mixing at close quarters.
46:08Now we are 176.
46:11Cheers!
46:14They were very soon good friends.
46:17We enjoyed the Kiel Week.
46:20At all the balls and dinners, the young English officers could be seen getting on famously with the German officers
46:25and flirting zealously with the German ladies.
46:32But the British weren't just here to have a good time.
46:35The night before the fleet left Britain, the admiral in command issued a secret memorandum from his flagship.
46:44He said that all the officers were to obtain all the information they can about the latest German weapon systems and state-of-the-art equipment.
46:51The fascinating list, he says they're particularly to look out for gunnery fittings, torpedo fittings, signalling and wireless telegraphy.
46:58Clearly, this mission was about a lot more than diplomacy.
47:01The British, of course, were here to spy.
47:05And the Germans knew it.
47:08They had spies of their own.
47:11But it was clearly no reason to stop the regatta.
47:14In fact, nothing, it seemed, could end the fun.
47:25Then, on the 28th of June 1914, as the Kaiser was racing his yacht, the meteor just out there,
47:31a messenger approached on a boat bearing bad news.
47:34Earlier that day, the Kaiser's friend and ally, the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, had been shot and killed in Sarajevo.
47:44The British ships stayed for another day of festivities.
47:48When it was time for them to leave, their hosts issued a signal wishing them a pleasant journey.
47:56The British replied,
47:59Friends today, friends tomorrow, friends forever.
48:04Cheers.
48:04Cheers.
48:05Cheers.
48:05Yet, just six weeks after making this promise, the British Navy would be at war with their German hosts.
48:16The fleet that Jack built was about to be tested in battle for the first time.
48:25HMS Caroline is a cruiser and one of the last ships to survive from the First World War.
48:42She was built in record time and launched in September 1914.
48:46Three months later, she headed to Scarpa Flow in Orkney to join Britain's Grand Fleet, under command of John Jellicoe.
48:55He was the man Fisher had chosen to be, as he put it,
48:59Admiralissimo when the Battle of Armageddon comes along.
49:02That day finally dawned on the 31st of May 1916, when the German High Seas Fleet steamed out of their ports,
49:13hoping to lure one of Jellicoe's squadrons into battle.
49:17The British had intercepted enemy signals and knew about the trap.
49:21HMS Caroline and the rest of the fleet left their bases to meet the Germans.
49:28The two fleets would finally clash in the North Sea, near Denmark, just west of Jutland.
49:36When the war began, the British people expected their beloved navy to fight and win another Trafalgar.
49:42Even though it had been 100 years before, it was still the only benchmark they had for a naval battle of this kind.
49:48The trouble was, since Trafalgar, war at sea had changed beyond all recognition.
49:53No one, not even Jellicoe, had any experience of fighting on ships like this.
50:02One German officer recounted seeing the British fleet for the first time.
50:07Suddenly my periscope revealed some big ships, black monsters, six tall, broad-beamed giants,
50:15steaming in two columns, and even at this great distance, they looked powerful, massive.
50:22But, despite first impressions, things very quickly began to go wrong for Jellicoe.
50:29For centuries, admirals have signalled their orders to their fleet using these signal flags.
50:35Now, they each have a separate meaning, both individually and when used together.
50:39Now, this is fine at the Battle of Trafalgar, when the ships were, you know, just a few metres apart.
50:44But at Jutland, Jellicoe was commanding over 100 vessels spread over tens of miles of ocean.
50:50Now, to make matters worse, all the smoke from these funnels would have obscured the flags,
50:55made it really impossible to read what the admiral was ordering.
50:58It was an outdated system in a modern world.
51:01One admiral, Evan Thomas, couldn't read the signals of his commanding officer.
51:09Unthinkingly, he led his squadron off in the wrong direction.
51:16Although he eventually turned them round, four of the most powerful ships in the world
51:21were unable to get close enough to the action for the opening critical encounter.
51:31The problems could have been solved by a brand new invention.
51:38Radio sets had recently been installed on the ships and they should have helped with communication.
51:43But like many forms of new technology, they also caused a lot of confusion
51:46and some commanders simply didn't bother using them.
51:51Battle commenced at 3.20.
51:54Throughout, Jellicoe was left in the dark.
51:56He later said the whole situation was difficult to grasp
52:01and we could hardly see anything except flashes of guns,
52:05shells falling and ships blowing up.
52:15At four o'clock, the first British battlecruiser was destroyed.
52:2020 minutes later, Queen Mary exploded with tremendous force,
52:24debris soaring hundreds of feet into the air.
52:281,200 men were killed instantly.
52:41But this wasn't caused by some German superweapon.
52:45This was an avoidable error.
52:48Protective doors had been installed to prevent fires spreading
52:52from one area of the ship to another.
52:55But to decrease the time it took for ammunition to be passed up from the magazines to the guns,
53:01British sailors kept the doors open.
53:04What happened was that German shells would hit the upper deck and cause an explosion
53:08that would send a white sheet of flame tearing through the middle of the ship
53:14until it ignited the magazine down here.
53:16Three British battleships in particular were blown apart in this way.
53:22One ship had only two survivors and 1,000 men killed.
53:25For part of the battle, HMS Caroline was in the thick of it.
53:35As the fighting raged, the helmsman would have been sent below.
53:38Down here, deep below the waterlines, where eight of the strongest men on board would have steered the ship,
53:51that hatch would have been locked.
53:53Their only connection with the outside world was this mechanism here,
53:56which transmitted the orders of the officers in command of the ship,
54:00high up on the bridge,
54:01telling these men which course to steer.
54:05If the ship was hit, they had absolutely no chance of escape.
54:09These low lights would have just died, it would have been pitch black,
54:13and water would have started to come in through these joins in the steel plates.
54:17When you come down here, you realise that warfare was just as terrifying,
54:22just as deadly out here at sea as it was in the trenches of the Western Front.
54:31By dawn the next day, the British had lost three fast, powerful battlecruisers for only one of Germany's,
54:39and the British had lost twice as many men.
54:42Many British shells had broken up rather than penetrate German armour,
54:46and British use of intelligence had been woeful.
54:50When Jackie Fisher heard reports of the battle, he said,
54:53they failed me.
54:55I've spent 30 years of my life preparing for this day,
54:58and they failed me.
55:03In the end, Jutland would be considered a British strategic victory.
55:08The sheer size of Jellicoe's fleet
55:11stopped the Germans from ever attempting to take on the British
55:15in the same way again.
55:17But the Germans had exposed weaknesses in that British fleet.
55:22Jutland had not been the knockout blow the British public had hoped for.
55:26After Jutland, the Kaiser exultantly declared,
55:37the spell of Trafalgar is broken.
55:39And, in a way, he had a point.
55:41The Navy had failed to land the knockout blow
55:44that they'd achieved 100 years before.
55:46But he was also right unintentionally in another way.
55:49There would be no more Trafalgar's.
55:51Jutland was the last battle decided by big-gunned warships alone.
55:57Below the waves and in the skies above,
55:59new weapons would now decide the outcome of war at sea
56:03and help defeat Germany.
56:05But the dominance of battleships,
56:07so long a symbol of national might, was over.
56:11Britain emerged from the war victorious,
56:13but exhausted and broke.
56:16And our Navy was finally forced to give up its determination
56:19to maintain by far the world's largest fleet.
56:24In time, other nations eclipsed Britain.
56:27It was the end of centuries of naval supremacy.
56:33Four centuries before,
56:35the Navy had set a tiny impoverished kingdom
56:38on the path to greatness.
56:41In time, it had transformed Britain
56:43into the most powerful empire in history,
56:46with enormous consequences for the rest of the world.
56:49There was slavery, conquest, and war on a titanic scale.
56:54But the Navy also ensured
56:56that Britain would preserve its independence
56:58in its unique economic and political systems.
57:02Its ships protected a vast trade
57:04that made Britain wealthy
57:06and sparked revolutions in agriculture,
57:09industry, and finance,
57:10which changed Britain and the world forever.
57:14The Navy pioneered new sciences
57:15and reinvented our understanding
57:18of the world we live in.
57:19And they made the sea and seafaring
57:21an integral part of our culture
57:24and national identity.
57:29And today, just as they've done for centuries,
57:32the ships of the Royal Navy
57:34continue to defend Britain's shores,
57:36and protect her sea lanes.
57:40Wherever I go,
57:42I see evidence of what the Navy has left behind.
57:44Its ships allow this country
57:46to have an impact far beyond
57:48the confines of the British Isles.
57:50The modern world is built
57:52on foundations laid by the Royal Navy.
57:54And that was the final part
58:09of Empire of the Seas.
58:11Next tonight, stay with us
58:12for a trip to Essex
58:13with Natural World.
58:14The National Anthem
58:19and the National Anthem
58:19and the National Anthem
58:20and the National Anthem
58:20and the National Anthem
58:21and the National Anthem
58:22and the National Anthem
58:23and the National Anthem
58:23and the National Anthem
58:23and the National Anthem
58:24and the National Anthem
58:24and the National Anthem
58:25and the National Anthem
58:25and the National Anthem
58:26and the National Anthem
58:26and the National Anthem
58:27and the National Anthem
58:27and the National Anthem
58:28and the National Anthem
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58:29and the National Anthem
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58:30and the National Anthem
58:31and the National Anthem
58:31and the National Anthem
58:32and the National Anthem
58:32and the National Anthem
58:33and the National Anthem
58:33and the National Anthem
58:33and the National Anthem
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