Royal Commission on Fuel and Engines
The British Royal Commission on Fuel and Engines was established in the United Kingdom on 31 July 1912, and its remit was "[t]o report on the means of supply and storage of Liquid Fuel in peace and war, and its application to warship engines, whether indirectly or by internal combustion."
Oil integration
Fisher's "quest" as
Churchill was concerned that Britain had inadequate storage and supplies of fuel oil for the Royal Navy. At the time of his appointment to the Admiralty, the Navy already had 189 oil-powered vessels built or under construction: these required "more than 200,000 tons of oil annually", while reserves of oil were only sufficient for 4 months.[13] The principal issue was that, while Britain's internal supply of coal was plentiful, it had no such supply of oil, either domestically or within its empire.[9] Further, a projection of the Navy's requirement for oil in 1912, produced by the Admiralty in December 1911 at Churchill's command, indicated that this would be "225 times" greater than the requirement 10 years previously.[14] He appointed Fisher chairman of the Commission,[15] and allowed him to choose its other members – all were "experts in petroleum, geology, engineering and shipbuilding."[16] While standard warrants were published in The London Gazette, the Commission's reports, issued in November 1912, February 1913 and February 1914, were kept secret under the Official Secrets Act 1911.[2][1]
Support
Some Navy officials showed outstanding support for the initiative. In 1914, Admiral John Jellicoe wrote to Fisher:
It [oil fuel] is also most a necessity for these vessels because of the great difficulty that they experience in our present battle cruisers of getting coal to the furnaces sufficiently rapidly to keep their full speed after they have reduced coal on board to from 50 to 60% of its full stowage.[17]
Great strides were made in oil innovations, thanks to the admiralty's support.[15]
Resistance
The first two reports recommended that storage be adequate for four years' supply. However, when signing them, Lambert, who was a
Result
Over the course of the three-year period, Fisher filed three reports on oil integration to Churchill. Churchill used these reports to establish three leading guidelines in oil integration:[20]
- Dispersing Oil Supplies so as not to rely on a single source
- Promoting competition between oil companies
- Drawing Oil Supplies from areas in the British Empire.
References
Footnotes
Notes
- ^ a b c d e f g "152. Fuel and Engines 1912–14". British History Online. 2017. Archived from the original on 2017-06-19. Retrieved 2018-12-17.
- ^ a b "No. 28632". The London Gazette. 2 August 1912. pp. 5721–5722.
- ^ Gilbert 2015.
- ^ Siegel 2002, p. 181; Watson 1988, p. 252; MacLeod 2004; Hammond 2008; Anon. 1930; Anon. 1932.
- ^ Shorter 1979, p. 261.
- ^ Anon. 1924.
- ^ "Henderson, Reginald Friend Hannam". The National Archives. n.d. Archived from the original on 2018-12-18. Retrieved 2018-12-18.
- ^ Black 2004, pp. 119, 134.
- ^ a b c Siegel 2002, p. 180.
- ^ Lyon 2005, p. 97.
- ^ Black 2004, p. 119.
- ^ Winegard 2016, p. 47.
- ^ Black 2004, p. 133.
- ^ Black 2004, pp. 133–4.
- ^ a b Dahl 2001, p. 52.
- ^ a b Brown 2003, p. 69.
- ^ Brown 2003, p. 21.
- ^ a b Vassiliou 2018, p. 405.
- ^ Kuiken 2014, p. 276.
- ^ Toprani 2019, p. 31.
Bibliography
- Anon. (1924), "The Late Sir George Beilby" (PDF), The Engineer, 138: 149
- Anon. (1930), "Obituary", Institute of Metals: Proceedings, 1: 383, archived from the original on 2018-12-19, retrieved 2018-12-19
- Anon. (1932), "Obituary" (PDF), The Engineer, 153: 133–135
- ISBN 0-471-67186-X
- Brown, W.M. (2003). The Royal Navy's Fuel Supplies, 1898 – 1939: The Transition from Coal to Oil (PDF) (PhD thesis). King's College London. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2018-12-17.
- Dahl, Eric (2001). Naval Innovation: From Coal to Oil (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-04-08.
- ISBN 978-0-916308-23-0
- Hammond, P.W. (2008). "Thorpe, Sir Thomas Edward (1845–1925)". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36514. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- Kuiken, J. (2014), "Caught in Transition: Britain's Oil Policy in the Face of Impending Crisis, 1967–1973", JSTOR 24145537
- Lyon, D. (2005) [1996], The First Destroyers, Mercury, ISBN 1-84560-010-X
- MacLeod, R.M. (2004). "Holland, Sir Thomas Henry (1868–1947)". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33945. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- Shorter, J. (1979), "Humphrey Owen Jones, F.R.S. (1878–1912), Chemist and Mountaineer", Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 33 (2): 261–277, S2CID 57870696
- Siegel, J. (2002), Endgame: Britain, Russia, and the Final Struggle for Central Asia, I.B. Tauris, ISBN 1-85043-371-2
- Toprani, Anand (2019). Oil and the Great Powers: Britain and Germany, 1914 to 1945. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-883460-1.
- ISBN 9781538111604
- Watson, G. (1988), The Civils: The Story of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Thomas Telford, ISBN 9780727703927
- Winegard, T.C. (2016), The First World Oil War, University of Toronto, ISBN 978-1-4875-0073-3