Admiral Sir William Wordsworth Fisher (26 March 1875 – 24 June 1937) was a Royal Navy officer who captained a battleship at the Battle of Jutland and became Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet. Arthur Marder wrote that he was "the outstanding admiral of the inter-war period".

Fisher was born on 26 March 1875, at Blatchington in Sussex, the son of historian Herbert William Fisher and his wife Mary Louisa Jackson (1841–1916). He joined the Royal Navy in 1888 and trained in HMS Britannia. He handed over command at the end of March 1936 and went on to be Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth, hoisting his flag in on 7 July 1936. After the Coronation Naval Review and the King's Birthday Review, on Southsea Common, he died in office, while on leave in the country, after just under a year in post, on 24 June 1937, aged 62. Their daughter Cecilia Rosamund Fisher married Captain Richard Coleridge, 4th Baron Coleridge, of the Royal Navy on 28 August 1936; they had issue, two sons, including the present peer. Another daughter, Horatia Mary Fisher, married Group Captain Geoffrey Mungo Buxton, a grandson maternally of the 3rd Earl of Verulam, and had three surviving daughters.

Fisher was the brother of H. A. L. Fisher, Edmund Fisher, Charles Fisher, Florence Henrietta Darwin and Adeline Vaughan Williams. His sister Cordelia Fisher married the author, critic and journalist Richard Curle and was the mother of the academic Adam Curle.

He was related to the Stephen family, and in 1910 his ship was targeted in the Dreadnought hoax by Adrian Stephen, his sister Virginia Stephen (later Virginia Woolf) and others.

References

Bibliography

  • Admiral Sir William Fisher by Admiral Sir William James (biography – published by Macmillan, 1943)

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