Browsing through Wikipedia edits today I noticed the claim on Jacky Fisher’s page that ‘On 2 August 1869, “at the early age of twenty-eight”, Fisher was promoted to commander.’ The quote is taken from Ruddock Mackay’s Fisher of Kilverstone, p. 56. This didn’t sound particularly early to me: for some reason I know off the top of my head that Sir Michael Culme-Seymour, Bart., four years older than Fisher, had been promoted to that rank aged only 23 in 1859 (and Captain aged 29 in 1865). Tellingly Reginald Bacon didn’t make the claim either in his life of Fisher. I wondered—how early could 28 be for promotion to Commander in 1869? There was only one way to find out. With an hour’s train journey at hand (enlivened by being marooned by Swedish rail operator MTRX) I went through all the Lieutenants promoted in that year with Navy Lists for 1869 and 1870 and The National Archives online list of service records (which contain dates of birth). There were 39 new commanders in 1869 as far as I can see. The oldest (Harcourt T. Gammell) was 40 and the youngest (the magnificently named Thornhaugh P. Gurdon and The Honourable Edward S. Dawson) were 26. The mean age was 30, and the median and mode ages 31. Six were younger than Fisher and one (Henry J. Martin) was also 28, but two months older.
So, was Fisher really at such an ‘early age’ when promoted? The evidence suggests not, even though he was in what was referred to as a ‘promotion billet’, First Lieutenant of the Excellent, gunnery training ship at Portsmouth! He had also won promotion to Lieutenant aged just 19 which gave him a slight head start over the rest of his contemporaries.
If anyone wants the Excel sheet I compiled for this little exercise, send me an email.
UPDATE 20/01/24: I see now that it was possibly Rear-Admiral Sir William S. Jameson who originated the claim in his 1962 The House that Jack Built, p. 95, writing Fisher ‘was promoted to Commander at the early age of twenty-eight’. It is interesting how many people have repeated the claim without bothering to check. Among those who have done so are Geoffrey Penn, Roger Parkinson, Barry Gough, Terry Breverton and Paul Ashford Harris (the last wrote ‘remarkably early age’!).
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