Not merely the form of the Fleet was revolutionized under his hand, but its spirit.

The British Navy was baptized into a new birth with the pea-soup of the North Sea.
When this great work was accomplished he ordered a ship to be built which should put the Kiel Canal out of business for many years.

That done, and while the Germans were spending the marks which otherwise would have built warships in widening and deepening this channel to the North Sea, Lord Fisher wrote it down that war with Germany would come in 1914, and that Captain Jellicoe would be England's Nelson.
From that moment he lost something of the hard and almost brutal expression which had given so formidable a character to his face.

He gave rein to his natural humour.

He let himself go; quoted more freely from the Bible, asserted more positively that the English people are the lost tribes of Israel, and waited for Armageddon with a humorous eye on the perturbed face of Admiral Tirpitz.
In July, 1914, he was out of office.