John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher

At the time, the strategic direction of the war is being set by the British War Cabinet, a five-man war cabinet.

You have Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, and military figures Lord Kitchener, representing the Army, and Admiral John, or Jacky, Fisher, representing the Navy, so a five-man cabinet.

But what's interesting about the War Cabinet is the lack of clear military advice that feeds into it and is shared with the wider cabinet.

The British Imperial General Staff has been sidelined at the start of the war.

So one of the key things is understanding who each of these people were, what their interests were.

So for example, um, the fourth lieutenant, uh, is, uh, a man called, uh, Jackie Fisher in 1863, um, Lord Fisher, who goes on to a glittering naval career.

He's a gunnery expert, so if you look in his cabin, you'll see all the indications of what you would expect if you had a gunnery officer occupying that cabin.

Very different to a navigator, for example, um, that you might get in George Parker, who's the third lieutenant at this time, who went off to map areas of Canada later on.

The shell shortage on the Western Front had become a public scandal.

The First Sea Lord, Admiral John Fisher, resigned dramatically over his objections to the Dardanelles operation, triggering a constitutional emergency that forced the Liberal government to invite the Conservatives into a coalition.

The Conservatives had conditions.

One of them was that Winston Churchill should be removed from the Admiralty.

This increased over the years so that by the start of the First World War Britain had commissioned 20 dreadnoughts and nine battlecruisers compared with Germany's 15 commissioned dreadnoughts and seven battlecruisers.

Another strategic consideration for Britain in the Pacific was the 1904 alliance with Japan, something the reforming First Sea Lord from 1904 to 1910, Sir John Fisher, leant upon in his planning and response to Germany's naval build-up.

Through these years, new ships were added to the East Asia Squadron.

In 1909, an armoured cruiser, the Scharnhorst.

There would be a reckoning.

On top of that, they'd used half of their ammunition at the Battle of Coronel.

Back in London, but too late to help Craddock, on the 3rd of November, the newly reappointed First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Fisher, ordered HMS Defence to join the ships off the coast of Chile.

The following day, the devastating and humiliating news of the defeat at Coronel came to London.