He was a driving force behind the development of the fast, all-big-gun battleship, and chaired the Committee on Designs which produced the outline design for the first modern battleship, . His committee also produced a new type of cruiser in a similar style to "Dreadnought" with a high speed achieved at the expense of armour protection. This became the battlecruiser, the first being . He also encouraged the introduction of submarines into the Royal Navy, and the conversion from a largely coal-fuelled navy to an oil-fuelled one. He had a long-running public feud with another admiral, Charles Beresford.