John Arbuthnot Fisher was born on 25 January 1841 on the Wavenden Estate at Ramboda in Ceylon. He was the eldest of eleven children, of whom only seven survived infancy, born to Sophie Fisher and Captain William Fisher, a British Army officer in the 78th Highlanders, who had been an aide-de-camp to the former governor of Ceylon, Sir Robert Wilmot-Horton, and was serving as a staff officer at Kandy. Fisher commented, 'My mother was a most magnificent and handsome, extremely young woman...My father was 6 feet 2 inches..., also especially handsome. Why I am ugly is one of those puzzles of physiology which are beyond finding out'.