The Royal Naval Massacre does not refer to the several high profile failures of the British Royal Navy at the beginning of the Global War. It can be argued that 1889 was the largest failure for the Royal Navy in history. Needless to say, many high ranking admirals were removed from the leadership of the Admiralty for this series of failures, and it is this radical sacking to which the term Royal Naval Massacre refers.
The Royal Naval Massacre cleared the way for two innovative, visionary admirals to rejuvenate the wartime Navy. Admiral
Milo James 'MJ' Barnett and Admiral
John Bryan were the men tapped for the task. Admiral Barnett was seen as a 'bright young thing' on the rise in the Admiralty, though his meteoric elevation to leadership was considered by some perhaps unseemly. The selection, on the personal recommendation of Prime Minister Lovecraft, of John Bryan as Barnettl's partner was even more controversial. Just before the war, Bryan had considered retiring from the Royal Navy as his outspoken views on the future of naval warfare had seen him relegated to dark horse status, but when many of his warnings proved all too real by developments in the Global War, it became obvious that he was the right man to devise a counterstrike, at least by those outside the old Admiralty. Together, Barnett and Bryan instituted three major programs that would see the Royal Navy strike back with vengeance in the latter half of the war.
The first was the crash refitting of the Royal Navy for use of smokeless gunpowder. Ships were recalled to the closest port for refitting, even to colonial ports. For those who could not be taken off station or were too far for practical turn-around, the 'refit fleet' of ship tenders and refitters set sail to convert the ships. While this was an impossible task to finish fully, the numbers that were successfully converted was considered little short of a miracle.
The second major innovation was the development of fast, compact (some would say cramped), attack boats to counter the threat of the Shark Boats. These Shark Hunter boats (shortened to Shark Hunters) were only a bit bigger than the Shark Boats that had been deployed so devastatingly in the Western Hemisphere (and were beginning to appear in other navies by 1890). The Shark Hunters were built with the latest fast fire guns, fleetest of engine designs, and were essentially seaworthy killing platforms. With them, the main fleet would be screened from the Shark Boats and able to pick them off at leisure. While the first prototypes and production Shark Hunters came out of English shipyards, the Rossall/Bryan Admiralty took the extraordinary step of charging shipyards throughout the Dominion of Southern America to construct the Shark Hunters, the first time since the Slaver Uprising that Royal Navy vessels would be build in the South. Some specialized equipment was purchased and rush shipped from the USA by rail and ship to bring Dominion works up to Royal Navy standards. The swarm of Shark Hunters required less crew than many vessels of the Royal Navy, but the British were still needing to recruit more for this surge of building, especially given the losses to experienced crew. Many Southrons joined the Royal Navy to crew the Dominion-built boats - this predominance of Southerner crew would lead the one of the longest lasting legacies of the Global War, the nick-name of "Shark Eaters" which began with the Southrons of the Royal Navy, but would later become a term used with affection (if one knew what was good for them) for all Southrons, especially abroad.
The third major decision taken by the Admiralty under Barnett and Bryan was to redesign all new ships of the line on an all large gun design. These would be referred to as the 'Big Bang Battleships' by the press of the time. The Big Bangs were felt especially by Bryan to be necessary in the age of smokeless gunpowder when the elimination (or serious decrease) of the 'fog of war' coupled with the creation of Shark Hunters eliminated the need for most secondary guns, freeing up crews, space, and tonnage for more main guns. This successful philosophy would serve as the basis for all post-Global War Battleships.