Jellicoe resembles Sir John French in more than given name. Like him, he is of quite markedly small stature. Neither the Generalissimo or Admiralissimo of Britain in the Great War at all corresponds, physically, to the popular notion that the English are "big" men. Like French, again, Jellicoe is mild and gentle, a pair of conspicuously tight lips indicating poise, reserve force and self-confidence. The chieftain of the Grand Fleet--that is its official title and not an effusive expletive--did not make his first acquaintance with danger afloat when von Tirpitz’ submarines began to make life a burden for British sailors. He has been snatched from the jaws of death on three separate occasions. In 1893 Jellicoe was commander of Sir George Tryon’s _Victoria_, when it was sent to its doom in the Mediterranean, and, although "below" in the ship-hospital with fever at the moment of the disaster, was miraculously rescued by a midshipman when he came to the surface more dead than alive after the vessel foundered. Seven years previous, as if Fate was keeping a protecting hand over him for some great hour, Jellicoe had an equally marvelous escape from drowning when a gig he was commanding off Gibraltar capsized and he was washed ashore. In the Boxer war of 1900, Jellicoe was flag captain to Admiral Seymour, the commander of the Allied expedition which marched from Tien-tsin to the relief of the Powers’ legations in Pekin, and at the battle of Peitsang Jellicoe was struck by a Chinese bullet, incurring wounds which the flagship-surgeon considered fatal. Again Jellicoe was spared. A brother-officer tells a story of Jellicoe’s agony on that occasion, which illuminates his capacity for facing the music, however doleful. He had asked how the advance to Pekin was proceeding. Told that everything was going satisfactorily, Jellicoe flashed back: "Tell me the truth, damn it. Don’t lie!" The triumvirate which has accomplished that amazing, silent victory of the British Fleet in the war--the complete conquest of sea power without anything savoring of a decisive action in the open--consists of Lord Fisher, the creator of the dreadnought; Admiral Sir Percy Scott, the inventor of the central "fire control" system, and Sir John Jellicoe, to whose gunnery science and innovations in that all-important branch of naval warfare are ascribed, in large measure, the acknowledged preeminence of the British Fleet as a striking force. He had not been director of ordnance a year when the percentage of the navy’s hits out of rounds fired increased from forty-two to more than seventy. "In other words," as a critic describes it, "Jellicoe enhanced by more than a third the fighting value of the British Fleet, and that without a keel being added to its composition."