THE GEDDES–WEMYSS era has been seen as the culmination of Staff development in the First World War. Stripped of Jellicoe's overcentralisation and pessimism, and with the winning combination of the Wemyss ‘hands off’ approach and Geddes's systematic mentality, the Naval Staff finally approached the ideal for which Richmond and others clamoured. Richmond even managed to join the Staff again, although not for long, and add his own incisive comments to the steady round of departmental memoranda. As has been suggested earlier, inmany respects Wemyss was the beneficiary of Jellicoe's work. Richmond, in the spirit of a true Jacobin, may have written of Jellicoe after his dismissal, ‘one obstacle to a successful war is now out of the way’, but in fact the Navy owed Jellicoe a lot. In some respects Wemyss represented a more conservative approach to strategy than Jellicoe, particularly in terms of any potential changes to the structure of the Grand Fleet. His appointment, somewhat like that of Jackson in 1915, was not driven by the belief that he was the best man for the job in a strictly naval sense. Rather it was his success in working with Geddes, having useful connections at court and getting on well with Beatty. As will be shown later, the last of these assets put him at odds with many Staff Officers when it came to the use of Grand Fleet warships.