World War I, 1914-18
2.3. The War at Sea
Had the war been as short as most people expected, then presumably it would have been fought almost exclusively on land.
In the event the fact that it was prolonged meant that resources had to be sought from all over the world, which helped turn it into a vast naval struggle as well. Just as military strength on land was calculated in terms of army divisions, so strength at sea was calculated in terms of Dreadnoughts.
The original Dreadnought was a new and very powerful type of battleship with an armament consisting exclusively of heavy guns. It was rst launched by Britain in 1906. All other powers were forced to follow suit, so that henceforward the largest ghting vessels were classi ed into pre-Dreadnoughts, Dreadnoughts, and Super- Dreadnoughts. The trouble with Dreadnoughts was that each belligerent possessed only a relative handful of them—a little under thirty in the case of Britain, far fewer in that of the other powers—
so that the scarcity value of Dreadnoughts, plus their role as symbols of power, meant that the loss of any one of them was considered a minor national disaster.
In the last few years before the war, Britain, thanks to its alliance with Japan, was able to concentrate in European waters a force of Dreadnoughts about equal to that of the next two powers combined, basing them on the newly built port at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. The basing of Royal Navy ships at Scapa Flow itself re ected an important change in strategy. Throughout the long period of Anglo-Dutch and Anglo-French wars between 1655 and 1815, British eets had been based rst on East Anglia and then on the channel ports from Dover to the west. This permitted Britain to exploit its dominant geographic position vis-a-vis its enemies, blockading them and interfering with their trade. The navies of the time depended on the wind for propulsion. Since it blew from west to east more often than the other way around, Britain was favored twice.
Traditionally, blockades were a matter of containing enemy ports, e ectively shutting them down. However, such methods were rendered out of date by modern technology. The closer any capital ship ventured to the enemy coast, the more exposed it was to mines as well as to the action of smaller, swifter, more maneuverable, and, last but not least, more expendable destroyers, submarines, and even motorboats. Carrying torpedoes as their main armament, light vessels—provided they took advantage of appropriate conditions such as darkness and mist—stood a reasonable chance of
approaching their larger enemies by virtue of agility or stealth. The conclusion was that the days of such “close” blockades were past.
From Scapa Flow, the British navy blocked the German eet from approaching the Straits of Dover, thus allowing the transport of troops to France to proceed in safety. At the same time, by closing the gap between Scotland and Norway, it would leave the German navy only the North Sea and the Baltic to operate in. Finally, Malta, which they had occupied in 1798, enabled the British to bottle up the Austrian-Hungarian surface eet even more securely than they did the Germans.
As early as September 1914, the pattern was set. The British successfully imposed a blockade—which, since the German admiralty had been singularly incompetent, led to the immediate loss of many German merchant vessels caught outside the ring or else anchored in neutral ports. From that point on, the only German ships that succeeded in operating outside the North Sea were a handful of commerce-raiders, most of which were converted merchantmen, well armed, and like the Flying Dutchman, forever on the run.
Relying on stealth to both avoid the Royal Navy and approach their victims, they would drop their camou age and hoist the ag at the last moment. In this and some other ways, they were the successors of the old-time pirates and buccaneers. As in the case of the pirates and the buccaneers, there grew around them an entire literature that celebrated their exploits and their chivalrous behavior. Chivalrous they had to be, given that practically every one of them could expect to be cornered sooner or later so that the fate of captain and crew depended on their previous record. Their exploits were often spectacular, and the search for them could tie down considerable resources. In 1914, the three-month search for one ship, the Emden, drew no fewer than eighty British vessels. Still, in relation to the war as a whole they amounted to mere pinpricks.
From 1914 to 1918, all the German blockade-runners combined accounted for only 323,000 tons out of a total 15,000,000 tons of Allied shipping sunk.26
Unlike blockade-runners, submarines had the armament to take on not only merchantmen but also warships of all sizes. Thanks to their low pro le when surfaced, they were hard to spot and could always dive in their approach or to make their getaway. Their great disadvantages were their slow submerged speed and the limited time they could spend underwater owing to their need to replenish their batteries, an issue even when they were operating at periscope depth. Finally, the range of World War I submarines was limited by their fuel-carrying capacity, which with few exceptions, caused their operations to be con ned to the waters surrounding the British Isles and the Mediterranean Sea.
In 1914, the laws of maritime warfare, as codi ed most recently in 1899, permitted the sinking of enemy merchantmen only after provisions had been made for the safety of passengers and crew, and in the case of neutral ships, it was necessary to rst stop and search the vessel for contraband. This system of board-and-search, though eminently suitable to the age of sail in which it originated, was not t for submarines which, having surfaced, could be rammed, and the crews of which were too small to carry out searches on any but the smallest vessels. So severe were these problems that the Germans, calculating they could win the war by this weapon, decided to ignore the rules. No less than three times during the war, they declared unrestricted submarine warfare, meaning that any ship entering certain designated waters could be sunk without warning. Twice, surrendering to pressure, they changed their policy.
The third time, failing to do so, they brought down American intervention on their heads.
Whereas overseas trade had played a role in the economies of all the belligerents, nowhere was this more important than in Britain.
Without food for its population, raw materials for its factories, and, most recently, fuel oil for its warships, Britain would have had to surrender within a matter of months. In fact, it is arguable that only German shortsightedness saved it from this fate; had the imperial navy spent less money on battleships, it could have started the war with many more than the twenty-nine e ective submarines it
actually had. This tiny eet, of which no more than seven or eight boats could be on station at any one time, was a ridiculously small force with which to confront an empire whose navy and merchant marine were the largest in history and whose trading interests spread from Canada to New Zealand.
From 1915 on, surface vessels began to be equipped with hydrophones for locating submarines and with depth charges for destroying them once they had been located. Both, however, were still fairly primitive devices that did not prove adequate for dealing with the menace. Apart from their own technical capabilities, which kept improving, the most important factors governing the submarines’ success were their numbers and the policy decisions that dictated whether or not they would disregard international law.
By February 1, 1917, the number of German submarines in service was around one hundred, although maintenance requirements and the distances at which they operated from base still meant only a third were on station at any one time. However, unlimited submarine warfare created a situation in which the rate at which vessels supplying Britain were sunk threatened to exceed the pace at which new ships could be built.27
Going back at least as far as the sixteenth-century Spanish “silver eets,” historical experience in protecting merchantmen was readily available and still applicable. The answer to submarines, as to earlier generations of surfacebound commerce raiders, was in the convoy. The convoy took advantage of two realities of submarine operations. First, the fact that submarines sat low in the water and were relatively slow when submerged, meant that armed prey had to venture pretty close to be spotted and then successfully intercepted. This forced the tactic of stationing submarines far apart from each other so as to increase the chances of encountering the enemy28 Second, the number of torpedoes each submarine could carry was strictly limited, hence after an attack, the vast majority of ships would always get through. And the larger the convoy, the more true this was.
Surprisingly, the admiralty resisted the tactic of the convoy. Its argument was based on the best-known naval theories of the day:
namely, those propagated by Captain Alfred Mahan in his famous 1890 book, The In uence of Sea Power upon History. Convoying, the admirals argued, violated the principles of war, the most important of which were concentration of force and aggressive action. Instead, it would disperse the navy’s smaller vessels over large parts of the sea, committing them to defensive operations, depriving the main battle force of its eyes and ears, and all but paralyzing it if and when the opportunity for a decisive eet action occurred. Their arguments were rejected by the new prime minister, David Lloyd George.
Once the tactic was adopted, the results of convoying could not fail to impress. Whereas, in April 1917, almost 873,000 tons of shipping were sunk, in June sixty merchantmen crossed the Atlantic in convoy without a single loss. Subsequently, out of I.I million American troops sent across, only 637 were drowned.29
But how about the long-expected eet action between the surface forces? In 1914, along with their concentration of ships on the North Sea, the Germans still had squadrons based in other parts of the world. Twice, at Coronel and at the Falkland Islands, these squadrons clashed with their British pursuers. The rst of these engagements was a tactical victory for the Germans. In the second, however, they were faced by superior forces and defeated with the loss of four warships; with that, any possibility of major surface actions being fought outside the North Sea came to an end.
Considering their numerical inferiority, the only way the Germans could risk such an action was by somehow tricking the British into ghting the entire high seas eet with only part of their own. Doing so would be hard enough under any circumstances; unknown to the Germans, the fact that the British had come into possession of one of their codebooks and were reading their radio communications made it harder still.
In 1914 and 1915, there were several small engagements at places such as the Dogger Bank and Heligoland but none that was
anywhere near decisive. Nor did German shelling of the coast of East Anglia amount to anything more than a slap.
When the great meeting of naval forces nally came about on the last day of May 1916, it was as if the battle of Jutland had been designed to illustrate all the factors shaping World War I–type naval warfare. Indeed for years afterward the British navy, in an attempt to justify the way the battle had been conducted, took extraordinary care to explain those factors. This is how the battle unfolded.
The Germans, commanded by Admiral Reinhard Scheer, were the rst to leave port in the hope of catching part of the grand eet with the whole of their own. The British, having received intelligence that the Germans had sailed, followed suit with their entire force.
Partly as a precaution, partly because they hoped to draw their enemies and take them by surprise, both sides sailed with their lighter vessels leading the way and the heavier ships drawn up behind.
At 1600 hours on May 31, the British vanguard under Admiral David Beatty ran into a much stronger German force. In the subsequent exchange of re, he lost several ships, then turned tail in the hope of leading the Germans into a trap. The ruse worked as expected; two hours later, with the battleships of the home eet appearing over the horizon, it was the Germans’ turn to be surprised. Several German ships were hit by heavy shells, but whereas British vessels tended to catch re and explode, excellent armor and damage control saved the German ships from sinking.
Next, a well-executed maneuver enabled the Germans to turn away and save themselves.
As dusk came, both sides found themselves groping about in the smoke and mist. Both possessed electrical searchlights developed a few years earlier; however, any ship that switched them on would automatically be a target. In the murk, a confused, more or less accidental series of maneuvers ensued, which nally created a situation whereby the British stood between the Germans and their bases. Considering himself out of danger as he ran for home, Scheer suddenly found himself in the worst conceivable situation, both
greatly outgunned and outnumbered by the entire grand eet—
which literally covered the horizon—and with his escape blocked.
His response was the only possible one: namely, to send his light vessels on a near-suicidal charge against the British battleships while most of his own heavy ships, by means of a second brilliant maneuver, were able to extricate themselves and disappear.
Critics have often blamed the British commander, Admiral John Jel-licoe, for being too fearful of the German light vessels and torpedoes. It is certainly true that Jellicoe had a well-ordered, meticulous mind tending toward caution.30 It is also true that the belligerent whose main naval forces he commanded had so much more to lose as to make almost any kind of risk taking foolhardy;
besides, this was probably the rst time in more than two centuries that the British navy faced an enemy whose ships and training were superior to its own. During the night of May 31–June 1, Jellicoe may indeed have missed a chance to destroy the German high sea eet. On the other hand, since that eet never ventured out of port again, the result actually achieved was almost equally good.
Considering the stalemate that had developed on land, Jutland was the one great battle that might have knocked a major belligerent out of the war in short order, and perhaps decided it in favor of Germany and its allies. Once it had ended as it did, the only thing that remained was attrition, as both sides were now given more time to mobilize their resources and throw them into action.
In this way, a struggle that was already the largest ever waged was destined to become much larger still.