The operations of the British Navy were undoubtedly one of the
dominating factors in the war. For more than four years the silent
service watched unceasingly and offered an effectual bar to such
naval enterprise as the Germans appeared capable of. The first naval
engagement was off the coast of Chili in November, 1914, in which the
_Good Hope_ and _Monmouth_ were sunk and Admiral Craddock lost his life.
This early disaster was retrieved on December 8th, when Admiral Sturdee
annihilated a German squadron under Admiral von Spee off the Falkland
Islands. For some time there was a good deal of activity on the part
of commerce raiders, principally by the _Emden_ and the _Appam_. On
January 24th, 1915, there was a naval battle off Dogger Bank in which
the _Blucher_ was sunk, and six months later the _Konigsberg_, a German
raider, which had taken refuge in the Rufigi River, was destroyed by
British monitors.
The most serious naval engagement of the war took place off Jutland on
May 31st, 1916. This proved to be the last attempt of the Germans to
defy British sea-power. The enemy lost eighteen ships, and the British
losses were by no means light, but the flight of the enemy fleet
to the shelter of their mine fields left no doubt as to the issue.
Probably the country will never know the extent of the navy’s work in
maintaining the blockade, safeguarding our food supply from all parts
of the world, and securing safe passage, not only for our own troops,
but also for thousands of American soldiers.
Perhaps the most daring enterprise of the war from a naval standpoint
was the raid on Ostend on April 22nd, 1918, which resulted in the
destruction of the enemy’s submarine depots. The last act in the naval
drama was the handing over of the German Fleet to Admiral Beatty, as
part of the Armistice conditions, and the subsequent scuttling of it by
the German crews while it was riding at anchor in Scapa Flow.