Transcriber’s Note: Bold text is enclosed in =equals signs=; italic
text is enclosed in _underscores_.
THE ACHIEVEMENT
OF THE BRITISH
NAVY IN THE
WORLD
WAR
[Illustration]
By
JOHN LEYLAND
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
MCMXVII
_E SHILLING_
THE ACHIEVEMENT _of the_ BRITISH NAVY
IN THE WORLD-WAR :: JOHN LEYLAND
[Illustration: THE KING CHATTING WITH ADMIRAL BEATTY]
THE ACHIEVEMENT OF THE
BRITISH NAVY IN THE
WORLD-WAR
BY
JOHN LEYLAND
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE SEA SERVICE 1
II. THE CENTRE OF SEA-POWER 11
III. SWEEPING THE ENEMY FROM THE OCEANS 21
IV. THE GRASP OF THE MEDITERRANEAN: SEA- AND LAND-POWER 29
V. DEALING WITH THE SUBMARINES 37
VI. THE NAVY AND THE MINE 46
VII. THE NAVY AND ARMY TRANSPORT 55
VIII. THE NAVY THAT FLIES 64
IX. OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE NAVY 71
X. WHAT THE BRITISH NAVY IS AND WHAT IT FIGHTS FOR 79
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE KING CHATTING WITH ADMIRAL BEATTY _Frontispiece_
PAGE
A BRITISH FLEET STEAMING IN LINE AHEAD 6
DRIFTERS WORKING AT SEA 6
A DRIFTER AT SEA: LOOKING FOR SUBMARINES AND MINES 22
A DRIFTER LAYING ANTI-SUBMARINE NETS 22
FLEETS IN ALLIANCE: BRITISH AND ITALIAN SHIPS IN THE ADRIATIC 38
ON BOARD THE _Queen Elizabeth_ AT MUDROS 38
A FLEET MANŒUVRING AT SEA 64
THE CAPTURED GERMAN SUBMARINE MINE-LAYER UC5 64
A BRITISH SUBMARINE 80
JOURNALISTS ON BOARD A MONITOR 80
_MAPS:_
I. THE CENTRE OF SEA-POWER: THE NORTH SEA _At end of book_
II. THE GRASP OF THE MEDITERRANEAN: SEA- AND LAND-POWER
_At end of book_
THE ACHIEVEMENT OF THE BRITISH
NAVY IN THE WORLD-WAR
CHAPTER I
DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE SEA SERVICE
Had I the fabled herb
That brought to life the dead,
Whom would I dare disturb
In his eternal bed?
Great Grenville would I wake,
And with glad tidings make
The soul of mighty Drake
Lift an exulting head.
_William Watson._
When King George returned from the visit he paid to the Grand Fleet
in June, 1917, he sent a message to Admiral Sir David Beatty, who had
succeeded Sir John Jellicoe in the command, in which he said that
“never had the British Navy stood higher in the estimation of friend
or foe.” His Majesty spoke of people who reason and understand. But
it is certainly true that the work of the Sea Service during this
unparalleled war has never been properly appreciated by many of
those who have benefited by it most. The silent Navy does its work
unobserved. The record of its heroism and the services it renders pass
unobserved by the multitude. Sometimes it emerges to strike a blow,
engage in a “scrap,” or, it may be, to fight a battle, and then it
retires into obscurity again. Its achievements are forgotten. Only the
bombardment of a coast town or the torpedoing of a big ship, which
the Navy did not frustrate, is remembered. Such has been the case in
all the naval campaigns of the past. Englishmen, who depend upon the
Navy for their security and the means of their life and livelihood, as
well as for their power of action against their enemies, are but half
conscious of what the Fleet is doing for them. On this matter, British
statesmen, when they speak about the war, almost invariably fail to
enlighten them.
Who can wonder that people in the Allied countries are still less able
to realise that behind all the fighting of their own armies lies the
influence of sea-power, exercised by the British Fleet and the fleets
that came one after another into co-operation with it? Without this
power of the sea there could have been no hope of success in the war.
As the King said, the Navy defends British shores and commerce, and
secures for England and her Allies the ocean highways of the world. The
purpose of this book is to show how these things are done.
On the first day of hostilities the British Navy laid hold upon the
road that would lead to victory. There is no hyperbole in saying that
the Grand Fleet, in its northern anchorages, from the very beginning,
influenced the military situation throughout the world, and made
possible many of the operations of the armies, which could neither have
been successfully initiated nor continued without it. But in the early
days of August, 1914, when, from the war cloud which had overshadowed
Europe, broke forth the lurid horrors of the conflict, the situation
was extremely critical. What was required to be done had to be done
quickly and unhesitatingly, lest the enemy should strike an unforeseen
blow. Happily, with faultless knowledge, the strategy of the emergency
was realised, and with unerring instinct and sagacity it was applied.
The foresight of great naval administrators, and chiefly of Lord
Fisher, who had brought about the regeneration of the British Navy,
shaping it for modern conditions, was justified a thousandfold.
Never was the need of exerting sea command more urgent than at the
outbreak of war. Everything that Englishmen had won in all the
centuries of the storied past was involved in the quarrel. Only by
mastery of the sea could the country be made secure. Its soil had never
been trodden by an invader since Norman William came in 1066. The very
food that was eaten and the things by which the industries and commerce
of the country existed demanded control at sea. If the British Empire
was to be safe from aggression it must be safeguarded on every sea. If
England was to set armies in any foreign field of operations, and to
retain and maintain them there, with the gigantic supplies they would
require; if she was to render help to her Allies in men or munitions or
anything else, whether they came from England, or the United States, or
any other country, and were landed in France, Russia, Italy, or Greece,
or in Egypt, Mesopotamia, or East or West Africa, for the defeat of
the enemy, that must be done by virtue of power at sea. Therefore, in
this war, as John Hollond, writing his _Discourse of the Navy_ in 1638,
said of the wars of his time, “the naval part is the thread that runs
through the whole wooft, the burden of the song, the scope of the text.”
The moment when the First Fleet, as it was then called, slipped away
from its anchorage at Portland on the morning of Wednesday, July
29th, 1914, will yet be regarded as one of the decisive moments of
history. The initiative had been seized, and all real initiative was
thenceforward denied to the enemy. The gauge of victory had been won.
“Time is everything; five minutes makes the difference between a
victory and a defeat,” said Nelson. “The advantage and gain of time and
place will be the only and chief means for our good,” Drake had said
before him. By a fortunate circumstance, which should have arrested
the imagination as with a presage of victory—a circumstance arranged
five months before, as the result of a series of most intricate
preparations—time and place were both on the British side.
The First, Second, and Third Fleets, and the flotillas attached
to them, had been mobilised as a test operation, and inspected at
Spithead by King George, on July 20th. The First Fleet had returned to
Portland and the other fleets to their home ports, where the surplus or
“balance” crews of the Naval Reserves were to be sent on shore. Then
had come the now famous order to “stand fast,” issued on the night of
Sunday, July 26th, which had stopped the process of demobilisation.
Dark clouds had shadowed the international horizon. Austria-Hungary had
presented her ultimatum to Serbia. She declared war on the 28th. The
Second Fleet remained, therefore, in proximity to its reserves of men,
and the men were ready to be re-embarked in the Third Fleet.
Few people realised at the time the immense significance of the
memorable eastward movement of the squadrons from Portland Roads, or
of the assembly of those powerful forces at their northern strategic
anchorages. Those forces became the Grand Fleet, that unexampled
organisation of fighting force, under command of that fine sea officer,
Admiral Sir John Jellicoe. War was declared by Great Britain on August
4th. Successive steps of supreme importance were taken, which, in very
truth, saved the cause of the Allies. Disaster and surprise attack were
forestalled. The Fleet, fully mobilised, and growing daily in strength,
was already exerting command of the sea, and the safe transport of the
Expeditionary Force to France was assured. Co-operation with the French
Fleet was immediately established—its cruiser squadron in the Channel
and its battle squadrons in the Mediterranean.
Fighting episodes were not delayed, but for many months the operations
of the Grand Fleet remained shrouded as by a veil, lifted only on rare
occasions. Few people knew the tremendous anxieties and responsibility
of the British Commander-in-Chief. His vast command of vessels of all
classes and uses had to be organised into a mighty fleet, complete in
every element—battle squadrons, battle-cruiser squadrons, light-cruiser
squadrons, flotillas and auxiliaries, transports, hospital ships,
and every ship and thing that a fleet can require. A whole series of
intricate dispositions had to be made. Officers were to be inspired
with the ideas of the Commander-in-Chief and the whole Fleet was to be
so trained, under squadron and flotilla commanders, that each would
know on the instant how he should act.
If Nelson, in 1789, spent many hours in explaining to his “band
of brothers” his plans for his attack at the Nile, with fourteen
sail-of-the-line, what must it have been for Sir John Jellicoe to
communicate to his officers, and discuss with them, all his plans for
every emergency or call for the service of every squadron and ship in
his vast command? All this must be realised now. And during the anxious
early months of the war, as the winter was drawing near, the great
anchorages were as yet unprotected, and safety from hostile submarines
could often only be found in rapid steaming at sea. The mining
campaign of the enemy had also to be overcome. The anxieties were
enormous, and it was only the power of command, the sea instinct, the
deep understanding, the readiness to act in moments of extraordinary
responsibility, and the resource and professional skill of the
Commander-in-Chief and his staff and officers in command, that enabled
the tremendous work to be accomplished.
[Illustration: A BRITISH FLEET STEAMING IN LINE AHEAD]
[Illustration: DRIFTERS WORKING AT SEA]
While this was in progress other work of immense significance had been
going on. The Admiralty had undertaken a gigantic task of supreme
importance with complete success. Great defensive preparations were
made in British waters, where all traffic was regulated and controlled.
The vast maritime resources of the country were added to the naval
service. Two battleships building for Turkey, another for Chile,
and certain flotilla leaders and other craft building in the
country, were taken over. Officers and men in abundance were ready.
The magnificent seafaring populations of the merchant marine and the
fisheries were drawn into the naval service, and subsequently the whole
mercantile marine was brought under naval control, and for practical
purposes was embodied with the Navy. Officers and men of these services
showed splendid heroism in situations of terror and responsibility
never anticipated.
A wide network of patrols was brought into being; the blockade was
organised and strengthened; the examination services were set on
foot and perfected; and the coast sectors of defence, with their
flotillas, were raised to a standard of high efficiency. Mine-sweepers
and net-drifters were at work. Every shipyard in the country and a
multitude of engineering and ammunition works began to buzz with work
for the Navy and the mercantile marine. Provision was made for dealing
with the raiding cruisers and armed merchantmen of the enemy.
At the time, the public knew little or nothing of what was in progress.
Imagination fails even now to grasp the magnitude of what was achieved.
The naval share in the campaign was of baffling obscurity, while the
stage of the war on land became crowded with fighting men, locked in
a terrible conflict, which at that time seemed to bode no good to
the Allies. After the brush in the Heligoland Bight on August 28th,
1914, the Fleet was lost to view. Not at first, but slowly, did it
become realised that the prognostications of peace-time alarmists had
proved baseless. There had been no “bolt from the blue,” as had been
foretold; neither invasion, nor raid, nor foray was attempted upon
British shores, and there was no anxiety about food. There was always,
with economy, enough to eat.
But popular confidence seemed for a time to be unreasonably
disturbed by a record of successive alarming and generally
unexplained incidents—the escape of the _Goeben_ and _Breslau_ in
the Mediterranean, the sinking of the _Aboukir_, _Cressy_, _Hogue_,
_Formidable_, and other vessels, the depredations of German raiding
cruisers on the distant lines of our trade, the bombardment of
Hartlepool, Whitby, and Scarborough, and other disquieting episodes.
Strange as it may seem, there were people who went about asking, “What
is the Fleet doing?” Was it not the ancient inspiration of the Navy to
seek out the enemy and to capture or sink or burn his ships wherever
they were to be found? Yet there was no battle. The German coast was
not attacked. Allied shipping to the value of millions of pounds was
being sunk. Why, then, was the Navy inactive? When, later on, the
submarine menace assumed formidable proportions, alarm began again
to seize upon the newspapers, when there was justification only for
precaution.
The hidden truth was not comprehended. Victories were expected when,
owing to the coyness of the enemy’s strategy, none were possible.
The Seven Years’ War—the most successful in British annals, the
turning-point in British history, the war in which Horace Walpole asked
each morning what victory there was to record—began with the disaster
of Minorca, followed by the tragedy of Byng. The central facts of naval
history were but little known. Yet the Navy was, and is, in truth, all
in all to the country, the Empire, and the Allies.
Before we enter into the main purpose of this book, in which we shall
discover in several theatres of war the real nature of sea-power, as
well as the character and momentous consequences of the antagonism
which grew up between England and Germany, we may inquire what services
could in reason have been expected from the Navy in the great cataclysm
which was about to sweep with destruction over the nations. It would
not have been expected to fight a battle every month or even every
year, for battles are rare events in naval history. It would not
have been expected to attack fortified coasts, though it might do so
on occasions, because ships are designed and built to fight at sea.
The Navy would not have been expected to forestall every untoward
incident. Fish often slip through the net, as raiders have slipped
through our guard in this and other wars. Nor, in these days of the
stealthy submarine and the blind death-dealing mine, could the Fleet
have been expected to remain immune from every misfortune. No one could
have expected the Navy to devise a single conclusive defence against
the attack of the submarine, any more than it was asked to find an
infallible remedy for the effects of gunfire.
What we should have expected was that it would make the sea again the
protecting wall, as Shakespeare says, of the British Isles,
Or as a moat defensive to a house
Against the envy of less happier lands.
We should have expected it to safeguard the incoming of the supplies
without which neither the people nor their industries could exist—to
be the panoply of all trade and interests afloat, whether in the
nature of imports or exports. We should have expected it to deny all
external activity to the enemy at sea—we might not have anticipated the
advent of the submarine as a pirate commerce-destroyer—to shut off his
sea-borne supplies, and to exert that noiseless pressure on the vitals
of the adversary of which Admiral Mahan speaks—“that compulsion, whose
silence, when once noted, becomes to the observer the most striking
and awful mark of the working of sea-power.” We should have expected
the Navy to become the support, in thrust and holding, of the armies
in the field—the shaft to their spearhead; their flank and rearguard
also. Inasmuch as the war is world-wide, and we have powerful Allies,
we should have expected naval influence and pressure to be manifested
in the oceans, in the Mediterranean, and, indeed, wherever the enemy is
and the seas are. Finally, we should have expected the Navy to be to
the British Empire what it has always been to the Empire’s heart—its
safeguard from injury and disruption, and the bond that holds it
together.
Each one of these functions has been executed by in Navy with
triumphant success in the war, and history would show that it is
executing them now as the Sea Service has accomplished them in all the
wars of the past.