THE CENTRE OF SEA-POWER[A]
Of speedy victory let no man doubt,
Our worst work’s past, now we have found them out.
Behold, their navy does at anchor lie,
And they are ours, for now they cannot fly.
_Andrew Marvel_, 1653.
Of all the theatres of the war, on sea or land, the North Sea is the
most important. It is vital to all the operations of the Allies.
Command of its waters and its outlets is the thing that matters most.
In that sea is the centre of naval influence. It is the key of all
the hostilities. From either side of it the great protagonists in the
struggle look at one another. There the great constriction of the
blockade is exerted upon Germany. It is the _mare clausum_ against
which she protests. Geography is there in the scales against her. She
rebels against British sea supremacy. The “freedom of the seas” is,
therefore, her claim—though she is endeavouring to qualify to be the
tyrant of them. Her only outlook towards the outer seas is from the
Bight of Heligoland and the fringe of coast behind the East Frisian
Islands, or from the Baltic, if her ships pass the Sound or the Belt,
issuing into the North Sea through the Skager-Rak. But they cannot
reach the ocean, except through the North Passage, where the Grand
Fleet holds the guard. Only isolated raiders, bent upon predatory
enterprise, have stealthily gone that way after nightfall. At the
southern gate of the North Sea, through the Straits of Dover and in
the Channel, the way is barred. The guns of Dover, the Dover Patrol,
and certain other deterrents forbid the enemy to adventure in that
direction.
[A] See Map I., at end of book.
The new engines of naval warfare—the mine, submarine, airship, and
aeroplane—found their first and greatest use in the North Sea; and only
by employing craft which hide beneath the water, and, on rare occasion,
by destroyers which seek the cover of darkness for local forays, have
the Germans been able to exert their efforts in any waters outside the
North Sea. At the beginning of the war they had raiding cruisers in the
Pacific and Atlantic, and a detached squadron in the Far East; but the
British Fleet reached out to those regions, and, aided by the warships
of Japan and France, it drove every vestige of German naval power from
the oceans.
In the North Sea, therefore, sea-power has exerted its greatest, most
vital, and most far-reaching effect. There the Germans, if they had
possessed the power, could have struck a blow which, if successful for
them, would have proved a mortal stroke at the British Empire and would
have rendered useless all the efforts of the Allies. Millions of men,
incalculable volumes of guns, munitions, and stores of every imaginable
kind for the use of the greatest armies ever set in the field, have
entered the French ports solely because the Grand Fleet holds the guard
in the North Sea. The whole face of the world would have been changed
by German naval victory. England would have been subjected by invasion
and famine. If the heart of the Empire had been struck, what would have
been the future of its members? If sea communication with the Allies
had been cut, what would have been their fate at the hands of the
victors? The attacks of sallying cruisers and destroyers upon the coast
towns of England, the “tip and run” raids, as they have been called,
and the visits of bomb-dropping airships and aeroplanes are the signs
of the naval impotence of Germany.
The situation in the North Sea is, therefore, of absorbing interest.
It may be studied chiefly from the two points of view of the strategy
of the opposing fleets and the exercise of the blockade. There is a
peculiarity in naval warfare, which is not found in warfare upon land,
that a belligerent can withdraw his naval forces entirely from the
theatre of war by retaining them, as with a threat, or in a position of
weakness, behind the guns of his shore defences. Nothing of the kind
is possible with land armies. A general can always find his enemy, and
attack or invest him, and, if successful, drive him back, or cause him
to surrender, and occupy the territory he has held. The Germans have
chosen the reticent strategy of the sea. They have never come out to
make a fight to a finish, to put the matter to the touch, “to gain or
lose it all.” The _animus pugnandi_ is wanting to their fleet. It was
necessary that they should do something. They could not lie for ever
stagnant at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven. They could keep their officers and
men in training by making brief cruises in and outside the Bight of
Heligoland. They might, with luck, meet some portion of the Grand Fleet
detached and at a disadvantage.
In any case, they were bold enough to take their chance on occasions,
always with their fortified ports and mined waters and their submarines
under their lee. They might succeed in reducing British superiority
by the “attrition” of some encounters. Such was the genesis of the
Dogger Bank battle of January 24th, 1915, when that gallant officer
Sir David Beatty inflicted a severe defeat upon Admiral Hipper, and
drove him back in flight, with the loss of the _Blücher_ and much
other injury. The same causes brought the German High Sea Fleet, under
Admiral Scheer, into the great conflict, first with Sir David Beatty,
and then with the main force of the Grand Fleet, under command of Sir
John Jellicoe, on May 31st, 1916. The events of the great engagement of
the Jutland Bank will not be related here. All that it is necessary to
note is that the Germans had so chosen their time that they were able
to avoid decisive battle with Sir John Jellicoe’s fleet by retreating
in the failing light of the day, and that their adventure availed them
nothing to break the blockade or otherwise to modify the impotent
position in which they are placed at sea. That action operated to the
disadvantage of England and her Allies in no degree whatever. The
superiority of the British Fleet as a fighting engine had been placed
beyond dispute.
The mine and the submarine have put an end to the system of naval
blockade as practised by St. Vincent and Cornwallis. No fleet can now
lie off, or within striking range of, an enemy’s port. Battleships
cannot be risked against submarines, acting either as torpedo craft
or mine-layers, nor against swift destroyers at night. That is the
explanation of the situation which has arisen in the North Sea. The
blockade is necessarily of a distant kind. There are no places on
the British coasts where the Grand Fleet could be located, except
those in which it lies and from which it issues to sweep the North
Sea periodically. The first essential is to control the enemy’s
communications, which is done effectively at the North Passage—between
the Orkneys and Shetlands, and the Norwegian coast—and at the Straits
of Dover. If the enemy desired a final struggle for supremacy at sea,
with all its tremendous consequences, he could have it. But he can be
attacked only when he is accessible. “There shall be neither sickness
nor death which shall make us yield until this service be ended,” wrote
Howard in 1588. That is the spirit of the British Navy to-day. But,
then, the Spanish Armada was at sea. It was not hiding behind its shore
defences. Be it noted that the Germans, thus hiding themselves, enjoy
a certain opportunity of undertaking raiding operations in the North
Sea. It is not a difficult thing to rush a force of destroyers on a
dark night against some point in an extended line of patrols and effect
a little damage somewhere. What advantage the Germans hope to gain by
such proceedings is difficult to discover.
The magnificence of the work of the British patrol flotillas and
the auxiliary patrols must be recognised. In the North Sea these
are subsidiary services of the Grand Fleet. Day and night, in every
weather—in summer heats and winter blasts and blizzards, when icy
seas wash the boats from stem to stern and the cold penetrates to the
bone—these patrols are at work. The records of heroism at sea in these
services have never been surpassed, and England owes a very great deal
to the men who came to her service. The mercantile marine has given its
vessels to the State, from the luxurious liner to the fishing trawler,
and officers and men have come in who have rendered priceless services.
The trawlers have carried on their perilous work of bringing up the
strange harvest of horned mines by the score. The patrol boats have
examined suspicious vessels, controlled sea traffic, and watched the
sea passages. The destroyer flotillas have been constantly at work and
ready at any time to bring raiding enemy forces to action. The Royal
Naval Air Service has never relaxed its activity and has engaged in
countless combats.
It has sometimes been wondered why the Grand Fleet did not take some
aggressive action: Why did it not attack the North German sea coast,
or rout out the pestilent hornets’ nest of Zeebrugge, which the enemy,
by internal communications impregnable to sea-power, had provided with
the most powerful guns, besides defending it by great mine-fields? This
matter requires to be examined. Naval history abounds with evidence
that to attack coast defences is not the proper or even the permissible
work of warships. It is the business of military forces, though naval
forces may often assist, and even give the means of victory. Moreover,
what was once possible is not possible now. Would Nelson have attacked
the French Fleet at the Nile if it had lain under the powerful guns
of these days, and behind mine-fields, through the secret passages of
which submarines could have issued to destroy him? It would be absurd
to compare Nelson’s attack upon a line of block-ships and rafts at
Copenhagen, covered by a few forts armed with old smoothbores, to an
attack upon coast positions defended by modern guns.
When old Sir Charles Napier was in the Baltic in 1854 he was denounced
at home because he did not destroy Kronstadt or Helsingfors. He rightly
refused to play his enemy’s game by endangering his ships. Captain
(afterwards Admiral Sir) B. J. Sulivan, who was with the fleet, put the
situation quite clearly in a letter written at the time. A military
operation was really required then, as it would be now, to accomplish
such a task.
We know that two guns have beaten off two large ships with great
loss. Had Nelson been here with thirty English ships he would
have blockaded the gulf for years, without thinking of attacking
such fortresses to get at ships inside. Brest, Toulon, and Cadiz
were probably much weaker than these places.... I suppose there
will be an outcry at home about doing nothing here, but we might
as well try to reach the moon.
But the Navy has never left the Belgian coast secure from attack. It
has never lost its aggressive spirit. It has attacked from the ship
and the air. The seaplanes of the Royal Naval Air Service spotted for
the guns when the monitors were bombarding. Bombs have repeatedly been
dropped on Ostend, Zeebrugge, and the places in the rear. When the guns
were silent there were reasons for it. A conjoint naval and military
expedition was required. The enemy began to feel his hold on the coast
precarious. Continued operations by sea and land might compel him to
relax his grasp. Ships may not attack places defended by big guns,
mine-fields, and submarines and destroyers issuing from secret passages
through them, but it is certain the British naval offensive will never
be paralysed.
Such is the magnificent work of the British Navy in blockading the
German Fleet, molesting the enemy’s coast positions, and controlling
his communications with the oceans.
The commercial blockade, by which the enemy’s supplies and commodities
are cut off and his exports paralysed, is too large a subject to be
dealt with here. The object is to bring the full measure of sea-power
to bear in crushing the national life of the enemy. It is vital but
“silent” work of the Navy, and does not lend itself to discussion
or description. Questions of contraband and the right and method of
search, which arise from the blockade, caused discussions with the
United States before the States came into the war. The only object
of the British Navy and the Foreign Office was to put an end to the
transit of the enemy’s commodities, and to do so with the utmost
consideration for the interests of neutrals, and complete protection
for the lives of the officers and crews in their ships and in the
examining ships. For these reasons neutral vessels were taken into port
for examination, safe from the attentions of the enemy’s submarines.
One great hope of the Germans was that the neutrals would become more
and more exasperated with England. They remembered that the war of
1812 arose from this very cause. But they were completely disappointed
in all such hopes, and they themselves, by interfering with the free
navigation of other countries, brought the United States into the war
against them.
The blockade work of the examination service and of the armed boarding
steamers has been extremely hazardous. It has called for the greatest
qualities of seamanship, because conducted in every condition of
weather and when storm and fog have made it extremely perilous to
approach the neutral vessels—which, moreover, have sometimes proved to
be armed enemies in disguise. Hundreds of vessels have been brought
into port by the Navy in those northern waters. Sleepless vigilance
has been required and the highest skill of the sea in every possible
condition of the service, while the seaman has become a statesman in
his dealings with the neutral shipmaster. It has been for the Navy to
bring the ships into port, and for other authorities to inquire into
their status and to take them before the Prize Court if required.
The German High Sea Fleet having failed, the submarine campaign was
instituted, and began chiefly in the North Sea. It has never answered
the expectations of its authors. It has not changed the strategic
situation in any degree whatever. Great damage has been inflicted upon
British interests, and valuable ships and cargoes have been sunk, and
officers and men cast adrift in situations of ruthless hardship. The
tale of the sea has never had a more terrible record, nor one lighted
by so much noble self-sacrifice and unfailing courage.