THE GRASP OF THE MEDITERRANEAN[B]
SEA- AND LAND-POWER
Others may use the ocean as their road,
Only the English make it their abode;
Our oaks secure, as if they there took root,
We tread on billows with a steady foot.
_Edmund Waller_, 1656.
It is important next to consider the situation in the Mediterranean,
where sea-power is of momentous importance to the Allies. In those
historic waters the fate of many nations has been decided. They are a
vital link and the highway of the British Empire. Between Gibraltar
and Port Said two thousand miles of British welfare lie outrolled. To
France, with her great possessions in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunis,
the importance of this sea highway is supreme. She must, in this war
and at all times, traverse its waters or she will be undone. Italy
has won a great position In the Adriatic and the Mediterranean, and
she would wither away and perish if either fell under enemy control.
Trieste is her object, and she has proclaimed a protectorate over
Albania the better to establish her power in the Adriatic, and she has
her new possessions in the Libia Italiana of Northern Africa. From
the operations in the Mediterranean we shall learn something more of
the relation of sea-power to land operations, and of the limitations
of that power, and we shall see the allied navies of England, France,
Russia, Italy, and Japan in co-operation. We shall know why the enemy
made a great submarine stroke in the Mediterranean when everything else
at sea had failed.
[B] See Map II., at end of book.
The French battleship squadrons were concentrated in the Mediterranean
before the war. The cruiser squadron in the Channel, like David against
Goliath, was willing to encounter even the whole German High Sea Fleet;
but the French had been assured of British co-operation, and all danger
was forestalled. In the Mediterranean the _Goeben_ and _Breslau_ had
come west, and had bombarded Bona and Philippeville; but the French
Admiral, going south from Toulon, was on their heels, and they fled to
the east again, running the gauntlet of the British squadron on their
way to join the Turks.
They had intended to raid the French transports at sea. At this
time the French were bringing their troops from Algeria and Tunis,
amounting in all to nearly 100,000 men, with guns, horses, mules,
stores, ammunition, hospitals, tent equipment, and all the requirements
for field service, to join the main army in France. It was a great
responsibility for the French Navy, increased many-fold when troops
began to come from their eastern possessions through the Suez Canal.
Failure would have meant disaster. But the whole of the transport work
was managed without the loss of a man or a horse, and was a wonderful
success. It could hardly have taken place with so much security if the
British squadron had not been in the Mediterranean, and not at all if
the Grand Fleet had not held the German High Sea Fleet fast in its
ports by the blockade in the North Sea. From that time forward for many
months, until the Italians came into the war, on May 23rd, 1915, the
French squadron was employed in neutralising the Austro-Hungarian Fleet
in the Adriatic, which did not dare to move. The blockading squadron
was extended across the Strait of Otranto, with occasional sweeps to
the northward, to control hostile operations, if possible, at Cattaro
and along the Dalmatian coast up to the approaches to Pola, where
the submarine _Curie_ was entangled, and lost to the Austrians. The
French base for these operations was at Malta, but an advanced base
was established in the island of Lissa. The blockade was completely
successful in checking every effort of the Austrians to strike at the
stream of transport in the Mediterranean, though it could not avail
to save Montenegro or hold back the Austrians in their advance into
Albania. No fleet can operate beyond the range of its guns, unless its
flying officers carry their bombs into inland countries.
The blockade maintained through the winter at the Strait of Otranto
was exceedingly arduous and filled with peril. Enemy destroyers and
submarines were at work, issuing from the wonderful island fringe of
the Dalmatian coast, and the French knew their peril. The armoured
cruiser _Léon Gambetta_ was sunk by submarine attack, with the loss
of Rear-Admiral Sénès, who was in command, and every officer on board,
as well as nearly 600 men. The armoured cruiser _Waldeck-Rousseau_
suffered damage by torpedo, and the new Dreadnought _Jean Bart_, with
Admiral Boué de Lapéyrère, the French Admiralissimo of the combined
fleets, on board, was touched, though only slightly injured. There
were other submarine attacks and losses of small craft, and some
losses were inflicted upon the enemy. British cruisers were attached
to the French Flag during these operations, and they continued to
co-operate with the French and Italians in Adriatic waters and in the
Ægean, where the French and Allied naval forces were the guard of all
the operations at Salonika and in the Piræus. Fleets and armies have
co-operated in the Mediterranean from the very beginning of the war. In
May, 1917, the British monitors, which, with the converted cruisers,
had been operating with the military expedition against the Turks and
Bulgarians, appeared in the Adriatic, and rendered valuable aid to the
Italians in their advance towards Trieste. The naval coalition has been
a marvel of effective organisation.
German professors have sometimes said that the land would sooner or
later beat the sea—that “Moltke” would become the victor over “Mahan.”
That is the convinced opinion of the Pan-Germans, who say that the
railway will yet prove the more rapid and the more secure means of
transport than the steamship. The lines from Antwerp by Cologne to
Vienna, and from Hamburg to Berlin, and thence through the very heart
of Europe to Vienna, and on by Belgrade and Sofia to Constantinople,
and from the opposite shore of the Bosphorus to Baghdad and down to the
Gulf, and by a branch through Persia to the confines of India, were to
give commercial and, perchance, military command of two continents.
Enterprise by the branch railway through Aleppo and Damascus against
Egypt, with a view to further developments in Africa, was related to
this conception of land-power. The measures adopted by the Allies for
the reconstitution of Serbia, the expeditions to the Dardanelles and
Salonika, the strong action taken in Greece, the naval movements on the
coast of Syria, the operations in the Sinai peninsula and Palestine,
and the expedition from the Persian Gulf to Baghdad were the answer to
these gigantesque projects of the enemy.
Behind them all lay the working of the fleets. Every class of ship and
almost every kind of vessel employed in naval warfare has been used in
one or other of these operations—the battleship, cruiser, destroyer,
torpedo-boat, submarine, mother ship, aeroplane, aircraft-carrier,
mining vessel, river gunboat, motor launch, mine-trawler, armed
auxiliary, special service vessel, transport, store ship, collier,
oiler, tank, distilling ship, ordnance vessel, hospital ship, tug,
lighter, and a crowd of other craft. All these are required for the
work of the Navy in the Mediterranean, as elsewhere, and they have been
employed with a quality of seamanlike skill, enterprise, resource,
courage, and success such as the history of the sea has no previous
record of. The appearance at the Golden Horn of a British submarine,
which had traversed a Turkish mine-field, was the sign of new powers
in naval warfare. We are lost in admiration of the self-sacrifice
of officers and men, both of the regular naval service and of the
mercantile marine and the fisheries, the latter being the heroes of
the perilous work of mine-sweeping. The British and French navies,
and the vessel representing the Russian Navy, acted in the closest
co-operation, and all the naval forces worked in intimate association
with the armies.
Where there was failure, the failure was due to the inevitable
limitations of sea-power, which has already been suggested with
reference to the North German coast, Zeebrugge, and the Montenegrin and
Albanian coasts. The history of the Dardanelles expedition will not be
written here. Beginning with a bombardment of the entrance forts on
November 3rd, 1914, which had little other effect than to stimulate
the defence, continued after an interval of months by the great naval
attacks in March, 1915, in which enormous damage was done to the forts
at the entrance and, to some extent, at the Narrows, but with the loss
of British and French battleships by the action of gunfire and drifting
mines, the enterprise concluded with the landing of the Allied armies
in the Gallipoli peninsula. The troops were compelled by outnumbering
forces and concentrated gunfire to withdraw. The combined attack should
have been made at the beginning. The unaided naval attack had merely
stimulated the defence. Here was the greatest demonstration of which
there is record of the limitation of sea-power. In the attack of such
a military position naval forces are essential, but military operations
are required if the desired success is to be attained.
This is true of all the operations in the Mediterranean and elsewhere.
Sea-power gave the means by which the army drove back the Turks from
Egypt, and it was the support of the advance in Sinai and Palestine.
It gave protection to the transports which carried troops and Army
requirements to Salonika and the Piræus, patrolling the routes or
providing convoy for the ships. The enemy realised his opportunity, and
his submarines began to develop great activity in the Mediterranean.
Certain transports were sunk and an attempt was made to cut the
communications of the expeditionary forces with their base. Some
considerable losses were suffered thereby, but gradually systems were
developed which gave a reasonable sense of security. The British,
French, and Italian flotillas were employed, and that of Japan came to
their aid. Never had such naval co-operation been witnessed before.
We cannot separate the advance in Mesopotamia from the Mediterranean
operations because the same object inspired both—viz., that of
arresting the threatened development of German commercial and military
power, through Asiatic Turkey to the Persian Gulf, and through Persia
to the borders of India. The first advance to Kut-el-Amara and
Ctesiphon proved disastrous because undertaken with inadequate means;
but the Navy rendered brilliant service, and, in the second advance, a
sufficient river flotilla of gunboats and transports made possible the
advance to Baghdad and beyond. The naval flotilla co-operated with
most excellent effect in this advance, played havoc with enemy’s craft,
and recaptured H.M.S. _Firefly_, which had been lost in the retreat
from Ctesiphon.
Thus we see the Navy operating in the great central theatre of war and
on its outlook to the East, exerting influence, transporting troops,
forming the base of armies, and everywhere proving an essential factor
in all that was done. It was confronted in the Mediterranean, as
elsewhere, with the new weapon of the submarine in very active form.
That menace, and the campaign against it, shall be the subject of the
next chapter.