The British Navy in Battle

by Arthur Joseph Hungerford Pollen

BRITISH STRATEGY

The battle of the Falkland Islands was an event of enormous importance and interest, and I propose to discuss a few of its more obvious bearings. Let us first consider its immediate direct and indirect effects upon the course of the war. The overseas naval situation at the end of October, while not in the larger sense at all threatening or dangerous, afforded nevertheless grounds for very great anxiety. Emden had made a series of sensational captures in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. Karlsruhe was working havoc with the British trade off the northeast corner of South America. The German China squadron had evaded the Japanese and British and Allied fleets in the East, and Australia and her consorts had obtained no news of its whereabouts when cruising between the Antipodes and the German islands. A few British ships had been taken by Dresden on her passage down to the Straits of Magellan, and the public was entirely without information which led them to suppose that either Von Spee or any of the raiding cruisers were the subject of any effective pursuit. Though the loss of ships by hostile cruisers was absurdly smaller than experts had anticipated, it was quite large enough to disconcert and alarm the public, who knew, after all, very little about the character of those anticipations. Suddenly in the first week of November came two thunderclaps. Admiral Cradock, with a preposterously weak force, had been engaged and been defeated by the lost Von Spee. Of the four ships composing his squadron, the armed liner Otranto and the light cruiser Glasgow had escaped, but Good Hope and Monmouth had gone down, lost with all hands. Then on November 3rd came the bombardment of Lowestoft by certain German cruisers. It was the first attack of any kind on the people of these islands, and it was hastily explained to us by the Admiralty—and quite rightly—that the thing was without a military objective or military importance, and as if to forestall naval criticism, we were further told that it would not be allowed to disturb any previously made Admiralty plans. We were asked to believe that it was a mere piece of frightfulness.

But it is not certain that this was the only motive of the adventure. May it not have been done in the express hope that the British higher command, face to face with a shocked and outraged public opinion, would hesitate about diminishing those forces at home which were best calculated to intercept and bring to action the fast vessels which alone could be employed with any chance of safety on these bombarding expeditions? Is it not more than possible that the German staff, knowing the prospects of the rebellion in South Africa, was most desperately anxious to give Von Spee an added chance of crossing the Atlantic in security and lending the tremendous support of his squadron to the German forces in South-West Africa, who, with this added prestige, could be counted upon to attract all the disaffected South African sentiment to its side? Were not these bombardments, in short, undertaken solely to compel us to keep our stronger units concentrated?

Whether this was the German plan or not, let it stand to the credit of the Fisher-Churchill régime that no fear, either of public opinion or as to the success of future raids, stood in the way of dealing promptly with the Von Spee menace. It should undoubtedly have been dealt with long before. It was a blunder that Jerram’s force was not overwhelmingly superior to Von Spee’s; a blunder that he had not been instructed to shadow him from the beginning. Cradock’s mission ought never to have been permitted. But now that fate had exposed these errors of policy, the right thing at last was done. Yet it must have taken some nerve to do it. The British forces in the North Sea had certainly been greatly strengthened since the outbreak of war. Agincourt, Erin, Canada, Benbow, and certain lighter units had joined the Grand Fleet. Tiger was finished and commissioned as part of the Battle-Cruiser Fleet under Sir David Beatty. This gave him four battle-cruisers of a speed of twenty-eight knots and armed with 13.5 guns, in addition to the four of an older type—New Zealand, Indomitable, Invincible, Inflexible. To take two of these and send them after Von Spee reduced this force very considerably, but it was probably thought that the addition of Tiger left Sir David strong enough for the main purpose. After victory had been won a month later, rumours were prevalent that a third battle-cruiser had been despatched westward as well, but this has never been confirmed. But on the main point, namely, the vital importance of sending an adequate force for the pursuit and capture of Von Spee, the strategical decision was indisputably right.

Its value can be judged by the immediate results of the victory. Between November 1st and December 8th it is almost true to say that British trade with the west coast of South America was at a standstill. On the east coast things were very little better. For if shippers were still willing to send their ships to sea, it was only on the receipt of greatly enhanced freights. Immediately after the victory Valparaiso shipping put to sea as if no war was in existence, and all Pacific and South Atlantic freight fell immediately to normal. Even the escape of Dresden did not qualify the universal sense of relief. The repercussion in South Africa was equally prompt. The rebellion in the Anglo-Dutch colonies had been put down. But to embark on the conquest of German South-West Africa was a different thing altogether, and certainly one that could not be attempted so long as there was the least suspicion of insecurity in General Botha’s sea communications. And while Von Spee was at large this insecurity was obvious. One of the direct results then of the despatch of Admiral Sturdee to the South Atlantic was to make the first military invasion of German territory both possible and ultimately successful.

Apart from its immediate results in the way of relieving British trade in South America and removing the last obstacle to active British military policy in South Africa, the Falkland Islands engagement was of enormous value not only in re-asserting the prestige of the British Navy, but in giving fresh heart to all the Allies after the exhausting struggles to defeat the German advances on the French capital and Calais. It was especially the first definite proof the Alliance had received that British sea-power was no vague and shadowy thing, but a real force which, rightly and relentlessly employed, must ensure the ultimate victory of Allied arms. These were its good sides.

It had one lamentable and disastrous consequence. Emden was captured before the battle-cruisers left their English port. Karlsruhe was never heard of again, and the rumours of her destruction seemed before December to be well founded, so that after the victory of December 8th, beyond the fugitive Dresden and two armed liners unaccounted for, there was not a German ship in the world to threaten a single British trade or territorial interest. For Koenigsberg, if she had escaped the guns of the two ships that had attempted her destruction in the mouth of the Rufigi, which was doubtful, was at any rate so closely blockaded that her power for active mischief was clearly at an end. German naval force was then limited to the High Seas Fleet, still of course intact, but with apparently no wish to attempt an active, and no power to make an effective, offensive. Of this force Sir John Jellicoe seemed to have taken the measure. Four months of activity, strenuous and anxious beyond description, had made our fleet bases proof against submarine attack, so that the only offensive open to the German fleet, that embodied in the policy of attrition, was no longer a menace. The submarine attack on trade was unexpected. At a blow, then, Whitehall, which for four months had been kept on tenterhooks by its unpreparedness for cruiser or submarine warfare, suddenly found itself without a naval care in the world.

But Mr. Churchill could not be idle, and the tempter planted in his fertile brain the crazy conception that the unemployed and unemployable fleet should add to his laurels, by repeating, on the Dardanelles forts the performances of the German howitzers at Liège, Maubeuge, and Antwerp. The failure of the Naval Brigade at Antwerp was to be picturesquely avenged. In judging of the results of the Falkland Islands battle then, we must set against its immediate and resounding benefits the humiliating tragedy of Gallipoli.