I.—The Development of the Grand Fleet

In the organisation existing before the War, the Home Fleets comprised the First, Second and Third Fleets—in fact, practically all ships in home waters which it was intended to mobilise on the outbreak of war.

The war organisation, as carried out, divided the Home Fleets into two parts.

The First, the Grand Fleet, included the First Fleet, comprising the latest-built ships; the force stationed at Harwich; four ships of the 6th Battle Squadron; the 6th and 10th Cruiser Squadrons from the Second and Third Fleets respectively; and the mine-laying Squadron from the Second Fleet.

The Second, or Channel Fleet, included the older battleships, the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th Battle Squadrons, the 5th and 7th Cruiser Squadrons, and a sweeping flotilla with torpedo boats. This force was commanded by Vice-Admiral Sir Cecil Burney until the end of 1914, when he joined the Grand Fleet. It was independent of the Grand Fleet.

Of the ships of the Channel Fleet, the 5th and 6th Battle Squadrons and the 5th Cruiser Squadron were manned before mobilisation with nucleus crews, and were consequently partly trained; these ships assembled at Portland. The ships of the 7th and 8th Battle Squadrons and 7th Cruiser Squadron were not manned until mobilisation, and the crews consequently required training. This training was carried out near Plymouth, and the battleships joined Sir Cecil Burney’s command on September 3rd, 1914.

The ships of the 7th Cruiser Squadron were employed as a look-out force in the Straits of Dover during the time that the Channel Battle Fleet was patrolling to guard the passage of the Expeditionary Force. They were subsequently ordered by the Admiralty to another service, and three of them, the Hogue, Cressy and Aboukir, were sunk whilst patrolling the Broad Fourteens off the Dutch coast.

These, then, were the conditions when War opened. It was only natural that war experience should show very quickly the many directions in which we had to recast, or elaborate, our pre-War ideas, or to introduce new arrangements.

Peace manœuvres, however useful, can never be a substitute for war experience. They are many factors which render peace manœuvres unreal. In the first place, the available ships have to be divided so as to form the opposing fleet, “an enemy”; secondly, a matter of far greater moment, the manœuvres occupy much too short a period, and many of the difficulties affecting both matériel and personnel are not experienced; thirdly, the conditions of war cannot be reproduced without serious inconvenience, and even danger, to merchant ships; finally, in our own manœuvres there was a tendency in the rules to give the torpedo less than its proper value as a fighting weapon.

But, more than all, it was the conditions under which war broke out that made it necessary for us in the Grand Fleet to build up what was almost a new organisation.

(a) The submarine had just become a most formidable weapon; its development during the War was extraordinarily rapid.

(b) The airship as a scout was in its infancy at the start, but it also developed with great rapidity, as did the heavier-than-air machines.

(d) The effective range both of the gun and of the torpedo was quickly shown to be much greater than had been considered possible before the War.[C]

(e) Wireless telegraphy developed with great rapidity, and was put to many uses not dreamt of in pre-War days.

[C] In pre-War days our Battle Practice had been carried out at a maximum range of about 9,500 yards, and only on one occasion, when the Colossus fired at a target at 14,000 yards off Portland in 1912, had this range been exceeded.

On the other hand, we were very fortunate in having the Fleet concentrated at the outbreak of war. People had often pictured war with Germany coming as a bolt from the blue, and even naval officers feared that when the occasion did arise, it would be found, as had previously been the case, that fear of precipitating a conflict might lead the Government to delay concentration with the result that our squadrons would be separated when war was actually declared. Fortunately, the Admiralty in the last days of July, 1914, placed us at once in a strong strategic position. For this action the nation should be grateful to the First Lord and First Sea Lord.

It was curious that, in spite of all the lessons of history, there was general expectation that a great Fleet action would at once be fought. No doubt this arose, partly, from the boastings of German naval officers in pre-War days, and partly from a knowledge of the great sacrifices the enemy would incur unless he could dispute effectively our command of the sea. Most people found it difficult to imagine that the High Sea Fleet (built at vast expense, and rightly considered by the enemy to be an efficient weapon of war) would adopt from the outset a purely passive rôle, with the inevitable result that German trade would be swept from the seas. But there were two factors tending to make the High Command adopt this course. First, there was the fear that action with the Grand Fleet would so weaken the High Sea Fleet as to cause the command of the Baltic to pass into Allied hands, with a consequent landing of Russian troops on German soil as the result. This fear had been present in the German mind ever since the days of Frederick the Great, when Russia threatened Berlin during the Seven Years’ War. The second point, no doubt, was that the German High Command realised that, if Germany adopted a defensive rôle with her Fleet, it created, by far, the most difficult situation for us. Repugnant as this might be to high-spirited German naval officers, it was unquestionably the worst policy for us, for, whilst the German High Sea Fleet remained “in being” as a fighting force, we could not afford to undertake operations tending to weaken our Grand Fleet, particularly in the earlier period of the War when our margin of superiority at Germany’s “selected moment” was not great. The main disadvantage to the Germans, apart from their loss of trade, lay in the inevitable gradual weakening of the morale of the personnel of the Navy, and it is highly probable that this loss of morale was in the end responsible for the series of mutinies which broke out in the High Sea Fleet during 1917 and 1918, culminating in the final catastrophe in November, 1918. In my view, the passive rôle was carried much too far.