The British Navy in Battle

by Arthur Joseph Hungerford Pollen

But the War Staff was never put into the position to discharge the functions which the 1909 committee had designated as its main purpose. So far from being an authority equipped for the exhaustive study of war and how to prepare for it, the whole apparatus of fighting was carefully excluded from its purview. It had no connection with the departments administering gunnery, torpedoes, submarines, aircraft, or mines. As to some of these activities, there were as a fact no departments solely charged with their control before the War Staff was instituted. They were not entrusted to the War Staff. And no new staffs were created! If the strategical vagueness, to which the Beresford Committee had borne witness in 1909, arose largely, as many supposed, from the uncertain state of naval technique, then, so far as the War Staff was concerned, this vagueness had to continue—for technique was not their concern.

The consequences were demonstrated in many striking ways as the war progressed. But not the least curious result was the confusion that arose as to the offensive and defensive aspects of naval strategy and preparation. In the debate on the Naval Estimates of 1916 a violent attack on Admiralty policy by Mr. Churchill left Mr. Balfour with no alternative but to break the brutal truth to us that, at the outbreak of war, we had not a single submarine-proof harbour on the East Coast. Reflect for a minute what this means. In the years which have elapsed since Lord Fisher came to the Admiralty as First Sea Lord, two altogether revolutionary changes have been made in naval war.

1. Until 1904 the 12-inch guns of our battleships were weapons that no one would have thought of using beyond the range of 4,000 yards. The identical guns have been used in this war at 11,000, 12,000, and 13,000 yards. The advance in range owes nothing to improvements in the gun. It has been brought about by improvements in sights, in range-finders, and in the organization called fire control.

2. Again, in 1904 the submarine, or submersible torpedo-carrying boat, had indeed been proved to be a practical instrument for war, but was still in its infancy. By 1907, when Captain Murray Sueter wrote his well-known work on the subject, it had become obvious that the tactics of battle, no less than the defence of fleets, stood to be completely changed by its actual and probable developments.

Now every new engine of war—and as a long-range weapon the modern gun is such—creates a double problem. There is the art of using it in attack; there is the art of countering it when it is in the enemy’s hands. With every new development, then, the Navy has to learn a new offensive and a new defensive. In the matter of guns, there is but one defensive that can be perfectly successful. It is to develop a method of using them so rapid, so insistent, and so accurate that the enemy’s guns will be out of action before they can be employed against us. Failing this there is a secondary defensive, viz., to protect ships by armour. Finally, you may keep out of range of the enemy’s guns by turning or running away. The adoption of armour calls for no perfection either of tactical organization or technical practice. It is a matter which can be left to the metallurgists, engineers, and constructors. The purely naval policy, then, would have been either to develop the use of guns offensively, which, as we have seen, must also be the best defence, or with a purely defensive idea, solely to enjoin the tactic that will avoid the risks inseparable from coming under the enemy’s fire. To the country that was completing nearly two battleships to any other country’s one, that aspired to command the sea, that hoped to be able to blow any enemy fleet out of the water if it got the chance, it would seem obvious that there could be only one gunnery policy; to wit, push the offensive to the highest possible extent.

Again, the distinguishing feature of submarines is their capacity to approach the strongest of vessels unseen and then, in waters superficially under hostile command, to strike with the most deadly of all weapons. As they gained in speed and radius of action, it became obvious that wherever a fleet might be—whether at sea or in harbour—it must, unless it were protected by effective passive defences while in harbour, and by numerous mobile guards when at sea, be exposed to this insidious and, if successful, deadly form of attack.

The basic supposition of British naval policy has been to maintain a fleet sufficiently powerful to drive all enemy’s craft within his harbours and defences. The proposition has only to be stated for it to be clear that the navy could not have expected, except in rare circumstances, to have any targets for its submarines, whereas it was as certain as any future thing could be, that every British ship would be a constant target for the enemy’s submarines. British policy in regard to submarine war should, then, have been mainly, if, indeed, not wholly, defensive.

Thus, if there was one form of offensive imperatively imposed on us, it was that of naval artillery; and if there was one form of defensive not less imperatively incumbent, it was the provision of adequate protection against submarines.

It is now, of course, common knowledge that it was exactly in these two particulars that Admiralty policy from 1904–1914 was either discontinuous, vacillating, and self-contradictory, or simply non-existent. So far as it cultivated anything, it was a defensive tactic for the gun and offensive tactics for the submarine! On the latter point let the non-provision of a safe anchorage on the Northeast coast stand for the whole. If you pick up a Navy List for any month in any year prior to August, 1914, you will look in vain for any department of Whitehall, any establishment at a principal port, any appointment of flag officer or captain, to prove that there was at any time an individual or a committee charged with the vital problem of protecting the British Fleet against enemy submarines when war broke out. The necessity had indeed been realized. It was set out by Captain Sueter in 1907. It had been urged on the Board of Admiralty. But no action was taken.

This, of course, was bad enough. The case of gunnery was worse, for if you compare the Navy List of August, 1914, with that of the corresponding month of the year that Mr. Churchill took office, you will find that it was to his administration that we owe the abolition of the only officer and department in the navy competent to advise or direct methods of gunnery adequate for war. From 1908 to 1913 the Inspectorship of Target Practice had been effective in giving shape, and to some extent, a voice, to the alarm, anxiety, and indignation of the navy at the manner in which gunnery administration boxed the compass of conflicting policies. With the suppression of the office there came administrative peace—and technical chaos.