The Harwich Naval Forces: Their Part in the Great War

by E. F. Knight

Chapter I

THE OPENING OF THE WAR[ToC]

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CHAPTER I

THE OPENING OF THE WAR

The light cruisers and destroyers—Harwich in war time—The Harwich Force goes out—The first shots of the naval war—Sinking of the Königin Luise—Loss of the Amphion.

He who undertakes to write the history of the Naval Forces which had Harwich as their base during the Great War will have a wonderful story indeed to tell—from the sinking, within a few days of the declaration of war, of the German mine-layer Königin Luise by a section of the force, down to the day when there steamed into Harwich harbour, under the escort of the Harwich Force, the surrendered submarines of the beaten enemy. To those who manned our ships during those four terrible years it must all seem now like some strange dream—the weary, watchful patrolling through storm or fog, with no lights showing on sea or shore; the feeling of the way by dead reckoning and lead in dark wintry weather along the enemy's coasts, with an ever-vigilant foe above, below, and on the surface of the sea; the amazing adventures; the risks boldly taken; and ever and anon an action fought with a fierce determination on both sides.

For the Germans fought bravely and skilfully on occasion during the first years of the war. One gathers that it was not until the end that their moral began to weaken. They thought that they could shake the moral of the British Navy by methods of frightfulness, by the cold-blooded murder of the survivors of sinking ships, and so forth. But it was their own moral that failed at last. For this parvenu German Navy, good though its ships and good its personnel, was lacking in one essential—the tradition that inspires our own Navy, the significance of which tradition the German, who knows not chivalry, is incapable of understanding. A Navy with an old and glorious tradition could not have surrendered itself, as did the German Navy, without having come out and made a fight—if hopeless fight—of it, as did the Spanish ships off Cuba and the Russians at Chemulpo, so saving the honour of their flag.