This chapter cannot be other than a faint and incomplete outline of happenings in the Baltic between 1914 and 1917. The British campaign ended in April 1918. When the German naval forces and transports approached Hangö, South-west Finland, four ‘E’ and three ‘C’ boats were taken outside the harbour of Helsingfors and blown up. The crews made their way, not without difficulty and danger, to Petrograd. “Whether it be wise in men to do such actions or no,” said Sir William Temple over two centuries ago, “I am sure it is so in States to honour them.”
Russia had gone into ‘Committee.’ The Baltic had ceased to be a battle area. A chapter in which the names of Horton, Laurence, Goodhart, and Crombie afforded something more than a tinge of romance had been added to the history books. To quote Admiral Kanin, successor to the hard-working and reforming von Essen, Russia had been “helped extraordinarily by the English submarines.” The boats were “magnificent,” the officers “fine young fellows.” Their bearing was “wonderful—and their coolness!”
CHAPTER XIV
Blockading the Blockade
“This blockade is a complete avowal of Germany’s weakness.”—Lord Robert Cecil.
Shelling an enemy is merely a scientific way of throwing stones. When a schoolboy in God’s open air is not quite sure of the nature of an object, his primitive ancestors prompt him to fling something at it; middle age, having the full advantage of civilization, pokes it with a stick.
In naval warfare ‘throwing things’ is perfectly legitimate cricket, but mining, which is invisible poking, is scarcely recognized as a worthy substitute for football. Two or three years passed before the last mine was swept from the waters that formed the theatre of the maritime drama of the Russo-Japanese War; it may take thrice that time to clear up the aftermath of the World Conflict. The prospect is not pleasant to contemplate. The belligerents sowed these murderous canisters in many latitudes. Germany, to her lasting shame, did not always provide the necessary apparatus to render them innocuous when they broke loose, or for those of the unanchored variety to become worthless “one hour at most after the person who laid them shall have lost control over them,” according to Article 1 of the Eighth Convention of The Hague Conference of 1907. Her favourite trick after a naval engagement was to fling floating mines overboard in the hope that the pursuing fleet would blunder into them. Many thousands were scattered along the trade routes. Let me hasten to add that in the use of mines Germany was well in advance of every other belligerent in 1914. It was weeks before the British Navy took advantage of what most salt-water sailors regard as a device associated with the dirty, low-down trick of hitting below the belt.
Mines, like their cousin the depth charge, played a very important part in combating the submarine menace. As Germany showed a partiality for them, we did our best to oblige her. The most extensive mine-field ever planted was sown by Great Britain. It stretched from the Orkney Islands to the fringe of the territorial waters of Norway, and covered an area of not less than 22,000 square miles. Access to the Atlantic, rigidly guarded by the naval police of the Patrol, was provided on the Scottish side. Other British mine-fields existed at the farther end of the North Sea, guarded by a hundred or more surface craft, and in the neighbourhood of Flanders, Heligoland, and Denmark. The object of these vast prohibited areas was to prevent U-boats from gaining easy access to the great ocean routes. Germany early laid a mine-field inside the Skager-Rack to prevent British submarines from entering the Baltic—which it did not do—and afterward violated international law by taking similar steps in the Cattegat. While the latter operation was proceeding, certain of our naval forces came across a batch of enemy mine-layers at their nefarious task, sank ten of them, and rescued their crews. The men ought to have been ordered to walk the plank, pour encourager les autres, as Voltaire said of Admiral Byng’s execution.
Britain’s bold bid to foil the U-boats was undertaken, in the words of the official explanation, “in view of the unrestricted warfare carried on by Germany at sea by means of mines and submarines, not only against the Allied Powers, but also against neutral shipping,” and because merchant ships were “constantly sunk without regard to the ultimate safety of their crews.” The big northern mine-field proved very useful. That was why the enemy immediately started a loud-mouthed campaign in neutral countries in the hope of inciting their Governments to protest against an effective method of warfare decidedly prejudicial to the German cause.
A word or two about the surface barrage maintained across the Channel. Every day and night, ceaselessly and relentlessly, in fair weather and foul, over a hundred armed patrolling craft of various sorts and sizes kept sentinel at the great southern gateway, and enabled troops and munitions to cross the drawbridge from England to France. It was not so difficult a task during the day as at night. When darkness fell the guard burned flares that made the passage of a submarine travelling on the surface an exceedingly dangerous undertaking. If a U-boat tried the underwater route, there were other means of obstruction quite as deadly as the methods of the fire-breathing trawlers. There is no truth in the yarn that a steel net stretched across the Straits of Dover, thereby guaranteeing with more or less certainty the immunity of transports from attack by underwater vessels.
The fisherman’s device for catching members of the finny tribe was, of course, applied to submarines. Long nets with meshes ten or fifteen feet square proved of great service when the war was young. Dropped in the course of an approaching U-boat, the probability was that she would poke her nose into it and find extreme difficulty in getting out. Subsequently cutters were fitted to the enemy’s craft, but nothing could eliminate the movement of the net, which was supported on the surface by small buoys or planks. Moored nets with mines attached boded no good to the submarine that was unfortunate enough to encounter the obstacle.