To a certain extent the submarine has enabled the torpedo to come into its own. It is not at all an easy task to hit a rapidly moving ship from a platform also ploughing the water at a great rate. Among other things the speed and distance of the opponent have to be taken into consideration, and the missile aimed ahead of the enemy so that it and the target shall arrive at a given point at the same moment. The late Mr Robert Whitehead’s invention, an improvement on that of Commandant Lupuis, of the Austrian Navy, who had sold his patent to the former, was tested by the British Admiralty at Sheerness in 1871. Although extremely crude when compared with its successor of to-day, the sum of £15,000 was paid for the English rights. It was first put to a practical test in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, when Lieutenant Rozhdestvensky, who afterward suffered defeat at the hands of the Japanese in May 1905, sank a Turkish warship by its means.

Viscount Jellicoe has told us that the arrival of the submarine led to certain alterations in strategy. I quote from an interview which the former First Sea Lord granted to a representative of the Associated Press in the spring of 1917. Sir John, as he then was, said: “The most striking feature of the change in our historic naval policy resulting from the illegal use of submarines, and from the fact that the enemy surface ships have been driven from the sea, is that we have been compelled to abandon a definite offensive policy for one which may be called an offensive defensive, since our only active enemy is the submarine engaged in piracy and murder.” Mr Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty in August 1914, put the matter a little more bluntly. “But for the submarine and the mine.” he wrote, “the British Navy would, at the outset of the war, have been able to force the fighting to an issue on their old battleground—outside the enemy’s ports.”

This did not mean that every other type of ship had been rendered obsolete or even obsolescent by the coming of the vessel that can float on or under the waves. Admiral von Capelle, Secretary of State for the German Imperial Navy, told the Main Committee of the Reichstag that the submarine was an “important and effective weapon,” but added that “big battleships are not wholly indispensable. Their construction depends on the procedure of other nations.”[[5]] For instance, the submarine has emphasized the importance of the torpedo-boat destroyer, which some seamen thought it would supersede. The T.B.D. has more than maintained its own. Not only is it useful for acting independently, fighting its own breed, but as the safeguard of the battleships and battle-cruisers at sea, and also as the keenest weapon against submarines, the naval maid-of-all-work has proved extraordinarily efficient.[[6]]

In the general operations of naval warfare it cannot be said that the enemy U-boats were particularly successful. In the five battles that were fought the work of German submarines was negligible so far as actual fighting was concerned. In two of them, namely Coronel and the Falklands, they were unrepresented on account of the actions taking place many thousands of miles from European waters. This limitation of range of action is a difficulty that time and experiment were beginning to solve when hostilities came to an abrupt conclusion.

The battles of Heligoland Bight and Dogger Bank are profoundly interesting to the student of War in the Underseas. Sir David Beatty, who commanded the Battle Cruiser Squadron in the first big naval engagement in which submarines were used, while admitting that he did not lose sight of “the risk” from them, says in his dispatch that “our high speed ... made submarine attack difficult, and the smoothness of the sea made their detection comparatively easy.” These two antidotes will be noted by the reader. The same distinguished officer, perched on the fore-bridge of the Lion in his shirt-sleeves while pursuing the German Fleet near the Dogger Bank, personally observed the wash of a periscope on his starboard bow. By turning immediately to port he entirely upset the calculations of the enemy commander, who was not afforded a further opportunity to torpedo the flagship. A like manœuvre defeated a similar projected attack on the Queen Mary in the Bight. The helm is therefore a third instrument of defence. Apparently the service rendered by enemy U-boats at these two battles was worthless. If they fired at all they missed. On the other hand, any attempt to sink them likewise failed.

In the dispatches on the Battle of Jutland, which a well-known Admiral tells me were severely edited before publication, there are several references to enemy submarines, none to our own. The first attempted attack took place about half an hour after Sir David Beatty had opened fire, and immediately following the entry of the 5th Battle Squadron into the fight. The destroyer Landrail sighted a periscope on her port quarter. With the Lydiard she formed a smoke-screen which “undoubtedly preserved the battle-cruisers from closer submarine attack.” The light cruiser Nottingham also reported a submarine to starboard. We are also informed that “Fearless and the 1st Flotilla were very usefully employed as a submarine screen during the earlier part of May 31.” The Marlborough, flagship of Vice-Admiral Sir Cecil Burney’s First Battle Squadron, after having been torpedoed—whether by submarine or other craft is not mentioned—drove off a U-boat attack while proceeding to harbour for repairs. “The British Fleet,” adds Sir John Jellicoe, “remained in the proximity of the battlefield and near the line of approach to German ports until 11 a.m. on June 1, in spite of the disadvantages of long distances from fleet bases and the danger incurred in waters adjacent to enemy coasts from submarines and torpedo craft.” In the British list of enemy vessels put out of action, one submarine figures as sunk.

Admiral Beatty justly remarks that the German losses were “eloquent testimony to the very high standard of gunnery and torpedo efficiency of His Majesty’s ships.” Of the twenty-one vessels lost or severely damaged, it would appear as though nine were accounted for by torpedoes, although this does not necessarily mean that they had not been engaged by gunfire as well. At Dogger Bank, it may be recollected, a torpedo finally settled the Blücher, which had already been rendered hors de combat by shell fired from more old-fashioned weapons.

The German High Sea Fleet adopted a prolonged attitude of caution after Jutland, but the All-Highest thought it well to issue an Imperial Order calculated to inspire the officers and men of the submarine flotillas. “The impending decisive battle” mentioned in the following message, which is dated Main Headquarters, 1st February, 1917, evidently refers to the ‘unlimited’ phase of U-boat warfare and not to a general action, as one might imagine at first glance. This highly interesting document runs:

To my Navy

In the impending decisive battle the task falls on my Navy of turning the English war method of starvation, with which our most hated and most obstinate enemy intends to overthrow the German people, against him and his Allies by combating their sea traffic with all the means in our power.