The Achievement of the British Navy in the World-War

by John Leyland

Having seen the British Fleet and the fleets allied with it operating in the North Sea, the Oceans, and the Mediterranean, we may suitably turn to some special features of the duties and work of the Navy in the war. The submarine came as a sign and a portent of new developments in the means and the practice of warfare at sea. Regarded once as the weapon of the weaker Power, it was adopted into the naval armoury of the strongest. When, in 1901, under Lord Fisher’s administration as First Sea Lord, a beginning was made in submarine construction by the ordering of five Holland boats, many people were taken aback. Confessedly the part to be played by the submarine lay at that time in the realm of speculation, but the British Navy could not afford to ignore it. Every advance must be watched and studied as it developed. The development has been rapid, and there are British submarines of astonishing powers, which have no equals in the world. They have made their mark in many a theatre of war. The French had led the way. The Germans followed in 1906. There is, indeed, the best reason to believe that Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, chief of the Navy Department, looked with no kindly eye upon submarine boats. He was a believer in battleships and the creator of the High Sea Fleet, with its battle squadrons and cruiser divisions. Concessions were made to the Admiralty Staff, and a few submarines were put in hand; but it was not until the beginning of the war that Tirpitz became inspired with the fervour of the convert.

Even now the relative position of the submarine in the category of warships is obscure. Admiral Sir Percy Scott thought that the knell of the battleship had been rung by its growing power; yet ships of the battleship class, carrying incredible armaments, possessing speed beyond the dreams of ante-bellum naval constructors, and infinitely superior for a dozen reasons to anything the Germans had thought of, have recently been completed, and will probably play a decisive part in any future naval engagement.

FLEETS IN ALLIANCE: BRITISH AND ITALIAN SHIPS IN THE ADRIATIC

ON BOARD THE “QUEEN ELIZABETH” AT MUDROS

But if the submarine has not dethroned the battleship, she has, in the hands of the enemy, done other remarkable things. She has struck a mortal blow at what many excellent people have hitherto regarded as the settled and accepted code of International Law; she has appeared as a pirate commerce-destroyer. Without warning and without pity she has sunk fishing vessels, tramp steamers, stately liners, and hospital ships. The code of honour is not observed by her. The German submarine officer has orders to run no risks, although in the old wars naval officers—who had no means of submerging either to attack or to escape—gladly ran every risk incidental to the service in which they were engaged. When the Lusitania was sunk it was explained that if the commander of the submarine had permitted the passengers to take to the boats before firing his torpedo, “this would have meant the certain destruction of his own vessel.” There was no evidence that such would have been the case, but the risk, which implied a danger merely incidental to naval service, was held to justify the sinking of the great liner with 1,200 souls on board. The wildest imagination could not have conceived that any human being could take such a distorted view of right and wrong, and of the plain duty of the seaman.

The submarine has accomplished other remarkable things in the war. She has converted benevolent neutrals into resolute enemies. She has brought the United States into the war in support of the Allies. She has transformed the mercantile marines opposed to her into actual fighting forces. A few merchant ships were armed before the war began, but now, because of ruthless submarine attack, the British mercantile marine is for practical purposes embodied with the Navy, in the sense that it is under naval control, is provided with means of defence, and acts directly under naval orders. Moreover, one-half or more of its shipping has been taken over by the naval service. The same is true of the merchant ships of the Allies. The German submarine has had a further effect. She has created a whole array of means directed to her destruction. Countless inventors have been set at work, and extraordinarily ingenious methods have been employed with the purpose of putting an end to submarine activities by sinking every boat as she appeared.

In the early days of the submarine it was believed that she might be sunk by using spar torpedoes fixed in swift boats, which would bear down upon the submarine as she submerged and explode the charge against her hull. But it soon occurred to seamen that if a swift vessel, destroyer or other, could run down a submarine she might more easily sink her by the impact of her sharp stem or a special keel. This method has been practised in the war, and by this means a number of enemy submarines have been dispatched to Davy Jones’s locker. There was an early case in which a certain destroyer, going at high speed, actually impaled a German submarine on her stem, and carried her onward, so injured that she sank. Another early case was that of the German submarine rammed and sent to the bottom off Beachy Head on March 28th, 1915, by the Thordis, commanded by that plucky skipper, Captain Bell, who set an example to many.

Another plan was to use suitable vessels in pairs, each pair dragging a cable connecting them, from which hung, on short lines, small mines to be electrically exploded when a submerged obstruction, probably a periscope or conning-tower, put a tension upon the connecting cable. The disadvantage of this system was that the entrapping vessels could not travel swiftly without bringing the cable near to the surface, and the chance of a submarine fouling the cable was remote. Yet it may be conjectured that the features of this system may have furnished the germ of procedures now in use. Capture or sinking by the use of nets was also an early idea, probably suggested by the nets used by big ships at anchor for protection against torpedoes, and Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson devised a large steel net for the purpose. Possibly this method, too, has developed into the nets employed in dealing with enemy submarines at the present time. But submarines were continually increasing in strength of structure, speed, and handiness, so that new systems were necessary and have developed with the requirements.