Who can wonder that people in the Allied countries are still less able to realise that behind all the fighting of their own armies lies the influence of sea-power, exercised by the British Fleet and the fleets that came one after another into co-operation with it? Without this power of the sea there could have been no hope of success in the war. As the King said, the Navy defends British shores and commerce, and secures for England and her Allies the ocean highways of the world. The purpose of this book is to show how these things are done.
On the first day of hostilities the British Navy laid hold upon the road that would lead to victory. There is no hyperbole in saying that the Grand Fleet, in its northern anchorages, from the very beginning, influenced the military situation throughout the world, and made possible many of the operations of the armies, which could neither have been successfully initiated nor continued without it. But in the early days of August, 1914, when, from the war cloud which had overshadowed Europe, broke forth the lurid horrors of the conflict, the situation was extremely critical. What was required to be done had to be done quickly and unhesitatingly, lest the enemy should strike an unforeseen blow. Happily, with faultless knowledge, the strategy of the emergency was realised, and with unerring instinct and sagacity it was applied. The foresight of great naval administrators, and chiefly of Lord Fisher, who had brought about the regeneration of the British Navy, shaping it for modern conditions, was justified a thousandfold.
Never was the need of exerting sea command more urgent than at the outbreak of war. Everything that Englishmen had won in all the centuries of the storied past was involved in the quarrel. Only by mastery of the sea could the country be made secure. Its soil had never been trodden by an invader since Norman William came in 1066. The very food that was eaten and the things by which the industries and commerce of the country existed demanded control at sea. If the British Empire was to be safe from aggression it must be safeguarded on every sea. If England was to set armies in any foreign field of operations, and to retain and maintain them there, with the gigantic supplies they would require; if she was to render help to her Allies in men or munitions or anything else, whether they came from England, or the United States, or any other country, and were landed in France, Russia, Italy, or Greece, or in Egypt, Mesopotamia, or East or West Africa, for the defeat of the enemy, that must be done by virtue of power at sea. Therefore, in this war, as John Hollond, writing his Discourse of the Navy in 1638, said of the wars of his time, “the naval part is the thread that runs through the whole wooft, the burden of the song, the scope of the text.”
The moment when the First Fleet, as it was then called, slipped away from its anchorage at Portland on the morning of Wednesday, July 29th, 1914, will yet be regarded as one of the decisive moments of history. The initiative had been seized, and all real initiative was thenceforward denied to the enemy. The gauge of victory had been won. “Time is everything; five minutes makes the difference between a victory and a defeat,” said Nelson. “The advantage and gain of time and place will be the only and chief means for our good,” Drake had said before him. By a fortunate circumstance, which should have arrested the imagination as with a presage of victory—a circumstance arranged five months before, as the result of a series of most intricate preparations—time and place were both on the British side.
The First, Second, and Third Fleets, and the flotillas attached to them, had been mobilised as a test operation, and inspected at Spithead by King George, on July 20th. The First Fleet had returned to Portland and the other fleets to their home ports, where the surplus or “balance” crews of the Naval Reserves were to be sent on shore. Then had come the now famous order to “stand fast,” issued on the night of Sunday, July 26th, which had stopped the process of demobilisation. Dark clouds had shadowed the international horizon. Austria-Hungary had presented her ultimatum to Serbia. She declared war on the 28th. The Second Fleet remained, therefore, in proximity to its reserves of men, and the men were ready to be re-embarked in the Third Fleet.
Few people realised at the time the immense significance of the memorable eastward movement of the squadrons from Portland Roads, or of the assembly of those powerful forces at their northern strategic anchorages. Those forces became the Grand Fleet, that unexampled organisation of fighting force, under command of that fine sea officer, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe. War was declared by Great Britain on August 4th. Successive steps of supreme importance were taken, which, in very truth, saved the cause of the Allies. Disaster and surprise attack were forestalled. The Fleet, fully mobilised, and growing daily in strength, was already exerting command of the sea, and the safe transport of the Expeditionary Force to France was assured. Co-operation with the French Fleet was immediately established—its cruiser squadron in the Channel and its battle squadrons in the Mediterranean.
Fighting episodes were not delayed, but for many months the operations of the Grand Fleet remained shrouded as by a veil, lifted only on rare occasions. Few people knew the tremendous anxieties and responsibility of the British Commander-in-Chief. His vast command of vessels of all classes and uses had to be organised into a mighty fleet, complete in every element—battle squadrons, battle-cruiser squadrons, light-cruiser squadrons, flotillas and auxiliaries, transports, hospital ships, and every ship and thing that a fleet can require. A whole series of intricate dispositions had to be made. Officers were to be inspired with the ideas of the Commander-in-Chief and the whole Fleet was to be so trained, under squadron and flotilla commanders, that each would know on the instant how he should act.
If Nelson, in 1789, spent many hours in explaining to his “band of brothers” his plans for his attack at the Nile, with fourteen sail-of-the-line, what must it have been for Sir John Jellicoe to communicate to his officers, and discuss with them, all his plans for every emergency or call for the service of every squadron and ship in his vast command? All this must be realised now. And during the anxious early months of the war, as the winter was drawing near, the great anchorages were as yet unprotected, and safety from hostile submarines could often only be found in rapid steaming at sea. The mining campaign of the enemy had also to be overcome. The anxieties were enormous, and it was only the power of command, the sea instinct, the deep understanding, the readiness to act in moments of extraordinary responsibility, and the resource and professional skill of the Commander-in-Chief and his staff and officers in command, that enabled the tremendous work to be accomplished.
A BRITISH FLEET STEAMING IN LINE AHEAD