The Achievement of the British Navy in the World-War

by John Leyland

A Drifter Laying Anti-Submarine Nets.

German cruisers, destructive as a few of them were, did not inflict losses amounting to anything like the figures of the old wars. In those contests of power, notwithstanding the depredations of commerce-destroying frigates, British oversea trade grew, while that of the enemy withered away. If the enemy captured ten British ships out of a thousand the loss might be considered serious, but if the British frigates captured ten out of the enemy’s hundred the injury inflicted was ten times more effective. Towards the end of the long war with France very few French traders were captured because scarcely any ventured to sea, while the French continued to capture English ships up to the very end of the war, ten years after their fleet had been destroyed at Trafalgar. The loss by capture and sinking was at the rate of 500 ships a year, and even in 1810, 619 English ships were lost.

In the present war the German commerce-destroying campaign, by means of cruisers and armed liners, though very effective at the beginning, collapsed with great rapidity. Hostile action against trade has never before been so rapidly brought under control. Steam, the telegraph, and wireless have enormously increased, as compared with the sailing days, the thoroughness and efficiency of superior sea-power. Difficulty of providing for coal and oil supply, the want of naval repairing and docking bases, and, above all, the immense superiority brought quickly to bear by the combined naval forces of England, France, and Japan, aided by the Australian Navy (auxiliary to the British, to which it belonged), within a comparatively short time caused the whole of German commerce to disappear from the oceans. Soon not a single ship remained—trader, cruiser, or armed liner—as a target, except that such isolated raiders as the Möwe might offer rare opportunities of attack. This failure of the Germans seemed the more remarkable because they had long recognised the floating commerce of England to be her Achilles’ heel. Prince Bülow described it as such. They had expressly reserved, at The Hague Conference, the right to convert merchantmen into cruisers on the high seas to serve as commerce-destroyers. They used this right in some instances, as in that of the Cap Trafalgar, which was sunk in single-ship action by the British converted liner Carmania. Yet this procedure proved of no effect in the war.

It would be a great mistake to regard the German cruiser campaign against commerce apart from the general distribution of German warships and the means taken to supply them with their requirements. The writer is inclined to the belief that the impotence of the Germans in distant waters shows that their Navy was not ready nor effectively prepared for the war. The great expenditure on the High Sea Fleet proved unavailing. The submarine boats did not exist in any considerable number. Only about twenty-seven or twenty-eight of them were completed in August, 1914, of which about a dozen were of early experimental type, fit only for local use, and the programme provided only for the building of half a dozen in each year. The German Navy possessed not more than a couple of big airships, and a few effective aeroplanes. The cruisers on foreign service were scattered about the world without plan. The battle-cruiser Goeben and the light cruiser Breslau had been detached in the Mediterranean during the Balkan War, and, according to the Greek White Book, Turkey having entered into alliance with Germany on August 4th, the two cruisers fled to the Dardanelles in conformity with orders received from Berlin. The Germans were apprehensive as to their safety, and their naval authorities never intended to leave them in their dangerous situation of isolation in an Italian port. The business of controlling and directing the operations of the commerce-destroying cruisers and armed liners, and providing their supplies, was admittedly dexterously arranged by the agency of wireless, mainly through the means placed at disposal by German sympathisers in the United States, the States of Southern America, and other neutral countries, though nothing they did could withstand the steady pressure of sea-power.

The most considerable German force in distant waters was the East Asian Squadron, under command of Admiral Count von Spee. It was located at Kiao-Chau, and its principal elements were the armoured cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Sooner or later this squadron was bound to be defeated, as its commanding officer fully realised. The Japanese declared war on August 23rd, and the fleets of Admiral Baron Dewa and Admiral Kato were stretched out to blockade and intercept him; but he extricated himself very dexterously, crossed the Pacific, defeated Admiral Sir Christopher Craddock off Coronel on November 1st, rounded Cape Horn, and was himself defeated with the loss of his whole squadron in the battle of the Falkland Isles on December 8th. One of his cruisers, the Emden, which had escaped the Japanese, made a great noise in the world. Her captain was a very capable and also a very gallant officer, who bombarded oil tanks at Madras, sank the Russian cruiser Jemtchug and the French destroyer Mousquet at Penang, and sent to the bottom seventeen British vessels, representing a value of £2,211,000, besides three sent into port. The Emden was destroyed by H.M. Australian cruiser Sydney at the Cocos-Keeling Islands on November 8th. The Karlsruhe sank vessels representing a value of £1,662,000.

It is not the purpose here to describe the depredations and ocean wanderings of the other German cruisers or auxiliary cruisers. The object is to show how, by the all-compassing pressure of naval power, they were successively destroyed. It would be folly to deny that there was something defective in the disposition of the British naval forces at the beginning. Admiral von Spee was at large, with two powerful armoured cruisers, but Sir Christopher Craddock was left in inferior force off the coast of Chile. The obsolescent battleship Canopus, which had inferior speed, was to join him, but did not reach him in time. The Australian battle-cruiser Australia, which would have been an extremely valuable aid to Craddock’s squadron, did not pursue the German squadron across the Pacific.

Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher returned to the Admiralty as First Sea Lord on October 29th, 1914, and at once set about to use the naval instrument he had been so largely instrumental in creating. In dead secrecy and with incredible speed a force was prepared and dispatched. Admiral Sturdee had with him the magnificent battle-cruisers Invincible and Inflexible, the armoured cruisers Kent, Cornwall, and Carnarvon, the light cruisers Bristol and Glasgow, and the armed liner Macedonia. The battleship Canopus was already at Port Stanley. Before anyone knew he had left England, he arrived at the Falkland Islands on December 7th, after having steamed a distance of 7,000 miles. The German Admiral was known to be approaching with the object of utilising the islands as a base. He arrived on the next day, but was taken by complete surprise, though he was conscious of impending fate, and his squadron ceased to exist.

This was one of the master-strokes of the war, made with lightning rapidity. Strategy was seen in action, and thenceforward the control of the ocean was secured. There remained the business of rounding up the enemy cruisers which were still preying upon shipping on the routes of commerce. Cruisers of sufficient force were dispatched, with instructions to remain at certain rendezvous, each forming a base upon which lighter cruisers could fall back, or to the support of which they could proceed. The lighter vessels cruised on specified curves or lines of search, and in this way a network was spread over the oceans comparable to a spider’s web. Thus in due course every enemy cruiser and auxiliary was intercepted, or, conscious of the toils which were spread for her, abandoned her task and sought safety in the internment of a neutral port. The Grand Fleet in the North Sea was the master of the situation, and made possible the decisive blow which was struck at enemy power in the oceans.

Thenceforward the enemy was impotent in every sea. Not a man could he send afloat to bring aid to his colonies and protectorates. His distant possessions collapsed like a house built of cards. No means had he to interrupt the transport of troops which have brought about the darkening of every German “place in the sun.” “Deutschland ist Weltreich geworden,” it was said. But distant possessions are the ripe fruit which falls into the lap of the ultimate sea-power, and the Weltreich exists no more. By means of sea-power it has been destroyed. The submarine is an effective weapon within its sphere, but no victory has ever been won by evasion, and no sea-power can be exercised by stealthy craft which hide beneath the surface of the sea.