CHAPTER XXVI
TO VICTORY ON A SEA OF OIL
ABILITY TO SECURE OIL AND TRANSPORT IT TO EUROPE WAS ESSENTIAL TO SUCCESS—OUR NAVY PATROLLED CARIBBEAN AND GULF COASTS—TRANSPORTED MATERIAL AND FURNISHED PERSONNEL TO LAY PIPE LINE ACROSS SCOTLAND—AMERICA FURNISHED EIGHTY PER CENT OF OIL FOR ALLIED FORCES.
"The Allies floated to victory on a sea of oil," was the epigrammatic way in which Lord Curzon expressed the truth that oil was essential for success in the World War. This was true particularly of the Navy's part in the war, for most of the naval force and the Shipping Board's ships were oil burners. That oil was necessary also for the army was emphasized when General Foch warned that "interruption of the petroleum supply would necessitate an entire change of campaign and if long continued might result in the loss of the war."
Long before 1914, Great Britain had felt dependence upon Mexican oil for its increasing oil-burning navy, and had made provision for securing it through acquisition of Mexican oil fields. American captains of industry had likewise large oil fields in Mexico. From the minute war was declared in 1914, Allied dependence was upon Mexican and American oil. Tampico and Port Arthur were strategic points in all Allied plans of campaign on sea or land. If this supply of oil had been interrupted, the war might have gone on much longer.
From the day the first German raider sank a British ship or a submarine fired at an Allied vessel, the British and French were zealous to protect the oil supplies in Mexico. They maintained patrol vessels in that region and kept ceaseless vigil of sea routes to protect this priceless agency of war. However great their need of ships on their own coast, they knew that if the oil supply failed at Tampico they would lose the only adequate available source of oil for all their operations.
The question has sometimes been raised why the Navy Department did not immediately upon the declaration of war send every patrol ship into European waters. One answer is Oil.
Before the United States entered the war, sensing, as the authorities did then, that oil might determine the outcome, a naval squadron, first under Admiral Wilson and afterwards under Admiral Edwin A. Anderson, was organized for patrol service in the Gulf and Caribbean as well as in the North Atlantic. Why? Again the answer was Oil, with a big O. The United States was importing millions of barrels of oil from Mexico for its own ships and industries. It could not permit any danger of cessation of this supply. Our dependence would be heightened when we entered the war. Gasless Sundays and other methods of conservation were practiced later in order that the Army and Navy in Europe might be well supplied.
At one time the sinking of the tankers was serious enough to alarm the Allied navies. The maintenance of fleets of Great Britain and America in the North Sea was dependent upon oil supplies, and always the U-boats were on the watch to torpedo oilers. They were so successful and the number of tankers was so small, compared to the need, that the American and British naval administrations decided to construct a pipe line across Scotland as the best new way to lessen the danger of losing tankers and to hasten the delivery of oil to the Allied fleet in the North Sea.
The Bureau of Navigation will enroll a force to lay the pipe line (Glasgow, Scotland) to consist of seven officers and one hundred men experienced in pipe line work. All material expense to be borne by British Government and personnel expense by United States Government.
That was the order I signed, April 5, 1918, in pursuance of which the Navy undertook to furnish the personnel, and, coöperating with the British, lay a pipe line across Scotland, thirty-six miles in length, following the course of the Clyde and Forth Canal, extending from Old Kilpatrick (St. Patrick's birth-place), to Grangemouth, Firth of Forth. Directions were also given that pipe and other material should be transported in American naval vessels. Priority orders were given by me for the material in order to expedite shipment and construction, and as soon as the necessary material was ready the naval force embarked and carried out the work under Commander W. A. Barstow. The pipe line was laid out by Mr. Forrest Towl, president of the Eureka Pipe Line Company, New York, and the naval personnel was able to complete the work in four months.