The problem of providing seaplanes with a floating base so that they might operate with the fleet at sea became urgent at once. On the 11th of August the Admiralty, realizing the great utility of aerial scouting with the fleet, took over three cross-Channel steamers from the South-Eastern and Chatham Railway Company—the Empress, the Engadine, and the Riviera. The Empress was fitted out to carry machines and stores for the Naval Air Service. The Engadine and the Riviera were structurally altered at Chatham Dockyard, so that they might serve as seaplane-carriers. Later on, in October 1914, the Empress was also converted into a seaplane-carrier, and her work as transport and messenger vessel was taken over by the Princess Victoria.

The whole business of seaplanes was still in the experimental stage, and during the first twelve months of the war there were many disappointments. It was found that the seaplanes, when they were loaded with bombs, could not get off a sea that would hardly distress a picket boat. Proposals for an aerial raid on Wilhelmshaven and the Kiel canal were put forward by the Admiralty on the 13th of August, but the machinery was too imperfect, and the raid did not come off. But on Christmas Day, 1914, when the weather was propitious, a successful raid was carried out, as shall be seen, against Cuxhaven. In the meantime much experimental work was done at high pressure, and a heavy responsibility fell on the technical staff of the Naval Air Service, who had to place definite orders, a year ahead, for engines to be developed and manufactured upon a large scale. In 1915 this policy produced the 225 horse-power Wight tractor, which could fly for seven hours at a speed of seventy knots, carrying a fair weight of bombs, and the 225 horse-power Short tractor, which could carry five hundredweight of explosives over a distance of three hundred miles. Both these machines could face broken water better than the earlier types, though it was not until the flying boat was perfected that the difficulties presented by a moderate sea were at last overcome.

It was an acute disappointment to the Naval Air Service that the enemy fleet at Wilhelmshaven and the enemy dockyards at Kiel should be left so long unmolested. The tendency to find some one to blame for lost opportunities is always strong in England. We are a strenuous and moral people, and we ask for a very formidable blend of virtues in our leaders. We are proud of the bull-dog breed and the traditions of our navy, but we demand from the bull-dog all the subtlety of the fox. We came through the war with credit not chiefly by intelligence but by character. Perhaps the two are never perfectly combined in one man. We know what it is to entrust our good name and our safety to men of stalwart and upright character, whose intelligence may in some points be open to criticism. Fortunately, we do not so well know what it is to trust our ultimate welfare to men of quick intelligence whose character is not above suspicion. The Lords of the Admiralty, like the rest of that great service, are good fighting sailors and good patriots.

What are called the principles of war, though they can be simply stated, are not easy to learn, and can never be learned from books alone. They are the principles of human nature; and who ever learned from books how to deal successfully with his fellows? War, which drives human nature to its last resources, is a great engine of education, teaching no lessons which it does not illustrate, and enforcing all its lessons by bitter penalties. One of the notorious principles of war, familiar to all who have read books about war, is that a merely defensive attitude is a losing attitude. This truth is as true of games and boxing, or of traffic and bargaining, as it is of war. Every successful huckster is thoroughly versed in the doctrine of the initiative, which he knows by instinct and experience, not by the reading of learned treatises. A man who knows what he wants and means to get it is at a great advantage in traffic with another man who is thinking only of self-defence. Every successful boxer is an expert in military science; he tries either to weaken his adversary by repeated assaults on the vital organs, or to knock him out by a stunning blow. He does not call these operations by the learned names of strategy and tactics, but he knows all about them. The most that a book can do, for trader or boxer or soldier, is to quicken perception and prepare the mind for the teaching of experience.

The experience of the war from beginning to end taught the old lesson of the supreme value of the offensive. The lesson was quickly learned and put to the proof by our forces on the western front. The Royal Naval Air Service, from the first, sought every opportunity for offensive action. Raids over enemy centres, for the reasons which have been given, were impossible to carry out except in the best of weather. Offensive action in collaboration with ships of war was impeded by the imperfect structure of the seaplanes and the imperfect arrangements for conveying them to the scene of action. Meantime the public, impressed by the dangers to be feared from the Zeppelin, called chiefly for defence. It has never been easy to instruct even the members of the other services concerning the right use of aircraft in war. When once they were reconciled to our aeroplanes they liked to see them in the air above them, which is the place of all places where our aeroplanes are least useful. It is greatly to the credit of those officers who commanded the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service that they divined the right doctrine, and practised it, and established it in use, thereby securing for the air force the liberty to use its power to the best advantage.

The best and most highly trained of the naval air units was the first to be sent abroad. This was the Eastchurch squadron, under Wing Commander Samson. Just after the outbreak of war it had been sent to Skegness, to carry out patrol duties. On the 25th of August its commander was summoned to London by the Director of the Air Department, and was ordered to take his squadron on the following morning to Ostend, which had been chosen to serve as an advanced base for reconnaissance. They were to co-operate with a force of marines. Air Commodore Samson, in the reminiscences which he has kindly contributed for the purpose of this history, speaks with enthusiasm of the men and officers under his command.

'Never once', he says, 'were we let down by our men, and both in France and the Dardanelles they worked like slaves without a single complaint. It is an absolute fact that during these periods I never had to deal with a single disciplinary offence. They were the very pick of the Royal Naval Air Service.'

The pilots, after receiving their orders, were kept waiting for a day at Eastchurch, to give time for the landing of the Marine Brigade. 'This depressed everybody,' says Air Commodore Samson, 'as we were all suffering from the fear of the war being over before we could get a chance to take part in it.' The fear proved groundless.

On the 27th of August there flew over: