Flag and Fleet: How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas

by William Wood

But the five chief kinds of fighting craft are only half the battle. There are five more to be told off on the fingers of the other hand. First, the Auxiliary Cruisers, which are swift merchant liners quickly armed and manned by trained Reservists, who are mostly merchant seamen and fishermen in time of peace. These cruisers do scouting and escort duty, and sometimes have a hard fight with the enemy; though they are not strong enough for regular battles between great men-of-war. Secondly, the Supply Vessels of every size and every kind, which keep the Fleet supplied with food and fuel, munitions and repairs, and everything else a great fleet needs. So vast is British sea-power of every kind, compared with the sea-power of any other people, that foreign fleets and joint expeditions generally have to get British shipping to help them through their troubles when the British are either neutral or allied. The Russian fleet could not have gone to the Far East in 1904-05 without the supply ships of the British. The American fleet that went round the world in 1908-09 had to depend on British colliers. And over three-fifths of all the American soldiers that went to France to fight the Germans went in British transports. Transports are any ships that can be used to carry troops, horses, motors, stores, munitions, guns, and all the other things an army needs. They come third on this list. Fourthly, come those Merchantmen which are not used by the Army or Navy because they carry on the regular oversea trade as best they can. Fifthly, comes the Fishing Fleet, many of whose best men and vessels have to be used to fish for mines and submarines, but much of which must still be left to help out the food supply. The merchantmen and fishing craft which carried on their peace-time trade throughout the Great War had many an adventure quite as thrilling and many a hero quite as glorious as any in the fighting fleets. So there was no kind of British sea-power which did not feel the awful stress of war; and none, we may be proud to add, that failed to do its duty.

On the second War Wednesday (July 29th) the British Foreign Minister warned the German Ambassador that the British could not be so base as not to stand by their friends if Germany attacked them without good reason. All through that night the staff of the Foreign Office were wonderfully cheered up in their own work by looking across the famous Horse Guards Parade at the Admiralty, which was ablaze with lights from roof to cellar. The usual way, after the Royal Review that ended the big fleet manoeuvres for the year, was to "demobilize" ships that had been specially "mobilized" (made ready for the front) by adding Reserve men to their nucleus crews. But this year things were different. War was in the very air. So the whole fleet was kept mobilized; and the wireless on top of the Admiralty roof was kept in constant touch with every ship and squadron all round the Seven Seas. By Friday night, the 31st, the whole Grand Fleet had steamed through the Straits of Dover into the grim North Sea and on to Scapa Flow, where it was already waiting when, four days later, it got the midnight call to arms.

By the third War Wednesday (August 5th) the Germans had invaded Belgium and France; that great soldier and creator of new armies, Lord Kitchener, had replaced the civilian, Lord Haldane, at the head of the War Office; Lord French's immortal first army had just got the word GO! and a German mine-layer was already at the work which cost her own life but sank the cruiser Amphion.

Years before the first shot was fired the French and British Navies had prepared their plans for blockading the Austrians in the Adriatic and the Germans in the North Sea. The French were more than a match for the Austrians, the British more still for the Germans. But the Austrians had their whole navy together, while the Germans also had at least nine-tenths of their own. So the French and British, in their efforts to keep the seaways open for friends and closed to enemies, had to reckon with the chances of battle as well as with those of blockade. The Austrians never gave much trouble, except, like the Germans, with their submarines; and after the Italians had joined us (May 1915) the Austrian Navy was hopelessly outclassed.

But the Germans were different. By immense hard work they had passed every navy in the world except the British; and they were getting dangerously close even to that. Their Navy did not want war so soon; and no Germans wanted the sort of war they got. Their Navy wanted to build and build for another ten or twenty years, hoping that our Pacifist traitors (who were ready for peace at any price, honour and liberty of course included) would play the German game by letting the German Navy outbuild the British. Then Der Tag (the day) would come in the way the Germans hoped when they drank to it with shouts of Hoch der Kaiser! (which really meant, The Kaiser on top, the British underneath! though that is not the translation). To get this kind of Tag the Germans needed to strike down their victims one by one in three quite separate wars: first, France and Belgium, Russia and the Southern Slavs; a thing they could have done with Austria, Bulgaria, and Turkey on their side and the rest of Europe neutral. Then, having made sure of their immensely strengthened new position in the world, Der Tag would come against the British Empire. Last of all, they would work their will in South America, being by that time far too strong for the United States. A nightmare plan, indeed! But, with good luck and good management, and taking us one by one, and always having our vile Pacifists to help them, this truly devilish plot might well have been worked out in three successive generations during the course of the twentieth century.

As it was, we had trouble enough to beat them; for they fought well by sea and land and air, though more like devils than like men. The charge of cowardice against our enemies, especially the Turks and Germans, is nonsense. Besides, it takes away our own men's glory if they had nothing more than cowards to put down. Of course the enemy had cowards, as other peoples have; but they had plenty of brave men too; and what, that unsurpassable hero of the air, McCudden, said of one brave German will do for many more. "I shall never forget my admiration for that German pilot who, single-handed, fought seven of us for ten minutes, and also put some bullets through all our machines. His flying was wonderful, his courage magnificent."

The Germans had not only the advantage of being able to mass nearly all their navy together but of training it all together on the same North Sea practice ground, and of building battle squadrons on purpose for one kind of fight close at home: a single tiger-spring and that was all. The British, on the other hand, had to build a good many ships "fit to go foreign" thousands of miles away, and so had to give up much space to the men's quarters and to fuel; while the Germans could save half this space for increased power in armour, engines, guns, and other things suited to one short cruise and tiger-spring near home. Not the least of the many British triumphs was winning against an enemy who was so brave, so skilful, so strong in many ways, and so very devilish in all.

Now that we know what we are about, let us clear the decks for action and go full steam ahead right through the fight at sea.

The British Navy had to help the British Army into France and take care that the Army's ever-growing forces there, as well as on a dozen different fronts elsewhere, always had the sea-roads kept open to many different bases over half the world. The Seven Seas are ten times bigger than the whole of North and South America. Yet the Navy watched or kept in touch with every part of all of them. So much for space. Now for time. Time was needed to get Kitchener's vast new armies ready. Millions sprang to arms. But it would have been sheer murder to send them to the front without many months of very hard training. So the enemy had to be kept at arm's length for a very long time—for the whole war, indeed, because reinforcements and supplies were always needed in vast and ever vaster quantities, both from the Mother Country and from the Empire, Allies, and Neutrals overseas. In addition to this the British oversea trade routes had to be kept open and the German ones closed; fisheries protected on one side, attacked on the other; and an immense sea service carried on for our Allies as well.

Some staggering facts and figures will be given in the chapter called "Well done!" Here we shall only note that the Navy, with all its Reserves and Auxiliaries, grew from two and a half million tons of shipping to eight millions before the war was over. This means that the Navy, in spite of all its losses, became bigger than any other country's navy, mercantile marine, fishing fleet, river steamers, and all other kinds of shipping, put together, since the world began. When we add the British mercantile marine, British shipbuilding, the British fishing fleets, and all the shipping interests of the Empire overseas, we shall find that British sea-power of all kinds equalled all the sea-power of all the rest of the world together. Destroy that sea-power and we die.