Naval History of World War I

A NAVAL HISTORY OF WORLD WAR I

A NAVAL

HISTORY OF

WORLD WAR I

PAUL G. HALPERN

NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS

ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND

This book has been brought to publication by the generous assistance of

Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest.

© 1994

by the United States Naval Institute

Annapolis, Maryland

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced

without written permission from the publisher.

Second hardcover printing, 1995

Second paperback printing, 1999

Third paperback printing, 2012

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Halpern, Paul G. 1937–

A naval history of World War I / Paul G. Halpern.

p.cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN 978-1-61251-172-6

1. World War, 1914–1918—Naval operations. I. Title.

D580.H34 1994

CONTENTS

LIST OF MAPS

PREFACE

1 • THE NAVAL BALANCE IN 1914

2 • NORTHERN WATERS: THE FIRST SIX MONTHS

3 • THE MEDITERRANEAN: 1914–1915

4 • SWEEPING THE SEAS

The Defense of Allied Trade

German Forces Overseas: Colonies and Cruisers

The Imperial Convoys

Coronel and the Falklands

5 • THE OVERSEAS CAMPAIGNS

Abortive North Sea and Baltic Projects

The Defense of Egypt and the Suez Canal

The Dardanelles Campaign

The Mesopotamian Campaign

The Eastern Mediterranean after the Dardanelles

North Russia

6 • THE ADRIATIC

Italy Enters the War

The Adriatic Stalemate

Evacuation of the Serbian Army

The Drifter Patrol and the Otranto Barrage

Attempts to Break the Adriatic Stalemate

7 • THE BALTIC

German and Russian Naval Plans

Opening Moves

British Submarines

The 1915 Campaign

The British and Russian Submarine Offensive

1916: Mine Warfare Predominant

1917: Revolution and Paralysis

Operation Albion

8 • THE BLACK SEA

The German and Turkish Challenge: 1914–1916

Amphibious Operations on the Caucasus Front

Russian Naval Superiority

Decline and Collapse of the Black Sea Fleet

9 • THE DANUBE

The Serbian Campaign

The Romanian Campaign

10 • FROM DREADNOUGHTS TO SUBMARINES: 1915–1916

The Germans Search for a Strategy

The First Submarine Campaign

The Restricted Submarine Campaign

The Battle of Jutland

Resumption of the Submarine Campaign

11 • THE SUBMARINE CRISIS: 1917

The Decision for Unrestricted Warfare

The Peak of German Success

British Minelaying

The Dover Barrages

The Convoy System

German Surface Raiders

The High Sea Fleet and the Submarine Campaign

12 • THE MEDITERRANEAN: 1915–1918

The U-Boat Flotilla

Ineffective Allied Countermeasures

The British Direct the Antisubmarine War

The Mediterranean Convoy System

13 • 1918: THE SUBMARINE THREAT CONTAINED

A New Strategy for the Grand Fleet

The Dover Strait and the Coast of Flanders

The Zeebrugge and Ostend Raids

The Last Sortie of the High Sea Fleet

The Atlantic Bridge

The Northern Barrage

Naval Aviation in the Final Months

Der Tag: The End of the War

MAPS

NOTES

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

LIST OF MAPS

1. The North Sea

2. The British Isles

3. The Mediterranean

4. The Adriatic

5. The Aegean

6. The Pacific

7. The Indian Ocean

8. The North Atlantic

9. The South Atlantic

10. Egypt and the Suez Canal

11. Aegean coast of Asia Minor and approaches to the Dardanelles

12. Mesopotamia

13. North Russia

14. Sabbioncello Peninsula, Curzola, and the Dalmatian coast

15. The Baltic

16. Gulf of Riga

17. The Black Sea

18. The Bosphorus and vicinity

19. Lazistan coast

20. The Middle Danube

21. The Lower Danube

22. The English Channel and Dover Strait

23. Patrol areas established by the Malta Conference (March 1916)

24. The Otranto barrages (October 1918)

25. East coast of Northern America

26. The Northern barrage

PREFACE

The first question any reader of this study might legitimately ask is, why do we need yet another history of the First World War at sea? There are a number of excellent histories; however, historians, like naval or aviation designers, often produce similar products when faced with the same requirements. A writer naturally analyzes where and what the most important events were, where the most modern and innovative weapons were used, and what the most important decisions were. But such analysis leads to books centered on events in the North Sea and the waters around the British Isles, with some mention of the Dardanelles and, of course, the distant battles off Coronel and the Falklands in the early months of the war. The books focus to a great extent on the activities of the Royal Navy.

This is as it should be—there is no denying that the British home waters and the North Sea were the center of gravity, and no matter what angle the war is studied from, the Royal Navy played a major role. A writer who has only a certain amount of space understandably concentrates on these areas. Staff colleges also tend to emphasize these events. The picture of the war that emerges, though, is not complete, for by concentrating on the North Sea and the British Isles, there is an assumption that nothing much from a naval point of view—with a few obvious exceptions—happened elsewhere. The study of these secondary campaigns is relegated to specialized and fairly narrowly focused studies, and some are gradually forgotten. The role of the smaller navies also is glossed over and gradually forgotten.

The aim of this study, as a glance at the table of contents will show, is to shift the focus and present a very broad picture of the war, for this was indeed a world war, and naval operations took place throughout the world and were conducted by many navies. There is a penalty for this. Just as an aircraft or naval designer must sacrifice some feature to accentuate another, in a broad study of this sort within a single volume, operational detail will have to be sacrificed. The reader will not find an in-depth analysis of naval battles such as Jutland. We already have some excellent studies of that battle, and here depth and detail have had to be sacrificed somewhat for breadth. It appears almost foolhardy to attempt a study of this scope, for it cannot be encyclopedic and include everything. The reader may find one of his pet subjects missing; as I write this, I can think of a few subjects I have not been able to include, such as shipbuilding and logistics, or the controversial role of the large K-class British submarines. It was not possible, lest the manuscript grow too long, to have a detailed examination of the naval aspects of the peace settlements in 1919. One can only hope that the notes will point the interested reader in the right direction.

The notes are an aid; they are not essential. They are included to show what material portions of an account are based on and to indicate where one might find further information on a subject of interest. There are those who dislike the spots and dots all over a page, but they need not worry. With only a few exceptions I have tried to limit the notes strictly to citations. The extended discussions that sometimes make the notes of a scholarly book or article more interesting than the text are omitted; the reader who is so inclined can safely ignore them.

In writing a study of this sort, one soon realizes how much opportunity remains for naval historians of the First World War. The Russian navy is a prime example, for there are major discrepancies in Russian, émigré, and German accounts of the same operations. One hopes that recent political developments will permit historians who have the ability to use the Russian language to mine Russian archives. There is also a need for studies of national navies, particularly those of France and Italy, that integrate naval affairs with domestic concerns. Even in the case of the United States, where we have excellent studies on aspects on the American naval role in the war, there is really nothing approaching the study on the navy as a whole similar to what the late Professor Marder did for the Royal Navy.

There is an old joke that the one thing that distinguishes the history of naval operations from the history of military operations on land is ships sink. We usually know what happened—it’s hard to disguise the fact that a ship sank—but it is much more difficult to determine why a ship was used (or not used) in the way she was. In general there often seems to be more information about the ship’s technical specifications and design.

In a topic as broad as this study, it would be unwieldy to follow strict chronological lines. I have therefore divided the work into theaters or geographical areas and, inevitably, there will be some going backward and forward in time. Geographical names are always a problem, and I have tried to use those most familiar to the people at the time, rather than those a modern linguistic purist would employ. Most of the places named in the text are on the maps accompanying the volume. The reader is no doubt aware that many names have changed and the current place name will not necessarily coincide with the one in use in 1914–18. Russian ship names were a particular problem. I have attempted to standardize them based on both Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships and Anthony J. Watt’s The Imperial Russian Navy, which usually, but not always, coincide.

I should like to thank for their assistance: David Brown, Robert Coppock, and the staff of the Naval Historical Branch, Ministry of Defence, London; Roderick Suddaby, Keeper, Department of Documents, and the staff of the Imperial War Museum, London; Dr. R. A. Morris and the staff of the manuscripts division, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; Nicholas Rodger and the staff of the Public Record Office, London; Contre-Amiral Chattel, Chef, and Pierre Waksman, Conservateur en chef, and the staff of the Service Historique de la Marine, Vincennes; G. J. A. Raven, Director of Naval History, Royal Netherlands Navy; and Dr. Evelyn Cherpak, Naval Historical Collection Division, and the staff of the Library, Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island.

For their advice and assistance I would also like to thank: Professor Jon Sumida; Professor Holger Herwig; Professor Charles H. Fairbanks; Professor Robert M. Grant; Dr. David Trask; Dr. John N. Westwood; Dr. Norman Friedman; Mr. Erwin Sieche of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Österreichische Marinegeschichte, Vienna; Ing. Erich Heyssler and Mrs. Nicholas Baker; and Capitano di fregata (CP) Ezio Ferrante. Ms. Carolyn Reynolds and the Inter-Library Loan Office of Strozier Library, Florida State University, performed wonders in tracking down obscure titles, in addition to the extra work caused by the unknown individual who stole the library’s entire set of Der Krieg zur See some years ago.

For permission to quote from copyright or unpublished material I should like to thank: the Trustees of the National Maritime Museum (Papers of Admirals Beatty and Limpus), Mr. Thomas Troubridge (Papers of Admiral E. C. T. Troubridge), Commander Richard A. Phillimore (Papers of Admiral Richard F. Phillimore), and Mrs. Margaret Munro (Papers of Commander G. M. Eady). I should also like to apologize to any holders of copyright I have been unable to trace.

Documents that are Crown Copyright appear by permission of the Controller, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.

The maps of the Mediterranean, the Aegean, the Adriatic, the Aegean coast of Asia Minor, Sabbioncello and the Dalmatian coast, the Mediterranean patrol zones, and the Otranto barrage appear by permission of Routledge. Mr. Peter Krafft, Director of Cartography, and his staff at the Florida Resources and Environmental Analysis Center prepared all other maps.

PAUL G. HALPERN

Tallahassee, Florida

A NAVAL HISTORY OF WORLD WAR I

1

THE NAVAL BALANCE IN 1914

The First World War was preceded by a generation of navalism, for perhaps never before or since have naval affairs been of such interest to the citizens of the great powers. This attention was fueled by the popular press, which tended to present warships as the most advanced product of the science and technology of the machine age. The public also was fascinated with more peaceful applications of maritime technology, as evidenced by the cult of the ocean liner, in which interest in the Blue Riband of the Atlantic—the award for the fastest crossing—was strong. Ocean liners were considered potential auxiliary cruisers in wartime, and their silhouettes appeared in naval annuals. Both warships and ocean liners were symbols of national pride and subjects for national competition. In the first decade of the twentieth century, this competition was keenest between the British and the Germans.¹

For roughly a century—the Pax Britannica—the British Empire appeared to be the largest and wealthiest in the world, and the Royal Navy was assumed to have enjoyed supremacy. Like all sweeping generalizations, this supposition must be qualified; for the closer one examines the subject, the more complicated things become. British predominance was challenged, and there were periodic naval scares in the nineteenth century, when British naval supremacy may have been more apparent than real. The French were frequently more innovative, introducing, for example, the ironclad Gloire in 1859 and submarines in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The development of the torpedo gave the French new opportunities, and the theories of the Jeune École concerning commerce warfare against British maritime trade posed a real challenge to the Royal Navy. There were times when the French were a more creditable threat than many have realized. In the 1890s, however, the French for a variety of reasons fell behind, and by the time of the Fashoda crisis in 1898, the French navy was no match for the British.²

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the traditional British rivalry with France and Russia had been replaced by a far more serious challenge—that of Imperial Germany. The belated unification of Germany and its rapid industrialization is one of the great success stories of the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, by the end of the century there had been a gradual cooling of relations and a growing trade rivalry between Great Britain and Germany.³ The fact that the German economy was outstripping the British economy meant that the Germans had the potential to be a far more serious maritime rival. The Germans were in a position to dominate the Continent both militarily and economically, and their decision to challenge the British at sea created a new and revolutionary situation in international affairs. The Anglo-German naval race was one of the most important features of the prewar period, but it is important to remember that the powerful modern warships being built by other countries also did much to erode that perceived British supremacy.

The German naval challenge to Great Britain is usually linked to the ideas of one man, Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz. Tirpitz, a torpedo officer who had commanded the German squadron in the Far East, became state secretary of the Imperial Naval Office, or Reichsmarineamt (RMA), in June 1897. Under German naval organization, the state secretary of the RMA was responsible for administration and, of particular importance, for naval building programs. The Admiralstab, created in 1899 to replace the former chief of the high command of the navy (Oberkommando), was responsible for operational planning. The chief of the Imperial Naval Cabinet completed what might be termed the triad of the German naval hierarchy and was certainly of equal importance, for he was close to the kaiser and served as a vehicle of influence for admirals with a grievance. The arrangement seemed almost designed to encourage rivalries; each department might check the others, and Tirpitz operated in a highly politicized environment. He was always, and remains, an extremely controversial figure.⁴

Tirpitz outlined the program for his well-known theory of deterrence, Risikogedanke (doctrine of risk), in a memorandum of 15 June 1897 entitled General Considerations on the Constitution of our Fleet according to Ship Classes and Designs. Germany must choose its ship designs with the greatest threat to its sea power in mind, Tirpitz asserted, for there was not enough money to meet every threat. Tirpitz considered England to be Germany’s most dangerous enemy, against which we most urgently require a certain measure of naval force as a political power factor. Because numerous British overseas bases made commerce raiding against the British hopeless, the German fleet should be constructed to unfold its greatest military potential between Helgoland and the Thames. A fleet of this type would be adequate to deal with France and Russia, who could be disregarded for the moment in the determination of ship classes. Tirpitz argued that the military situation against England demanded battleships in as great a number as possible. Technical factors, such as the capacity of German dockyards, as well as personnel and training, would limit their objectives, at least for the moment. Thus the goal for 1905 would be two squadrons of eight battleships each, a fleet flagship, and two reserve battleships—a total of nineteen ships. Tirpitz cautioned that Germany would have to concentrate its efforts at home and keep overseas commitments within strict limits, for only the main theatre of war would be decisive.⁵

Tirpitz’s program is highly controversial; indeed, the reason for the entire naval program has been a matter of controversy in German historiography. There is a popular view that much of the program was developed primarily for reasons of internal policy, an attempt to win over the working class and benefit the shipbuilding industry by eliminating cycles and guaranteeing regular orders. It also was intended that the fleet play an important role in social integration. In 1895 Tirpitz explained that the expansion of the navy was necessary, because the great patriotic task and the economics to be derived from it will offer a strong palliative against educated and uneducated Social Democrats.⁶

Tirpitz’s naval law had distinct advantages from the bureaucratic point of view, for it lessened the interference of a potentially meddlesome parliament by not only fixing the number of ships but also providing for their automatic replacement after a certain number of years. In the 1898 naval law, battleships and cruisers would be replaced after twenty-five years of service. The elusive goal of Tirpitz was the so-called Marineaeternat, or iron budget, with the number of ships to be laid down each year a matter of law.

Tirpitz, whatever his faults, was a skilled propagandist. His creation of a news bureau was a master stroke, designed to tap the potential support of the legislature and people. At a time when the Royal Navy prided itself on being the silent service, Tirpitz and his associates, in liaison with the Flottenverein—the naval league generously supported by the steel interests—conducted a masterful campaign that struck a responsive cord among the German middle classes. The membership of the Flottenverein—240,000 at the end of November 1899—was far beyond the paltry few thousand of the Navy League in England, let alone similar organizations in France and Italy.⁷

Whatever the implications of the naval program for German internal politics, the creation of the powerful battle fleet was something the British could not ignore. Furthermore, they would have been most unwise to do so: despite bland assurances from Germany about the defensive nature of the fleet, it obviously was directed primarily against Great Britain. Tirpitz informed the kaiser in September 1899 that after the completion of the German fleet, the British would have lost, for general political reasons and because she [England] will view the situation from the purely sober standpoint of a businessman, all inclination to attack us. Instead, Tirpitz stated, the British would concede to Your Majesty, such a measure of maritime influence which will make it possible for Your Majesty to conduct a great overseas policy.⁸ The German navy would be a deterrent, but there inevitably would be a danger zone through which the Germans would have to pass before their fleet was strong enough to constitute a true risk fleet, and German diplomacy would have to take this into account. Remembering the history of the Napoleonic Wars, Tirpitz warned they would have to guard against the danger of being Copenhagened—a reference to the preemptive strikes by the British against the Danish fleet.

Germany’s initial naval law was therefore deceptively mild, but the scope of the Tirpitz program was revealed in the Second German Naval Law of June 1900—passed, incidentally, while the British were preoccupied with the Boer War and a substantial portion of the world sympathized with the Boers. The law declared that the German navy would be increased to 38 battleships, 20 armored cruisers, and 38 light cruisers. There would be 2 fleet flagships, 4 squadrons of 8 battleships each, and 4 battleships in reserve. Tirpitz used supplementary naval bills in attempts to increase the total, and advancements in naval technology changed the authorized ship types to dreadnoughts and battle cruisers. Tirpitz’s goal was a 2:3 ratio with the Royal Navy, for naval experts held that a weaker fleet had to be at least two-thirds the size of its stronger opponent before it had any chance of victory. He aimed at the dreier tempo, that is, laying down three capital ships a year. If pursued consistently over a twenty-year period, the German fleet would number over sixty dreadnought-type battleships and battle cruisers, and the British would have to increase their fleet to ninety capital ships to match it. Tirpitz did not believe they could do this. Aside from financial considerations, they could not find the manpower. The Germans could stand the naval race better than the British, who, because of their navy’s larger size, could not increase their fleet at the same rate. The British also could not compete with the advantage conscription gave the Germans, for a portion of each year’s conscripts automatically went to the navy. The British had to rely on volunteers. Additionally, the British had to meet their imperial commitments beyond the North Sea, although it was in the North Sea that they were most vulnerable.

Tirpitz at times went beyond questions of mere deterrence. He appears to have believed he could defeat the British. In September 1899 he informed the kaiser that thanks to Germany’s geographical position, system of military service, mobilization, torpedo boats, tactical training, systematic organizational structure, and—added no doubt for the benefit of the kaiser—uniform leadership by the monarch, we shall no doubt have a good chance against England. Tirpitz was realistic enough to realize, however, that they could not hope to keep the sea lanes to the Atlantic open without a victorious battle.⁹

From a technical point of view, Tirpitz’s scheme might have been plausible. In a broader sense, though, it had momentous consequences, for more than any other factor it moved the British from their traditional policy of splendid isolation to a Continental commitment. The entire Tirpitz scheme had a fundamental flaw: it assumed the British would not do what they had to do to maintain the necessary margin for the security at sea that was so vital for them. The British met the challenge, and Tirpitz’s danger zone became an ever-lengthening one. Tirpitz’s dreier tempo proved impossible to maintain, and it was the German government itself that refused his request for a supplementary naval law in 1913. By then, however, immense diplomatic damage had been done. The British reached an agreement with the Japanese in the Far East in 1902, and in 1904 concluded an agreement with their historic rivals, the French. The Anglo-French Entente, or Entente Cordiale, was definitely not an alliance, but an understanding, a sweeping away of old grievances in some cases dating back to the eighteenth century. It also was a cordial understanding, and the Entente Cordiale came to have more inherent strength and value than the formal and presumably binding alliances of Germany’s Triple Alliance partners, Italy and Austria-Hungary.

In 1907 the British reached a similar entente with their traditional Russian rivals. The Anglo-Russian Entente was never as cordial or comprehensive as its Anglo-French equivalent, but the Germans could now truly complain of encirclement. What is even more important, under the stimulus of Germany’s threatening behavior in the Moroccan crisis of 1905, the British and French began the unofficial and nonbinding staff talks that ended by creating an intangible but very real bond between them. The Anglo-French staff conversations contributed to the feeling that the British had at least a moral obligation toward the French and could not leave them in the lurch if war came.¹⁰

Tirpitz’s confident assumptions of victory were based on the situation as it appeared in 1899. The Royal Navy of 1914 was, however, a very different service. Long years of peace may have bred a certain complacency, but all of this changed with the German challenge. Much of this change can be associated with Tirpitz’s equally controversial contemporary, Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Fisher, First Sea Lord from October 1904 to January 1910.¹¹ Fisher is credited with revitalizing the navy and turning it into an organization better suited to the needs of modern war. He gave full support to the revolution in gunnery, particularly the work of Captain Percy Scott, which culminated in the introduction of director (centralized) control for firing by the outbreak of the war.¹² Fisher scrapped large numbers of obsolete warships and began the process of concentrating the major portion of the fleet and the newest and best ships in home waters, as opposed to in the Mediterranean or other foreign stations. Fisher was not infallible; he could be ruthless and his methods questionable. The Royal Navy was not always a happy place during his tenure, but he made his mark.

Fisher is perhaps best known for the introduction in 1905 of HMS Dreadnought, the all-big-gun warship. He was roundly criticized for this, because the revolutionary warship rendered existing battleships obsolete and, in effect, canceled the Royal Navy’s large advantage by wiping the slate clean and giving the Germans the opportunity to catch up. His decision to build the battle cruiser HMS Invincible and two sister ships, completed in 1908, was even more controversial. The battle cruiser represented a new type of large, fast, armored cruiser with a dreadnought’s armament but scant protection.¹³

There is evidence that the battle cruiser rather than the Dreadnought was actually at the heart of Fisher’s scheme. By the turn of the century, foreign building made it financially impossible to build warships in adequate numbers. Fisher therefore hoped to build ships that would be qualitatively superior to their foreign rivals and tried to combine battleships and first-class cruisers in a single type, the battle cruiser. He placed great emphasis on high speed, but it was possible to achieve this without exorbitant expense only by reducing the scale of armor protection. Fisher was confident the battle cruiser’s speed would enable it to impose battle and hit at long range, which would prevent the enemy from taking advantage of its relative lack of protection. The battle cruiser never replaced the battleship, largely because by the time the Dreadnought entered service, the diplomatic situation had altered, thereby reducing the need for combining battleship and armored cruiser in a single type. France was friendly, and the Russian navy had been crippled in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5). Germany now represented the most likely potential adversary. Unlike the French and Russian fleets, the German fleet had relatively few armored cruisers or overseas bases and was proportionately much stronger in battleships. The British thus continued to build battle cruisers, but concentrated on battleships.¹⁴

As for the argument that the radical new ship negated the British advantage at sea, Fisher was convinced that the superiority of the new design outweighed the disadvantages and was confident of Great Britain’s ability to outbuild its German rival and maintain the lead. This confidence was justified: at the outbreak of war the British had maintained their advantage. There were twenty-one dreadnoughts and four battle cruisers in the Grand Fleet (plus another five at other locations), compared with thirteen dreadnoughts and five battle cruisers (including the hybrid Blücher) in the High Sea Fleet. It is important to remember that the new warships evolved out of the necessity of finding an economical means to face the old rivalry with France and Russia, not out of the new rivalry with Germany.¹⁵

The new types presupposed the ability of British gunnery to hit accurately at long ranges. Fisher was overconfident the British had solved the problem, underestimating the difficulties, particularly when the range between ships on converging courses was constantly changing. The Royal Navy might well have solved the problem had it adopted the system of fire control developed by Arthur Pollen. For a variety of reasons the British instead opted for an inferior system, and this may have cheated them of decisive results in the war’s actions.¹⁶

Next to Fisher the best-known figure associated with the Royal Navy in the period immediately before the war is undoubtedly Winston Churchill, first lord of the Admiralty from October 1911 to May 1915. As civilian head of the navy, Churchill was regarded as a brash young man, fully as controversial as Fisher. He brought dynamism and eloquence to the navy’s cause, was the central figure in important strategic changes reflected in the navy’s redeployment of 1912, and was responsible for the decision to switch to oil fuel.¹⁷

The strategic redeployment of 1912 continued Fisher’s policy of concentrating in home waters. By this time the Anglo-French Entente had been tested by the Moroccan crises of 1905 and 1911. The Mediterranean fleet, reduced from fourteen battleships in 1902 to eight in 1904 and six in 1906, was shifted from Malta to Gibraltar. It could, in theory, operate in either the Mediterranean or Atlantic, but the understanding was that it would be brought home in time of war. The battleship squadron stationed at Gibraltar would return to home waters. Initially Churchill intended to leave merely a cruiser force at Malta, which meant, in effect, the abandonment of the Mediterranean by British capital ships in time of war. The French in turn transferred the only battleship squadron they had left in the north from Brest to the Mediterranean. This seemed a startling demonstration of the Entente Cordiale at work, and the press was full of assured speculation that it had been the result of prior agreement, the British leaving the guarding of the Mediterranean to the French. In fact the decision had been reached independently by both navies, and both were responding to necessity brought on by technical factors. For the French the growth of the German navy meant that the remaining battleship squadron at Brest, composed of old predreadnoughts, would have had little chance of survival should the German fleet have arrived off the French coast and public opinion forced it to sortie. The French in reality had already made the decision to concentrate in the Mediterranean by sending their newer and best battleships there. The British were disturbed by the growth of the Italian and Austro-Hungarian navies, rivals themselves but also allies of Germany in the Triple Alliance. The decision of both Italy and Austria-Hungary to build modern and powerful dreadnoughts meant that the predreadnoughts the British had retained at Malta would be outclassed by potential adversaries. Furthermore, Churchill argued that the crews were needed to man newer vessels at home.

The decision to abandon the Mediterranean was opposed strongly by the Foreign Office and the War Office, and in the end Churchill had to compromise. The Admiralty agreed to leave sufficient force in the Mediterranean so that, joined with the French, it would assure superiority over the combined Austrian and Italian fleets. For this purpose the Admiralty chose battle cruisers, which in theory were strong enough to fight and fast enough to run away when necessary. The Admiralty intended to provide a squadron of dreadnoughts for the Mediterranean in the future, but only when it was consistent with an appropriate margin of safety in home waters.¹⁸ In March of 1912 Churchill revealed in Parliament that Great Britain had quietly abandoned the old two-power standard and was building against one power and one power alone—Germany—and that the margin of superiority was 60 percent. There were periodic attempts to dampen or slow down the naval race; for example, Churchill’s proposal for a naval holiday, during which each country would forego laying down its planned number of capital ships for that fiscal year. The most striking attempt was the visit of Lord Haldane to Germany in February 1912 in an effort to get the Germans to table their planned Novelle, or supplementary naval law. The effort did not succeed, largely because the Germans wanted a political agreement assuring British neutrality in the event of a Continental war before any naval agreement, whereas for the British the naval agreement was paramount. Both sides were speaking past each other. There is no space for a detailed account of the diplomatic aspects of the prewar naval race here, but after 1912 both sides settled in for the long haul. The march of technology meant that by the outbreak of war, the navies were dealing with superdreadnoughts, with 15-inch instead of 12-inch guns and with similar improvements in speed and protection. The British were determined to, and did, maintain their lead.¹⁹

British superiority is demonstrated by the number of dreadnoughts and battle cruisers in service or under construction at the beginning of the war:

aIncludes two Turkish ships requisitioned by the Admiralty.

bIncludes one ship under construction for Chile requisitioned by the Admiralty and one German dreadnought never completed.

cIncludes one in Australian service.

The British advantage is even more marked in terms of predreadnoughts, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, although here numerical tables are debatable, for it is not always clear what to include in terms of age and types. Given these qualifications, however, the following is a rough estimate of ships in service at the beginning of the war:

aincludes three in Australian service.

Mere lists of numbers tend to be meaningless without innumerable qualifications as to age and type of ship, which might offset some of the apparent German inferiority. The worldwide commitments of Great Britain inevitably caused British warships to be scattered throughout the world to a far greater degree, and the Germans had to detach forces to match the Russians in the Baltic. The author of the standard work on British destroyers (who credits them with only 207) points out that however impressive the number might look on paper, over half were fit solely for coastal duties, whereas the speed of many of the latest classes was only slightly more than that of the battle cruisers they would have to screen.²⁰

On the other hand, the British benefitted immensely from their superiority in older types of warships. Obsolescent ships, particularly cruisers that could not be employed in a major fleet action in the North Sea, performed invaluable work in the exercise of sea power in distant waters. The large British merchant marine, which included vessels of virtually every conceivable type, also provided a source for auxiliaries that after conversion performed tasks scarcely dreamed of before the war.

The British superiority in numbers also must be qualified by the generally better protection afforded German warships and by the excellence of German gunnery and optical systems. Nevertheless German warships tended to have a shorter range than their British counterparts. Newly commissioned warships on both sides were in the process of working up at the beginning of the war and nowhere near the peak of efficiency. Mere bean counting is therefore a more complicated business than at first sight.²¹

A realistic estimate of the best and most modern forces likely to be employed at the outbreak of war by the most important British and German forces, the Grand Fleet and the High Sea Fleet, respectively, would give the following results:

These are maximum theoretical figures, particularly for destroyers, and take no account of ships unavailable because of refits, accidents, or other detachments. For example, in a flotilla of twenty destroyers, usually 20 percent would be absent, having their boilers cleaned or undergoing minor repairs.²² Ships are also by their nature mobile, and their numbers (particularly of armored cruisers) change at short notice as units are recalled from other stations or entered into service as they are brought out of the reserve.²³

There is also the question of quality. How did the British and German navies compare with each other in terms of men and matériel? The subject has been closely examined. Speaking in broad generalities, British warships tended to have larger caliber guns and greater range than their German contemporaries. British destroyers had more guns but fewer torpedo tubes than German destroyers, and they usually enjoyed a larger radius of action. The big German warships were generally better protected both above and below water. They were harder to sink, with more extensive underwater compartmentation, and they were beamier because, for reasons of economy, the beam of British warships was limited by the size of docking facilities.

British gunnery was improved immensely by the introduction of director control for firing, but at the outbreak of war, only eight battleships incorporated this innovation. The Germans had excellent stereoscopic range finders, better than their British counterparts, and displayed a high standard of gunnery. The Royal Navy, as mentioned, missed the opportunity to employ on a wide scale the truly revolutionary system of range plotting developed by Arthur Pollen. British shells also suffered from a hidden defect revealed by the test of war: they were relatively ineffective and tended to break up on contact with enemy armor. British propellant was less stable than that used by the Germans, and their ammunition hoists were not protected from flash. The problem was aggravated by the practice in action of leaving the doors to magazines open in order to speed the rate of fire. All of this, when added to the unstable cordite, proved disastrous to the battle cruisers at Jutland. German torpedoes and, particularly, mines also were more effective. In fact the Royal Navy did not have a truly effective mine until it copied a German example later in the war.²⁴

The British also suffered from a disadvantage in terms of naval bases, because traditional naval bases such as Plymouth and Portsmouth dated from the days of naval rivalry with France. Except for Chatham, too far to the south, the British did not have a first-class naval base on the east coast to face the new challenge from Germany. The development of new bases proceeded very slowly; shipbuilding had a much higher priority. The Admiralty had designated Rosyth on the Firth of Forth as a major base as early as 1903, but little work had been accomplished there by the outbreak of war. Cromarty, farther to the north, had been designated as a second-class base but had no protection against submarines, and the anchorage at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys was virtually unprotected. In contrast the German North Sea bases, notably Wilhelmshaven and Cuxhaven, had elaborate defenses supplemented by the heavily fortified offshore island of Helgoland. The Germans also had the use of the Kiel Canal, recently enlarged for dreadnoughts, to shift warships from the Baltic to the North Sea without the necessity of sailing around the Danish Peninsula.

What of personnel? Here the British enjoyed the advantage of a volunteer service composed of those who had enlisted for long periods of service. The German navy was to a large extent composed of three-year conscripts, which meant that at all times a sizable portion of the service was new to naval life. The Germans were thoroughly drilled and trained, but the fact remained that officers and men of the Royal Navy spent far more time at sea. The Royal Navy possessed that indefinable something, call it confidence, that came from its long tradition of naval supremacy and constant navigation in all seas and under all conditions. The Germans were the newcomers at sea, worried about proving themselves. Unfortunately not all the British in high positions had the imagination or brilliance to match that seamanship, and the war demonstrated that the quality of staff work left much to be desired. Tactical training tended to be unimaginative, training in antisubmarine warfare was largely nonexistent, and the Grand Fleet was bound by extensive and rigid battle orders that left little scope for the initiative of individual commanders. There were those who argued that the changed conditions of warfare necessitated this. The commander in chief of the Grand Fleet, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, fifty-five years old at the outbreak of the war, was highly competent and possessed the full confidence of his officers and men. He was, however, a great centralizer, reluctant to delegate authority. The Germans had their problems too, not the least being the great social gulf between officers and men, and on the whole they were less successful in the question of man management than the British, as the final collapse in 1918 demonstrated only too clearly.²⁵

It is always important to remember, however, that because the British and Germans were the leading contenders, their navies have received the greatest amount of scrutiny, and their faults have been mercilessly exposed. Still, when compared with other navies in the world, they set the standard. Whether it was sea keeping, gunnery, the amount of time spent in port compared with time at sea, or the experience of war, in a host of naval matters, the French, Austrians, Italians, Russians, and even the Americans, until they gained the necessary experience, were a cut below.

The Anglo-German naval race had by 1914 settled down to a long haul in which the British did what they had to do to maintain the necessary lead. Some of the edge seemed to have been taken off the competition by the spring of 1914 and, perhaps symbolic of this, a British naval squadron was actually invited to visit Kiel for the traditional regatta week in June, with each British vessel paired with a German chummy ship acting as host. The image of men soon to be at war with one another fraternizing has always had a certain fascination, and especially in this case, for it was in the midst of the regatta that the news of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination arrived, setting off the train of events that led to war. Perhaps this indicates that the Anglo-German naval race was less dangerous by this time, if only because it was predictable. This was not true of the other and less well-known naval races then going on. These were far more volatile—particularly in the Mediterranean and, even more so, in the Aegean.

The French navy was the leading Mediterranean power. For a long time second only to the British, the French had been eclipsed by the German fleet by 1905, completing at sea what had been evident on land since the Franco-Prussian war. The French navy without British assistance stood virtually no chance against the Germans in the north and had tacitly recognized this by concentrating its newest and best forces in the Mediterranean. Here the French hoped to maintain their superiority over the Italian and Austrian fleets, allies in the Triple Alliance.

Command of the sea from the very beginning of the war was essential to the French, because of the necessity of repatriating troops from North Africa for what were assumed to be the decisive battles on the French frontier. The fact that Italy and Austria were rivals, perhaps more likely to be fighting against each other than together as allies, certainly was known to the French. But they could not assume Italy would not be against them. At least initially the French had to prepare for the worst case, which for them became even worse in the first decade of the twentieth century. Both the Italians and Austrians sought to improve their fleets and began construction of dreadnought-type warships. The two were really building against each other, but as their fleets grew it became apparent that should they combine, they might actually have a chance of wresting control of the sea from the French. This new opportunity was the result of two major factors. The first was the relative decline of the French navy and the delay in its building programs, brought about to a large extent by the ideological shenanigans of the radical governments of the early twentieth century. The second factor was the decision by the Austro-Hungarian government to construct modern dreadnoughts, converting what had been essentially a coast-defense force into a blue water navy that could not be disregarded. Austro-Hungarian naval development was in many ways the truly revolutionary event in the Mediterranean.²⁶

The French navy had emerged from the nineteenth century with what was contemptuously dubbed a fleet of samples, the reflection of a confused naval policy resulting from the constant turmoil caused by politics or surrounding the debate over the theories of the Jeune École. The French had seemed on the road to recovery with the passage of the naval law of 1900, which would have provided for a fleet of 28 battleships, 24 armored cruisers, 52 destroyers, 263 torpedo boats, and 38 submarines.²⁷ The law appeared to establish a firm plan for the future, including the construction of homogeneous classes. Unfortunately the minister of marine from June 1902 to January 1905 in the government of the noted radical Emile Combes was Camille Pelletan, another radical who revived the controversies of the late nineteenth century in his attempt to democratize the navy. Pelletan retarded construction of the battleship program, for he was another believer in cheaper naval means, such as torpedo boats and submarines. Submarines may have been the weapon of the future, but they were no substitutes for a balanced fleet, and Pelletan played havoc with the naval program at the very moment the dreadnought-type warship was to come into service. French construction fell far behind in both quantity and quality of capital ships. The French built six semidreadnought Danton-class battleships while the other navies were building real dreadnoughts. The first French dreadnoughts were not laid down until 1910, which was not only well after the British and Germans but after the first dreadnoughts of their Mediterranean rivals as well.

The French navy returned to the proper course with a pair of able naval ministers, Vice Admiral Augustin Boué de Lapeyrère and Théophile Delcassé, and the naval law of 1912 provided for a French fleet by 1920 of 28 first-class battle ships, 10 scout cruisers, 52 destroyers, 10 ships for overseas stations, and 94 submarines. The French accelerated this program in 1913 with newer and larger dreadnought classes, but none were ever completed. When war broke out, the French had only two dreadnoughts in service and two still completing their trials. Eight more had been laid down, of which only three were completed. The French had a relatively large number of armored cruisers, but these were big, vulnerable targets, expensive to man, too slow for real cruiser work, and too weak to stand up to real battleships. The program’s scout cruisers also had not been laid down yet—they were scheduled for 1917—and the French suffered severely from lack of this type, which proved invaluable to the British and Germans in the North Sea. Lapeyrère, who followed his term as minister by commanding the 1ère Armée Navale—the major French fleet in the Mediterranean—from 1911 to 1915, also complained of the quality of the destroyers. And many of the submarines were outmoded, their achievements during the war a disappointment despite the gallantry of their crews. To compound their difficulties, the French had the problem of unstable powder, which caused the loss of two battleships before it was solved. The Austrians and Italians had a real chance to catch up, at least on paper. On the other hand, the French retained an advantage in older classes of warships.

On the eve of the war the French navy numbered:

Many of the older ships or smaller torpedo boats or submarines were of little value, suitable only for local defense. In realistic terms, in a fleet action the major French force in the Mediterranean—the 1ère Armée Navale—would probably include:

Once again it is difficult to predict how many of the older battleships and protected cruisers would actually have been included.²⁸

The Italian navy—the Regia Marina—had a tradition in the late nineteenth century for technical innovation, introducing battleships such as the Dandolo or Italia, which placed it at least temporarily in the vanguard of naval design. Unfortunately the resources devoted to maintenance of the fleet were not always adequate, and Italian ambitions did not always match the means of the Italian kingdom. Nevertheless the Italians laid down their first dreadnought in June 1909, a year before their French or Austrian rivals. The ship, the Dante Alighieri, was designed with the then-novel triple-gunned turrets. The execution of the Italian building program proved to be much slower than anticipated, partially due to the inadequacies of the Italian steel industry. Nonetheless the Italians did build extremely powerful warships, and by the outbreak of the European war they had three dreadnoughts in service and another three in varying stages of completion. They were planning another class—never to be completed—of four superdreadnoughts. Vice Admiral Paolo Thaon di Revel, capo di stato maggiore (chief of naval staff) in 1913, wanted a fleet at least 60 percent that of the French and with a 4:3 margin of superiority over the Austrians. In July 1914 the Italians had:

Italian predreadnoughts tended to be more lightly protected and/or armed than their rivals, although faster, and it is questionable whether some should even have been counted as battleships at all. There also were questions on the state of Italian training, and during the war British officers discovered that Italian practices in gunnery and fire control left much to be desired, even on the most imposing of the new dreadnoughts.²⁹

The navy of Austria-Hungary, the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine, was probably one of the most interesting of the world’s navies at the time. At the close of the twentieth century, it is difficult to realize that Austria was once a naval power, but in 1914 the Dual Monarchy controlled much of the eastern shore of the Adriatic, with major ports at Trieste and Fiume and naval bases at Pola and in the Gulf of Cattaro. The k.u.k. Kriegsmarine had a tradition of victory, notably in the Battle of Lissa in 1866, which the Italian navy dreamed of avenging. The navy reflected the multinational composition of the Habsburg monarchy. The majority of officers were German or Hungarian; German was the service language, but ships’ companies were mixed, unlike the army, in which entire regiments were of the same nationality.

The k.u.k. Kriegsmarine essentially had been a small coast-defense force. The decision after the turn of the century to build large modern warships had a significant effect on the Mediterranean balance of power. The expansion of the fleet began when Vice Admiral Rudolph Graf Montecuccoli was Marinekommandant (1904–13). The old emperor, Franz Joseph I, had never been terribly interested in the navy, but his nephew and heir to the throne, the ill-fated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was an enthusiastic supporter. The Austrians made a clear break with tradition when they started to build three ships of the semidreadnought Radetzky-class in 1907. In 1910 they laid down the first two of a class of four true dreadnoughts. By the time the first, the Viribus Unitis, was completed in October 1912, the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine had to be taken seriously. The ship, with triple-gunned turrets, was more powerful than any of the predreadnoughts the British had at Malta. Moreover, Austria-Hungary was far more likely than Italy to be an ally of Germany in the event of war. In 1914 the Austrians were planning to lay down a second class of four dreadnoughts, the Ersatz Monarchs. There was a common assumption in England and France that the Austrians were merely acting as surrogates for the Germans. This was wrong; the Austrians had their own interests, and their major rivals were their ostensible allies the Italians.³⁰ On the outbreak of war Austrian strength was:

The Austrian navy by itself was obviously little threat to the French, but as the Austrians and Italians built against each other, the sum of their fleets opened new prospects. The initiative for a Triple Alliance naval understanding came from the Italians. The Italo-Turkish War (1911–12) had, at least temporarily, brought Italy closer to the Triple Alliance, especially when the Italian navy was involved in various maritime incidents with the French. Without getting into the diplomatic details of Italy’s ambiguous position, suffice it to say that the Italian navy realized how terribly vulnerable an unsupported Italy would be to Anglo-French sea power. The Italian naval authorities were ignorant of the exact nature of Italy’s diplomatic obligations toward its Triple Alliance allies—they never saw the text of the treaty—and did not realize how strictly defensive it was in scope. They therefore had to plan for their own worst case, and as Austrian naval strength grew, the logic behind the move toward an agreement with Austria-Hungary seemed overwhelming. The Italians began their overtures in 1913, with the Germans acting as enthusiastic mid wives. In late 1912 the Germans had established a permanent naval presence in the Mediterranean as a result of the Balkan Wars (1912–13). The Mittelmeerdivision, consisting of the new battle cruiser Goeben and the fast light cruiser Breslau, would have been a powerful addition to any Triple Alliance naval force. There was nothing in the French navy that was powerful enough to both catch and fight the Goeben.

These considerations prompted the Triple Alliance Naval Convention of October 1913. To obtain Austrian participation, the Italians even agreed to an Austrian commander in chief, Admiral Anton Haus, for the Austro-Italian force, which planned to assemble with German forces then in the Mediterranean at Augusta, on the east coast of Sicily, after the outbreak of war. The Italians collected coal stocks here, and the three allies prepared the Triple Codex, a code book for use by their combined fleets. At one point Haus and Thaon di Revel even met secretly and incognito in Zurich to discuss their plans.³¹

In July 1914 the potential Austro-Italian force was six dreadnoughts and three semidreadnoughts against only two dreadnoughts and six semidreadnoughts for the French. It is easy to see why the British were so anxious to maintain a few battle cruisers in the Mediterranean to provide the margin of superiority for an Anglo-French force. Naturally there were many variables involved, and it is doubtful how effectively the Austrian and Italian naval forces would have worked together. The Triple Alliance Naval Convention never lost its air of unreality, but it did exist and had to be guarded against. The Italian decision to remain neutral when the war began ended any prospect of a major surface action in the Mediterranean and insured that the British and French would have an overwhelming superiority in surface warships.

If the prewar naval balance in the Mediterranean was delicate, the situation in the Aegean was even more volatile. The Greeks and Turks, traditional enemies, had just engaged in the Balkan Wars, in which the Turks had lost most of their remaining territories in Europe. The Turkish navy had, however, a powerful dreadnought under construction in Great Britain. In late 1913 they acquired another extremely powerful ship when the Brazilians for financial reasons put the Rio de Janeiro, also under construction in England, up for sale. The South American navies were a source of instability for the European powers. The Brazilians had two dreadnoughts in service, the Chileans and the Argentines each had two on order. The prospect that nearly completed capital ships such as these could change hands on short notice was alarming. Churchill complained of the Latin American naval activities, It is sport for them, it is death for us. The implication that only the great powers should have dreadnoughts is debatable, but in the summer of 1914, the fact that the Turks might have two extremely powerful dreadnoughts was disturbing.

Relations between Greece and Turkey were very tense in the early part of 1914, and it is generally forgotten that many observers expected the war to break out there rather than where it actually did. There was talk of a preemptive strike by the Greeks, who searched frantically for major warships to match the Turks. The Greeks were forced to order a dreadnought in France as a condition of a loan from the French, but the ship would not be ready for some time. The same was true of a battle cruiser ordered in Germany. The Greeks finally obtained two predreadnoughts that the U.S. Navy found ill-suited to its requirements. President Wilson was persuaded to sell them to the Greeks to preserve the balance of power. The older ships were no match for the Turkish dreadnoughts, but, presumably, the psychological implications of the sale played a role. The Turkish ships were taken over by the Admiralty on the outbreak of war, probably a wise move, because the Turks had offered to send the ships to Germany after the conclusion of a Turkish-German alliance in August 1914.³² Greece and Turkey at this time were fertile fields for the salesmen of other naval armaments, and both sides had received or ordered smaller warships from different European yards. Prior to the fictitious sale of the Goeben and Breslau to the Turks, the naval balance between Greece and Turkey was:

Ironically, once the submarine war became serious, it was the fate of the Greek light craft that would most preoccupy the British and French.

The Russians were a land power of great importance in the European balance of power. Their strength at sea was nowhere near their strength on land, but their potential was significant. Unfortunately their problems were serious. The Russian navy was still in the process of recovery from the disastrous Russo-Japanese War. Geography compelled the Russians to divide their navy into at least three parts, with separate forces for the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Far East. They had little hope of seriously contending with the Japanese in the Pacific or matching the German fleet ship for ship in the Baltic, but they could realistically hope to dominate the Black Sea once their dreadnoughts entered service. The big question was how much of the German fleet might they divert to the Baltic from its position facing the British in the North Sea. The question obviously had significant strategic importance, but in dealing with the Russians in the prewar period, the emphasis must always be on the word potential.

The Russians were certainly ambitious. In April 1911 Vice Admiral Ivan K. Grigorovitch, an unusually capable and energetic officer, became minister of marine and obtained funds for laying down four dreadnoughts for the Baltic and three dreadnoughts for the Black Sea. This was the first part