The War at Sea

World War I was a land war, with its biggest and most important battles fought on the battlefields of Europe. There were relatively few naval battles in the war, and the important ones were won by the British navy, which succeeded in keeping the German navy pinned down in its ports on the North Sea. This does not mean, however, that affairs of the sea were not crucial to the waging of war. One of the key elements of the Allies' strategy was a naval blockade of Germany; the Allies hoped to starve Germany of the food and raw materials it needed to wage war. Equally key to the Central Powers' war aims was the campaign of submarine warfare that struck at Allied shipping. Although no naval battle decisively influenced the course of the war, the war for control of the seas was vital to the winning of the war.

If one thing seemed certain at the beginning of World War I, it was that Great Britain would rule the seas. With the world's biggest and most powerful navy, Britain seemed likely to continue its long dominance of naval warfare. The German navy was also large and powerful, but German leaders, especially Kaiser Wilhelm, did not want to risk a direct confrontation

with the powerful British navy. Therefore, the British were able to trap the bulk of the German navy in its North Sea ports, which lay between the neutral countries of Holland and Denmark. The Germans found their greatest naval successes under the sea, with a fleet of submarines, or U-boats, that did great damage to Allied warships and merchant ships. Had the Allies not figured out how to avoid the German U-boats, as they did by late 1917, the war might have turned out quite differently.

Cruiser Battles

The first naval encounters of the war were small affairs, and they were humiliating if not disastrous for the Allies. These encounters—battles would be too dramatic a word— involved German cruisers (small battleships) scattered around the world. The most troublesome of the German cruisers escaped from the German-held Chinese port city of Tsingtao before that city fell to the Allies early in the war. German admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee (1861–1914) headed east across the Pacific with his cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau; he sent a lighter cruiser named Emden west into the Indian Ocean. These cruisers did their best to terrorize Allied shipping before they were stopped.

The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were the most powerful German ships outside the North Sea. With eight 8-inch guns and six 6-inch guns (gun size was measured by the diameter of the shell that could be fired), they were capable of taking on anything smaller than the newest British dreadnoughts, the largest and most heavily armed ships on the sea. Von Spee's squadron shelled French holdings in the South Pacific before moving on toward the southern coast of South America. It was there, on November 1, 1914, that they met up with a small British squadron consisting of older, slower ships manned by crews who had never fired their guns before. With the light fading from the sky and the British ships silhouetted against the setting sun, the two squadrons squared off against each other. Within an hour the more powerful German ships had sunk the British ships Good Hope and Monmouth, sending nearly fifteen hundred British sailors to their death. This fight, called the Battle of Coronel, was the first British naval defeat in over a hundred years.

Smarting from their defeat, the British sent a squadron of newer, faster ships—including two of their battle cruisers, Invincible and Inflexible—to the Falkland Islands, which were off the eastern coast of Argentina, in the South Atlantic. Finding and destroying von Spee's German squadron should have been difficult, for the waters in which von Spee could have hidden were huge. But the German admiral helped the British cause by appearing near the Falklands just after the British had arrived. With faster boats and bigger guns, the British made short work of the small German fleet, destroying the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and several smaller ships in the Battle of the Falklands on December 8, 1915. In all, eighteen hundred German sailors were killed, and the British navy regained its reputation—at least for the moment.

Emden. Few lone ships did as much damage in World War I as the German light cruiser Emden. For two months Emden roamed around the Indian Ocean, wreaking havoc on Allied shipping. Emden sank some of the ships she encountered; she

captured others and used them for supply or prisoner ships. On September 22, 1914, Emden shelled the Indian city of Madras, hoping to stir up an Indian revolt against British rule. In late October she cruised into the Allied port of Penang and destroyed a Russian cruiser and a French destroyer. Finally, in the second week of November 1914, the Australian cruiser Sydney met and overpowered Emden, ending her brief career as the terror of the Indian Ocean. In all, Emden had sunk over 70,000 tons of Allied shipping (the tonnage of a ship is a measure of the number of tons of water that a ship displaces).

Controlling the North Sea

Three factors kept naval warfare between Germany and Britain from becoming an important element in the war: geography, the size of the opposing navies, and a German reluctance to fight. The German navy was based out of ports on the North Sea, principally the port at Jade Bay. But their routes of access to the open Atlantic, and therefore to the oceans, were thoroughly blocked by the British. To the south, the British navy controlled the English Channel; to the north, the British fleet based at the port of Scapa Flow controlled all access into and out of the north end of the North Sea. Britain's Admiral Fisher described this

advantage to King George V in a passage quoted in John Keegan's First World War: "With the great harbour of Scapa Flow in the north and the narrow straits of Dover in the south, there is no doubt, sir, that we are God's chosen people."

There were other circumstances that kept the German navy from becoming an important factor in the war. Most importantly, the Germans were outnumbered: According to Niall Ferguson, author of The Pity of War, in 1914 the British had twenty-nine large naval vessels to the Germans' seventeen. In tonnage (the measure of the total size of a navy's ships), the British fleet was twice as large as the German fleet. Finally, German naval leaders, from the kaiser down to the various admirals who served under him, did not want to risk losing their newly built navy in open fights with the British. For all these reasons, the Germans never truly challenged the British for control of the seas. They did, however, meet the British in several exciting North Sea battles.

Battle of Heligoland Bight. The first meeting of German and British ships confirmed the kaiser's fears about risking his navy. On August 28, 1914, the British used a decoy force to try to lure the Germans out of Heligoland Bight (a portion of the North Sea between the island of Heligoland and the German coast). The Germans took the bait but tried to spring a surprise of their own by sending out a much heavier force than the British expected. In a disorganized battle fought on misty seas with little visibility, the British succeeded in sinking one destroyer and three cruisers while only taking minor damage. This minor British victory confirmed the Germans' fears and convinced them to lay more mines (floating bombs meant to destroy enemy ships) and post more patrols in the area.

Dogger Bank. The Germans wanted revenge for their defeat at Heligoland Bight, but they labored under a new disadvantage as they prepared for battle in early January of 1915: The British had captured German codebooks and were able to decipher coded messages sent over the radio. Therefore, when the Germans tried to lure a small squadron of the British navy into a trap near Dogger Bank (a submerged sandbank in the central North Sea), the British responded with a large and powerful squadron intent on pounding the Germans. Showing up to spring their trap on January 24, 1915, German ships led by Admiral Franz von Hipper discovered a line of five battle cruisers bearing down on them. The British opened fire while the Germans turned and ran, but what should have been a decisive British victory fell apart when British communications failed and some of their ships sailed off in the wrong direction. In the end the British sank one German armored cruiser, the Blücher, while the rest of the German squadron escaped. For the rest of 1915 and into 1916, the Germans stuck to the safety of their ports. But as the stalemate continued on the Western Front, leaders from both Germany and Britain looked to their navies for some way to break the deadlock.

The Battle of Jutland

In May of 1916 British and German naval commanders made the same decision: They would send a powerful force out into the North Sea to scare off any enemy ships in the area. These two decisions, made independently, led to the biggest

battle in naval history. Both sides committed to battle their biggest and best ships—called dreadnoughts—as well as a full range of supporting ships. The British sent forward 28 dreadnoughts, 9 battle cruisers, 11 armored cruisers, 26 light cruisers, 78 destroyers, a seaplane carrier, and a minesweeper. The Germans brought into battle 16 dreadnoughts, 6 pre-dreadnoughts, 5 battle cruisers, 11 light cruisers, and 61 destroyers. The two fleets met in the open sea in an area to the west of Denmark in an area known as Jutland on May 31, 1916.

The Battle of Jutland began when Britain's First Scouting Group (a squadron of battle cruisers), stumbled upon Admiral Reinhard Scheer's main group of German ships. The two navies engaged in a running battle as they moved to the south, directly toward the main force of German dreadnoughts. The British lost two battle cruisers along the way. When the British encountered the main German force, they turned and ran in the opposite direction. The German fleet followed, and the opposing lines of ships continued to shell each other, this time to Britain's advantage. Still, neither side had brought its dreadnoughts into battle.

The main fleet of the German navy followed the battle north, and thus it ran directly into the main force of British dreadnoughts commanded by Admiral Sir John Jellicoe. The two navies met in a naval situation known as "crossing the T." The British ships were lined up as the top of the T with their guns facing toward the German fleet; the ships in the German fleet were lined up with their bows forward, forming the leg of the T. The most powerful of the British ships opened fire; only the most forward of the German ships could answer. In ten minutes the Germans took twenty-seven hits, while the British took only two. The Germans were forced to turn and run. Admiral Scheer left support ships to cover the German retreat, and they took heavy losses. Fighting continued through the night, but most of the German fleet slipped away under cover of darkness back to their home base. The Germans had escaped a major defeat.

The Battle of Jutland was the most dramatic naval battle of the war, with the biggest ships on earth lobbing shells at each other over great expanses of water. It is also the subject of continuing controversy over who won the battle. The British lost more ships and more men, though more of the surviving German ships were damaged than the British. Most historians now agree that the British won the battle, if only because they kept control of the North Sea. In any case, the two navies never fought again, for the German navy stayed in port and left the fighting at sea to the deadly U-boats.

The Power of the Submarine

With imports virtually halted by the powerful Allied blockade and with the German navy trapped in North Sea ports by the British, Germany seemed to be losing the battle for control of the seas. German naval efforts would have been a complete failure if not for one thing: the success of submarine warfare. Naval officers from every nation had no great expectation for submarine warfare at the beginning of the war, but German successes as early as 1914 convinced the Germans to use submarines—they called them U-boats, for underwater boats—as a major element in their naval strategy.

The Germans scored their first U-boat success in the North Sea, where they had eighteen active subs. On September 5, 1914, submarine U-21 sank the British cruiser Pathfinder; just a few weeks later, U-9 torpedoed the British cruiser Aboukir, then sank the cruisers Hogue and Cressy when they stopped to rescue the first ship's men. With these strikes the Germans realized the sub's power: It could move undetected and torpedo ships that had no idea the subs were there. Allied ships now traveled with the troubling knowledge that an invisible enemy might sink them at any time.

By 1915 the Germans decided to unleash their new weapon on merchant shipping (ships carrying goods, rather than warships), in direct violation of maritime law. Maritime law (laws governing the behavior of ships at sea) required attacking ships to stop a merchant vessel and allow the crew to escape on lifeboats before the vessel was destroyed. Because submarines worked best when they remained hidden from view, German submarine captains ignored these rules and sank merchant ships at will. When a German sub sank the British liner Lusitania in 1915, killing 128 Americans, the United States protested and threatened the break off relations with Germany.

Germany did not want the United States to enter the war. Beginning in May 1916, German naval commanders limited U-boat attacks on unarmed ships, avoiding especially U.S. vessels. But as the war on land grew increasingly desperate, the Germans could no longer afford to hold back one of their most potent weapons. On February 1, 1917, the Germans returned to unrestricted submarine warfare, attacking merchant ships. Their goal was the same as the goal of Britain's naval blockade: They wanted to starve the enemy into giving up the fight.

Unrestricted Submarine Warfare

The "sink on sight" campaign that the Germans unleashed in 1917 had an immediate impact. By this time the Germans had 148 U-boats in active service, and they began sinking massive numbers of Allied and neutral ships. In 1917 alone, the U-boats sank over a thousand British ships. The damage was greatest early in the year. In February U-boat attacks sent 520,412 tons of cargo to the bottom of the sea; this was followed by 564,497 tons in March and 860,334 tons in April, according to John Keegan in The First World War. German military planners estimated that if they could sink 600,000 tons a month, they could starve Britain out of the war. By May the British government estimated that they had only a six-week supply of food left in the entire country. The U-boat strategy was working; if the Allies couldn't figure out how to stop the subs, Britain would soon be out of the war.

Stopping the Underwater Menace

The German sub attacks helped draw the United States into the war in April 1917, just as the Germans had feared, but the Americans initially had little to offer to combat the submenace. Depth charges (bombs that were dropped into the sea and that exploded when they reached a certain depth) and mines were not the solution, because not enough of them could be laid across shipping channels to stop the submarine menace. Then, thanks to the suggestion of an American admiral, an old idea that British leaders had discarded—the convoy—was tried again. A convoy was a group of ships that sailed together, protected on all sides by armed vessels and sometimes aided by observation balloons that floated above the convoy and allowed spotters to see subs from high in the air. The first convoy was tried on April 28, 1917—and it made it from America to Great Britain without a loss.

Soon, more and more of the merchant ships bringing food and war supplies to Britain traveled in convoys. Losses from U-boat attacks dropped to 511,730 tons by August and 399,110 tons by December. American troops traveled to France in convoys as well and were unmolested by German submarines. The Allies also used other means to combat the subs: They dedicated more airplanes to spotting subs in busy shipping areas and laid hundreds of thousands of mines in shipping channels. But it was the convoy that made the difference, effectively ending Germany's attempt to drive Britain from the war. With Britain still fighting and American troops joining Allied soldiers on the battlefields of Europe, the Allies finally claimed victory in November of 1918.

For More Information

Bosco, Peter. World War I. New York: Facts on File, 1991.

Clare, John D., ed. First World War. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1995.

"The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century." [Online] http://www.pbs.org/greatwar (accessed October 2000).

Halpern, Paul G. A Naval History of World War I. Naval Institute Press, 1994.

Stewart, Gail. World War One. San Diego, CA: Lucent, 1991.

Sources

Ferguson, Niall. The Pity of War: Explaining World War I. New York: Basic Books, 1999.

Gilbert, Martin. First World War Atlas. New York: Macmillan, 1970.

Heyman, Neil M. World War I. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997.

Keegan, John. The First World War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.

Milford, Darren. "World War 1 Naval Combat." [Online] http://www.worldwar1.co.uk/ (accessed November 2000).

Sommerville, Donald. World War I: History of Warfare. Austin, TX: Raintree Steck-Vaughn, 1999.

Stokesbury, James L. A Short History of World War I. New York: William Morrow, 1981.

Cat and Mouse in the Mediterranean

When World War I began, four of the warring nations had ships in the Mediterranean Sea, the body of water between Europe and Africa. Britain and France hoped to control this naval theater, but first they had to rid the sea of Austrian and German ships. With fewer than a dozen ships based at the port of Pola on the Adriatic Sea (a narrow body of water between Italy and Austria-Hungary that opens into the Mediterranean to the south), the Austrians were easily trapped in their port. But the Germans proved more difficult.

A squadron of German ships, including the battle cruiser Goeben and the light cruiser Breslau, dashed out of port early in August of 1914 and set about disrupting Allied shipping in the Mediterranean. They shelled several Algerian ports and nearly got into a battle with a British squadron. The Allies believed Turkey was neutral and hoped they could trap the German fleet against the Turkish shore and destroy it. But Germany had a trick up its sleeve: Germany and Turkey had signed a treaty joining their forces, and the Allies were unaware of this. The Germans simply sailed through the strait at the Dardanelles (a narrow body of water linking the Mediterranean with the Black Sea) and "sold" their ships to the Turks. The Allies were embarrassed that they had let the Germans get away, and the Turks gained two powerful warships that they used to shell Russian bases in the Black Sea.

Blockading the Germans

Control of the North Sea was part of the larger Allied strategy of starving Germany of imports, especially imported food. In addition to naval blockades sealing off the North Sea, the Allies established major blockade lines where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic and in a line stretching north from Scotland to Iceland and on to Greenland. Allied ships stopped all the shipping they could across these blockade lines and seized food and raw materials bound for Germany. The Allies often prevented neutral countries such as Norway, Sweden, Holland, Denmark, and Spain from receiving goods that might be resold to the Germans.

The blockade of Germany was an immediate and enduring success. In 1915 the Allies seized some 3,000 ships headed for German ports; in 1916 they seized 3,388; 2,000 ships were seized in 1917; and in 3,500 ships in 1918. Only 80 ships are known to have evaded interception in this time. Imports to Germany dropped accordingly. Meat imports went from 120,000 tons in 1916 to 45,000 tons in 1917 to 8,000 tons in 1918. Shipments of butter, fish, and live cattle dropped in similarly dramatic ways. These dramatic drops in the quantity of food coming into Germany caused real hardship for the German people. Beginning in 1916, food riots erupted throughout Germany as people clamored for access to limited supplies; many workers were given extra food to get them to perform their jobs. The number of deaths attributed to the blockade rose with each passing year, from 88,235 deaths in 1915, to 121,114 in 1916, to 259,627 in 1917—and finally to 293,760 in 1918. When the German government collapsed and then surrendered to the Allies at the end of 1918, the civilian distress caused by the blockade may have been as important a factor as the military defeats on the Western Front. (All figures are from Martin Gilbert, First World War Atlas.)

The Dreadnought

Dreadnought was the name given to the biggest and most powerful ships in the world. These ships were powerful fighting machines, with massive guns and thick armor. They could direct their shelling at targets miles away and could withstand direct fire. They were also equipped with the most modern communication and targeting equipment. By World War I the strength of a modern navy was measured by the number of dreadnoughts it had.

James L. Stokesbury, author of A Short History of World War I, described dreadnoughts thusly: "The dreadnought-type battleship was a perfect embodiment of the expertise, the virtues, and the failings of western society. Huge, ponderous yet graceful, those floating cities were massive machines made up of a combination of brute power and the finest instruments the mind of man had yet devised. They could spot a target twenty miles away, and they could hurl at it with pinpoint accuracy a shell that weighed more than a ton. Manned by highly trained and determined technicians, they seemed indestructible. They were dedicated to destruction."