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The War at Sea
Early Actions
The opening of the war found Winston Churchill as first
lord and Prince Louis of Battenberg as first sea lord, the highest civilian
and naval positions in the Admiralty. Adm. Sir John Jellicoe (later
1st Earl Jellicoe) had command of the British Grand Fleet. This fleet
was at its war base in Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, while the German
High Seas Fleet cut short its cruise to Norway to return to the Jade.
Since both fleets were built around battleships and battle cruisers,
it is necessary only to compare figures in these types to get an idea
of comparative naval strengths. The Grand Fleet had 19 dreadnoughts,
8 predreadnoughts, and 4 battle cruisers, while the High Seas Fleet
had 13 dreadnoughts, 8 predreadnoughts, and 4 battle cruisers. In the
Mediterranean the British had 3 battle cruisers, and the Germans 1.
A total of 8 cruisers and 96 torpedo craft guarded British coastal areas,
especially the Strait of Dover. The British had 24 new and 31 old submarines,
while the Germans had 10 new and 18 old ones.
The first naval operation of the war, which took place
in the Mediterranean, was a decided victory for the Germans. This was
the escape of the battle cruiser Goeben and the light cruiser Breslau
to Constantinople. Vice Adm. Wilhelm A. T. Souchon boldly took action
on his own initiative while the British commanders were receiving conflicting
instructions from the Admiralty. The two ships were added to the Turkish
Navy, a step which had a decided effect in bringing Turkey into the
war on the German side.
The British took the initiative in the first surface
action in the North Sea. On Aug. 28, 1914, a sweep by five battle cruisers
toward Helgoland resulted in a light-force action that cost the Germans
three cruisers. This action set the pattern of ambush and hit-and-run
raids that characterized North Sea fighting throughout the war.
A few weeks later, on September 22, the German submarine
U-9 sank three British cruisers, the Cressy, Hogue, and Aboukir, off
the coast of the Netherlands. This action made a deep impression on
both naval commands. It caused the withdrawal of the Grand Fleet to
the north of Ireland, while bomb and net defenses were installed at
Scapa Flow. The fleet was therefore 300 miles away from the North Sea
when the German Army captured Antwerp and almost took the Channel ports.
This series of setbacks, combined with a lack of the action that the
British public had expected from its fleet, caused the resignation of
Prince Louis of Battenberg and the reappointment of the 1st Baron Fisher,
who had been first sea lord from 1904 to 1910. On Nov. 2, 1914, the
North Sea was declared a war zone and mined, and neutral shipping was
instructed to proceed by certain channels or accept the risk involved.
This step gave the Germans a precedent for justifying the war zone which
they declared around Great Britain in February 1915 in their all-out
submarine campaigns.
A major task of the British Fleet, second only to the
security of the British Isles themselves, was the protection of overseas
trade and of troop movements against the German cruisers that were on
foreign stations when the war commenced. The Emden, which had been detached
from the German Far East Squadron to raid in the Indian Ocean, sank
15 ships before she was finally run ashore by the Australian cruiser
Sydney, and the Karlsruhe in the West Indies destroyed 17 ships before
she was destroyed by an internal explosion. Meanwhile, other raiding
cruisers destroyed a few more British ships.
The German Far East Squadron, under Vice Adm. Maximilian
von Spee, posed the principal threat to British shipping and convoys
in the Indian and Pacific oceans. This squadron, consisting of the armored
cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the light cruiser Nurnberg, crossed
the' Pacific and was joined by two more light cruisers, the Leipzig
and Dresden. Off Coronet, Chile, on Nov. 1, 1914, it met an inferior
British squadron, consisting of the armored cruisers Good Hope and Monmouth,
the light cruiser Glasgow, and the auxiliary cruiser Otranto, under
Rear Adm. Sir Christopher Cradock. The Germans sank the two armored
cruisers in a short action, and the other British ships made their escape.
This disaster brought a quick reaction from Lord Fisher.
The battle cruisers Inflexible and Invincible were sent to the South
Atlantic, where they were joined by four other cruisers. In the meantime,
the German squadron had entered this area on its way home. The British
ships were coaling at the Falkland Islands on December 8, when Admiral
von Spee, unaware of their presence, decided to raid the British station.
The result was that the Germans were caught in a running fight with
a superior force. Only the Dresden escaped, and she was found and destroyed
three months later off the Juan Fernandez Islands.
By December 1914, therefore, the German surface raider
threat was ended. Conditions had changed since the days of the Alabama
in the American Civil War. Dependence on coal plagued the German cruisers,
and radio telegraphy made it relatively easy to track them. The submarine
would be the commerce raider of the future.
In the North Sea the German battle cruisers had made
a sweep in November 1914, and on December 16, they bombarded Scarborough,
Hartlepool, and Whitby on the English coast. These operations were undertaken
for the purpose of drawing out and engaging detached British forces.
On Jan. 24, 1915, these ships made a sweep to Dogger Bank, two thirds
of the way across the North Sea, hoping to catch British light forces
patrolling in the area. A short time before, however, the British had
obtained a code book which had been jettisoned from a German cruiser
grounded in the Baltic and recovered by a Russian diver. Since the Germans
never radically changed their codes, the British thereafter were able
to secure advance information on their operations.
Rear Adm. David Beatty with five battle cruisers, the
Lion, Tiger, Princess Royal, New Zealand, and Indomitable, and a light
cruiser squadron, thus could leave the base at Rosyth in the Firth of
Forth just a few minutes after Rear Adm. Franz von Hipper, with three
battle cruisers, the Derfflinger, Moltke, and Seydlitz, and the armored
cruiser Blucher, cleared the Jade. When the Germans reached a point
about 30 miles north of Dogger Bank and 180 miles west of Helgoland
at 7 A.M., they found the British waiting for them. Hipper immediately
reversed course and sped for his base with the British in pursuit. Shortly
before 9 A.M., the British ships began to come within range and opened
fire on the Blucher, the last ship in the German column. Fire was later
shifted to other German ships, and the Seydlitz was seriously damaged.
The Germans concentrated on the Lion, the leading British ship, which
was struck several times, causing her to fall out of line. Poor fire
distribution and faulty communications on the part of the British allowed
the three battle cruisers to escape. The Blucher was sunk, but not before
a British photographer obtained one of the best naval photographs of
the war. The Germans profited from this defeat, for they strengthened
the side plating and turret tops of their battle cruisers and improved
the protection of the magazines and ammunition supply. These changes
were to pay large dividends a year and a half later at Jutland.
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