The Great War at Sea: 1914-1918

by Richard Hough

  Asquith’s concern about the readiness of the Navy had been intensified during the diplomatic conflict in Morocco between France and Germany, which also affected Britain. In the spring of 1911 the French despatched a small military force to Morocco, ostensibly because French lives in that country were threatened by a revolt against the Sultan of Morocco. The Germans rightly suspected that this was only a first move towards part-annexation, which would thwart the long-term German intention of establishing a naval base on the Atlantic coast.

  The Germans emulated Britain’s long-established corrective for trouble abroad by sending a gunboat to Agadir. Britain’s own response was for a time confused, although everyone agreed that the situation could become dangerous. The Press response was varied, from the Manchester Guardian preaching peace and deploring panic, to the Standard on the far right: ‘The plain truth of the matter,’ ran an editorial, ‘is that no Government… could consent to allow a great foreign navy to station itself on the flank of our Atlantic trade and on the line of our route to the Cape.’(3) Sir Arthur Nicolson, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office agreed. The Admiralty, however, made light of the affair to the Foreign Office claiming that the Germans would require a powerful detachment to support this distant base, which would mean weakening the Fleet in the North Sea. Informed opinion also believed that Germany was much more interested in interfering with France’s suspected annexation of Morocco, humiliating her and driving a wedge into the newly formed Entente Cordiale.

  It was an indication of the gravity of the crisis that, with bellicose words thick in the air in Germany, France, and Britain, Lloyd George. arch-pacifist radical-Liberal, made a speech at the Mansion House. Peace with Germany at the price of loss of vital interests ‘won by centuries of heroism and achievement’, was unacceptable he stated in his best patriotic manner. ‘National honour is no party question.’

  During August and the early part of September 1911, while France and Germany tried to patch up their differences, war between Britain and Germany appeared for a time imminent. Grey sent for McKenna to warn him that the Fleet might be attacked at any moment.

  The crisis and likelihood of war slowly receded, but it was noted by Asquith that the Fleet, though ready, had no war plans. Further enquiry revealed the absence of any progress on the formation of a Naval War Staff. Admiral Wilson was even more intractable over this question than Fisher. Both men believed that any plans should be locked up securely in the mind of the First Sea Lord, although it was rumoured (no doubt apocryphally) that Wilson had once scribbled his plans on one side of a piece of paper which was somewhere in his desk. When questioned at a meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence at the height of the Agadir Crisis about the Admiralty’s strategy, Wilson could only mutter – he was no orator – that, briefly, the plans were for a close blockade of German ports, the capture of advanced bases, and possible landings on the enemy’s coast. He was against the Army sending an expeditionary force to help France until the enemy’s Fleet had been destroyed.

  Churchill found that Fisher’s successor was quite out of his depth in terms of modern strategy, weapons, and conditions, with no intention of consulting with anyone, certainly not the Army, or even his civil master, the First Lord. Churchill’s admiration for Wilson as a man was boundless: ‘He was, without any exception, the most selfless man I have ever met or even read of. He wanted nothing and he feared nothing – absolutely nothing. [He had earned the VC fighting the Dervishes]… He impressed me from the first as a man of the highest quality and stature, but, as I thought, dwelling too much in the past of naval science, not sufficiently receptive of new ideas when conditions were changing so rapidly, and, of course, tenacious and unyielding in the last degree.’(4)

  Churchill selected as Wilson’s successor the C.-in-C. of the Home Fleet, an unexceptional man, Sir Francis Bridgeman, who seemed intelligent and alert and malleable, whom Churchill understood looked forward rather than back and was in favour of a Staff. Bridgeman’s first duty was to hand to Wilson Churchill’s letter demanding his resignation and offering him a peerage if he wanted one. When Wilson had hauled down his flag for the last time, in contrast with Beresford he had expressly forbidden even the smallest demonstration. Now he accepted the demand for his resignation in silence, and ‘without any grace whatever,’ according to Bridgeman, ‘promptly declined the honour’.(5)

  This incident was only an early clue to the nature of the new regime. Suspicion of Churchill before he came to the Admiralty was widespread. Established Conservatives of all classes saw him as the man who had fought against increasing the strength of the Navy and now was its civil head with the responsibility for keeping it strong. ‘A self-advertising mountebank’, was the National Review’s opinion. Even the service and semi-service magazines were muted in their enthusiasm. The Navy League Annual stated that his arrival was not regarded with much favour. Nor could The Navy ‘feel much satisfaction at the change which has taken place’.

  Traditionally, the First Lord of the Admiralty is not expected to know, or wish to know, much of the detail of the Navy of which he is political chief: The First Lord, who was responsible for the Navy to Parliament, presided at Board meetings and acted as spokesman for the Cabinet among his functions. Churchill was not content with these limited activities. To the concern of his Board and senior officers with whom he was immediately in touch, he revealed himself as a civilian Fisher, investigating, questioning, reforming where reforms were not thought to be needed, formulating plans – and not just Naval War Plans – where plans already existed or were not seemingly essential.

  Churchill did not sit at his desk in Whitehall like McKenna or Lords Tweedmouth and Selborne before him. He dashed out to inspect dockyards and new ships, barracks and torpedo training establishments. He even went to sea. His position entitled him to the use of the Admiralty Yacht Enchantress, a 3,500-ton steam vessel, as graceful and comfortable as the Royal Yachts. During his first eighteen months in office Churchill spent a total of six of them at sea in the Enchantress, sailing with his senior admirals fellow politicians, and friends on board. He took Asquith to sea to observe gunnery practice, and, according to the Prime Minister, was soon ‘dancing about behind the guns, elevating, depressing and sighting’.(6)

  None of this rushing about helped to improve the traditional naval establishment’s opinion of Churchill. Almost everywhere he went he left behind him hostility and suspicion for his methods and manner. He even succeeded in raising the wrath of his sovereign who already distrusted him. George V, the new King, was not only an Admiral of the Fleet of great experience: he loved his Navy and its traditions and high reputation. In Churchill he saw only the clever, opportunistic politician, and had agreed to his appointment with many reservations.

  A month after Churchill became First Lord names had to be submitted to the King for new battleships under construction. This duty was the prerogative of the civil head of the Navy and Churchill took much satisfaction in it. The names he sent to Buckingham Palace were Africa, Oliver Cromwell, Liberty and Assiduous. These were scarcely traditional or ringing names and the King rejected them all except Africa. With extraordinary lack of tact and discretion, Churchill put forward Oliver Cromwell a second time and had it turned down again.

  In reply Churchill sent the King’s secretary a long and strongly argued case for using the name of this militaristic, anti-monarchist and anti-Irish figure, adding that he was ‘satisfied that the name would be extremely well received’. He received a sharply-worded reply from Lord Stamfordham reminding him of the animosity aroused recently by the proposal that a mere statue to Cromwell should be erected, with the government of the day being overwhelmingly defeated in a vote on the issue. Why not Valiant? was the King’s counter-suggestion. Churchill yielded, and in fact the super-dreadnought lived up to its name through two reigns and two world wars.

  There is no doubt that Churchill was arrogant, overbearing, opinionated, and generally insufferable in the eyes of the
traditional naval officer of the time. He also had a consistently hostile Press from the more traditionally-minded newspapers. The methods of Mr. Churchill,’ the Globe contended, ‘are wholly unfitted for the great Service of which for the time being he is the responsible head.’(7)

  No one judged Churchill better than Asquith, who regarded his First Lord’s more extreme activities with a mixture of wry amusement and mild vexation. Asquith once described a letter he had received from Churchill as ‘very characteristic: begotten by froth out of foam’. But Asquith had every confidence that Churchill would eventually settle down. He was too clever, and had too clever a wife, to continue to exasperate his friends and create hostility among his colleagues for very long. And, as usual, Asquith was proved right. Two months before war broke out, Tirpitz received a letter from the German naval attaché in London which stated that ‘on the whole the Navy is satisfied with Mr Churchill, because it recognizes that he has done and accomplished more for them than the majority of his predecessors… The intensive co-operation of all forces for an increase in the power and tactical readiness of the English Navy has under Mr. Churchill’s guidance… experienced rather energetic impulses and inspiration. The English Navy is very much aware of it.’(8)

  Churchill’s prodigious work and fundamental reforms for the Royal Navy in 1912-14 were in line with and in scarcely broken continuity with those of Fisher, from whom he encouraged letters (as if that were necessary) containing a torrent of facts and advice. ‘As the man wrote about white leather hunting breeches to his tailor,’ quipped Churchill once to Fisher about his letters, ‘“Keep continually sending”’.(9) Thirty years ahead of his time, and in characteristically violent style, Fisher wrote to Churchill on 16 January 1912: ‘Sea fighting is pure common sense. The first of all its necessities is SPEED, so as to be able to fight-

  When you like

  Where you like

  and How you like.

  Therefore the super-Lion, the super-Swift and the super-Submarine are the only three types for fighting (speed being THE characteristic of each of these types). AVIATION has wiped out the intermediate types…’(10)

  There was a brief cooling-off when Fisher disapproved of some naval appointments but Churchill soon charmed him back with an irresistible imitation to cruise in the Mediterranean in the Enchantress with his wife, the Prime Minister, the First Sea Lord, and numerous other bigwigs on board.

  Churchill took Fisher’s advice to heart on the construction of super-fast big ships, submarines, and ‘AVIATION’ as on much else, and Fisher, out of office but by no means out of power, took a material as well as an inspirational part in all three developments. A division of powerful battleships had been called for. They had to be fast enough to storm ahead of the two parallel lines of contesting battleships in order to ‘turn’ the enemy vanguard and ‘cross the T’ – the classic naval manoeuvre that allowed your full broadside to bear on the bows of the enemy -just as the Japanese Admiral Heihachiro Togo had done in his defeat of the Russians at the Battle of Tsu-Shima (May 1905). They would in theory, fulfil Fisher’s requirement and be able to fight when they liked, where they liked, and how they liked.

  Churchill was now determined to go one better in gunpower as well as speed. The 12-inch gun of the Dreadnought firing an 850-pound shell had been followed, at Fisher’s direction, by the 13.5, whose shell weighed 1,400 pounds. In the United States, 14-inch guns were already being developed, and there could be no doubt that Krupps in Germany would eventually go to at least this calibre. Churchill consulted Fisher. A 15-inch gun would fire a shell of almost 2,000 pounds and would be devastatingly effective up to a range of 35,000 yards. Fisher was enthusiastic. ‘No one who has not experienced it’, wrote Churchill in the chapter headed The Romance of Design in his war memoirs, ‘has any idea of the passion and eloquence of this old lion when thoroughly -roused on a technical question… So I hardened my heart and took the plunge. The whole outfit of [15-inch] guns was ordered forthwith.’(11)

  Like everything else, the cost of these new battleships was about double that of the original Dreadnought, itself approaching obsolescence. A speed of 25 knots and 15-inch guns demanded a displacement of 27,500 tons, and to achieve these statistics, Churchill learned from his technical experts, required oil rather than coal fuel. The consumption of oil in Britain in 1912 was extremely modest. The nation’s and the Navy’s energy needs were met almost entirely by God-given coal, the nation’s foundation in both meanings. ‘To commit the Navy irrevocably to oil was indeed “to take arms against a sea of troubles”’, Churchill wrote later.

  Fisher was an enthusiast not only for the 15-inch gun but also for oil-fired ships. Oil was efficient and clean. It gave a battleship 40 per cent greater radius of action for the same weight of coal. A coal-burning fleet at sea lacked 25 per cent of its ships which were perforce away refuelling, an exhausting and filthy process anyway. An oil-fired fleet could refuel by turning a tap, and, in all but rough weather, refuel at sea. Oil required less than half the number of stokers. The arguments in favour of oil were incontrovertible, with one exception. It was a foreign not a home mineral.

  Churchill passed the problem to Fisher. In June 1912 he wrote: ‘The liquid fuel problem has got to be solved, and the natural, inherent, unavoidable difficulties are such that they require the drive and enthusiasm of a big man. I want you for this viz to crack the nut. No one else can do it so well. Perhaps no one else can do it at all… ‘’(12) Fisher agreed to chair a Royal Commission on oil. Its report favoured the momentous switch by the Navy from coal to oil. Churchill entered into negotiations with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and carried through the House of Commons the AngloPersian Oil convention which led to the Navy having what was believed to be a guaranteed supply of oil without any risks of foreign control or interruption.

  There thus came into being the magnificent class of five 15-inch gunned Queen Elizabeth battleships whose service in two world wars was pricelessly valuable. And from this time virtually all new British men o’war were fuelled by oil.

  Fisher’s demand for ‘super-Submarines’ was even more difficult to meet. Disregarding early experimental craft, the submarine was scarcely a decade old, the first practical vessels being designed by an Irish-born American, J. P. Holland, and introduced into the United States Navy in the 1890s. Fear of underwater weapons went back earlier than this, but it was the fixed mine and the automobile torpedo carried by small craft that were most influential in modifying the tactics and strategy of the battle fleet and the defences of the battleship.

  The submarine was at first regarded as a defensive weapon for the protection of harbours, bases and coastlines. The German Navy saw them in this role until after the outbreak of war, and Tirpitz was astonished at the damage the U-boat was able to inflict far from its own base. In Britain, the submarine service grew slowly and in face of the hostility of the great majority of senior officers and members of the Board. When submarines took part in manoeuvres and war games, their successes tended to be discounted. Wilson judged the submarine as ‘Underhand, unfair and damned un-English’. Most officers regarded them as playthings for the eccentric young men who dressed up in oilskins (very necessary) and looked like scruffy North Sea fishermen. The submarine in all major navies was patronizingly regarded as ‘the weapon of the weaker power’.

  Churchill under the influence of Fisher, the submarine’s most ardent advocate, a small number of intelligent and far-sighted senior officers, and politicians, supported the submarine branch and the construction of more submarines and new long-range torpedoes. As early as January 1912 he was in earnest correspondence with a number of politicians about the influence of the modern submarine and torpedo on the nation’s defensive as well as offensive plans. Arthur Balfour, recently Prime Minister (1902-5) and destined to succeed Churchill as First Lord. was especially encouraging. ‘I have been thinking over what you wrote about submarines,’ Churchill wrote to him. ‘They seem to me a great advantage to us. They make inv
asion look more difficult than before. They are the most formidable defence for their own coasts… On balance we are the gainers of this new type [of submarine]… Another thing which properly employed will be helpful to us is the long range torpedo. 10,000 yards! And it is a mere calculation of odds to see how many must be fired from one line of ships at another to hit every vessel – bar accidents.’

  Balfour replied that he entirely agreed. ‘I have long been strongly of the opinion that submarines will modify the whole question of Home Defence’, he answered.’(13)

  By 1912 the size, range, and power of the submarine had much increased and its influence on manoeuvres could only be denied by blinkered officers, which unfortunately included a majority of the Board. In the 1913 manoeuvres submarine officers claimed to have accounted for 40 per cent of the men o’war present, in spite of the rule that after making a claim the submarine was obliged to surface for half an hour and not attack any vessel within three miles, in simulation of what were judged to be real-war conditions.

  Nonetheless, under Churchill’s regime the submarine was rapidly developed. The E-class which was to play such an important part in the war, was a vessel 178 feet long with a radius of action of 4,000 miles, a surface speed of over 15 knots and submerged speed of almost 10 knots. No one could totally disregard the threat of a swarm of such vessels on a battle fleet in misty typical North Sea weather. Recognition of the threat from German U-boats was reflected in the fundamental and highly secret strategical decision taken in 1912 to cancel a close blockade of the German coast in the naval war plans and substitute distant blockade. In debates inside and outside the Admiralty in the months leading to war the submarine threat was argued exhaustively. Even the possibility of having to keep the dreadnought fleet out of the North Sea altogether because of what was euphemistically termed ‘the small-craft menace’ was aired.