The war at sea, as noted earlier, was a battle front in which the Entente had a decided advantage. As the chart below shows, in capital ships (dreadnought battleships and battle cruisers) the Allies had almost a two-to-one advantage. The only major encounter was the Battle of Jutland in May 1916. It proved indecisive –  both sides claiming victory – but after the battle the German fleet returned to base and never ventured out again in force.

 

     But there were a number of major and minor battles.  As we shall see, the British and French navies, for example, were employed in the build-up to the Gallipoli campaign; the Russians and Germans fought in the Baltic; the British clashed with the Germans in the Battles of Heligoland Bight and Dogger Bank, and battles were fought as far afield as the Falkland Islands and the Pacific and Indian Oceans. From the first week of the war, for example, the German light cruiser Emden, working in the seas around India, destroyed or captured twenty-three merchant ships before being sunk by an Australian cruiser off the Cocos Kelling Islands early in November. And early on in the war the Germans had bombarded the British coastal towns of Hartlepool, Whitby and Scarborough, much to the astonishment and anger of the residents!


     In these battles on the high seas the Germans had their share of success, but they had to proceed with caution, ever conscious of their inferiority in numbers. Despite this drawback however, they had a substantial technological lead in various types of naval equipment, such as magazine protection, range-finding, and – particularly important – the torpedo and the mine. These two items in particular were put to good use. Being anxious to blockade their enemy and bring them to their knees by a war of attrition, the Germans saw it best to pass this task over to the well-proven mine and the submarine, a fairly new weapon in naval warfare (and one, it must be said, with a somewhat disappointing record). In fact, however, the German U-boat (Unterseeboot), though untried in battle and very much in its infancy with regard to its mechanical efficiency and tactical role, proved highly successful. Together with the mine, they caused the Allies deep concern, particularly Great Britian, a country that was very far from being self-sufficent, and was thus very dependent upon the import of food stuffs and raw material. Indeed, had it not been for the introduction of the convoy system in May 1917, Britain might well have been forced to consider some form of peace settlement.


     The Germans only had about twenty-eight submarines when the war started and, early on, were restricted to attacking enemy vessels only, but with the increase in their number and their introduction of “unrestricted warfare” in January 1917 (whereby virtually any vessel was a target within a designated war-zone), the loss of Allied shipping increased enormously. By the end of the war, submarines had sunk 6,394 ships (for a loss of 229) and displaced a combined total of nearly 12 million tons. But noteworthy and impressive though this was, it was not sufficient to fulfil its task, close though it came to success. Indeed, ironically, it was the German submarine campaign that, by causing the loss of a large number of Amercan lives – particularly in the sinking of the British liner The Lusitania in May 1915 – brought the United States into the war and virtually sealed Germany’s fate. And throughout the war the British Navy, for their part – given their superiority  imposed a highly effective blockade of Germany by totally blockading the German ports in the North Sea. It was by no means a one-way ticket.

THE WAR AT SEA

Acknowledgements

Blockade: Sutori.com  Heligoland:  britishbattle.com. by German  war artiest Willie Stöwer   Coronel: commons.wikimedia.org, artist unknown.  Uboats: youtube  Falklands:  en.wikipedia.org, by English war artist William Lionel Wylie  Lusitania: Art Uk, y Gaer Museum, Art Gallery & Library, by the British artist Thomas Marie Madawaska Henry  Jutland: naval-encyclopedia.com, artisit unknown  U-Boat:  bbc.co.uk  Heading: youtube.com

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The list below, beginning with the Battle of Heligoland Bight,

gives all the major naval encounters in sequence.


 To access a particular entry, simply click on the title.

ACCESS TO A CHRONOLOGICAL ACCOUNT IS GIVEN BELOW

A CHRONOLOGICAL ACCOUNT

With the outbreak of war the British navy wasted no time in confining the German High Seas Fleet to the North Sea and imposing a blockade on all German ports along that coastline. In the north, mine barrages were laid down from Norway to Scapa Flow, and in the south a strict watch was kept astride the narrow Straits of Dover. However, though confined, the German navy did send out occasional patrols – usually a number of destroyers – in search of enemy submarines or minelayers, and it was this that brought about the opening encounter at sea, the First Battle of Heligoland Bight.

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Aug

1914

First Battle of Heligoland Bight

Nov


Battle of Coronel and

Falkland Islands (Dec)

Jan

1915

Battle of Dogger Bank

Naval Blockade of Germany

British Isles declared a “War Zone”

First U-Boat Campaign

May


Sinking of British passenger liner RMS Lusitania

German submarine campaign suspended (Sept)

July


The Baltic – Battles of Gotland and Gulf of Riga (Aug)

May

1916

Battle of Jutland

Feb

1917

Germany reintroduces unrestricted u-boat warfare

The Three Campaigns and the Convoy System

The Battle along America’s Eastern Seabord

May


War intensifies in the Mediterrainean and includes

the Battle of the straits of Otrento in the Adriatic

Sep


The Germans capture Riga and launch Operation Albion in The Baltic Sea

Dec


Conflict in the Black Sea

Apr

1918

The Zebrugge Raid

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