THE WAR AT SEA

THE NAVAL BLOCKADE OF GERMANY:  5th JANUARY 1915

THE BATTLE OF DOGGER BANK:  24th JANUARY 1915

THE BRITISH ISLES DESIGNATED A “WAR ZONE”:  4th FEBRUARY 1915

THE FIRST U-BOAT CAMPAIGN: 18th FEBRUARY 1915

Acknowledgements

British Blockade (Map): quora.com Introduction: youtube.com Dogger Bank (Map): hissinsnake.tripod.com Propaganda: germanexpressionismleicester.org by German artist Kathe Kollwitz HMS Lion: britishbattles.com by German painter Willy Stoewer SMS Blucher: britishbattles.com by English painter Lionel Wyllie Ritter: socialgrip.com Military Area and War Zone (Maps): history.navy.mil Wilhelm II: commons.wikidemia.org The Turtle (diagram): waterencyclopedia.com U-boat (details): Wikipedia Commons U-Boat attack: Sanctuaries.noaa.gov by the German artist Willy Stower (Library of Congress). Cartoon: punch.co.uk Heading (detail): shootingthegreatwar.blogspot. com Hunley: by courtesy of the Confederate Memorial Library Society Collection.

    As we have seen in our coverage of the First Battle of Heligoland Bight, at the outbreak of the war the British imposed what it termed “a distant blockade” on the German ports situated along the north-west coast of Germany. In the North Sea, mine barrages and patrols were established from Norway to Scapa Flow and, in the south, enemy ships were prevented from sailing through the narrow Straits of Dover. The German home fleet was securely confined to British waters, watched day and night, and German ports were denied any imports, including fuel and food. And at the same time a similar blockade was imposed in the Adriatic Sea with French assistance. This was to be total war, aimed at starving Germany and Austria-Hungary into submission. As the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, put it, this was “a steady, cold-blooded game” that one could keep up indefinitely. As a first step – and within a week of war being declared – 245 German merchant ships were captured, over 1,000 were confined to neutral ports, and some 200 were restricted to the Baltic Sea.

    The British naval blockade of Germany was officially declared on the 5th January, 1915, and this clearly brought its problems. Though neutral states had the right to continue trading, the British now took it upon themselves to seize any “contraband” cargo bound for the Central Powers. This aggressive display of martime power was strongly resented by certain countries, particularly by the United States and countries like Holland and the Scandinavian Countries that had land borders with Germany and, ipso facto, could trade on behalf of their neighbour! And if not carefully handled, states such as Sweden and the Netherlands might well abandon their neutrality and enter the war on the side of the Central Powers. It was for this reason that, whilst the Admiralty executed the blockade, the delicate task of negotiating, administrating and accumulating data was put firmly into the hands of the Foreign Office. As a result of this diplomatic approach, a mixed-bag of unofficial agreements were reached with a number of neutral states. During 1915, for example, British patrols stopped and searched more than 3,000 vessels, of which 743 were sent into a port for closer examination. And by mid-1916 the vast majority of neutral merchantmen were putting into British ports for inspection, and the blockade could generally be seen as fit for purpose. To a very large extent Germany was being denied what it needed the most, and the blockade was beginning to bite.

    But the true effect of this blockade, and, in some aspects, its very justification, was, and has remained, a bone of contention. Many critics argue that the “British hunger blockade” accounted for the death of thousands of civilians (number ranging from 478,000 to 800,000), caused by diseases related to hunger and malnutrition. And, famine being the mother of anarchy, this led to strikes, civil disorder and a real threat to the overthrow of the government, not dissimilar to the chaos and confusion current in the Russian Revolution. Others, however, argue that the shortage of food in Germany was home-made. Thousands of troops had to be adequately fed, but the farming community had lost two-thirds of its manpower (and draught horses) to the battlefied. The “Hindenburg Programme” of December 1916 drafted all men aged 17 to 60 (plus prisoners of war) to work on local farms, but there was very little increase in production. Nor were matters helped by poor weather and the failure of the potatoe crop in 1916-17. And a number of critics were not prepared to lay the blame of Germany’s surrender upon the civilian population, arguing that the war was lost where it began – on the battlefied. There was known to be a serious lack of petrol and oil where it was so badly needed, and in September 1918 General Erich Ludendorff informed the Kaiser that the military front was in real danger of immediate collapse. In this controversy, like so many, the truth probably lies somewhere in between.

THE BATTLE OF DOGGERxBANK

    As touched on earlier, it was in December 1914, a week after the Battle of the Falkland Islands, that a German task force, including four battle cruisers, evaded the British Grand Fleet in home waters and bombarded the English seaside towns of Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby. In the attack, 137 civilians were killed and nearly 600 were wounded. Understandably, this violent onslaught resulted in a loud public outcry against the incompetence of the Royal Navy, and – equally understandably – the German commander who had planned the attack, Vice Admiral Franz Hipper, was eager to launch another one. This time, however, the British knew of the plan – having been given a German code book captured by the Russians – and were ready to take action. The result was the Battle of Dogger Bank, fought between the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet on the 24th January (see map). Hipper’s target on this occasion was the British fishing fleet operating near the Dogger Bank, based on the belief that these fishing boats were informing the British Admiralty of German movements in the North Sea. The British force, under the command of Admiral Beatty, was composed of five battle cruisers, together with a number of lighter cruisers and destroyers. Faced with such a show of over-whelming strength, Hipper had no alternative but to order a retreat back to Wilhelmshaven. In the running battle that followed the German armoured cruiser SMS Blücher was attacked and sunk – with the loss of 782 hands – and Hipper’s ship, the Sevdlitz was badly damaged and lost 192 of its crew. On the British side, Admiral Beatty’s flagship, the battlecruiser Lion, was struck a number of times and put out of action, though only 15 sailors lost their lives. It is very likely that more damage could have been done to the German fleet, but Beatty, concerned about the possible presence of mines and u-boats, decided to call off the action.

     The Battle of Dogger Bank was by no means a major engagement, but, as a consequence Kaiser Wilhelm ordered that the German navy was not to take any more serious risks, a decree that virtually kept the German fleet confined to its home stations for over a year. And this victory was also a morale booster for the British at the very time when the Allies were struggling to improve their position and reduce their losses on the Western Front.

     Incidentally, during the Battle of Dogger Bank a German seaplane and Zeppelin airship appeared on the scene and dropped small bombs on the British fleet. It was a glimpse of things to come. They caused no damage but, as they were sitting targets when picking up survivors, the ships were ordered to keep moving as much as possible.

     VicexAdmiral Franz Ritter von Hipper joined the German navy in 1881 as an officer cadet. Before the war he gained vital experience, both as the commander of several torpedo boat units, and as the watch officer aboard a number of war ships. He also served on the Kaiser’s yacht, SMS Hohenzollern, when it attended Queen Victoria’s funeral in 1901. A year before the outbreak of war, he was appointed commander of the High Seas Fleet Scouting Force, and it was in this capacity that in December 1914 he attacked a number of English seaside towns, earning praise from the German public, and the title “baby killer” from the British! His planned attack at Dogger Bank, known in advance by British intelligence, was an inevitable failure. Suffering losses, he was obliged to make a rapid retreat back to base, but, as we shall see, in the Battle of Jutland he made a commendable contribution, his force being responsible for the sinking of two British battle cruisers. In August 1918 he was promoted to Admiral and was appointed commander-in-chief of the High Seas Fleet. One of his last acts before retirement was organizing the fleet’s transfer to Scapa Flow.

GERMANY DECLARES THE BRITISH ISLES A “WAR ZONE”

     Retaliation against the British declaration of a naval blockade was expected, and was not long in the coming. On the 4th February 1915, based on a policy put forward by the Commander of the Submarine Service, Hermann Bauer, in October 1914, the German Kaiser declared the waters around the British Isles a “War Zone”. As from the 18th February, Germany intended to sink any and all ships sailing under the flags of Britain, France and Russia within that area. By the very nature of submarine warfare, this meant that the safety of crews and passengers of neutral ships sailing within that zone could not be guaranteed. Neutral ships entered the “war zone” at their own risk, particularly as some British merchantmen were flying neutral colours in order to avoid being attacked. The British response was predictable. Such a policy was viewed as “uncivilized behaviour”, but a number of neutral states also objected strongly against what they saw as an attack upon their right to safe passage. The United States in particular – a big and important player on the international scene – condemned the policy and, as we shall see, this became a deal more vociferous and threatening as Germany’s first U-boat campaign got under way.

    WilhelmxII (1859-1941) became kaiser (emperor) of the German Empire in 1888. He was very keen to increase the strength of Germany’s armed forces, particularly the navy, and this alarmed the Entente Powers, especially Britain. He supported the Boers in their fight against the British, but he was very fond of his grandmother, Queen Victoria. In the crisis over the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand, he openly encouraged the outbreak of war, and, over the next four years kept in close contact with events on land and at sea. He made some important decisions, but always ensured that he had sufficient support. With the defeat of Germany in 1918, he was forced to abdicate and went into exile in the Netherlands. He died there in June, 1941.

THExFIRST U-BOAT CAMPAIGN – 18th FEBRUARY 1915

    The submarine as a war weapon had its beginning in the American War of Independence when in September 1777 the “Turtle”, a one-manned wooden craft powered by a hand crank and foot pedal (see diagram) attempted, unsuccessfully, to attach a bomb to HMS Eagle in New York harbour. The first sinking of a warship came in the American Civil War when, in February 1864, the oar-propelled Confederate submarine, the CSS Hunley (then referred to as “the fish torpedo craft”) sank the USS Housatonic in Charleston Harbour, South Carolina. It was a turning point in naval history.

     This new weapon had its sceptics, but over the next fifty years various inventors and the navies of all the major nations put their minds to the development of an undersea fighting machine. At the beginning of the war, for example, Britain had 75 submarines in service. The Germans – renowned for their technical skill – only had 30, but with many more under construction. It was just as well, because when war began it became quickly apparent – and clearly realised hitherto! – that the German navy could in no way stand up to the might of the British navy on the high seas. It fell to the U-boat (the Unterseeboot) to be their weapon of war under the sea. Fortunately for the Germans, it proved a very successful weapon, despite its shortcomings. Indeed, in the first four months of the war nine U-boats, working out of Heligoland, attacked British warships in the North Sea – the first submarine patrol in time of war (something like the “wolf pack” in the Second World War). In that period they sank nine warships for the loss of five U-boats, including the cruiser HMS Pathfinder, three antiquated armoured cruisers, HMS Aboukier, Hogue and Cressy (in a single action), and the pre-dreadnought battleship HMS Formidable. Meanwhile, in the Mediterranean, a U-boat sank the French battleship Jean Bart, followed at the end of January 1915 by the sinking of three British steamers, the SS Tokumaru, Ikaria and Oriele. It was a promising start.

    The early models were around 214 ft long, had a crew of about 30, and carried twelve torpedoes. They had a rudimentary diesel engine, a range of about 2,000 miles (4,000 by 1918), and could stay submerged for about two hours. The torpedoes were not likely to be accurate over 3,000 feet, but the submarine more often came to the surface to use its deck-mounted guns (see pic below). Then it could only do about 17 knots and was itself open to attack. When it was submerged, however, Allied warships had difficulty in locating and dealing with this under-water menace. They had no accurate means of detection (though work was progressing on some kind of sonar device), and the depth charge was primitive and generally ineffective. In fact, there was little in the way of defence at this stage. When attacked on the surface, captains of merchant ships were simply advised to turn towards the U-boat in the hope of ramming it before it could use its guns! However the British did introduce the Q-boat, so named, it is said, because it was based at Queenstown (now called Cobh) in southern Ireland. Some 200 vessels, including cargo ships, trawlers and schooners, were cleverly fitted out as decoys. With 4 inch guns concealed in dummy lifeboats or fake funnels, and with hinged side panels that could be quickly dropped to reveal a 12 pounder gun, these seemingly vulnerable merchantmen lured U-boats to attack them and then destroyed them as they surfaced to make use of their deck-mounted guns. These boats did not prove particularly successful, but they did provide a means of counter-attack when virtually no other means was available. Out of the 200 boats, twenty-seven were destroyed for the loss of 14 U-boats.

    On the strength of the U-boat’s early performance, and with the rope tightening and closing the noose around Britain’s supply lines, the Kaiser, as noted earlier, sanctioned what amounted to an unrestricted submarine campaign around the British Isles, commencing on the 18th February. Over the next six months twenty U-boats, working out of Ostend (which provided easy access to the sea lanes around Britain) sank on average close to two ships a day, and virtually equalled the number of new ships being built. This said, there was clearly much room for improvement. In the first week of the campaign, for example, seven allied ships were sunk out of the eleven attacked, but over 1,350 had safely reached their destination. And in the whole of March, 6,000 sailings were recorded, but only 21 ships were sunk. And there were similar figures for April. Furthermore, as noted earlier, any measure of success achieved had to be weighed against the powerful objections raised by neutral countries – and particularly the United States. Given the increasing number of neutral vessels being sunk in error, they saw this blockade as murder on the high seas. It was one thing to restrict the passage of goods (as in the British blockade), unlawful though this clearly was, but the U-boat campaign, indiscriminate in practice, took the lives of innocent men, women and children. That was quite a different matter.

     From the purely military point of view, however, given the small number of U-boats operating at that time, the submarine campaign was seen as highly promising. With a substantial increase in the number of submarines, and an improvement in their weaponry, the German naval command actually saw the possibility of a successful conclusion to the blockade …. nothing less than a British capitulation! (And, in fact, that was seen to be quite a likely outcome by late 1917). But alongside this improving run of success went a number of highly damaging incidents. In February, for example, Belridge, a Norwegian tanker, was sunk, and in March a Swedish and Dutch freighter, a Belgian relief ship (clearly marked), and two Greek vessels were destroyed by U-boats. Then on May 1st the German U-boats sank their first American merchant ship, the tanker Gulflight, off the Scilly Isles. Two crewmen were drowned.

    These, and other sinkings, generated wide and angry protest and, as we shall see, reached a critical stage with the sinking of the British ocean liner the RMS Lusitania on the 7th May. Of the 1,959 passengers aboard, 1,198 were killed, including 128 U.S citizens. This brought a severe hardening of attitude on the part of the American government and the American public, and an end to the German unrestricted U-boat campaign …. for the time being.

    Incidentally, when the “submarine” CSS Hunley attacked and sank the USS Housatonic in 1864, it also suffered damage from the encounter and sank soon afterwards. In 1995 the wreck was located, and, five years later, it was brought to the surface. It is now on display at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in North Charleston, South Carolina. This painting of 1863 was by the American artist Conrad Wise Chapman ……

     …… One of the Q-boats has survived. Built in 1918, HMS Saxifrage was renamed The President in 1922 and moored on the Thames as a Royal Naval Reserve drill ship. Then in 1988 it was used as a shore establishment of the Royal Naval Reserve, based in St. Katharine Docks near Tower Bridge. It remained there until moved to Chatham in 2016.

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