Naval Warfare 1914–1918: From Coronel to the Atlantic and Zeebrugge

Showalter

The Royal Navy battleships that would fight World War I were all but unrecognizable from those that had fought under Nelson. Steam propulsion, iron hulls and great advances in guns and armour revolutionized navies. Sea power was central to the causes and outcome of the war.

INTRODUCTION

The Coming of War

At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain enjoyed an unrivalled predominance on the seas. The British rule of the waves sustained the ‘Pax Britannica’ throughout the nineteenth century, deterring great power rivals as well as permitting expansion of the empire. By the end of the century, however, as storm clouds began to gather over Europe, this maritime strength had changed utterly in composition.

Britain's maritime strength also appeared to be losing much of its value as the industrial revolution threatened to reduce the advantages of Sea Powers relative to Land Powers. A new Continental enemy arose, which was less dependent on the sea and hence less vulnerable to naval power. This might have marginalized the struggle at sea in any future conflict. Yet when the great powers of Europe fought each other once again, the war at sea was to prove just as important as in almost all of the previous or later conflicts.

The nineteenth century saw the sailing warship, which for centuries had been the key instrument of naval warfare, displaced by a very different kind of vessel, as the effects of the industrial revolution were felt at sea. Changes in technology gave rise to major developments in naval tactics and strategy, and also affected wider issues such as the place of naval power within national policy. The most significant of these were the adoption of steam power, the advent of iron hulls, rapid advances in guns and armour and the development of underwater weapons.

The great powers in Europe on the eve of World War I were very different to those that had fought the Napoleonic Wars, mainly due to the unification of Italy and Germany.

STEAM POWER

The most momentous change was the gradual move from sail to steam as the means of ship propulsion. Adopting steam power freed warships from dependence on the wind, reducing journey times as well as making them more predictable, and making feasible some routes that had previously been impossible. In battle, warships became easier to manoeuvre, which greatly simplified tactics as well as changing the range of skills required to handle a ship or a squadron effectively. A steam-powered warship also had a good chance of either securing a favourable tactical position against a sailing ship or, alternatively, of avoiding battle altogether. This freedom, however, came at the cost of the need for fuel – initially coal, though the move to oil began just before the outbreak of World War I – which tied ships to their bases far more closely than hitherto. Strategically, this favoured local over more distant powers and also made the acquisition of overseas bases more important. At the widest level, it changed the physical and human resources needed to be a great naval power, although Britain still enjoyed an early lead in the production of coal and steel, and industrial capacity.

J.M.W. Turner's painting The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up (1838). This picture, recently voted Britain's most popular, symbolizes the demise of the old sailing battleships that had dominated naval warfare for centuries, replaced by the steam-powered offspring of the Industrial Revolution. The ship depicted was launched in 1798, and was named after a ship captured from the French; she also fought at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Steam power was initially taken up with greatest enthusiasm by merchant shipping. It was first introduced to navies on a large scale by Britain, with France also showing considerable interest, and some experiments took place in the United States. It seemed to offer particular advantages for short-ranged warships such as the small gunboats so often used in minor wars during the nineteenth century, not least due to their ability to use shallow waters and rivers. Steam warships and gunboats performed well in the Crimean War (1853–56); most of the British and French battleships deployed to the Black Sea were sailing ships, but the majority of the smaller warships were steam powered. This war established the advantages of steam ships, which not only proved extremely efficient in bombardment of targets ashore, but also at times inflicted the indignity on their sail-powered colleagues of towing them into position. By the end of the war, sailing warships were well on the way to becoming a thing of the past, with sails used only to supplement steam, and then only temporarily.

HMS Wivern was one of two ironclad steam ships initially built for the Confederate Government. They could have helped to change the balance at sea in the American Civil War, but were taken over by the Royal Navy.

The use of steam power on land in the form of railway engines raised some doubts about the impact of military power landed from the sea, given that large armies could be swiftly deployed by Continental powers. Napoleon had complained that if the British had 30,000 troops at sea, he had to tie down 300,000 in garrisoning all of the places where they might land. In contrast, when Bismarck was asked what he would do in the event that the British Army landed in Germany, he is said to have responded that he would send out the local police force and arrest it. However, if the ability of navies to influence events ashore was reduced by steam power, so too was the ability of armies to guarantee a swift victory over the mobilized army of another great power. Without such a knockout blow, there could still be an important wartime role for sea power.

IRON HULLS

Following soon after the adoption of steam power by navies came the increased use of iron in warships. At first, this took the form of plates of iron bolted to the outside of wooden ships, to provide protection against shell guns. While the old wooden hulls had been able to take considerable punishment from solid shot, guns firing explosive shells threatened to blow them apart. This was demonstrated at the Battle of Sinope (1853), with the destruction of a Turkish fleet by Russian warships using the new Paixhans shell gun. Protection was needed against this threat, so the ‘ironclad’ was born. Moves to adopt iron for the construction of the ship, rather than simply as additional armour, proceeded slowly because of its tendency to splinter. However, advances in metallurgy changed this. Iron (and then steel) construction proved attractive because it permitted larger as well as more robust vessels that were not as vulnerable to fire as wooden ships, and were able to carry the ever heavier guns and armour that were developed during the century.

National rivalries helped to drive the process of innovation. The first ironclad battleship was the French La Gloire, launched in 1859. The advance represented by this ship drove an urgent counter-reaction in Britain, as would the German naval expansion at the start of the twentieth century. The British response was to build HMS Warrior, launched in 1860 and commissioned the following year, which was not an ironclad but rather the world's first iron-hulled warship. She carried an 11.4cm (4.5in) belt of iron armour, backed by 45.7cm (18in) of teak between it and the iron hull, and was divided into internal compartments to further reduce her vulnerability. She was steam powered, although she was also fitted with sails to save fuel, and heavily armed. Warrior never fired her guns in anger and was considered obsolete after just 10 years – in stark contrast to HMS Victory, which was over 40 years old at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805) yet still at the cutting-edge of quality. This tendency of warships to become obsolete more quickly, and the related importance of retaining technological parity with rivals, was an important new development in naval warfare.

HMS Warrior

HMS Warrior, the world's first iron-hulled warship, was theoretically a frigate due to her single gun deck, but was at her launch the most powerful battleship in the world, armed with 26 x 68-pounder guns (as opposed to the usual 32-pounders) and 10 massive 110-pounder, breech-loading guns. She was nicknamed ‘The Black Snake’, after the reported comment of the French emperor Napoleon III that, against his warships, Warrior would be like a ‘black snake among rabbits’. She can be visited today at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.

HMS Hercules (at centre) together with HMS Warrior and HMS Bellerophon. These vessels demonstrate the changing character of warships as a result of the impact of the Industrial Revolution.

GUNS AND ARMOUR

Shortly after the launch of Warrior, guns and projectiles that could penetrate her armour were already being tested. This illustrates the ongoing duel waged over the course of the nineteenth century between guns and armour.

The effect of explosive shells, as opposed to solid shot, against wooden hulls has already been noted. Solid shot remained better for penetrating armour for some years, though this would change as armour-piercing shells were developed. Other advances that enhanced the offensive side of the balance included improvements in metallurgy (which resulted in stronger guns, able to withstand more powerful charges), rifled barrels firing cylindrical projectiles (which increased both the range and accuracy of fire) and slower-burning powder (which increased range and penetrative power). When perfected, breech loading, as opposed to loading by the muzzle of the gun, both eased and increased the speed of reloading. From the 1860s onwards, guns began to be mounted in rotating turrets rather than firing through ports in the side of the vessel, as warships tended to carry fewer and larger guns. Turrets were not compatible with sails and all of the rigging they involved; as steam power increasingly become the sole means of propulsion, so turreted guns became more widely used. These improvements went alongside an increase in the size of main armament, up to the 16in guns of HMS Benbow (1885). As the range of guns increased, a need arose for a better means of aiming than simply sighting along the barrel. Thus, more sophisticated sights and director gear were introduced, allowing all of the ship's main guns to be fired together in a single salvo, followed by more elaborate fire-control systems that took into account factors such as the relative movements of the firing ship and its target.

As the power of naval guns increased during the nineteenth century, so too did the strength of the armour that was designed to protect warships. HMS Inflexible (shown here) represented the peak of this tendency, carrying the thickest armour ever fitted to a warship. She also carried a ram, which was a fashion for warships of the time.

One further effect of the growth in the size, range and striking power of artillery was a swing in the balance of advantage from ships to guns ashore, which were less constrained by weight and size. Warships still enjoyed some advantages over static shore batteries, but the saying often (and falsely) attributed to Nelson that ‘a ship's a fool to fight a fort’ became increasingly pertinent.

Armour improved alongside advances in naval artillery, first simply increasing in thickness – culminating in the 61cm (24in) belt of the aptly named HMS Inflexible – and then in quality, as steel was introduced. The latter was initially used as an outer plate attached to iron armour, and then in the form of all-steel armour, which provided better protection for less weight. The increasing weight of armour led to a divergence and greater specialization in ship design, with cruisers concentrating on speed and range at the expense of armour, while battleships featured the heaviest protection and firepower. Also, to save weight, the whole ship could not be equally protected, so armour was concentrated around the most vital parts, giving rise to what would become known as the ‘citadel’ in US ships. Later, the longer range of guns meant that ships would be hit from above by plunging fire, as well as from the sides, so horizontal deck armour was introduced over some parts of the ship. At times, it was even thought that armoured warships might prove impervious to naval guns (partly due to the inconclusive result of the Virginia (Merrimack)–Monitor action during the American Civil War). However, armour could never guarantee the invulnerability of warships, although it could make them less vulnerable and more capable of absorbing fire, particularly against smaller-calibre guns or at longer ranges.

The Battle of the Hampton Roads (1862)

The famous Battle of the Hampton Roads (March 1862) saw the first clash between two ironclads (wooden-hulled ships with plates of iron armour). The Merrimack (actually its former name – the ship had been renamed the Virginia after being captured and rebuilt by the Confederates) successfully sank several wooden Union ships, but was then confronted by the more formidable Monitor. The two ships blasted each other indecisively for four hours. However, the most modern guns were more than capable of inflicting severe damage on armoured ships. The engagement was an aberration rather than the shape of things to come, because of the short range at which it was fought and the overall indecisiveness of the encounter.

All of these changes together meant that warships had changed dramatically in appearance compared to those from the days of Nelson. There was also a greater distinction within the fleet between ships intended for different roles. The other effect of all of this was a steady and dramatic increase in the cost of warships – with an increasing penalty for lagging behind the leading edge of technology – and hence a decrease in the number of battleships in the main fleets. This tendency encouraged some states to think more creatively about how they might seek to exercise sea power, or prevent their enemies from doing so.

UNDERWATER WEAPONS

Rather than simply opposing a fleet of battleships with a similar force, some thinkers sought a different approach to countering them through the use of underwater weapons. They held the appeal of making possible a stealthy attack, as well as targeting vulnerable areas of the ship below its main armour. There were unsuccessful attempts to use submarines as early as the American War of Independence (1775–83). Further experiments with submarines and naval mines (often referred to, confusingly, as ‘torpedoes’) followed during the period of the Napoleonic Wars (1793–1815), as well as during some regional conflicts in the nineteenth century; Russia, for example, made widespread use of mines during the Crimean War, albeit to little effect. They first saw widespread use and some positive results during the American Civil War. Several attacks were made by mines and spar torpedoes (an explosive charge at the end of a pole), including the first sinking of a ship by a submarine, the Confederate Hunley. What would today be called a torpedo – that is, a weapon that is self-propelled rather than simply floating – was invented by Robert Whitehead in 1866 and was first used in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877. As with other innovations, early examples were flawed but their evident potential encouraged swift evolution in reliability, range and accuracy. The Royal Navy eagerly took up the torpedo boat from 1875 and, at the same time, sought to counter the threat such vessels posed by fitting battleships with small batteries of quick-firing guns. In addition, in the early 1890s the Navy created a new class of ship, the ‘torpedo boat destroyer’. This was fast and well armed, and also had its own torpedo tubes for an offensive role. Success in countering torpedo boats placed more value on submarines, the pre-war development of which will be explored in the later chapter on the U-boat war.

The submarine Resurgam II. Her name translates as ‘Would that I might rise again’. This apparent lack of confidence was rather appropriate, since very often early submarines failed to do so, with fatal consequences for their brave crews.

GREAT POWER RIVALRIES

Changes in technology during the nineteenth century had a fundamental effect on sea power, altering the shape of the navies that would vie for supremacy with each other during the course of World War I. They were accompanied by wider changes in international politics, which redrew the map of the world in an equally significant fashion. The ‘Concert of Europe’ represented an attempt by the European great powers to prevent the Continent from being plunged into another conflict like the Napoleonic Wars. It had some successes, but was gradually undermined by the new forces of political nationalism and the industrial revolution. Some European powers flourished (Britain and France) while some moved towards collapse (Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire), yet new powers also emerged (Italy and, with greater consequence, Germany). Moreover, by the end of the century the international system was no longer synonymous with Europe, as the United States and Japan entered the world stage to the west and east.

Underwater weapons were relatively primitive during the American Civil War, which saw the first sinking of a surface ship by a submarine, the Hunley, in February 1864. Still, they showed signs of becoming an important element of naval warfare, which could not be ignored by the great sea powers.

Kaiser Wilhem II, the German emperor, was a keen supporter of sea power and of expanding the German Navy. His hope was to copy the Royal Navy and earn the respect of Britain, but his naval expansion programme helped to bring the two countries into conflict.

Naval power itself helped to play a role in creating the conditions for war. A new power arose with ambitions outside Europe and on the high seas, with the result that the traditional and familiar rivalry between Britain and France gave way to something much more dangerous.

BRITAIN AND THE TWO-POWER STANDARD

In the decades after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain had the luxury of looking away from Europe and towards the wider world. This was not due to any lack of vital interests on the Continent; as the long clashes with France demonstrated, Britain clearly could not afford to ignore the rise of a hostile power that threatened to dominate Europe. Rather, in the absence of any such threat, Britain could concentrate on commerce, empire and industrialization. While never anything more than ‘first among equals’ in terms of military power, the economic strength of Britain during this period was unique, and it rested, above all, on the protection afforded by sea power. As explained by Alfred T. Mahan, the American naval historian, there seemed to be a virtuous circle enjoyed by the leading sea power, with superiority on the oceans providing trade and colonies. This increased the wealth of the country, which in turn sustained superior sea power. British strategy turned on a small but high-quality army and, mainly, on the superiority of the Royal Navy over any challenger – or, indeed, over any two challengers.

Alfred T. Mahan (1840–1914)

Alfred Thayer Mahan was a US naval officer, historian, lecturer at the Naval War College and a great advocate of sea power. His notable books include The Influence of Sea Power on History 1660-1783 (1890), The Interest of America in Sea Power (1897) and Naval Strategy: Compared and Contrasted with the Principles and Practice of Military Operations on Land (1911). The British were delighted by his writings, which seemed to vindicate their policy and praised the Royal Navy. He was more influential in driving change in the United States, Japan and Germany, where both Kaiser Wilhelm II and Alfred von Tirpitz were avid readers. The (rather over-simplified) conclusions that they took from his work were, first, that a great power needed an empire and a great navy to secure its wealth, status and security, and, second, that this navy should not look to cruisers and commerce raiding, which would amount to mere harassment of the enemy's shipping, but rather to a battlefleet to win command of the sea.

The concept of a ‘two-power standard’ – that is, that the Royal Navy should be superior to a combination of the second and third largest fleets – was initially coined in 1817, shortly after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. It was designed to ensure that Britain's sea power would remain unchallenged not only by any state but by any alliance. Critically, it did not specify any particular navies, but rather applied to whichever were the second and third most powerful. This was sensible: given the long lifespan of warships, it was not possible to be certain whom one might wish to deter 10 or 20 years after they were built. In practice, however, it tended to apply to France and Russia, Britain's main rivals throughout the century. The two-power standard officially became policy with the 1889 Naval Defence Act, following a popular and press campaign for naval expansion in response to a French naval build-up and a worsening in relations with her and with Russia. It was reaffirmed in 1893, with specific reference to France and Russia, which had accelerated their own building programmes. The technological developments previously explained made it increasingly expensive to maintain the two-power standard – yet Britain continued to commit the resources to meet it. At its heart, the policy was a reflection of Britain's dependence on the sea for her security and even survival. It also suggested just how seriously the country would view any new challenge on the oceans.

GERMANY’S WELTPOLITIK

For Britain, the international system was changing. The rise of the United States caused some disputes, but these were handled diplomatically. The creation of a new European power with the unification of Italy in the early 1860s was not a matter of concern, since it had good relations with Britain and – crucially – was economically dependent on trade with her. Potentially more serious was the unification of Germany a few years later, which created a new great power in the centre of the Continent. Yet this was not unwelcome to Britain, which had for generations allied with the German states to balance against France. Britain's main security concerns lay well beyond Europe in the shape of threats to the empire, from France in the Near East and Africa and, in particular, from Russia over the ‘Great Game’ in Central Asia (especially Persia and Afghanistan), which had implications for India. The Russian threat seemed to be growing, as the development of railways meant that Russia could transport large armies to disputed areas far more rapidly than Britain could reinforce her local troops. The acquisition of empires by the European powers accelerated in the 1880s with what has become known as the ‘scramble for Africa’, as informal influence was replaced by more formal control. No state wanted to be left out of a carve-up that would affect the balance of power back in Europe, so this new wave of imperialism not only included the usual suspects of Britain and France, but also the older imperial powers of Spain and Portugal, as well as less familiar participants including Belgium and Italy, and also the united Germany, which acquired colonies in Southwest Africa, the Cameroons and Tanganyika. This was hugely significant as it marked the early stages of Germany's Weltpolitik (world politics). In 1888, Wilhelm II became kaiser and in March 1890, he dismissed the chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck, the principal architect of German unification, had concentrated on Europe and had been wary of colonial entanglements precisely because they risked souring relations with Britain. Far better, he thought, to use the world outside Europe