Allied Naval Council

On 29 and 30 November 1917 an Allied naval conference met in the building of the French Ministry of Marine in Paris. It was chaired by the new French minister of marine, Georges Leygues. Britain was represented by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Eric Geddes, and the United States by the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral William Benson. The conference decided to create a permanent Allied Naval Council, which was to ensure the closest possible co-operation between the Allied fleets. The British chronology of the war records under 30 November that the council was formed in London. In fact the decision was taken in Paris, and London was one of the places where the council later met.

From conference to permanent council

The Allied admiralties had met before. In January 1917 the British, French and Italians conferred in London on the defence of shipping in the Mediterranean, and in September, with the Americans taking part, another conference was held there, devoted mainly to the war against German submarines. These, however, were ad hoc meetings. The American admiral William Sims, commander of United States naval forces in European waters, later wrote that the council “was not officially established by the Allied governments until November 29, 1917”, although in practice the heads of the admiralties had conferred frequently since the beginning of the war.

On land a similar step had been taken a few weeks earlier, when the Supreme War Council was set up at Rapallo. The British prime minister David Lloyd George recalled that the question of a separate Allied naval council had then been put off until later. It came up again at the great inter-Allied conference in Paris that opened on 29 November. Colonel Edward House’s American mission crossed to Europe for it, and Benson was its naval member. In his report to the government he listed the creation of the council among the mission’s most important achievements, alongside the decisions to send American battleships to the Grand Fleet and to lay a joint minefield barrage with the British in the North Sea.

The council’s tasks

The creation of the council was officially announced on 15 December. The communiqué stated that its task would be “to watch over the general conduct of the naval war and to ensure co-ordination of effort at sea”, as well as the development of scientific methods of warfare. The council was to prepare recommendations on the basis of which governments took decisions, and to check how they had been carried out. It did not, however, take over command: the responsibility of the chiefs of staff and fleet commanders for the operations they conducted and the disposition of their ships remained unchanged.

The council was to consist of the ministers of marine and chiefs of naval staff of Britain, France, Italy, the United States and Japan. Since its meetings had to be held in Europe, the American and Japanese chiefs of staff were to be represented by admirals they appointed. From then on the Americans were represented by Sims. The council was given a permanent secretariat, which collected information from the admiralties, and its meetings were to be chaired by the minister of marine of the country in which it met.

Its constitution was adopted in January 1918. The council then met in Rome, London and Paris, among other places. It was the council that in 1918 decided, among other things, to strengthen the Otranto Barrage, which was to close the exit from the Adriatic to submarines.