The Royal Navy in the First World War

The Royal Navy, Britain’s navy, entered the First World War as the most powerful fleet in the world. For four years it barred Germany’s way to the ocean and enforced its blockade, carried the armies of the Empire and guarded the shipping on which the feeding of Britain depended. It won no decisive victory over the German fleet, failed in its attempt to force the Dardanelles, and in 1917 nearly succumbed to the U-boats. In November 1918, however, it received the surrender of the German fleet.

The Admiralty and the fleet in 1914

The navy was run by the Admiralty. Its political head was the First Lord of the Admiralty, in 1914 Winston Churchill, and its professional head the First Sea Lord, the most senior officer. On 1 August, before the government had decided on war, Churchill mobilised the fleet on his own responsibility. According to an Admiralty answer in the House of Commons in 1926, in July 1914 the navy numbered 146,047 officers and men. The historian Graham Watson counted 617 ships on the day war broke out; the English Wikipedia gives 622.

The main forces, renamed the Grand Fleet on the day war was declared, took up station at Scapa Flow in Orkney. The waters off the English coast were guarded by smaller forces: the Channel Fleet, the Harwich Force, the Dover Patrol and the submarine flotillas, and on distant seas by the cruisers of the overseas stations. The fleet’s air arm, the Royal Naval Air Service, had been made a separate formation a few weeks before the war.

The first months brought successes and shocks. The German ships Goeben and Breslau slipped past the British in the Mediterranean and reached Turkey. On 28 August British cruisers and destroyers won the Battle of Heligoland Bight, but on 22 September a single U-boat sank three armoured cruisers. On 1 November the squadron of Maximilian von Spee destroyed Admiral Cradock’s force at Coronel, and on 8 December British battlecruisers wiped it out off the Falklands. At the end of October Prince Louis of Battenberg was replaced as First Sea Lord by John Fisher, returning to the post for the second time.

Blockade and the Dardanelles (1914–1915)

The British did not station ships off the entrances to the German ports, where they would have fallen victim to mines and torpedoes. They closed the exits from the North Sea instead: patrols in the English Channel and between Shetland and Norway stopped ships and sent them in for inspection. They searched for contraband, also on ships bound for neutral ports, which provoked protests from the neutrals, above all the United States.

At the beginning of 1915 the government decided to force a way through the Dardanelles to Constantinople with the fleet. The naval operation lasted from 19 February to 18 March and ended with three battleships sunk by mines, two British and the French Bouvet. The expedition turned into a land campaign on Gallipoli, which the fleet had to support.

The quarrel over the Dardanelles cost both heads of the Admiralty their posts. On 15 May Fisher walked out of the Admiralty, and after the coalition government was formed Churchill was replaced by Arthur Balfour. Admiral Henry Jackson became First Sea Lord.

Meanwhile British submarines were forcing their way through the Dardanelles into the Sea of Marmara, where they sank Turkish transports and warships. On 8 August 1915 E11 torpedoed the battleship Barbaros Hayreddin. On distant waters the fleet hunted German cruisers: in July monitors directed by aircraft put the cruiser Königsberg out of action in the Rufiji delta.

Jutland and the submarine crisis (1916–1917)

On 31 May – 1 June 1916 the Grand Fleet fought the German High Seas Fleet in the Battle of Jutland. It lost more ships, but the Germans escaped and did not break its superiority. In December John Jellicoe became First Sea Lord, and Edward Carson took over the Admiralty.

The new leadership faced the greatest danger of the war. From 1 February 1917 Germany waged unrestricted submarine warfare. In April shipping losses reached, depending on the count, from about 835,000 to over 880,000 tons. The Admiralty had long regarded convoys as too risky, because a mass of ships was expected to be an easy target.

Under pressure from the Prime Minister and some younger officers, the Admiralty tried them in May: on 10 May the first trial convoy left Gibraltar. On 14 June Jellicoe approved the plan, and on 2 July the first convoy of the regular series sailed from Hampton Roads in Virginia. The American navy was already helping: its representative, Rear Admiral William Sims, had reached England on 9 April.

In the same year the Admiralty itself was reorganised. The naval staff became a true operational staff under the First Sea Lord, who also became Chief of the Naval Staff. In July Carson was succeeded by Eric Geddes, a railwayman and organiser.

The last year (1918)

On Christmas Eve 1917 Geddes dismissed Jellicoe, whose duties were taken over by Vice Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss. On 1 April 1918 the navy’s air arm became part of the new Royal Air Force.

On the night of 23 April ships of the Dover Patrol under Vice Admiral Roger Keyes attacked Zeebrugge and Ostend to shut the U-boats in their base at Bruges. At Zeebrugge two blockships sank in the canal; off Ostend they ran aground. In the Adriatic the Allies were building a barrage across the Strait of Otranto.

The armistice ended the war at sea on Britain’s terms. On 20 November the U-boats began to surrender at Harwich, and on 21 November the Grand Fleet of David Beatty escorted the German ships into internment.

At the armistice the navy was more than twice as large as in 1914. According to Watson it had 1,261 ships, according to the English Wikipedia more than 1,354, and 263,200 men were on active service. According to John Simkin the fleet lost 34,642 killed and 4,510 wounded in the war.