HOW THE “SYDNEY” MET THE “EMDEN.”
HOW THE “SYDNEY” MET THE “EMDEN.”
In the old sailing-ship days it was more common than it is now for fighting ships to pass close to one another without detection. Whole fleets used then to do it in a way which now seems always unbelievable. The classical example is that of Napoleon and Nelson in June, 1798. On the night of June 30th-July 1st, Napoleon with a huge fleet of transports, escorted by Admiral Brueys’ squadron, crossed the Gulf of Candia and reached Alexandria on the afternoon of the 1st. Nelson, who had been at Alexandria in search of his enemy, left on June 29th, and sailed slowly against adverse winds to the north. Though the French and British fleets covered scores of miles of sea they passed across one another, each without suspicion of the presence of the other. Nelson was very short of frigates. It is not remarkable that the British convoy and theEmdenon the night of November 8th, 1914, should so nearly have met without mutual detection; what is wonderful is that theEmdenshould have chosen the day and hour for raiding the Cocos Islands when a greatly superior British force was barely fifty miles distant and placed by accident in a position which cut off all prospects of escape. It was a stroke of Luck for us which exactly paralleled the occasion of von Spee’s raid a month later upon the Falkland Islands.
By seven o’clock Glossop and theSydneywere ready to leave upon their trip of investigation—they had no knowledge of what was before them—and during the next two and a quarter hours they steamed at twenty knots towards the distant cable station. In the meantime theEmdenhad sent a boat ashore and the work of destruction of the station was completed by 9.20 a.m. Everything fitted exactly into its place, for the Fates are very pretty workmen. TheEmdenknew nothing of theSydney’scoming, but as Glossop sped along his wireless receivers took up the distress calls from Cocos. He learned that the enemy warship had sent a boat ashore—and then came interruptions in the signals which showed that the wireless station had been raided. Naval officers do not get excited—they have too much of urgency upon which to concentrate their minds—but to those in theSydneymust have come some thrills at the unknown prospect. Their ship and their men were new and untried in war. Their guns had never fired a shot except in practice. Before them might be theEmdenor theKönigsbergor both together. They did not know, but as they rushed through the slowly heaving tropic sea they serenely, exactly, prepared for action.
The light cruiserSydney, completed in 1913 for the Australian Unit, is very fast and powerful. She is 5,600 tons, built with the clipper bows and lines of a yacht, and when oil is sprayed upon her coal furnaces can steam at over twenty-five knots. She bears upon her deck eight 6-inch guns of the latest pattern, one forward, one aft, and three on either beam, so that she can fire simultaneously from five guns upon either broadside. Her lyddite shells weigh one hundred pounds each. She was, and is, of the fast one-calibre type of warship which, whether as light cruiser, battle cruiser, or heavy battleship, gives to our Navy its modern power of manœuvre and concentrated fighting force. Speed and gun-power, with the simplicity of control given by guns all of one size, are the doctrines upon which the New Navy has been built, and by virtue of which it holds the seas. TheSydneywas far more powerful than theEmden, whose ten guns were of 4.1-inch, firing shells of thirty-eight pounds weight. The German raider had been out of dock in warm waters for at least three and a half months, her bottom was foul, and her speed so much reduced that in the action which presently began she never raised more than sixteen knots. In speed as in gun-power she was utterly outclassed.
Let us visit theSydneyas she prepares for action on the morning of the fight just as she had prepared day after day in practice drill at sea. Before the foremast stands the armoured conning tower—exactly like a closed-in jam-pot—designed for the captain’s use; forward of the tower rises the two-storeyed bridge, the upper part of which is the station of the gunnery control officer; upon the mast, some fifty feet up, is fitted a spotting top for another officer. This distribution of executive control may look very pretty and scientific, but Glossop, who had tested it in practice, proposed to fight on a system of his own. If a captain is cooped up in a conning tower, with the restricted vision of a mediæval knight through a vizard, a gunnery lieutenant is perched on the upper bridge by the big range-finder, and another lieutenant is aloft in the spotting top, the difficulties of communication in a small cruiser are added to the inevitable confusion of a fight. So the armoured jam-pot and the crow’s nest aloft were both abandoned, and Glossop placed himself beside his Gunnery Lieutenant Rahilly upon the upper bridge with nothing between their bodies and the enemy’s shot except a frail canvas screen. Accompanying them was a lieutenant in charge of certain instruments. At the back of the bridge—which measured some ten feet by eight—stood upon its pedestal the principal range-finder with a seat at the back for the operator. This concentration of control upon the exposed upper bridge had its risks, as will presently appear, but is made for simplicity and for the rapid working both of the ship and of her guns. Another lieutenant, Geoffrey Hampden, was in charge of the after control station, where also was fitted a range-finder. When a ship prepares for action the most unhappy person on board is the Second in Command—in this instance Lieutenant-Commander John F. Finlayson (now Commander)—who by the rules of the Service is condemned to safe and inglorious, though important duties in the lower conning tower. Here, seeing little or nothing and wrapped like some precious egg in cotton wool, the poor First Lieutenant is preserved from danger so that, if his Chief be killed or disabled, he at least may remain to take over command.
From the upper fore bridge of theSydneywe can see the guns’ crews standing ready behind their curved steel screens and note that as the ship cuts through the long ocean swell the waves break every now and then over the fo’c’sle and drench the gun which stands there. At 9.15 land is sighted some ten miles distant and five minutes later a three-funnelled cruiser, recognised at once as theEmden, is seen running out of the port. Upon theSydneya bugle blows, and then for twenty minutes all is quiet orderly work at Action Quarters. To theEmdenthe sudden appearance of theSydneyis a complete surprise. Her destruction party of three officers and forty men are still ashore and must be left behind if their ship is to be given any, the most slender, chance of escape. Captain von Müller recognises theSydneyat once as a much faster and more heavily gunned ship than his own. His one chance is to rush at his unexpected opponent and utilise to the utmost the skill of his highly trained gunners and the speed with which they can work their quick-firing guns. If he can overwhelm theSydneywith a torrent of shell before she can get seriously home upon him he may disable her so that flight will be possible. In rapid and good gunnery, and in a quick bold offensive, may rest safely; there is no other chance. So out he comes, makes straight for theSydneyas hard as he can go and gives her as lively a fifteen minutes as the most greedy of fire-eaters could desire.
When the two cruisers first see one another they are 20,000 yards distant, but as both are closing in the range comes quickly down to 10,500 yards (six land miles). To the astonishment both of the Captain and Gunnery Lieutenant of theSydney, who are together looking out from the upper fore bridge, von Müller opens fire at this very long range for his small 4.1-inch guns and gets within a hundred yards at his first salvo. It is wonderful shooting. His next is just over and with the third he begins to hit. At the long range theEmden’sshells fall steeply—at an angle of thirty degrees—rarely burst and never ricochet from the sea. They whine overhead in torrents, plop into the sea on all sides, and now and then smash on board. One reaches the upper fore bridge, passes within a foot of Lieutenant Rahilly’s head, strikes the pedestal of the big range-finder, glances off without bursting, cuts off the leg of the operator who is sitting behind, and finishes its career overboard. If that shell had burst Glossop and his Gunnery Lieutenant, together with their colleague at the rate-of-change instrument, must have been killed or seriously wounded and the Second in Command would have been released from his thick steel prison. Not one of them was six feet distant from where the shell struck in their midst. The range-finder is wrecked and its operator killed, but the others are untouched. A few minutes later two, possibly three, shells hit the after control, wound everyone inside, and wipe that control off the effective list.
But meanwhile the officers of theSydneyand their untried but gallant and steady men have not been idle. Their first salvo fired immediately after theEmdenopened is much too far, their second is rather wild and ragged, but with the third some hits are made. TheSydneyhad fortunately just secured her range when the principal range-finder was wrecked and the after control scattered, and Gunnery Lieutenant Rahilly is able to keep it by careful spotting and rate-of-change observations. Glossop, who has the full command given by superior speed, manœuvres so as to keep out to about 8,000 yards, to maintain as nearly constant a rate of change as is possible, and to present the smallest danger space to the enemy. TheEmden’sfirst effort to close in has failed, and now that theSydney’s100-pound shells begin to burst well on board of her theEmden’sone chance upon which von Müller has staked everything has disappeared. During the first fifteen minutes theSydneywas hit ten times, but afterwards not at all; theEmdenwas hit again and again during the long-drawn-out two hours of the hopeless struggle. After twenty minutes theEmden’sforward funnel went and she caught fire aft. Her steering gear was wrecked and she became dependent upon the manipulation of her propellers, and the inevitable falling off in speed to about thirteen knots. During the early critical minutes of the action theSydneyhad theEmdenupon her port side, but all her casualties were suffered upon the starboard or disengaged side due to the steepness with which the German shells were falling. Once she was hit upon the two-inch side armour over the engine room and the shell, which this time burst, left a barely discernible scratch. Another shell fell at the foot of a starboard gun pedestal in the open space behind the shield, burst and wounded the gun’s crew but left the gun unhurt except for a spattering of a hundred tiny dents. The electric wires were not even cut. It is remarkable that during the whole of the action no electric wires in any part of theSydneywere damaged. As I have told both gun controls of theSydneywere hit during the first few minutes though only the after one was put out of action; theEmden, less fortunate, had both her controls totally destroyed and all the officers and men within them killed.
After the lapse of about three-quarters of an hour theEmdenhad lost two funnels and the foremast; she was badly on fire aft and amidships, so that at times nothing more than the top of the mainmast could be seen amid the clouds of steam and smoke. Her guns, now occasionally firing, gave out a short yellow flash by which they could be distinguished from the long dark red flames of theSydney’sbursting lyddite. Once she disappeared so completely that the cry went up from theSydneythat she had sunk, but she appeared again, blazing, almost helpless. Glossop, who had been circling round to port, then drew in to a range of 5,500 yards—which in the absence of the range-finder was wrongly estimated at under 5,000—and determined to try a shot with a torpedo. It was a difficult shot as the torpedo gunner was obliged to set his gyroscope to a definite angle and then wait until the rapidly turningEmdencame upon his bearing. But in spite of the difficulties it was very good; the torpedo ran straight for its mark and then stopped short at the distance of 5,000 yards for which it had been set. The torpedo crews, naturally enough, wanted forthwith to let off all their mouldies, just to show the gunners how the business should be done with, but the hard-hearted Glossop forbade. The moment after the one had been fired he swung the ship round to starboard, opened out his range, and resumed the distressful game of gun-pounding. TheEmdenalso went away to starboard for about four miles and then von Müller, finding that his ship was badly pierced under water as well as on fire, put about again and headed for the North Keeling Island, where he ran aground. TheSydneyfollowed, saw that her beaten enemy was irretrievably wrecked, and went away to deal with theEmden’scollier—a captured British shipBuresk—which had hovered about during the action but upon which Glossop had not troubled to fire. TheEmdenfired no torpedoes in the action, for though von Müller had three left his torpedo flat was put out of business early in the fight.
Though theEmdenwas beaten and done for, the gallantry and skill with which she had fought could not have been exceeded. She was caught by surprise, and to some extent unprepared, yet within twenty minutes of theSydney’sappearance upon the sky line von Müller was pouring a continuous rain of shell upon her at over 10,000 yards range and maintaining both his speed of fire and its accuracy until the hundred-pound shots bursting on board of him had smashed up both his controls, knocked down his foremast, and put nine of his ten guns out of action. Even then the one remaining gun continued to fire up to the last. The crew of theSydney, exposed though many of them were upon the vessel’s open decks—a light cruiser has none of the protection of a battleship—bore themselves as their Anzac fellow-countrymen upon the beaches and hills of Gallipoli. At first they were rather ragged through over-eagerness, but they speedily settled down. The hail of shell which beat upon them was unceasing, but they paid as little heed to it as if they had passed their lives under heavy fire instead of experiencing it for the first time. Upon Glossop and his lieutenants on the upper bridge, and in the transmission room below, was suddenly thrown a new and urgent problem. With the principal range-finder gone and the after-control wrecked in the first few minutes, they were forced to depend upon skilful manœuvring and spotting to give accuracy to their guns. They solved their problem ambulando, as the Navy always does, and showed that they could smash up an opponent by mother wit and sea skill when robbed by the aid of science. It is good to be equipped with all the appliances which modern ingenuity has devised; it is still better to be able at need to dispense with them.
I love to write of the cold fierce energy with which our wonderful centuries-old Navy goes forth to battle, but I love still more to record its kindly solicitude for the worthy opponents whom its energy has smashed up. Once a fight is over it loves to bind up the wounds of its foes, to drink their health in a friendly bottle, and to wish them better luck next time. When he had settled with the collierBuresk, and taken off all those on board of her, Glossop returned to the wreck of theEmdenlying there helpless upon the North Keeling Island. The foremast and funnels were gone, the brave ship was a tangle of broken steel fore and aft, but the mainmast still stood and upon it floated the naval ensign of Germany. Until that flag had been struck theSydneycould not send in a boat or deal with the crew as surrendered prisoners. Captain Glossop is the kindliest of men; it went against all his instincts to fire at that wreck upon which the forms of survivors could be seen moving about, but his duty compelled him to force von Müller into submission. For a quarter of an hour he sent messages by International code and Morse flag signals, but the German ensign remained floating aloft. As von Müller would not surrender he must be compelled, and compelled quickly and thoroughly. In order to make sure work theSydneyapproached to within 4,000 yards, trained four guns upon theEmden, and then when the aim was steady and certain smashed her from end to end. The destruction must have been frightful, and it is probable that von Müller’s obstinacy cost his crew greater casualties than the whole previous action. These last four shots did their work, the ensign came down, and a white flag of surrender went up. It was now late in the afternoon, the tropical night was approaching, and theSydneyleft theEmdento steam to Direction Island some fifteen miles away and to carry succour to the staff of the raided cable and wireless station. Before leaving he sent in a boat and an assurance that he would bring help in the morning.
Although the distance from Direction Island, where the action may be said to have begun, to North Keeling Island, where it ended, is only fifteen miles the courses followed by the fighting vessels were very much longer. They are shown upon the von Müller-Glossop plan, printed on page193. TheEmdenwas upon the inside and theSydney—whose greatly superior speed gave her complete mastery of manœuvre—was upon the outside. TheEmden’scourse works out at approximately thirty-five miles and theSydney’sat fifty miles. The officers and men who are fighting a ship stand, as it were, in the midst of a brilliantly lighted stage and may receive more than their due in applause if one overlooks the sweating engineers, artificers, and stokers who, hidden far below, make possible the exploits of the stars. At no moment during the whole action, though ventilating fans might stop and minor pipes be cut, did the engines fail to give Glossop the speed for which he asked. His success and his very slight losses—four men killed and sixteen wounded—sprang entirely from his speed, which, when required, exceeded the twenty-five knots for which his engines were designed. When, therefore, we think of Glossop and Rahilly, who from that exposed upper bridge were manœuvring the ship and directing the guns, we must not forget Engineer Lieutenant-Commander Coleman and his half-naked men down below, who throughout that broiling day in the tropics nursed those engines and toiled at those fires which brought the guns to fire upon the enemy.
True to his promise Glossop brought theSydneyback to theEmdenat eleven o’clock on the morning of November 10th, having borrowed a doctor and two assistants from Direction Island, and then began the long task—which the Navy loves only less than actual battle—of rescue and care for the sufferers by its prowess. North Keeling Island is an irregular strip of rock, boulders and sand almost entirely surrounding a large lagoon. It is studded with cocoanut palms and infested with red land-crabs. An unattractive spot. TheEmdenwas aground upon the weatherside and the long rollers running past her stern broke into surf before the mainmast. Lieutenant R. C. Garsia, going out to her in one of theSydney’sboats, was hauled by the Germans upon her quarter-deck, where he found Captain von Müller, whose personal luck had held to the last, for he was unwounded. Von Müller readily gave his parole to be amenable to theSydney’sdiscipline if the surviving Germans were transshipped. TheEmdenwas in a frightful state. She was burned out aft, her decks were piled with the wreck of three funnels and the foremast, and within her small space of 3,500 tons, seven officers and 115 men had been killed by high-explosive shell and splinters. Her condition may be suggested by the experience of a warrant officer of theSydneywho, after gravely soaking in her horrors, retailed them in detail to his messmates. For two days thereafter the warrant officers’ mess in theSydneylost their appetites for meat: one need say no more! The unwounded and slightly wounded men were first transferred to the boats of theSydneyandBuresk, but for the seriously wounded Neil-Robertson stretchers had to be used so that they might be lowered over the side into boats. This had to be done during the brief lulls between the rollers. By five o’clock theEmdenwas cleared of men and Captain von Müller went on board theSydney, which made at once for the only possible landing place on the island in order to take off some Germans who had got ashore. To the surprise of everyone it was then discovered that several wounded men, including a doctor, had managed to reach the shore and were somewhere among the scrub and rocks. Night was fast coming on, the wounded ashore were without food and drink—except what could be obtained from cocoanuts—and were cut off from all assistance except that which theSydneycould supply. The story of how young Lieutenant Garsia drove in through the surf after dark—at the imminent hazard of his whaler and her crew—hunted for hours after those elusive Germans, was more than once hopelessly “bushed,” and finally came out at the original landing place, is a pretty example of the Navy’s readiness to spend ease and risk life for the benefit of its defeated enemies. In the morning the rescue party of English sailors and unwounded Germans, supplied with cocoanuts and an improvised stretcher made of bottom boards and boathooks, at last discovered the wounded party, which had not left the narrow neck of land opposite the strandedEmden. Lieutenant Schal of theEmden, who was with them, eagerly seized upon the cocoanuts and cut them open for the wounded, who had been crying for water all night and for whom he had not been able to find more than one nut. The wounded German doctor had gone mad the previous afternoon, insisted upon drinking deeply of salt water, and so died. The four wounded men who remained alive were laboriously transferred to theSydneyand the dead were covered up with sand and boulders. “A species of red land-crab with which the ground is infested made this the least one could do.” The reports of Navy men may seem to lack grace, but they have the supreme merit of vivid simplicity. That short sentence, which I have quoted, makes us realise that waterless crab-haunted night of German suffering more vividly than a column of fine writing.
THE “SYDNEY-EMDEN” ACTION.
THE “SYDNEY-EMDEN” ACTION.
All was over, and the packedSydneyheaded away for her 1,600-mile voyage to Colombo. To her company of about 400 she had added 11 German officers and 200 men, of whom 3 officers and 53 men were wounded. The worst cases were laid upon her fo’c’sle and quarter-deck, the rest huddled in where they could. It was a trying voyage, but happily the weather was fine and windless, the ship as steady as is possible in the Indian Ocean, and the Germans well behaved; von Müller and Glossop, the conquered and conqueror, the guest and the host, became friendly and mutually respecting during those days in theSydney. I like to think of those two, in the captain’s cabin, putting their heads together over sheets of paper and at last evolving the plan of theSydney-Emdenaction which is printed here. Von Müller did the greater part of it, for, as Glossop remarked, “he had the most leisure.” A cruiser skipper with 400 of his own men on board and 200 prisoners, is not likely to lack for jobs. To the von Müller-Glossop plan I have added a few explanatory words, but otherwise it is as finally approved by those who knew most about it.
Some single-ship actions remain more persistently in the public memory and in the history books than battles of far greater consequence. They are easy to describe and easy to understand. One immortal action is that of theShannonand theChesapeake; another is that of theSydneyand theEmden. It was planned wholly by the Fates which rule the Luck of the Navy, it was fought cleanly and fairly and skilfully on both sides, and the faster, more powerful ship won. I like to picture to myself theSydneyheading for Colombo, bearing upon her crowded decks the captives of her bow and spear, her guns and her engines, not vaingloriously triumphant, but humbly thankful to the God of Battles. To her officers and crew their late opponents were now guests who could discuss with them, the one with the other, the incidents of the short fierce fight dispassionately as members of the same profession, though serving under different flags, just as Glossop and von Müller discussed them in the after cabin under the quarter-deck when they bent their heads over their collaborated plan.
CHAPTER X
FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH
Since I have not been so foolish as to set myself the task of writing a history of the Naval War, I am not hampered by any trammels of chronological sequence. It is my purpose to select those events which will best illustrate the workings of the British Naval Soul, and to present them in such a manner and in such an order as will make for the greatest simplicity and force. Naval warfare, viewed in the scattered detail of operations taking place all over the world, is a mightily confusing study; but, if it be analysed and set forth in its essential features, the resultant picture has the clarity and atmosphere of the broad sea horizon itself. There is nothing in naval warfare, as waged by the Royal Navy, of that frightful confusion and grime and clotted horror which has become inseparable from the operations of huge land forces. Sailors live clean lives—except when the poor fellows are coaling ship!—and die clean deaths. They have the inestimable privilege of freedom both in the conception of their plans and in their execution. The broad distinction between land and sea service was put clearly to me once by a Marine officer who had known both. “At sea,” he observed, “one at least lives like a gentleman until one is dead.” It must be very difficult to live or to feel like a gentleman when one is smothered in the mud of Flanders’ trenches and has not had a bath for a month.
Although, as I have shown, the Grand Fleet at the outbreak of war was, in effective battle power, of twice the strength of its German opponents, no time was lost in adding largely to that margin of strength. Mines, with which Germany recklessly sowed the seas whenever she could evade the watchful eyes of our cruisers and destroyers, and the elusive and destructively armed submarine, were perils not lightly to be regarded by our great ships. We took the measure of both these dangers in due course, but in the early months of war they caused a vast amount of apprehension. In addition, therefore, to dealing directly with these perils the whole power of our shipyards, gun shops, and armour-rolling mills was turned to the task of increasing the available margin of battle strength so as to anticipate the possibility of serious losses.
And here we had great advantages over Germany. We not only had a far longer and far greater experience, both in designing and constructing ships and guns, but we had a larger number of yards and shops where battleships and battle cruisers could be completed and equipped. Throughout the fourteen years of the peace contest Germany had always been far behind us in design, in speed of construction, and in the volume of output. We built the first Dreadnought in little more than fifteen months—by preparing all the material in advance and taking a good deal from other ships—but our average time of completing the later models was rather more than two years apiece. The exalted super-battleships occupied about two years and three months before they were in commission. Germany—which so many fearful folk seriously look upon as superhuman in efficiency—never built an ordinary Dreadnought in peace time in less than two years and ten months, and always waited for the chance of copying our designs before she laid one down. It is reasonable to suppose that in the early days of war the German yards and gun shops worked much more rapidly than during the peace competition, but as our own quicker rate of construction was also enormously accelerated it is in the highest degree unlikely that our speed of war output was ever approached by our opponents. We had at the beginning far more skilled labour and, what is more important, far more available skilled labour. Since it was only by slow degrees that we enlisted a vast army for Continental service while Germany had to mobilise the whole of hers at the beginning of hostilities and to call upon the millions of untrained men, the drain upon our manhood was for a long time far less than the drain upon hers. As time went on labour became scarce with us, even for naval work, but it could never have been so scarce as with the Germans when after their immense losses they were driven to employ every possible trained and untrained man with the colours.
We had yet another advantage. In August, 1914, as the result of the far-seeing demands of the British Admiralty we had twice as many great ships under construction in this country as Germany had in the whole of her North Sea and Baltic yards. This initial advantage was an enormous one, since it meant that for eighteen months Germany could make no effective efforts to catch up with us, and that at the end of that period we should inevitably have in commission an increase in battle strength more than twice as great as hers. The completed new lead thus secured early in 1916, added to the lead obtained before the outbreak of war, then made our position almost impregnable. We were thus free to concentrate much of our attention upon those smaller vessels—the destroyers, patrol boats, steam drifters, fast submarine catchers and motor boats—which were urgently needed to cope with Germany’s attacks upon the world’s merchant ships.
Early in 1915, six months after the outbreak of War, our shipyards and gun shops had turned out an extraordinary quantity of finished work. There had been some loss in skilled labour through voluntary enlistment in the Army, but the men that were left worked day and night shifts in the most enthusiastic and uncomplaining spirit. The war was still new and the greatness of the Empire’s emergency had thrilled all hearts. Some coolness came later, as was inevitable—poor human nature has its cold fits as well as its hot ones—and there was even some successful intriguing by enemy agents in the North, but the great mass of British workmen remained sound at heart. The work went on, more slowly, a little less enthusiastically, but it went on.
During the first six months we completed the great battle cruiserTiger, a sister of theLionwith her eight 13.5-inch guns, and the sisters fought together with those others of their class—theQueen MaryandPrincess Royal—in the Dogger Bank action in January, 1915. We took over and completed two battleships which were building for Turkey and under their new names ofErinandAgincourtthey joined Jellicoe in the north. The second of these great vessels—ravished from the enemy—had fourteen 12-inch guns (set in seven turrets) and the other ten 13.5-inch. We completed two vast super-ships, theQueen Elizabethand another like to her, both with a speed of twenty-five knots and eight 15-inch guns apiece. The battle cruisers,IndomitableandIndefatigable, speeding home from the Mediterranean, had raised the Battle Cruiser strength in the North Sea to seven fine vessels of which four carried 13.5-inch guns and the three others 12-inch weapons. Even though theInflexibleandInvinciblewere still away—they were not yet back from fighting that perfect little action in which the German Pacific Squadron had been destroyed—we had a battle cruiser force against which the rival German vessels could not fight and hope to remain afloat.
After six months, therefore, Jellicoe had received four new battleships—two of them by far the most powerful at that time afloat—and Beatty had been joined by three battle cruisers, one of them quite new. The Grand Fleet was the stronger for six months of work by seven ships.
As compared with our increased strength of seven ships (five quite new), Germany had managed to muster no more than three. She completed two battleships of a speed of twenty and a half knots, each carrying ten 12-inch guns. Neither of these vessels were more powerful than our original Dreadnought class and they were not to be compared with our King George V’s, Orions or Iron Dukes and still less with our Queen Elizabeths. That Germany should, six months after the war began, be completing battleships of a class which with us had been far surpassed fully four years earlier is the best possible illustration of her poverty in naval brains and foresight. Germany had also completed one battle cruiser, theDerfflinger, of twenty-seven knots speed and with eight 12-inch guns, which in her turn was not more powerful than our Invincibles of five years earlier date. TheDerfflingercould no more have stood up to our newTigerthan the two battleships just completed by our enemies could have fought for half an hour with our two new Queen Elizabeths. So great indeed had our superiority become as early in the war as the beginning of 1915 that we could without serious risk afford to release two or three battle cruisers for the Mediterranean and to escort the Canadian and Australian contingents across the seas, and to send to the Mediterranean the mightyQueen Elizabethto flesh her maiden guns upon the Turkish defences of the Dardanelles. Ship guns are not designed to fight with land forts, and though theQueen Elizabeth’s15-inch shells, weighing over 1,900 lbs. apiece, may not have achieved very much against the defences of the Narrows, their smashing power and wonderful accuracy of control were fully demonstrated.
Inconclusive though it was in actual results, the Dogger Bank action of January, 1915, proved to be most instructive. It showed clearly three things: first, that no decisive action could be fought by the big ships in the southern portion of the North Sea—there was not sufficient room to complete the destruction of the enemy. Secondly, it demonstrated the overwhelming power of the larger gun and the heavier shell. Thanks to the skill of the Navy’s engineering staffs it was also found that the actual speed of our battle cruisers was quite a knot faster than their designed speed, and since no similar advance in speed was noticeable in the case of the fleeing German cruisers it could be concluded that the training of our engineers was fully as superior to theirs as was unquestionably the training of our long-service seamen and gunners superior to that of their short-service crews. As the fleets grew larger our superiority in personnel tended to become more marked. We had an almost unlimited maritime population upon which to draw for the few thousands whom we needed—before the war the professional Navy was almost wholly recruited from the seaboards of the South of England—we had still as our reserves the east and west coasts of England and Scotland. But Germany, even before the war, could not man her fleets from her scanty resources of men from her seaboards, and more and more had to depend upon partially trained landsmen. If one adds to this initial disadvantage in the quality of the German sea recruits, that other disadvantage of the cooping up of her fleets—sea training can only be acquired fully upon the open seas—while ours were continually at work, patrolling, cruising, practising gunnery, and so on, it will be seen that on the one side the personal efficiency of officers and men, upon which the value of machines wholly depends, tended continually to advance, while upon the German side it tended as continually to recede. It was the old story. Nelson’s sea-worn fleet, though actually smaller in numbers and weaker in guns than those of the French and Spaniards at Trafalgar, was so infinitely superior to its opponents in trained officers and men that the result of the battle was never for a moment in doubt.
At the time of the Dogger Bank action, which confirmed our Navy in its growing conviction that Speed and Power of guns were of supreme importance, the Germans had no guns afloat larger in calibre than 12-inch and seven of the ships in their first line were armed with weapons of 11 inches. They then mustered in all twenty big ships which they could place in the battle line against our available thirty-two, and of their twenty not more than thirteen were of a class comparable even with our older Dreadnoughts. They had nothing to touch our twelve Orions, King Georges, Iron Dukes, all with 13.5-inch guns, and upon a supreme eminence by themselves stood the two new Queen Elizabeths which, if need be, could have disposed of any half-dozen of the weaker German battleships. In the Jutland Battle four Queen Elizabeths—Barham,Warspite,ValiantandMalaya—fought for an hour and more the whole High Seas Fleet. It is no wonder, then, that the Germans did not come out far enough for Jellicoe to get at them. And yet there were silly people ashore who still prattled about the inactivity of the Royal Navy and asked one another “what it was doing.”
There is a good story told of the scorn of the professional seamen afloat for the querulous civilians ashore. When theLionwas summoned to lead the battle cruisers in the Dogger Bank action she was lying in the Forth undergoing some slight repairs. As she got up steam a gang of dockyard mateys, at work upon her, pleaded anxiously to be put ashore. They had no stomach for a battle. But there was no time to worry about their feelings; they were carried into action with the ship, and when the shots began to fly they were contemptuously assured by the grizzled old sea dogs, that they were in for the time of their lives. “You wanted to know,” said they, “what the b——y Navy’s doing and now you’re going to see.”
While the power of the Grand Fleet dominated the war at sea, some thirty supply ships and transports safely crossed the English Channel every day, and troops poured into Britain and France from every part of our wide-flung Empire. But for that silent, brooding, ever-expanding Grand Fleet, watching over the world’s seas from its eyries on the Scottish coast, not a man or a gun or a pound of stores could have been sent to France, not a man could have been moved from India or Australia, Canada or New Zealand. But for that “idle” Grand Fleet the war would have been over and Germany victorious before the summer and autumn of 1914 had passed into winter. During the war sea power, as always in naval history, has depended absolutely upon the power in men, in ships, and in guns of the first battle line.
At the beginning of 1915, in addition to the completed ships which I have already mentioned, Great Britain had under construction three additional Queen Elizabeths—Malaya,Barham, andValiant—all of twenty-five knot speed and carrying eight 15-inch guns apiece. She had also on the stocks in various stages of growth five Royal Sovereign Battleships designed for very heavy armour, with a speed of from twenty-one to twenty-two knots, and to be equipped with eight 15-inch guns each.
It will be seen how completely during the war the Royal Navy had “gone nap” on the ever faster ship and the ever bigger gun. Calculations might be partially upset by weather and visibility—as they were in the Jutland Battle—but even under the worst conditions speed and gun power came triumphantly by their own. Our fast and powerful battle cruisers, and our four fast and more powerful Queen Elizabeths—the name ship was not present—could not on that day of low visibility choose their most effective ranges, but the speed and power of the battle cruisers enabled them to outflank the enemy while the speed and hitting power of theBarham,Valiant,WarspiteandMalayaheld up the whole of the German High Seas Fleet until Jellicoe with his overwhelming squadrons could come to their support. Even under the worst conditions of light, speed and gun power had fully justified themselves.
Let us for a moment consider what are the advantages and disadvantages of the bigger and bigger gun; the advantages of speed will be obvious to all. To take first the disadvantages. Big guns mean weight, and weight is inconsistent with speed. The bigger the gun, the heavier it is, the heavier its mountings, its turrets, and its ammunition. Therefore in order that weight may be kept down and high speed attained, the ships which carry big guns must carry fewer guns than those which are more lightly armed. The Orions, K.G. Fives, and Iron Dukes each bear ten 13.5-inch guns within their turrets, but the battle cruisers of which theLionis the flagship, built for speed, can carry no more than eight. The Queen Elizabeth battleships, designed to carry 15-inch guns and to have a speed of twenty-five knots, mount eight guns only against the ten of the earlier and more lightly armed super-Dreadnoughts. Speed and weight being inconsistent, increase in speed and increase in size of guns can only be reconciled by reducing the number of guns carried. The fewer the guns carried, the fewer the salvos that can be fired at an enemy during a fixed time even if the rate of fire of the big guns can be kept so high as that of the smaller ones. When opposing ships are moving fast upon divergent courses, ranges are continually varying and the difficulty of making effective hits is very great indeed. The elaboration of checks and controls, which are among the most cherished of naval gunnery secrets, are designed to increase the proportion of hits to misses which must always be small even when the light is most favourable. If the heavy gun were no more accurate than the light one, then the small number of guns carried and the reduced number of salvos, would probably annul the benefit derived from the greater smashing power of the heavier shell when it did hit an enemy. The ever-expanding gun has, therefore, disadvantages, notable disadvantages, but as we shall see they are far more than outweighed by its great and conspicuous merits.
The first overwhelming advantage of the big gun is the gain in accuracy. It is far more accurate than the lighter one. As the fighting range increases so does the elevation of a gun, needed to reach an object within the visible limits of the horizon, sensibly increase. But the bigger the gun and the heavier its shell, the flatter becomes its trajectory. And a flat trajectory—low elevation—means not only more accurate shooting, but a larger danger zone for an enemy ship. At 24,000 yards (twelve sea miles) a 12-inch shell is falling very steeply and can rarely be pumped upon an enemy’s deck, but a 15-inch shell is still travelling upon a fairly flat path which makes it effective against the sides and upper works of a ship as well as against its deck. The 15-inch shell thus has the bigger mark. It also suffers less from deflection and, what is more important, maintains its speed for a much longer time than a lighter shell. Increased weight means increased momentum. When the 15-inch shell gets home upon its bigger mark at a long range it has still speed and weight (momentum) with which to penetrate protective armour. When it does hit and penetrate there is no comparison in destructiveness between the effect of a 15-inch shell and one of twelve inches. The larger shell is nearly two and a half times as heavy as the smaller one (1,960 lbs. against 850), and the power of the bursting charge of the big shell is more than six times that of the smaller one. Far-distant ships, big ships, can be destroyed by 15-inch shells when, even if occasionally hit by one of twelve inches, they would be little more than peppered. The big gun therefore gives to our Navy a larger mark, greater accuracy arising from the lower trajectory, and far greater destructive hitting power in comparison with the lighter guns carried by most of the German battleships.
But the advantages of the big gun do not end here. Gunnery, in spite of all its elaboration of checks and controls, is largely a matter of trial and error. All that the checks and controls are designed to do is to reduce the proportion of errors; they cannot by themselves ensure accurate shooting. Accuracy is obtained through correcting the errors by actual observation of the results of shots. This is called “spotting.” When shells are seen to fall too short, or too far, or too much to one side or the other, the error in direction or elevation is at once corrected. But everything depends upon exact meticulous spotting, an almost incredibly difficult matter at the long ranges of modern sea fighting. Imagine oneself looking for the splash of a shell, bursting on contact with the sea ten or more miles away, and estimating just how far that splash is short or over or to one side of the object aimed at. It will be obvious to anyone that the position of a big splash can be gauged more surely than that of a small one, and that the huge splash of the big shell, which sends up a column of water hundreds of feet high, can be seen and placed by spotting officers who would be quite baffled if they were observing shots from 12-inch weapons. In this respect also, that of spotting results, the big gun with its big shell, greatly assists the elimination of inevitable errors and increases the proportion of effective hits to misses. If then we get from bigger guns a higher proportion of hits, and a much greater effectiveness from those hits, then the bigger gun has paid a handsome dividend on its cost and has more than compensated us for the reduction in its numbers. Where the useful limit will be reached one cannot say, nothing but experience in war can decide, but the visible horizon being limited to about fifteen sea miles, there must come a stage in gun expansion when increase in size, accuracy, and destructiveness will cease to compensate for smallness of numbers. And the limit will be more quickly reached when during an action the light does not allow the big gun to use its accuracy at longer ranges to the fullest advantage.
Although one’s attention is apt to be absorbed by the great ships of the first battle line, the ultimate Fount of naval Power, a Navy which built only vast battleships and cruisers would be quite unable to control the seas. A navy’s daily work does not consist of battles. For the main purposes of watching the seas, hunting submarines, blockading an enemy, and guarding the communications of ourselves and our Allies, and also for protecting our big ships against submarines and other mosquito attacks, we needed vast numbers of light cruisers, patrol boats, destroyers, armed merchant cruisers, steam drifters and so on, and these had to be built or adapted with as great an energy as that devoted to turning out the monsters of the first battle line. The construction of light cruisers and destroyers—the cavalry of the seas—kept pace during 1915 and 1916 with that of the big fighting ships, while the turning out of the light fast craft essential for hunting down enemy submarines, far surpassed in speed and other building operations. At the beginning of the war we had 270 light mosquito vessels; at the end of 1917 we had 3,500!
Nothing like the tremendous activity in warship building during 1915 has ever been seen in our country. Mercantile building was to a large extent suspended, labour was both scarce and dear, builders could not complete commercial contracts at the prices named in them, the great yards became “controlled establishments” with priority claims both for labour and material. Consequently every yard which could add to the Navy’s strength, whether in super-battleships or cruisers, destroyers or in the humble mine sweeper, were put on to war work. The Clyde, typical of the shipbuilding rivers, was a forest of scaffolding poles from Fairfield to Greenock within which huge rusty hulls—to the unaccustomed eye very unlike new vessels—grew from day to day in the open almost with the speed of mushrooms. A trip down the teeming river became one of the sights of the city on the Clyde and, though precautions were taken to exclude aliens, the Germans must have known with some approach to accuracy the numbers and nature of the craft which were under construction. What was going on in the Clyde during that year of supreme activity, when naval brains were unhampered by Parliament or the Treasury, was also going on in the Tyne, at Barrow and Birkenhead, in the Royal Dockyards—everywhere day and night the Navy was growing at a speed fully three times as great as in any year in our history.
Twenty-two months after war broke out, in May of 1916, Jellicoe’s battle line had been strengthened during the previous twelve months by the addition of no less than seven great vessels. Three more Queen Elizabeths were finished and so were three Royal Sovereigns, and in addition a fine battleship, which had been building in England for Brazil, was taken over and completed. She was named theCanada, had twenty-three knots of speed, and was designed to carry ten 14-inch guns. There were thus available in the North Sea, allowing for occasional absences, from thirty-eight to forty-two great ships of the battle line, of which no fewer than eight carried 15-inch guns of the very latest design. This huge piling up of strength was essential not only to provide against possible losses but to ensure that, in spite of all accidents, an immense preponderance of naval power would always be available should Germany venture to put her fortunes to the hazard of battle. And accidents did occur. The coast lights had all been extinguished and ships at sea cruising at night were almost buried in darkness. As time went on it became more and more certain that a Battle of the Giants could have but one result.
I have now carried the story of naval expansion down to the time of the Jutland Battle—May 31st, 1916—and will show by how much our paper strength had increased between August 4th, 1914, and that date, and how much of that strength was available when the call for battle rang out. It happened that none of our battle cruisers was away upon overseas enterprises, so that we were in good circumstances to meet the call. There had been added to the Fleets one battle cruiser, theTiger, with 13.5-inch guns, five Queen Elizabeth battleships with 15-inch guns, three Royal Sovereign battleships with 15-inch guns (Royal Sovereign,Royal OakandRevenge), theErinbattleship with 13.5-inch guns, theCanadabattleship with 14-inch guns, and theAgincourtbattleship with fourteen 12-inch guns. At the beginning of the war our total strength in battleships and battle cruisers of the Dreadnought and later more powerful types was thirty-one, so that on May 31st we had in and near the North Sea a full paper total of forty-two ships of the battle line.
But the Royal Navy which is always at work upon the open seas can never have at any one moment its whole force available for battle. The squadrons composing the Fleets were, however, exceedingly powerful, far more than sufficient for the complete destruction of the Germans had they dared to fight out the action. As the battle was fought the main burden fell upon thirteen only of our ships—Beatty’s four Cat battle cruisers assisted by theNew ZealandandIndefatigable, Hood’s three battle cruisers of the Invincible class, and Evan-Thomas’s four Queen Elizabeth battleships. Jellicoe’s available main Fleet of twenty-five battleships, including two Royal Sovereigns with 15-inch guns, theCanadawith 14-inch guns, and twelve Orions, K.G. Fives and Iron Dukes with 13.5-inch guns, which was robbed of its fought-out battle by the enemy’s skilful withdrawal, was almost sufficient by itself to have eaten up the German High Seas Fleet.
During the battle we lost theQueen Marywith 13.5-inch guns, and theInvincibleandIndefatigablewith 12-inch guns, all of which were battle cruisers. So that after the action our total battle cruiser strength had declined from ten to seven, while our battleship strength was unimpaired.
It is not easy to be quite sure of what the Germans had managed to do during those twenty-two months of war. I have given them credit for completing every ship which it was possible for them to complete. They were too fully occupied with building submarines to attack our merchant ships, too fully occupied with guns and shells for land fighting, and too much hampered in regard to many essential materials by our blockade, to be able to effect more than the best possible. Rumour from time to time credited them with the construction of “surprise” ships carrying 17-inch guns, but nothing unexpected was revealed when the clash of Fleets came on May 31st, 1916. Huge new battleships and huge new guns take us at the very least fifteen months to complete at full war pressure—most of them nearer two years—and the German rate of construction, even when unhampered by a blockade and the calling to the army of all available men, has always been much slower than ours. The British Admiralty does not work in the dark and doubtless knew fully what the Germans were doing.
If we credit the Germans with their best possible they might have added, by May, 1916, four battleships and two battle cruisers to their High Seas Fleet as it existed early in 1915. One of the battleships was theSalamis, which was building at Stettin for Greece when the war broke out. She was designed for speed of twenty-three knots, and to carry ten 14-inch guns. The other three battleships were copies of our Queen Elizabeths, though slower by about four knots. They were to have been equipped with eight 15-inch guns, though Germany had not before the war managed to make any naval guns larger than 12-inch. The battle cruisers (HindenburgandLützow) were vessels of twenty-seven knots with eight 12-inch guns, not to be compared with our Cats and no better than our comparatively old class of Invincibles.
The story of theSalamisand its 14-inch guns forms a very precious piece of war history. The guns for this Greek battleship had been ordered in America, a country which has specialised in guns of that calibre. But when Germany took over the ship the guns had not been delivered at Stettin, and never were delivered. They had quite another destination and employment. Our Admiralty interposed, in its grimly humorous way, bought the guns in America, brought them over to this country, and used the weapons intended for theSalamisto bombard the Germans at Zeebrugge and the Turks in Gallipoli. One may speculate as to which potentate was the more irritated by this piece of poetic justice—the Kaiser in Berlin or his brother-in-law “Tino” in Athens.
At their utmost, therefore, the Germans could not have added more than five vessels to their first line (they had lost one battle cruiser), thus raising it at the utmost to twenty-five battleships and cruisers, as compared with our maximum of forty-two much more powerful and faster ships. Four of their battleships were the obsolete Nassaus with twelve 11-inch guns and two of their battle cruisers (MoltkeandSeydlitz) were also armed with 11-inch guns. If a successful fight with our Grand Fleet was hopeless in August, 1914, it was still more hopeless in May, 1916. We had not doubled our lead in actual numbers but had much more than doubled it in speed and power of the vessels available for a battle in the North Sea. In gun power we had nearly twice Germany’s strength at the beginning; we had not far from three times her effective strength by the end of May of 1916. It is indeed probable that Germany was not so strong in big ships and guns as I have here reckoned. She did not produce so many in the Jutland Battle. I can account for five battle cruisers and sixteen battleships (excluding pre-Dreadnoughts) making twenty-one in all. I have allowed her, however, the best possible, but long before the year 1916 it must have been brought bitterly home to the German Sea Command that by no device of labour, thought, and machinery could they produce great ships to range in battle with ours. We had progressed from strength to strength at so dazzling a speed that we could not possibly be overtaken. Had not the hare gone to sleep, the tortoise could never have come up with it—and the British hare had no intention of sleeping to oblige the German tortoise. There is every indication that Germany soon gave up the contest in battleships and put her faith in super-submarines, and in Zeppelins, the one to scout and raid, and the other to sink merchant vessels and so between them either to starve or terrify England into seeking an end of the war.