World War One

Duties of the British navy

• To protect British shipping (to allow supplies to get to Britain across the Atlantic)

• To carry vital resources and manpower to the Western Front

• To blockade German ports

The threat from torpedoes and mines had led the British to adopt a strategy of distant blockade, basing their major units in Scotland, notably at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys, and also at Rosyth. The German navy was based at Wilhelmshaven.

In this way they shut the Germans up in the North Sea, controlling the access of merchant shipping to Germany and preventing German surface warships from having access to the world ocean.

Battleships

Dreadnoughts

Battlecruisers

Submarines (U-Boats)

It was Admiral John Fisher, the First Sea Lord, was the driving-force behind the development of the Dreadnought that was built at Portsmouth between October 1905 and December 1906. The Dreadnought was the most heavily-armed ship in history. She had ten 12-inch guns (305 mm), whereas the previous record was four 12-inch

guns. The gun turrets were situated higher than usual and so facilitated more accurate long-distance fire. In addition to her 12-inch guns, the Dreadnought also had twenty-four 3-inch guns (76 mm) and five torpedo tubes below water. In the

waterline section of her hull, the Dreadnought was armoured by plates 28 cm thick.

The British were the winners in the pre-war naval race with Germany. At the outbreak of war, in August 1914, the British Grand Fleet had 29 big gun

dreadnought and super dreadnought battleships, and four fast battle cruisers, against only 17 German dreadnoughts and three battle cruisers.

Battle cruisers – had the speed of a cruiser and the striking power of a battleship.

The Queen Mary, with its 13.5-inch guns, was the largest ship in the Royal Navy.

Queen Mary was sunk at Jutland with the loss of almost 1,300 lives.

A battleship is destroyed at the Battle of Heligoland Bight, 1914 

The Heligoland Bight is the stretch of water off Germany's major North Sea base of Wilhemshaven. The battle that bears its name was fought in a confusion of fog and haze on 28 August 1914, when a British attack led by Commodore Tyrwhitt was mounted on German coastal patrols - using the force of destroyers and submarines based at Harwich.

The Battle of Jutland, 1916 On 31 May, the Grand Fleet under Admiral Jellicoe, and the German High Sea Fleet under Vice Admiral Scheer, came

into contact in the eastern North Sea.

The U boatsBy the outbreak of the First World War Germany had 10 diesel-powered U-boats (17 more under construction). The German Navy also had 30 petrol-powered submarines. Britain had 55 submarines whereas the French had 77. Although submarines were slow, fragile and able to dive for only a couple of hours at a time, with torpedoes they posed a serious threat to other ships.

After war was declared in 1914, Tirpitz urged a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare against the British in the Battle of the Atlantic. In the first six months of 1915, German U-Boats sank almost 750,000 tons of British

shipping.

“Sink at Sight”

The convoy system helped prevent some attacks

The liner Lusitania sinks after a U-boat attack, May 1915 

Tactics to minimise effects of the “Sink at Sight” campaign

• Convoy system

• Mines

• Decoy ships (Q ships)

• Rationing

• Torpedoes

• Depth Charges

Results of blockade of German ports

• Starvation - “Turnip Winter” of 1917

• Shortages of raw materials and fuel

On 21 November 1918, under the terms of the Armistice agreement, the most powerful units of the German High Sea Fleet surrendered to Admiral Beatty, off the Firth of

Forth.

The German fleet who scuttled their fleet at Scapa Flow. 72 ships sank.(June 1919)

Allied and neutral ships lost during the war

1914 1915 1916 1917 1918

To submarines 3 396 964 2,439 1,035

To surface craft 55 23 32 64 3

To mines 42 97 161 170 27

To aircraft - - - 3 1