WORLD WAR I.

The Royal Navy failed to sink the Goeben and Breslau. two German warships that sailed through the Mediterranean to Constantinople, a feat which encouraged the Turks to declare war on Britain. For nearly two years, the Kaiser refused to send his High Seas Fleet out into battle. Two small engagements, the Battle of Heligoland Bight (1914) and the Battle of the Dogger Bank (1915) proved indecisive. Understandably, the Kaiser would not throw his battleships against the Grand Fleet based at Scapa Flow until the numerical superiority enjoyed by Britain's Navy had been reduced - and here the German weapons were mines and submarines. Well aware of the damage that these could do, Admiral Jellicoe preferred to hold his 24 battleships in readiness for a German breakout. Thus the ships of both sides languished for much of the war within the safety of torpedo nets at Scapa Flow, Kiel and Wilhelmshaven. In the early months of the war, the Royal Navy swept all German surface raiders from the seas. At the Battle of the Falkland Islands (1914) British warships virtually wiped out the German Pacific Fleet, but only after the British had sustained heavy losses at the earlier Battle of Coronel. By the end of 1914, all German surface raiders had been destroyed. The U-boats were a tougher and more elusive foe and the war against them was fought out at all times and in all weathers.

Battle of Jutland, 31 May 1916

The British Navy was bearing the brunt of the operations at sea and strangling Germany with its ever-tightening blockade. Only once in the Battle of Jutland on 31st May, 1916 - did the main fleets engage, Admiral Jellicoe fought a running action against Admiral Scheer's battleships, most of which managed to escape as a result of their superior gunnery and construction. The immediate result was disappointing and inconclusive. But the German Navy, having prudently retired to harbour, never afterwards ventured far out again except to surrender at the end of the war.

Instead the Germans turned to a second and more intensive U-boat campaign in 1917. All ships entering the war-zone around Britain were liable to attack. As an indication of this vital part played by the British Grand fleet Churchill spoke of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, its commander-in-chief, as the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon.

The casualties sustained by the British Navy during this war were 312 warships of all types lost as against 937 total enemy warships destroyed, and 27,106 officers and men of whom over 22,258 were killed, while the Navy expanded from 2,419,043 tons in August 1914 to 4,087,950 tons in October 1918.