“The Board of Admiralty desire to express to the officers and men of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines on the completion of their great work their congratulations on a triumph to which history knows no parallel.”

They came in flying the White Ensign, which was the cleanest thing about them. Only a few weeks before the commanders of these same bedraggled U-boats had boasted of defying the world; now they had been brought to heel like a pack of whipped curs. German officers and men were taking part in the biggest collapse in naval history; their conquerors in the greatest triumph. At Beatty’s bidding they meekly surrendered their piratical craft at the rate of a score a day for a week or more. The bluejackets at Harwich rechristened the Stour “U-boat Avenue” when the captives were given floating-room in its sluggish waters.

On the 9th November, 1918, Sir Eric Geddes gave it as his opinion that the High Sea Fleet had “gone mad” because it “dared not fight” and because it “had not got a good cause.” That is the psychological explanation, true to fact and experience. Its moral broke down, which is another way of saying that it lost its nerve. When ordered to put to sea on the 28th October, 1918, ostensibly for manoeuvres, but in reality as a gambler’s last hazardous throw of the dice, the German Fleet mutinied in a far more thorough manner than had obtained a few months previously.

At Wilhelmshaven about one thousand sailors were imprisoned for taking part in the mutiny; Kiel, on the other hand, went wholly ‘red,’ as did also the commercial ports of Hamburg, Bremen, and LÜbeck. Soviets came into being, a Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council was formed, Bolshevism was openly preached, fireworks were let off at Wilhelmshaven in honour of the German Republic.

Apart from the moral issue, three main causes led to the defection of the German Navy. It did not fight because the Battle of Jutland had proved the vast superiority of the Grand Fleet; it did not want to fight because the complements of the vessels were mainly landsmen by upbringing and inclination; it had no heart to fight because the U-boat campaign had failed to win the war according to promise, or even to shake Britain’s resolution by one iota. Probably the ultimate and determining factor was the frightful mortality among the submersibles. When the High Sea Fleet failed at Jutland the U-boat campaign was undertaken in real earnest; when that failed the mutiny took place. The death-rate toward the end was frightful. Of 360 submarines launched during 1914–18, 200 were sunk or captured.

That Germany made a bold bid for triumph cannot be gainsaid. There were times when the Allied Admiralties regarded the situation as critical. The statistics of the matter are instructive, though not pleasing. From first to last Great Britain lost 9,000,000 tons of shipping, while Allies and neutrals suffered to the extent of a further 6,000,000 tons. In addition there were eighty British vessels, with an aggregate tonnage of 172,554, held up in German ports during hostilities, an amount by no means to be despised, although it is small compared with the enemy tonnage captured and brought into Allied service. The latter reached the respectable figure of 2,392,675. British naval casualties totalled 39,766 in killed, wounded, interned, and captured. In the Merchant Service 14,661 lost their lives, and 3,295 were taken prisoners. War in the Underseas was waged at frightful cost to all belligerents, both vanquished and victors. Taking British losses by enemy action and marine risks during the war, the worst quarters were in this order: second quarter of 1917, third, first, and last quarters of the same year, and first quarter of 1918 and last quarter of 1916. In April 1917, 555,000 tons of British shipping were sent to the bottom. Had things gone on at that rate, “we were in deadly danger; had it gone on for nine months we were ruined.”^[34] In September 1918 the depletion had been reduced to 151,000 tons.

Captain Persius asserts that, following the action off the Danish coast, twenty-three battleships were disarmed for the purpose of obtaining metal for constructing U-boats—excellent proof of the grip of the blockade and of the British victory at Jutland. His figures regarding underseas craft are a little difficult to follow, because he only deals with what he calls ‘front submarines,’ presumably those definitely on active service and not merely patrolling in home waters. In April 1917, he says, Germany had 126 U-boats, in the following October 146; in February 1918 she possessed 136; in June of the same year, 113. In January 1917 only 12 per cent. were at sea, 30 per cent. in harbour, 38 per cent. under repair, and 20 per cent. incapacitated. His most important admission is that the ill-trained crews had no confidence in their craft, and that toward the end of the campaign it was difficult to get men to work them. He flatly contradicts the assertion that losses were made up by new construction.

Apart from the offensive operations of the Navy proper, the defensive equipment of traders and the introduction of the convoy system in the summer of 1917 were of enormous importance in thwarting the submarine. In addition to merchant shipping and munitions 16,000,000 fighting men were escorted, and of these less than 5000 met with disaster.

Sea-power worked miracles in other directions. “The blockade,” says Sir Eric Geddes,^[35] “is what crushed the life out of the Central Empires.” That was the work of the 10th Cruiser Squadron. From 1914 to 1917 the ships of that squadron “held the 800 miles stretch of grey sea from the Orkneys to Iceland. In those waters they intercepted 15,000 ships taking succour to our enemies, and they did that under almost Arctic conditions, and mainly in the teeth of storm and blizzard; out of that 15,000 they missed just 4 per cent., a most remarkable achievement under impossible conditions. Behind the blockade was the Grand Fleet, the fulcrum of the whole of the sea-power of the Allies. If ever testimony were needed of the value of sea-power, I can give it. In every individual case when an armistice was signed by our enemies, and in one, if not two, cases before, the one cry that went up was, ‘Release the blockade.’”

Admiral Sir Percy Scott holds that four years of U-boat warfare have “tragically demonstrated the truth” of his neglected warning, but he also acknowledges that the Navy did not fail us. “From the first,” to quote the apostle of the submarines, “Great Britain kept command of the seas.” His prophecy of 1914 that the day of the big surface ship was over has not been fulfilled, though the submarine may become the capital ship of the future. He contends that if Germany could have placed 200 U-boats on the ocean trade routes at the outbreak of war she would have defeated the Allies. She might have done so, but the important fact is that she did not possess the requisite number. At that time we were lamentably short of light craft, German cruisers and raiders were running amok in various parts of the world, and the Grand Fleet was fully occupied ‘containing’ the main German squadrons. Given the hypothetical conditions mentioned by the Admiral, it is not improbable that the enemy would “have defeated the Allies and practically conquered the world,” but it is not “certain,” as Sir Percy asserts. Germany regarded the intensified U-boat campaign as a sure thing; we know the result. In his now famous letter to the Times, one of the eminent correspondent’s contentions was that “the introduction of vessels that swim under water has already done away with the utility of ships that swim on the top of the water,” that “as the motor vehicle has driven the horse from the road, so has the submarine driven the battleship from the sea.” The Great War of 1914–18 disproved this very definite statement, and witnessed the introduction of mighty ‘hush’ ships which lived and moved and had their being on the surface of great waters.

On the other hand we should be crass fools if we neglected the lessons of the war as regards the latest naval arm. The records of British submarines are eloquent of their effectiveness. Summed up they amount to this: Two battleships sunk and three badly damaged; two armoured cruisers destroyed; two light cruisers sunk and one badly damaged. The long obituary list also included seven torpedo-boats, five gunboats, twenty submarines, five armed auxiliaries, fourteen transports, two store ships, half a dozen ammunition and supply ships, fifty-three steamships, 197 sailing vessels, and one Zeppelin, making a grand total of 315 vessels dead and buried. As to the sea-going qualities of the craft, one British commander made twenty-four cruises, covering 22,000 miles, in a year, while in a single month British submarines navigated 105,768 sea miles, one mile in every ten being in the submerged position. We have seen in previous chapters that the Allied naval losses, while they made no appreciable difference to the situation, were not negligible. Approximately 230 fighting ships were lost from all causes by Great Britain during the war.

Without going so far as Mr Arthur Pollen, whose opinion regarding the submarine is that, “viewed strictly as a form of sea force, it is the feeblest and least effective that has ever been seen,” all available facts show that warships travelling at a good speed are comparatively immune from attack. There is also little danger when they are going slowly, provided they have a covering screen of destroyers. The majority of battleships and cruisers that fell victims to U-boats were taking life easy, as for instance the Aboukir, the Cressy, and the Hogue in the North Sea, and the Formidable in the Channel.

The Great Collapse revealed no new wonders, though the cargo-carrying Deutschland, converted into a ‘front submarine’ and mounting 5.9–in. guns, was a sight for the gods as she lay floating on the bosom of old Father Thames. Another former commercial cruiser, U 139, had just returned to the Fatherland after a voyage of sixty-four days with a company of ninety-one, fifteen of whom were specially detailed for manning prizes. One ugly brute, believed to have been responsible for the sinking of 47,000 tons of shipping, carried forty-two mines and twenty-two torpedoes. Perhaps the most interesting discovery was a cat-o’-nine-tails stained with blood, extracted from under the bunk of a certain U-boat commander. Two sailors were so enamoured of their own country that they had to be persuaded to go on board the transport at the point of a revolver. One commander, in handing over his signed declaration, was good enough to remark, “We shall be coming over again for them soon.” Another officer explained that his periscope was missing and his compass gave an incorrect reading because a steamer had ‘sat’ on his boat, while a British Lieutenant-Commander had the satisfaction of piloting a submarine he had once attacked in German waters. Another boat was brand-new from the shipbuilding yard. Nearly all were camouflaged. The majority of the submarines surrendered were certainly not of the cruiser type, about which one heard so much during the war, although in the first batch to reach Harwich was a monster 340 ft. long, with a displacement of 2300 tons and accommodation for a crew of seventy. The remainder were mostly of 800 tons displacement, 225 ft. long, and 22 ft. beam.

It has taken ten centuries to make the British Navy; it took four and a quarter years for the Senior Service to secure the surrender of its most formidable rival in the greatest Sea Conquest of all time.

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