Compared with World War 2 with the Battle of the Atlantic, the Russian and Mediterranean convoys, the major invasions, and great sea and air battles that raged across the Pacific, the war of 1914-18 is mainly remembered for the struggle on land. For most, it conjures up images of trench warfare at Ypres, the Battle of the Somme, Verdun, perhaps the Eastern Front, with just the occasional sea battle (mainly Jutland) appearing out of the mists together with the U-boat scares towards the end. In fact the Great War at Sea, even aside from the impact of the British blockade on Germany, was crucial both to Allied survival and later victory.

For the Allies, including Russia to a certain extent, this was a peripheral and thus a maritime war. Even British arms and supplies for France and the Western Front had to be transported in ships across the oceans, and in some ways, the potential danger was even greater than in World War 2. If the German High Seas Fleet had defeated the British Grand Fleet or even broken out into the Atlantic and beyond, Allied supplies lines would have been cut. This did not happen, but the U-boat warfare of 1917 nearly succeeded.

Aside from the 1914 trade war by German surface ships and the battles of Coronel and Falklands that followed, together with the later unrestricted U-boat warfare on the oceans and in the Mediterranean, most of the naval actions of World War 1 took place or threatened to in the narrow and inland seas surrounding Europe - the North Sea and English Channel, the Baltic, the Adriatic and Aegean, and the Black Sea. In these areas, various "fleets in being" caused many head-aches to their opponents:

- for the British, the German fleet in the North Sea,

- for the Germans, the Russian Baltic Fleet in the Baltic,

- for the French, Italians and British, the Austrian Navy in the Adriatic,

- for the British and French, the Turkish-German fleet in the Aegean and Black Sea.

Only one major battle at sea may have been fought - Jutland - but the navies of the world found themselves in many actions, both large and small, over the four years, in which good seamen and ships of all nationalities were lost.

To convey something of the individual naval officers and men who fought at sea and sometimes on land throughout the Great War, awards of the British Victoria Cross and American Medal of Honour are included. Not including the bravery awards of other countries does not diminish the courage of those who received such distinctions as the French Légion d'Honneur, German Pour le Mérite, Italian Medal for Military Valour, Japanese Order of the Rising Sun, and Russian Cross of St George.

Aims - The aims of this work is similar to the "Royal & Dominion Navies in World War 2". That is to answer the questions: what warships were lost, when, where, and in what circumstances? And what else of significance was taking place in the naval, military and political spheres.

However there are two differences:

- All the combatant navies of the Great War are included, although the Royal Navy and to a lesser extent, the German Navy played the major part in the war at sea.

- The land war and the events leading up to its outbreak are covered in somewhat greater detail because the Great War is less widely known and understood than the Second World War. Also the campaigns on land were proportionally greater in scope than the naval side. A certain amount of attention is also given to the new war in the air.

Format - To convey this information, naval events and battles, background military and political events and the major warship losses are grouped month-by-month into four main theatres:

Oceans and Overseas,

Western Europe and North Sea,

Eastern Europe and Baltic Sea,

Mediterranean, Near East, Black Sea.

Major warships include capital ships, monitors, cruisers, seaplane and aircraft carriers, destroyers, some of the larger torpedo boats, and submarines for all the navies, as well as Royal Naval escorts, coastal craft and Q-ships. Ships sunk or lost are in bold CAPITAL LETTERS; those damaged in bold small letters. Again because the warships of this war are not so well known as those of the Second World War, brief details are given for those lost, namely year completed, normal displacement tonnage, main or heaviest guns, and number of torpedo tubes for destroyers and submarines.

Acknowledgements - All the sources used are listed in the World War 1 Naval Books, but some were more important than others. On the naval side, I have drawn heavily on Bennett's "Naval Battles of the First World War" and Halpern's scholarly "A Naval History of World War 1", supported by such books as Hough's "The Great War at Sea" and the official histories of Corbett and Newbolt. The Conway and Ian Allan publications have supplied much of the basic warship loss information.

Warship Loss Discrepencies - Even though the Great War is recent history, there is a surprising amount of variation on warship loss information, and not only in the more obvious case of submarines - notoriously difficult to confirm. Otherwise reliable sources can vary on date, cause and place of loss. Where there are variations, these are included so that readers will be aware of which ship losses should still be treated with caution.

The military side caused even more difficulty as the various one-volume accounts vary on what they cover and the detail they go into, and in some cases, disagree on even major facts and battles. Instead of attempting to reconcile these military differences (which strictly should not be necessary in a work on naval warfare), I have again relied heavily on one book - the slim, but readable "World War 1: An Outline History" by Baldwin, backed up by additional information from Stokesbury's "A Short History of World War 1" and the "Chronology of the Great War", originally published in 1918-1920. I apologise for any obvious errors this may have introduced on the military side.

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