CHAPTER V

 

THE END OF THE YEAR 1917 IN HOME WATERS

(See Map 9.)

 

 

1

The Dover Barrage. November‑December 1917

 

It was in September that the German submarine captains began to abandon the outer approaches to the British Isles and to operate closer in, but this tendency did not become a settled policy until November. There was a lull in the enemy's submarine operations during the first half of the month; but between the 13th and the 18th nine submarines were located in the approach routes. Their principal zones of operation were the St. George's and the English Channels; and it was quite clear that the focusing points of the German attack would henceforth be the localities where the convoys dispersed. These operations might, indeed, be the preliminary moves in the general campaign against the convoy system, which Admiral Sims had foreseen in September. The U‑boats which were now concentrating on the Channel and the approaches to Liverpool appeared, moreover, to be passing almost entirely through the Dover Straits; as far as we could tell, the north‑about route was temporarily abandoned. It was natural, in these circumstances, that the Admiralty should give special thought to the defence of the Dover Straits and the Pas de Calais. On November 17 they appointed Rear‑Admiral Roger Keyes, the Director of the Plans Division, to be Chairman of a "Channel Barrage Committee."

 

(Its other members were Captain F. C. Learmonth, RN; Captain Cyril Fuller, RN; Captain F. S. Litchfield‑Speer, RN; Colonel Alexander Gibb, R.E.; Mr. W. MeLellan.

 

The committee's terms of reference were as follows:

 

The committee is appointed for the purpose of investigating and reporting on the possible measures for constructing a barrage across the Channel between England and France.

 

The committee is particularly charged with the following duties: to consider in what respects the barrage already attempted has not been successful and why.

 

To consider in detail the practicability from all points of view and probable efficiency of any scheme or schemes which can be put forward, showing clearly every detailed requirement which is involved in the construction, equipment, maintenance and defence of the barrage in the matter of personnel, plant, materials and equipment ‑ the latter, of course, including all vessels and guns employed in its defence.)

 

The committee was instructed to investigate the whole question of barring the Dover Straits to enemy submarines, and in particular to inquire whether the barrage which was being maintained between the South Calliper and the Flanders coast did actually obstruct German submarines or not.

 

The committee's inquiries had thus to cover both the existing barrage and the plans for enlarging it that Admiral Bacon had recently put forward. Early in July he had proposed to the Admiralty that the barrage should be supplemented by a deep minefield between Cape Gris Nez and the Varne Shoal, and the Admiralty had approved. The first lines of mines in this field were about to be laid when the committee assembled. Their first report to the Board was highly critical of the existing barrage. They had no difficulty in proving that throughout the year German submarines had passed through the Dover Straits without difficulty; it was even probable that they actually used the large light buoys along the barrage as navigational marks. As an obstruction to surface craft the barrage appeared to the committee to be almost equally useless. During a visit to the Straits, the committee had put to sea in the Swift, and had passed over the upper jackstay of the barrage from which the explosive nets were suspended. Admiral Bacon, it is true, intended to double the numbers of the supporting buoys, and so bring the jackstay nearer to the upper surface; but the committee doubted whether this would greatly alter matters. During their investigations they had also visited the Swin, where an experimental barrage had been laid; by accident the Swift had been taken across it. The net was certainly found to be damaged, but not the Swift, which was drawing fourteen feet at the time.

 

In view of this, and of a great deal of similar evidence, the committee concluded that the existing barrage was no obstacle either to surface vessels or submarines. They were, indeed, inclined to believe that the enemy would regret the loss of the barrage if it were ever removed; and drew attention to stratagems by which the Germans were encouraging us in a false confidence in the efficacy of the obstruction. Their positive proposals, however, differed only slightly from Admiral Bacon's; they urged, as he did, that a deep minefield should be laid between Gris Nez and the Varne, and that, when completed, it should be extended towards Folkestone; and they too urged that the deep minefields should be swept by searchlights. The committee were, however, at issue with Admiral Bacon on this general question of lighting. Knowing, as they did, that submarines always dived deeply when caught in a searchlight beam, they considered it essential that the whole surface of the minefield should be strongly illuminated, and that lightships and intermittent flares from trawlers should supplement the searchlights. They were convinced that unless submarine commanders were repeatedly detected in these zones of light they would get into the habit of clearing the deep minefield on the surface. As soon as they did so, it would be useless. Admiral Bacon was, however, only prepared to sanction a modified lighting scheme ‑ he strongly deprecated the use of lightships ‑ and on this point his disagreement with the committee's findings was a disagreement on a question of principle.

 

In conclusion the committee recommended that every possible assistance and encouragement should be given to those who were experimenting upon certain new and promising devices; when brought to perfection, these new devices were to be used in a new barrage laid further to the eastward. This requires a brief explanation. Professor Bragg was at the time experimenting with an extremely delicate device for detecting submarines, known as "indicator loops"; and the Mining Division at the Admiralty were engaged in perfecting designs for mines which would be automatically detonated by the sound waves, or by the magnetic lines of force, generated when an iron ship passed over them. The second barrage, which the committee recommended, was to consist of four whole lines of these new mines, laid between the South Calliper and the Dyek shoal; an elaborate system of indicator loops was to traverse the Channel between the two obstructions.

 

There were thus considerable differences of opinion between the Admiralty Committee and Admiral Bacon. A channel would have to be left free for ordinary traffic, at each end of the deep minefield, and it was an open question, upon which the Admiralty and Admiral Bacon were not agreed, whether these channels ought to be mined or strongly patrolled; the best method of maintaining a searchlight patrol over the minefield was also doubtful. In ordinary circumstances these differences would either have been composed, or the Admiralty would have allowed the local commander

 

Nov. 1917

THE DOVER STRAITS

 

discretion to act as he thought best; but the circumstances were far from ordinary, for the German submarines were passing through the Straits of Dover in an unbroken procession.

 

On November 29, when the committee's report was presented to the Board, there were eight German submarines in the English and St. George's Channels. U.96 was off the Smalls; U.101 was off the north coast of CornwalL, U.57, UB.80, UB.62, UB.35 and a UC‑boat whose number could not be identified were in the Channel itself; a week later, there were eleven boats out, distributed roughly in the same areas, and nearly all their reliefs were now passing through the Straits of Dover. For months past, papers taken from German submarines had made it fairly clear that the Dover barrage was no real obstacle to them, and the latest captures made this more certain. Two officers and three seamen had been saved from UC.65 when she was torpedoed by the British submarine C.15; and from them it was learned that although submarine commanders generally passed the barrage at night high water, and waited on the bottom if they reached the Straits before high tide, they never had any difficulty in crossing the barrage jackstay.

 

The prisoners captured from U.48, which was sunk on November 24, told the same story. Indeed, it appeared from a chance remark by the captain that all German submarines, large and small, would henceforth use the Dover Straits route. The prospect was alarming. When submarines used the long north‑about route, seven, and sometimes eight, days separated the date on which the U‑boat left her base from the date on which she sank the first merchantman of the cruise. The same number of days generally separated the dates of the last sinking and the return to harbour. A U‑boat generally remained at sea for twenty‑five to thirty days, so that if the Dover barrage, by its mere existence, had achieved the great success claimed for it, it would have kept the U‑boats to the north‑about route, and compelled them to spend one‑half of each voyage in unproductive cruising. (The Straits were navigated 334 times during 1917, and only three submarines were sunk.) If German U‑boat commanders still felt at liberty to use the shorter Dover Straits route, and found by experience that they could do so with impunity, they would reach their cruising grounds off Ushant and the Scillies in about sixty‑five hours, and productive waters in about twenty‑four.

 

Nor was this all: there was now always one, and sometimes there were two homeward‑bound convoys in the English or the St. George's Channel. This German concentration against the terminal points of our most important convoys was in itself ominous, and the threat was the stronger in that the concentration was taking place almost without opposition from our side. If this was the beginning of that general attack upon the convoy system which Admiral Sims had foreseen in September, it was highly important that it should be met and resisted. On December 14, therefore, the Admiralty, after long discussion, ordered Admiral Bacon to concentrate his patrol craft upon the deep minefield which now ran continuously from near the French shore to the Varne: he was, if necessary, to withdraw them from the barrages on the Flanders coast and across the Channel. He was further directed to assemble a strong force of destroyers to protect the new concentration against raids from Zeebrugge.

 

This order involved such large changes in his system of defence that Admiral Bacon sent the Admiralty a long and considered reply. He had at once carried out the Admiralty's wishes by reinforcing the minefield patrol; but he felt obliged to represent that the sudden and drastic alteration in his general plan of defence could only be carried out at a grave risk. As an obstruction to submarines the Belgian barrage might not have given the results expected of it; but if it were maintained, Admiral Bacon was confident that German destroyers raiding the Straits would be compelled to pass down the channel near West Kapelle. So long as the enemy was thus held to a single entrance and exit route, a group of our destroyers at Dunkirk could occupy the German line of retirement after the alarm was given, and would always be a danger, and consequently a deterrent, to any force of German destroyers raiding the Straits.

 

On the other hand, any redistribution of Admiral Bacon's forces which removed or weakened the Dunkirk detachment would correspondingly expose the drifters and patrol craft on the minefield to a shattering attack. Moreover, a reduction in the number of patrol craft allotted to the Belgian barrage would give the same result through another chain of cause and effect. When the patrol was reduced, the Belgian barrage would fall into disrepair, and the German destroyers and submarines would be free to use whatever entrance and exit routes they chose.

 

On receiving this letter, the Admiralty at once summoned Admiral Bacon to a conference at Whitehall; it took place on December 18, and only served to emphasise the existing differences of opinion between Admiral Bacon and certain sections of the Admiralty Staff. The actual subjects discussed were severely technical: how the drifters should be

 

Dec. 1917

THE DOVER STRAITS

 

distributed, whether destroyers on patrol should enter beams of searchlight, and whether destroyers working in the Straits by night would be unduly exposed to attacks by coastal motor‑boats; but the discussion of these professional questions provoked a sharp difference of opinion upon points of strategical principle. Admiral Bacon was determined to distribute his forces so that they secured the important points in his command; those points were numerous and scattered, and he consequently felt compelled to divide and allocate his forces in order to give effect to his general plan. To some sections of the Admiralty Staff this seemed a mere waste of opportunity; in their opinion every available vessel in the command should be concentrated on or near the deep minefield, and the whole system of defence should resolve itself into a system for compelling German submarines to dive on to the mines. These differences were no longer differences between a local commander and the High Command; they divided the Admiralty itself, where several officers could not be persuaded to admit any serious alteration in the defence of the Dover Straits. The events of the next twenty‑four hours very much strengthened the position of those officers who supported the committee's recommendations. Admiral Bacon left London in the afternoon, after giving an undertaking that he would station a flare and searchlight patrol on the minefield when he returned to Dover. He actually did so on the night of the 19th, and on that same night UB.56 was driven into the mines and destroyed.

 

The barrage committee presented their second report on December 21. It was little but an elaboration of the previous proposals for using new types of mines and new detecting devices when they became available, and was therefore rather a plan of technical policy than a project of reform. But this second report gave additional force to the opinions of those who were urging the correlative policy of concentrating patrols upon danger areas; for they argued that all these devices and obstructions would never be effective unless the patrols drove the German submarines into them; the existing dispositions would not suffice for this, and nothing but the most drastic redistribution of patrol and surface forces would serve.

 

But although these arguments were powerful, they did not persuade those members of the Board who were opposed to a revision of the existing system of defence in the Straits. Meanwhile, however, the Admiralty were investigating the causes of a disaster which had occurred a few days previously.

 

 

2

The Second Attack on the Scandinavian Convoy, December 11‑12, 1917

(See Maps 10, 11.)

 

We have seen that the discussions which followed the October raid upon the Scandinavian convoy had ended in a proposal to lengthen the intervals between any two successive sailings. The Admiralty could not, however, decide definitely in favour of this proposal until they had examined the state of the Scandinavian trade and assured themselves that the projected change would not disturb its normal processes. The question was complicated by a recent agreement between the British and Norwegian Governments, whereby Great Britain had promised to send 250,000 tons of coal to Norway every month. The deliveries for November were less than half the promised quota; and the Admiralty naturally hesitated to sanction proposals which could only cause further delays in the sailings and deliveries of Scandinavian trade.

 

After very careful inquiries, it was decided that if the Scandinavian traffic was to be expedited, its passage must be shortened. This, however, could not be arranged without consultation between the Admiralty and the local authorities; so, on December 10, Captain Henderson, representing the Naval Staff at Whitehall, arrived at Longhope for a general conference with the officers in charge of the Scandinavian convoy. His main proposal, that the convoys should start from Methil instead of Lerwick, was agreed to without any dissent from the local authorities. With this starting point, the voyage would be much shortened; Methil was, moreover, a more natural point of departure for vessels engaged in the Danish and Swedish trade, besides being in itself a better-equipped harbour than Lerwick.

 

The Commander‑in‑Chief agreed with the findings of the conference, but felt obliged to warn the Admiralty that, though the new plan would increase the carrying power of vessels engaged in Scandinavian trade, it would at the same time make the convoys more vulnerable to surface attack, as the new route would be appreciably nearer the German bases. The only remedy, in his opinion, would be to assimilate the Scandinavian to the Atlantic convoy system, and so put the convoys between Scotland and Norway under the protection of the cruisers engaged in oceanic escort work. A few

 

Dec. 1917

GERMAN FLOTILLA GOES NORTH

 

hours before the Commander‑in‑Chief sent off this warning, Admiral Scheer had completed his last preparations for a second attack on the Scandinavian trade.

 

His new plan was more embracing than the last, in that not one but two points on the convoy route were selected for attack. A half‑flotilla of destroyers was to attack the convoy in the war channel along the East coast, another half‑flotilla was to operate at the eastern end of the Bergen‑Lerwick line. These two half‑flotillas, the 3rd and 4th, together made up the 2nd Flotilla, a formation composed of the newest and fastest German boats. They left harbour on the 11th, escorted by the light cruiser Emden, and at three o'clock in the afternoon were off the north‑eastern corner of the Dogger Bank. There they divided, the 3rd Half‑Flotilla, under the command of Hans Kolbe, held on to the north; the 4th steered west‑south‑westwards towards the British coast near Newcastle.

 

At two o'clock on the afternoon of the 10th, the destroyers Ouse and Garry had left Lerwick with the south‑bound coastal convoy. The Scandinavian convoy left harbour every day as usual; and on the 11th the destroyers Pellew and Partridge, with four armed trawlers, the Livingstone, Tokio, Commander Fullerton and Lord Alverstone, took the east‑bound convoy of six vessels out of Lerwick. They were due to arrive in the Marsten leads early in the afternoon of the following day, and were to pass through two rendezvous; the first fifteen miles south of Lerwick, the second twenty‑five miles south‑west of the entrance to Bjorne Fiord.

 

During the afternoon and evening of the same day two cruiser squadrons put to sea. The 3rd Light Cruiser Squadron (Chatham, Yarmouth and Birkenhead) left Rosyth with four destroyers at a quarter‑past five. They were under orders to be thirty miles west‑south‑west of Jaederen at half‑past eight on the following morning (December 12), to sweep across the mouth of the Skagerrak towards Bovbierg, and to return home after dark. "This force," said Admiral O. de B. Brock in an inquiry which took place later, "was sent out in accordance with the general policy of making periodical sweeps to cover the approach of vessels on the Bergen‑Lerwick route; and, in addition, of giving early information of enemy forces coming out of the Bight." At ten o'clock in the evening of December 11 the Shannon and Minotaur (2nd Cruiser Squadron) with four destroyers, left Scapa to patrol the convoy route between Lerwick and Norway. They were known as the covering force, and Captain V. B. Molteno of the Shannon was in charge of it. His orders were to make contact with the west‑bound convoy on the morning after he left harbour; to move eastwards across the convoy route and cover the east‑bound convoy, which would be crossing during the day.

 

Whilst these forces were leaving harbour the 3rd Half-Flotilla was approaching the British coast. At above five o'clock the German commander of the half‑flotilla intercepted a group of British wireless messages which very greatly influenced his plan of operations. These messages, as read in the German flotilla, seemed to show that a force of British destroyers would leave the Firth of Forth that evening in charge of a south‑bound coastal convoy, that there was a group of eight British cruisers at Rosyth, a force of destroyers at the Tyne, and two destroyers at Immingham. This information was incorrect in every particular, but it was especially misleading with regard to the convoy which was supposed to be leaving the Firth of Forth. No mercantile convoy was either entering or leaving the Forth: the only convoys off the coast were the south coming convoy escorted by the Ouse and Garry, and the convoy for the east coast ports escorted by the Rother and Moy; both had left Lerwick during the 10th. It is quite true that escort forces had been mentioned in signals made from local stations during the day; these, however, were not escort forces in the sense that the German commander gave to the words, but groups of destroyers, torpedo boats and auxiliary patrol craft detailed to patrol the war channel and control the coastal traffic.

 

None the less, the German commander's search for a phantom convoy was likely to bring him very near to a real and substantial one. His course was converging fast with that of the Ouse and Garry, and the six merchantmen that they were escorting. At noon (11th) they were roughly in the latitude of Aberdeen, at four o'clock, an hour before the German commander read the intercepted signal from Inchkeith, they were about forty‑five miles east of Fifeness. At half‑past nine they sighted the Longstone Light, and they passed it just before eleven o'clock, without suspecting that a powerful enemy force was lurking in the darkness to the east of them. After nightfall the weather became thick and rainy, and two Scandinavian vessels, the Peter Willemoes (Danish) and the Nike (Swedish), did not keep their station; but the destroyer officers, thinking that they had fallen out deliberately in order to make for Blyth direct, did not attempt to rally them. It was probably this that saved the rest of the convoy; for the German half‑flotilla was, by now, close at hand.

 

About half an hour after midnight the German destroyers

 

Dec. 1917

EAST COAST CONVOY ATTACKED

 

fell in with the Danish steamer Peter Willemoes, some twenty-five miles to the cast of the war channel, and sank her with torpedoes. The Danish captain, who was under the impression that he was about six miles east of the Farn Islands, had thus come very far out of his reckoning.

 

The German half‑flotilla commander now steamed in towards the coast, expecting to make the Longstone Light; but was quite baffled to find that it was not burning. As very little shipping moved along the war channel during the dark hours, the Admiralty had long before made arrangements with the Trinity House that certain coastal lights should be lit up only at certain specified times, and extinguished when no longer required. On this particular night the commanding officer of the escort that was bringing the convoy south had asked that the Longstone Light should be shown between half‑past nine and half‑past eleven. The result was that the light was extinguished when the German half‑flotilla approached the land, and its commander, finding that the whole coast was in utter darkness, was compelled to round the Farne Islands at a safe distance. He fell in with nothing on his northerly course, and so, thinking that the convoy he believed to have left the Firth of Forth that evening had slipped past him, he soon turned south again.

 

When the Peter Willemoes was torpedoed, the Ouse and Garry were abreast of Coquet Island, only thirty miles to the southward. The Germans, therefore, still had time to overtake the convoy and destroy it before dawn; and if they had taken the Danish seamen from the Peter Willemoes on board, they would doubtless have realised this, and would not have wasted time by steaming northwards along the war channel before they finally turned south. It was a singular piece of good fortune for the convoy just to the south of them that the German commander never once used his opportunities for checking and verifying the inaccurate information with which he had been supplied.

 

At four o'clock in the morning the German destroyers picked up the Swedish steamer Nike off Blyth. She had not straggled so far as the Peter Willemoes, and when they overhauled her the convoy was not more than twenty miles ahead. Again the Germans lost an admirable chance; for they torpedoed the Nike as they had torpedoed the Peter Willemoes, and made no attempt to take prisoners or to ascertain the real position: indeed, they did their work so hastily that they left the Nike under the impression that they had sunk her, whereas she was still afloat, though in great difficulties. As the German destroyers steamed away they sighted four small steamships; these inoffensive vessels were assumed to belong to the convoy for which the Germans were seeking, and a murderous fire was opened upon them. One was sunk, the others escaped; and the German commander, after making a rapid search for other signs of the convoy and finding nothing, turned for home. It was about five o'clock when the Germans set a course for the Bight, so that the half‑flotilla was well out of sight of land by dawn.

 

On our side it was not realised for several hours that the traffic in the war channel had been attacked by surface craft. Just after four o'clock the look‑out station at Blyth reported heavy gunfire to the north‑east; about a quarter of an hour later the Hartlepool station confirmed this by another report of gunfire from the same direction; later on the naval depot at North Shields sent a message to the Admiralty that the Ouse and Garry were probably responsible for the firing. The Senior Naval Officer at the Tyne asked the escort commander whether he had heard the firing, and received an immediate reply: "Yes; but it seems a long way off." This was reassuring, in that it proved that the convoy was in no danger. (The convoy arrived at the Humber between three and four in the afternoon of the 12th. Neither of the destroyer captains had the slightest suspicion that the stragglers from the convoy had been attacked by surface craft during the night.)

 

The matter would probably have been cleared up earlier had it not been that the two trawlers which escaped the German destroyers during the night reported that they had been attacked by a submarine. This seemed to explain the mysterious firing that had been heard during the night, and the Admiralty made no further inquiry. At noon on the 12th, therefore, the authorities at Whitehall were still unaware that enemy warships had been operating in the war channel during the dark hours; but even if they had known of it earlier, it is hardly likely that they would have been able to parry or avoid the second blow, which was then about to fall.

 

A quarter of an hour before noon (12th) the Pellew's convoy was approaching the second rendezvous, to the south‑west of the Bjorne Fiord. The Partridge was astern of her; and behind the Partridge was the convoy of six ships with an armed trawler leading, and armed trawlers on each flank. There was a stiff north‑westerly breeze blowing, and the swell was extremely heavy; if the destroyers tried to increase their speed, they were at once washed down. The look‑out men in both destroyers sighted strange ships on the northern side of the convoy at practically the same instant. The Partridge

 

Dec. 1917

PELLEW AND PARTRIDGE ATTACKED

 

attempted to challenge; but the searchlight was then found to be out of order, and ten whole minutes went by before the challenge was actually made, and a warning sent to the Pellew that it had been wrongly answered. During those ten minutes the strange vessels steadily approached the convoy, and they were only five miles away when the alarm gongs were sounded in the British destroyers, and the Pellew ordered the convoy to scatter. The commanding officers of the two destroyers now prepared to defend their convoy as best they could. The Pellew steamed across the convoy's bows to get on to their exposed flank; the Partridge followed her, and, just before the action began, sent off a signal to the Commander‑in‑Chief, informing him that the convoy escort was in contact with an enemy whose number and composition were unknown. Neither of the destroyer captains had been told that there was a covering force of cruisers at sea, so that they could only send their warning to the Commander-in‑Chief.

 

Lieutenant‑Commander J. R. C. Cavendish of the Pellew hoped that he would be able to gain time for the convoy by engaging the enemy closely and hotly; but the Germans were in sufficient strength to thwart his manoeuvre. Three of their destroyers steered a parallel course to that of the Pellew and Partridge, and engaged them fiercely; the fourth was detached to deal with the convoy.

 

The British destroyers were no match for their opponents, and they were, moreover, in the leeward position. The north‑west wind swept a blinding storm of spray into the faces of their gunners, and when the Partridge and Pellew were in the trough of the waves, nothing was to be seen of the enemy except their masts, and the tops of their funnels. The Germans made admirable use of their advantage; and, as usual, their fire was extremely accurate and rapid. Although the terrible precision of the enemy's shooting meant death to most of those who saw it, the officers and men in the British destroyers watched the fall of the German salvoes with a sort of bitter admiration. From the very beginning matters went badly with the British destroyers, and both began to suffer. The Partridge, indeed, was a doomed ship. After a few moments of firing, a shell struck her at the forward end of the engine‑room, and severed the main steampipe. In an instant the engine‑room was filled with scalding steam, and the ship came to a standstill. Everybody working at the engines was scalded to death, and, though Engineer-Commander P. L. Butt and a chief engine‑room artificer attempted repeatedly to enter the engine‑room and give assistance, they were always driven out by the boiling steam. A few minutes later another shell struck the after gun, and put it out of action; almost simultaneously a torpedo struck the ship forward, and she began to settle down. The Partridge had now as little power of manoeuvre or resistance as an ordinary practice target, and Lieutenant‑Commander R. H. Ransome, the commanding officer, gave orders that the ship was to be abandoned; at the same time he directed the engine‑room staff to do everything in their power to see to it that the ship sank rapidly.

 

As the crew were attempting to clear away the boats, the enemy's destroyers came inside the firing arc of the Partridge's torpedo tubes; but in order to cause no delay in the escape of any possible survivors, Lieutenant A. A. D. Grey and Lieutenant L. J. B. Walters determined to fight the torpedo tubes by themselves. They manned the after tube, and fired a torpedo which struck one of the enemy's destroyers without exploding; they then went forward, but found that the deck beneath the other tubes was so buckled that the training gear was immovable. Soon afterwards Lieutenant Grey was wounded in the thigh; he was put, with the first lieutenant, into a boat which capsized, and threw both of them into the water: Lieutenant Grey now mustered his strength for a great effort. He saw that the first lieutenant was getting very exhausted, and helped him to swim to the nearest raft. When they reached it Lieutenant Grey found that it would carry only one more person; he refused to take the vacant place himself, but put the first lieutenant on to it, and swam away towards the nearest German destroyer. The water was intensely cold, and he was swimming in it for nearly half an hour with the blood flowing from his wound all the time; but he reached the German destroyer at last, and the German seamen hauled him on board; just before he fell down unconscious, he saw a terrific explosion in the Partridge, as she sank, struck by a third torpedo.

 

(These details were supplied, later, by Engineer‑Commander Butt, on whose recommendation Lieutenant Grey was awarded the Silver Medal and Certificate of the Royal Humane Society. Equally meritorious was the action of Engineer‑Commander Butt, who was awarded the D.S.O. He tried, three times, to get into the engine‑room after the main steam‑pipe had been severed. He finally succeeded when the ship was sinking: it was still full of steam, and pitch dark, as the dynamos had long since ceased to work; but he groped his way through the steam and darkness, and rising water, and opened the door of the starboard condenser, in order to make the ship sink more rapidly.)

 

Meanwhile the Pellew escaped by a miracle. After her gunners had fired a few salvoes she was struck in the engineroom,

 

Dec. 1917

PELLEW ESCAPES

 

and her speed fell rapidly. Lieutenant‑Commander Cavendish turned his ship away, and ordered the officers at the torpedo tubes to open fire. Only one torpedo could be fired, as the electric leads to the after tube had been pierced; and if the enemy had detached even one destroyer to deal with the Pellew she could hardly have survived. But by good fortune a blinding rain squall covered the Pellew as she yawed out of the fight, and the enemy did not follow her closely. As she sagged away they turned back and steamed into the convoy, to complete the destruction that the detached destroyer had already begun. No ship or armed trawler escaped: within an hour of the enemy's first appearance nothing was left of the convoy or its escort but the Pellew, steaming towards Norway with her port engine‑room full of water, and a few ship's cutters, with a handful of survivors on board lying wounded and half conscious below the thwarts, or splashing listlessly at the oars as the boats laboured and drifted in the heavy seaway.

 

The Shannon was the first ship to get news of the disaster. At noon her wireless‑room staff intercepted the Partridge's message to the Commander‑in‑Chief; and Captain Molteno at once ordered his cruisers to work up to twenty knots. At a quarter‑past twelve another intercepted message was reported to him. The call signs of the emitting ship had been made completely unrecognisable by interference from Telefunken; but the message itself ran thus: "Enemy destroyers at T rendezvous." (This was the convoy's eastern rendezvous, twenty‑five miles south‑west of the entrance to Bjorne Fiord.) When Captain Molteno received this second confirmatory warning of disaster his detachment of cruisers and destroyers was about sixty miles to the westward of the enemy's position. He immediately ordered his destroyers to steam ahead, and followed on himself at twenty knots.

 

The Partridge's message was handed to the Commanderin‑Chief at five and twenty minutes past twelve. It gave no indication of the enemy's strength or composition, and Admiral Beatty had in consequence to make provision for meeting what might prove to be a large movement by the High Seas Fleet. He at once ordered the 5th Battle Squadron, the 2nd and 4th Light Cruiser Squadrons, and the Battle Cruiser Force, to raise steam. A few minutes later, however, he received, from the Shannon, the second report that enemy destroyers were at the convoy's eastern rendezvous. This cleared up the position considerably, and he ordered the 3rd Light Cruiser Squadron to sweep towards the position where the enemy were reported (1.03 p.m.).

 

The Admiralty got news of the attack upon the northern convoy route and of the enemy's operation off the East coast at nearly the same time. The Commander‑in‑Chief's message reached them just before two o'clock, and about seven minutes earlier, the Senior Naval Officer at the Tyne telephoned to Whitehall to say that enemy destroyers had been off the Northumbrian coast during the night. As the two incidents were obviously connected, and might be mere diversionary moves preliminary to a large concerted operation, the Admiralty ordered the Grand Fleet and the Harwich Force to raise steam and be at an hour and a half's notice.

 

Meanwhile Lieutenant‑Commander Cavendish of the Pellew had brought his damaged vessel to the safety of the Norwegian coast at the entrance to Selbjorn's Fiord. As he approached the Island of Slotteroe he was met by the Norwegian torpedo boat Hvas, whose commanding officer, Lieutenant Hans Solheim, treated him with great courtesy and consideration and towed him to a safe anchorage. Just after three o'clock Captain Molteno, in the Shannon, received a signal from Lieutenant‑Commander Cavendish, to say that the Pellew had reached Slotteroe, and was unable to steam.

 

The Shannon's destroyers, which had steamed ahead when the first news of the disaster came through, reached the boats and rafts at about two o'clock, and spent the next hour picking up survivors. The German half‑flotilla thus had about two and a half hours' start of the first British forces. There was still a chance, however, that they would be intercepted and brought to action. The 3rd Light Cruiser Squadron was patrolling between the south‑western coast of Norway and Bovbierg, and was thus right upon the line of the German retirement.

 

It so happened, moreover, that Captain L. C. S. Woollcombe, the senior officer of the squadron, was given timely warning of the disaster. He had reached the northern end of his patrol line at the appointed time, and spread his cruisers over a front of about ten miles. At noon on the 12th the three cruisers were about one hundred and fifty miles to the south of the convoys eastern rendezvous, steering south-south‑east towards Bovbierg. The Birkenhead was on the Chatham's port beam and the Yarmouth to starboard of her. The Rival, the destroyer acting as a submarine screen to the Birkenhead, was the first ship in the squadron to get news of the attack on the convoy. Just after noon, she, like the Shannon, took in the Partridge's first report, and at once

 

Dec. 1917

THE ENEMY UNDETECTED

 

signalled it to the Birkenhead: at five and twenty minutes past twelve it was in Captain Woollcombe's hands. He at once turned his squadron sixteen points, and made for the position where the, enemy was reported. By the time he received the Commander‑in‑Chief's order he had advanced over twenty miles towards the convoy's eastern rendezvous. All the afternoon Captain Woollcombe and his colleagues swept northwards; and, if the enemy had returned to the Heligoland Bight by the way they had left it, their half-flotilla could hardly have failed to have come within sight of Captain Woollcombe and his cruisers during the afternoon. An extraordinary chance saved them. During their run northward the German destroyers had fallen in with very bad weather, and when the work of destroying the convoy was completed, the German commander of the half‑flotilla determined to make for the Skagerrak and return by the Baltic, where he would get into more sheltered water. Their homeward course thus ran fairly near the Norwegian coast.

 

All the afternoon Captain Woollcombe and his colleagues swept northwards, watching closely for any sign of the enemy: they saw nothing; the Germans most probably passed astern of them at about five o'clock. They cannot have been very far off, yet none of the look‑out men in the light cruisers or the screening destroyers sighted anything, and at four o'clock, when dusk began to fall, the Yarmouth and the Birkenhead closed the Chatham, and the whole squadron was formed in single line ahead. By nightfall the last chance of bringing the Germans to action was gone; and the forces which put to sea from Rosyth that night served only to cover the Pellew on her return from Norway. (1st Battle cruiser Squadron, 1st Light Cruiser Squadron, and six destroyers.) The damaged destroyer ‑ the only ship that had survived the disaster ‑ reached Scapa with the Shannon, Minotaur and four destroyers during the morning of December 15.

 

Three days after the convoy had been attacked a conference of officers assembled at the Admiralty to consider the decisions that had already been taken by the previous conference at Rosyth. What had happened did not shake the conviction that Methil, not Lerwick, ought to be the port of departure of the Scandinavian convoy; and the conference considered all the implications of this change in the organisation, and submitted a detailed plan to the Admiralty. It was approved, and early in the new year the new system was put into operation; the convoys between the Humber and Methil were run daily; those from Methil to Scandinavia and back every three days. The management of the convoys themselves was left to the Admiralty; the provision of covering forces to the Commander‑in‑Chief. Although the convoys were sent northwards to the latitude of Aberdeen before they crossed to Norway, the new route across the North Sea was considerably longer, and closer to the German bases than the old route between Lerwick and the Bergen leads. The convoys, which had already been successfully attacked on two occasions, would thus be more exposed under the new system than under the old, but in order to give absolute security to a traffic which carried loads of political responsibilities in addition to the cargoes, the Commander‑in‑Chief regularly attached a battle squadron to the covering forces. This allocation of a battle squadron to the defence of trade was a great departure from the principle of rigid concentration which had dominated the organisation and employment of the Grand Fleet since the war began: it was illustrative of the extent to which the war against commerce had engaged our strength and resources.

 

 

3

The Submarine Campaign, December 1917

(See Map 1.)

 

Throughout the last month in the year the German inshore attack, begun in the middle of November, continued with unabated vigour and with considerable success. The total sinkings, which had fallen off in the previous month, showed a marked rise, and during the last week of the month losses along the coastal route were particularly severe. The increasing use of the Dover Straits by the heavy type U‑boats, which was an alarming feature in the month's campaign, has been already described elsewhere. The counter attack upon the German submarines showed a marked decline. Only five U‑boats had been destroyed in Home Waters during the course of the month; another had been lost by accident.

 

(UB.81, deep minefield in the Channel (Dec. 2); UC.69, rammed by U.96 off Cape Barfleur (Dec. 6); UB.75, lost in mine nets off Flamborough Head (Dec. 10); U.75, lost in minefield off Borkum (Dec. 13); UB.56, lost on mine or mine net off the Belgian coast (Dec. 19); U.87, lost in an action with convoy escorts P.56 and Buttercup in the Irish Sea (Dec. 25).)

 

If all the outstanding facts of the year's campaign were

 

Dec. 1917

DECLINING SINKINGS

 

reviewed they supported no positive conclusion and justified no hard and definite forecast. The most important result to the Allies was that the average daily destruction of each operating submarine had fallen steadily since the summer months. On this point the tables kept by the French Staff were instructive:

 

1917	Number of operating S/Ms	Total number of days spent on active operations	Tonnage destroyed in Atlantic	Tonnage destroyed in Channel	Yield
					Ships per day	Tons per day
January	23	310	241,000	6,500	0.50	775
February	35	410	353,000	29,000	0.45	860
March	40	455	405,000	58,000	0.55	889
April	50	660	550,000	46,000	0.37	870
May	41	535	385,000	23,500	0.40	717
June	50	745	498,500	88,000	0.25	669
July	47	720	423,000	44,500	0.21	588
August	38	630	349,000	26,000	0.19	485
September	53	850	233,000	65,500	0.14	274
October	41	620	289,000	62,500	0.15	466
November.	39	515	165,000	67,000	0.16	320
December	50	760	216,000	67,000	0.13	284

 

This steady decline in the daily yield of each submarine was proof that the efficacy of our counter measures, taken as a whole, had risen. The concentrated attack against the inshore routes and the terminal points had not, however, increased the dangers to which the operating submarines were exposed in any marked degree. They were now acting in zones which were patrolled by flotillas fitted with the detecting apparatus from which so much had been hoped at the beginning of the year. Although these hunting flotillas were establishing contact with submarines in the Channel and the Irish Sea almost every day, they were quite unable to maintain contact for any length of time, or to keep on the track of a single submarine for long enough to hamper its operations seriously. The failure of the hydrophone flotillas was particularly noticeable in the Irish Sea, a zone in which enemy submarines had been operating for the last three months of the yeax. The Admiral at Milford, Vice‑Admiral C. H. Dare, had realised the weakness of the system that he was administering as soon as the Germans began to operate seriously in the Irish Sea. In the middle of October he sent in a reasoned report on the position. "It is fatal," he wrote, "to send out ships on the assumption that local patrols can protect them. The situation resolves itself, in my opinion, as follows: Is it advisable to allow ships to pass through Home Waters unescorted? The only solution which suggests itself to me is:

 

(a) to escort convoys to their port of destination;

 

(b) for coastal vessels to be formed into convoys and escorted along the coast by drifters, or other small auxiliary patrol vessels.

 

If sufficient escorting vessels cannot be found to carry out this duty, it is suggested that vessels, if the requirements of the country permit, should be retained in port until escorts are available. In short, this would mean that all vessels should be escorted, and would entail the withdrawal of all local patrols, in order to supply the necessary escorts. This method would have at least one great advantage, in that a submarine would be compelled to attack within reach of a vessel capable of active retaliation. With the present system of patrols this is not the case: the enemy can, with the greatest ease, evade them, and only attack a merchant ship when they are absent. The hydrophone flotillas might still be retained at work on their present patrols, but I am of opinion that, with the present instruments, and the incessant bad weather .... these vessels are a waste of useful ships."

 

Events showed that Admiral Dare's appreciation was sound and accurate. The Irish Sea, with its narrow entrances, should have been an exceptionally suitable theatre for the operations of the hydrophone flotillas; for U‑boats entering by the southern entrance ought to have been detected and followed by the line of hydrophone drifters, which Admiral Dare maintained between the Welsh shore and the south‑west coast of Ireland. At least five and possibly more U‑boats passed the line during November, and were never once detected by the hydrophone flotillas. Throughout the month Admiral Dare was compelled to send as many ships as he could assemble to the place where the German submarine was last reported. On December 1 he instituted the first local convoy in his command, and put three ships under escort between Barry Roads and Milford. Being convinced that this was the only method of giving better protection to merchant traffic in the Irish Sea, he decided to take vessels away from their patrolling duties, and to use them for local escorts. He was well justified by results; during December his local forces escorted twelve convoys ‑ seventy‑four ships in all ‑ between Milford, Holyhead, Kingstown, and the south

 

Dec. 1917

LOCAL CONVOYS

 

of Ireland. Not one of the escorted ships was lost or damaged.

 

 

Diagram Showing Organisation of Local Patrols Falmouth And Devonport

 

Admiral Dare's local convoys were, however, a particular measure in a particular zone. Their success was an incident in the greater and more comprehensive successes of the convoy system. The actual state of submarine warfare at the end of 1917 ‑ that is, the counterpoise of the attack and the defence ‑ can best be understood by examining a few typical incidents in the Channel, the zone where the attack against trade was being prosecuted with the greatest vigour.

 

The coastal route between Hartland Point and Lyme Bay was divided into nine sections called A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H and J. Of these A and B were allotted to the Penzance command, D, E and F to the Rear‑Admiral at Falmouth, and the remainder to the Commander‑in‑Chief at Plymouth. The whole coast was watched by a string of war signal stations, connected by land wires to the general telegraphic system of the country; the stations at the Scillies, Land's End, Falmouth, Plymouth and Portland Bill were fitted with wireless.

 

Although considerable forces of Auxiliary Patrol vessels were allocated to the French coal‑trade convoys, there was still a sufficient residue for escorting traffic along the coastal routes, and patrolling its various sections. It was only in quite exceptional circumstances that the patrolling forces in any given section numbered less than two vessels. A flotilla of hydrophone vessels ‑ motor launches or trawlers ‑ had been allotted to each local command. These were the "hunting flotillas" which held so important a position in the plan that the Admiralty had drawn up at the beginning of the year. (The hydrophone flotillas were actualy stationed at Newlyn, Falmouth and Devonport.)

 

On December 18 no submarine had been reported between Land's End and Lyme Bay for three days, and traffic was moving normally. The weather was stormy, and though the patrol vessels were on their stations, the hydrophone flotillas were sheltering in harbour. At 11.0 a.m. the out‑bound convoy of seventeen sailed from Falmouth, and the trawlers in sections "F" and "G" were temporarily moved from their patrol stations to form a screen off the Eddystone. The convoy sailed out of the Channel without incident; but at half‑past one in the afternoon the s.s. Riversdale was torpedoed off Prawle Point. The trawlers detached from the section which lay opposite to Prawle Point had not then returned to their station, and the Devonport hydrophone flotilla was sheltering in Tor Bay. There was, thus, no hope that the submarine could be chased; so the Commander-in‑Chief at Devonport ordered all traffic between Plymouth and Portland to be held up. An hour later he received a report that the s.s. Vinovia had been torpedoed eight miles south of the Wolf Rock. This position was well outside section "C" of the Falmouth command, so that, again, there was no chance of starting a chase. All that could be done was to send assistance to the survivors.

 

These two casualties, occurring as they did within a period of two hours, showed that two submarines were at work within the Falmouth and Devonport commands. As there had been no sinkings for three days previously, it was reasonable to suppose that these submarines had only just arrived, and would remain in the zone for several days to come. There was thus a chance that the hunting flotillas would detect them and run them down.

 

During the night the Rame Head wireless station reported red lights to the southward of the Eddystone Lighthouse; and the Commander‑in‑Chief at Devonport ordered the trawlers on section "F" to investigate. Two trawlers - the Mewslade and the Coulard Hill ‑ went to the spot, and one of them set a hydrophone watch. Neither saw nor heard anything, so that at daybreak on the 19th the hunting flotillas could only guess where the operating submarines were from the positions of casualties that had occurred some fifteen hours before.

 

Early in the morning of the 19th the Falmouth hunting flotilla moved to Cadgwith Bay near the Lizard, and the Newlyn hydrophone motor launches took station off Land's End. The Devonport Flotilla was still held weather‑bound in Tor Bay ‑ they could not put to sea, as the wind was strong in the north‑east and east. During the forenoon the commanding officers at Falmouth and Devonport received a message, which explained the report about the red lights that had been seen to the south of the Eddystone by the Rame Head wireless station. Airship C.23, patrolling on the coastal route, reported that a steamer was lying abandoned to the south of the Eddystone, and that there was a submarine near by. It was the French steamer St. AndrŽ, on a voyage from Havre to Oran; she had been torpedoed some time after midnight, and the crew had abandoned her. It was impossible to order a special search for the submarine that had done the work; but she was evidently operating near sections "F", "G" and "H" of the coastal route, and these sections were being patrolled by six trawlers.

 

Dec. 1917

COASTAL PATROLS

 

There was thus a reasonable chance that she would be located shortly.

 

One of the operating submarines was located during the morning. The sailing vessel Mitchell, sailing with a disguised armament under Lieutenant John Lawrie, R.N.R., was then cruising off the north Devon coast. The breeze was off the land, and Lieutenant Lawrie's ship was running free to the south‑westward. At ten minutes past ten, when the ship was about six miles to the west‑north‑west of Trevose Head, a submarine came to the surface at about 800 yards on the starboard beam. Lieutenant Lawrie opened fire a few minutes later, and there was a sharp exchange of shots; it seemed as though some of the Mitchell's shells hit the submarine, but she was evidently not much damaged, for she dived soon after and was not seen again. The trawler Sardius, which was patrolling section "A" of the coastal route and was about a mile away, closed the Mitchell at full speed, but by the time she arrived the submarine had disappeared and there was nothing more to be done.

 

At five and twenty minutes past ten, the war signal station at Trevose Head reported an action between a sailing vessel and a submarine six miles west‑north‑westward of the point. The message was sent to Penzance, Falmouth, Swansea, Newlyn, Land's End and Whitehall; but it was not until considerably later that the motor launches off Land's End were ordered to change their station.

 

There were more submarines in the western channel than the authorities imagined. At four o'clock in the afternoon the Belgian steamer Prince Charles de Belgique was attacked by a submerged submarine, eight miles west of the Lizard, whilst on her way from Cardiff to Havre. The torpedo missed her by a few feet; and a seaplane from the Newlyn air station, which was patrolling at an altitude of five hundred feet, sighted the submarine and dropped bombs on her. (This could not have been the submarine that had been located earlier in the day, and it was certainly not the submarine which was located further out by the Take Care.) The incident was not at once reported either to the Rear‑Admiral at Falmouth, or to the Falmouth hunting flotilla, which were then watching off Black Head, to the north‑east of the Lizard; and whilst this new submarine was attacking the Belgian steamer, the submarine which had sunk the St. AndrŽ during the night was located off the south coast of Devon.

 

At four o'clock in the afternoon the trawler Take Care, which was acting as an armed guard for the Brixham fishing fleet, sighted a submarine off Berry Head. The skipper engaged her and she made off; but the incident was not reported either to headquarters at Devonport or to the commander of the hunting flotilla in Tor Bay.

 

Later in the afternoon the hydrophone flotilla off Land's End received orders to track the submarine that had been reported earlier in the day off Trevose Head, in action with the Mitchell. They were ordered to go to Padstow and search, and at a quarter‑past five, as they drew near to Trevose Head, they received further news. A steamer had been sunk off the headland, and the trawler Lysander, patrolling in section "A," had the survivors on board. The casualty was the Norwegian steamer Ingrid II, on her way to Cardiff for repairs. She was torpedoed and sunk within a very short distance of the Lysander, which was then patrolling in section "A."

 

The hydrophone flotilla took station to the west of Trevose Head, and at once picked up sounds of a submarine in the north‑east. They followed the sound until it was "lost on account of traffic," and then went into St. Ives, at about ten o'clock at night. Two hours previously the Commander-in‑Chief at Devonport ordered all traffic to be resumed. He was still unaware that the trawler with the Brixham fleet had located a submarine off Prawle Point a few hours previously. The orders sent out in consequence of the unsuccessful attack on the Prince Charles de Belgique only reached the Falmouth flotilla near Black Head at 9.20 p.m., five and a half hours after the attack had been delivered. The commander of the flotilla left one of his trawlers behind, and set a hydrophone patrol with the remainder about six miles to the south of Mounts Bay. They kept watch all night, and heard nothing; but the night did not pass so quietly in other sections of the patrol.

 

Three Devonport trawlers were watching section "H" of the coastal route, and just before midnight the skipper of the Rinaldo ‑ which was one of them ‑ heard and saw an explosion towards Start Point. He steamed towards the spot; but found nothing, for the time being. What he had actually seen was the sinking of the Alice Marie ‑ the submarine located by Take Care at four o'clock was again at work, and the traffic released by the Commander‑in‑Chief's order was steaming across Lyme Bay towards her. Two more disasters occurred before daybreak. At twenty minutes past one the skippers of the trawlers Rinaldo and Ulysses saw another explosion to the north‑eastward. It was the steamship Warsaw; but for several hours nothing could be found

 

Dec. 1917

CHANGING METHODS

 

of her or of her crew, except a ship's boat drifting about in the bay with two dead men lying beneath the thwarts. Even now the night's disasters were not over; for at four o'clock the steamer Eveline was torpedoed near the Start. The war signal station at Dartmouth reported the first and the last of these casualties very rapidly, and at a quarter‑past five the Commander‑in‑Chief at Devonport held up all traffic between Portland and Plymouth.

 

The day passed quietly, there were no more casualties and no more reports. In the morning the Penzance motor launches took station north‑east of St. Ives; later they moved to the south and eastward of the Wolf Rock, and later again they moved in to the Runnelstone; they heard nothing throughout the day. Towards evening the Devonport hunting flotilla left harbour to search the coastal route across Lyme Bay. Commander Adrian Keyes, who was in charge of the hunting flotillas, collected three destroyers ‑ Spitfire, Roebuck and Opossum ‑ five motor launches, four drifters, and two fishing trawlers for the operation. He hoped that if his ships were well spread, one or more of them would pick up sounds of the submarine charging its engines, and that, after it had been thus located, the flotilla would be able to bring it to action as it approached the traffic route on the following morning. They heard nothing, naturally, for the submarine they were hunting had now shifted its ground to the eastern part of the Channel.

 

There is no need to continue the narrative in detail: there were no more sinkings in the zone until the 22nd, when the steamer Mabel Baird was sunk off the Lizard, by a submarine which was not detected, either previously or subsequently, by the hunting flotillas; after this there was a lull of three days, and then the succession of fruitless hunts began again.

 

If these operations, which are typical of those which were being carried on at almost every part of the coast, and on every day of the year, be compared with those described in Volume IV, it will be seen that the methods of submarine hunting had been considerably changed during the interval. In September 1916, the date of our last example, submarines were hunted by destroyers detached for the purpose from the principal destroyer bases; and their operations were directed largely by the Admiralty, who moved them from one area to another, and decided on the zones that were to be searched. At the end of 1917 all submarine hunting was done locally; the Commander‑in‑Chief or the Senior Naval Officer of the area was practically acting independently of Whitehall, and the hunting flotillas received their orders and their intelligence of the enemy's movements from the local commanders. It can be seen at a glance that this decentralisation of control was in itself good. It had much reduced the interval which elapsed between the time at which a submarine was reported and the time at which the hunting flotillas were on the spot where it had last been located.

 

Whereas under the old system forty‑eight hours or even more went by before the forces detached for submarine hunting could reach their zone of operations, the corresponding interval under the new system was between six and eight hours. It is obvious, however, that although the interval had been reduced, it was still too long; submarines were still operating, without danger to themselves, within a few miles of our hunting flotillas, and the acoustic apparatus, upon which so much material and so much labour had been expended, was not making the problem of hunting for submarines any simpler. Such advance as had been made was an advance in methods and organisation.

 

It was, however, consoling that whilst every other measure of war undertaken during the year had given results which were doubtful and liable to setbacks, the achievements of the convoy system seemed to be both secure and cumulative. The system had now been in operation for five whole months, and the necessary readjustments in its mechanism had been made without difficulty. Milford was shortly to be substituted for Queenstown as the port of assembly for outgoing convoys, and arrangements had been made for bringing home the Argentine grain harvest in a service of convoys which were to be assembled at Rio. The American Government had allotted heavy cruisers to those Halifax convoys which were carrying American troops and drafts, in order to protect them adequately against surface raiders. The great disadvantage of the system ‑ the loss of carrying power due to delays in harbour ‑ had been practically overcome. Captain Henderson had been in close consultation with the Liverpool shipping owners during November; and, as a result, a strong and representative convoy committee had been set up under the chairmanship of Mr. T. Harrison Hughes. This committee drew up a plan for obtaining the greatest possible economic and commercial return from the convoy system, and its recommendations were agreed to by the Admiralty. As a defence of ocean traffic, the system still seemed unassailable. The German submarine cruisers were still operating in the Azores‑Madeira zone, where shipping losses continued. But the enemy's occupation of this

 

Dec. 1917

NEW BOARD OF ADMIRALTY

 

important nodal point in the Atlantic trade routes had only once endangered the convoys that were continually passing through it. During the month of December six convoys from Dakar and Sierra Leone had passed safely through the area in which Gansser and Valentiner were operating. They had apparently not been located; they had certainly not been attacked. In all those areas through which convoys passed the decline in sinkings was even sharper than it had been during the previous month.

 

It was, indeed, the very effectiveness of the convoy system which had compelled the German submarine commanders to operate closer in, to seek for convoys where the chances of establishing contact were greater, and where ships dispersing from convoy, or on their way to a port of assembly, were exposed to attack. Here the enemy had been successful: the number of ships sunk at a distance of ten miles or less from the land had risen steadily during the last quarter of the year.

 

This new and dangerous attack could not be combated either by extending the scope or by perfecting the workings of the convoy system. It raised questions of high naval policy which were urgently calling for a solution when the year drew to its close: What was the best method of impeding the passage of enemy submarines through the Straits of Dover; whether destroyers should or should not be detached from the fleet in large numbers to conduct operations against submarines in the North Sea; how the northern barrage should be laid and how patrolled. Each of these questions had provoked divergencies of opinion ‑ the first in particular had sharply divided the High Command.

 

At this moment, too, a decision was called for upon a matter of the first importance, which had for some time been under anxious consideration. Admiral Jellicoe, as Commander‑in‑Chief of the Grand Fleet, and afterwards as First Sea Lord, had borne for nearly three and a half years the burden of the naval war. It was a burden in itself great beyond all experience, and since the contest and the hazard were on a Titanic scale, the anxieties of these high offices were even more exhausting than the incessant labour. Great as were Sir John Jellicoe's powers, and admirable as were his devotion and endurance, there was among those who met him frequently at the council table no doubt that the strain was bearing hard upon him, and could not be further prolonged with justice to him or advantage to the Service. During the last days of the year, therefore, he was released from office, and was succeeded as First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff by Admiral Wemyss. The Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Oliver, left the Admiralty at the same time, and was relieved by Admiral Fremantle: at Dover Admiral Bacon was replaced by Admiral Keyes. The Board as re‑constituted was:

 

(First Lord. ‑ The Right Hon. Sir Erie Geddes. First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff ‑ Admiral Sir Rosslyn E. Wemyss. Second Sea Lord‑Vice ‑ Admiral Sir Herbert L. Heath. Third Sea Lord. ‑ Rear‑Admiral Lionel Halsey. Fourth Sea Lord ‑ Rear‑Admiral Hugh H. D. Tothill. Deputy Chief of Naval Staff ‑ Rear‑Admiral Sydney R. Fremantle. Assistant Chief of Naval Staff ‑ Vice‑Admiral Sir Alexander L. Dull. Deputy First Sea Lord. ‑ Rear‑Admiral George P. W. Hope.)

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

CHAPTER VI

 

THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR 1918 IN HOME WATERS

(See Map 14.)

 

ON the second day of the new year the Commander‑in-Chief arrived in London to attend a naval conference in Whitehall. After discussing the impending attack against the Flanders bases ‑ for which preparations had already begun and for an intensive air attack against the enemy's naval bases, the conference passed on to the principal item upon its agenda: the general situation in the North Sea. The discussion that followed showed the extraordinary changes which a year of unrestricted submarine warfare had caused in our higher strategy. The submarine campaign had certainly been held; the curve of shipping losses was still falling and there was a reasonable hope that, at some time in the spring, replacements would exceed losses. When this occurred, the submarine onslaught against the Allied communications would be finally and absolutely defeated; the great attack upon our seaborne supplies would cease, from then onwards, to be a major strategical operation and would revert to the position which centuries of naval history have assigned to sporadic attacks upon trade. This position was almost in sight; but the success of the British campaign at sea had been gained at great cost, and that cost had been the dispersion of our principal naval forces. (See Appendix A.) It was true that the battle fleet was still based at Scapa and Rosyth (Reinforced on Dec. 7, 1917, by a United States Squadron (6th B. Sq.), Rear‑Admiral H. Rodman, Flag, Wyoming.), and the auxiliary destroyer forces at Harwich, and that the numerical strength of our North Sea forces was very great. This numerical strength was, however, deceptive.

 

In the North Sea the campaign against the German U‑boats now consisted in mining expeditions, in special operations carried out largely by destroyers and light forces, and in escorting vessels engaged in the Dutch and Scandinavian trades. These duties had ceased to be spasmodic and had become continuous, and they were practically all performed by the first line striking forces of Great Britain; for the minelaying expeditions were often covered and protected by detachments of the battle fleet, which in their turn were protected against submarine attack by large detachments of destroyers. Special operations, on the model of those conducted in October 1917, might and indeed generally did require about fifty destroyers and auxiliaries for their execution. The escort of the Dutch and Scandinavian trades absorbed detachments of first‑class ships from the battle fleet, and about thirty destroyer units. Just as we had found, in the early stages of the campaign, that a submarine, operating in a given area, would immobilise great numbers of watching and hunting forces, so, in its later phases, when the whole submarine fleet of the Central Powers was striving to obtain a decision at sea, we found ourselves obliged to take countermeasures, which, in their total consequences, were equivalent to a strategical division of the fleet.

 

As a result the Commander‑in‑Chief informed the conference that it was, in his opinion, no longer desirable to provoke a fleet action, even if the opportunity should occur. Such large contingents of our naval forces were now absorbed in the regular duties of the anti‑submarine campaign, that he could no longer be certain of meeting the German fleet even on terms of equality. At the request of the Admiralty, the Commanderin‑Chief expressed these views in a long and forceful letter which was subsequently laid before the War Cabinet. "So long as he [the enemy] remains in his harbours," wrote Admiral Beatty, "he is in a position to operate on interior lines, and with such forces as he may choose against our vitally important mercantile traffic with the Scandinavian countries. His interior position, and the presence of his agents in neutral ports from which convoys sail, facilitate the execution of surprise attacks with forces stronger than our covering forces. To take an extreme case, it is obviously impossible to have the whole Grand Fleet covering the convoy, whereas it is possible for the whole High Seas Fleet to effect a surprise attack with reasonable prospect of escape to their bases ... The forces detached to cover the convoys must be treated as permanent deductions from the striking strength of the Grand Fleet, as they could not be part of a sudden concentration. This dissipation of force might not, in itself, reduce the Grand Fleet's numerical superiority below the figure considered necessary for safety, but it had to be considered in conjunction with other sources of weakness. In the Commander‑in‑Chief's opinion, the German battle cruiser fleet was now definitely more formidable than ours. We believed it to be composed of six units ‑ the Mackensen (The war came to an end before the Mackensen was completed.), Seydlitz, Moltke, Derfflinger,

 

Jan. 1918

STRATEGICAL PROBLEMS

 

Hindenburg and Von der Tann; and of our nine battle cruisers, only three ‑ the Lion, Princess Royal and Tiger ‑ would be fit to fight in the battle cruiser line. The "Renowns" were insufficiently armoured, the "New Zealands" and the "Inflexibles" were deficient in speed, protection and armament. In addition to this, the absorption of our destroyer forces in the submarine campaign made it virtually certain that the German flotillas would be more numerous than ours in a fleet action. Finally, the new type of shell, decided upon after Jutland, had not yet been supplied to the fleet. Until the summer, the bulk of our battle squadrons would go into action with projectiles that were admittedly of poor design. Was it wise, in these circumstances, to adhere rigidly to the old policy of forcing a fleet action whenever an opportunity occurred? The Commander-in‑Chief considered that it was not. "The foregoing review," he concluded, "represents the situation as I see it. If correct, as I believe it to be, and accepting the principle that trade must be protected, the deduction to be drawn is that the correct strategy of the Grand Fleet is no longer to endeavour to bring the enemy to action at any cost, but rather to contain him in his bases until the general situation becomes more favourable to us."

 

The Admirafty endorsed the Commander‑in‑Chief's letter by a unanimous expression of approval, and, as a corollary to this decision, determined to continue minelaying in the Bight with all the means at their disposal. The enormous quadrant of mines laid across the Heligoland Bight had not, in January 1918, produced any appreciable effect upon the operations of the German U‑boats. It had compelled the Germans to create a vast auxiliary service of sweepers and auxiliaries, and it had, indirectly, been the cause of an action between German and British cruiser forces in the late autumn of the previous year; but it had caused the enemy no serious losses, and had, as yet, not closed the Bight to outgoing or incoming submarines. In this sense our minelaying operations had been disappointing, and a strong case could have been made out for abandoning the whole policy, and using the ships released for laying the barrage which the British and American navies were to place across the northern exit to the North Sea.

 

But our minelaying in the Bight, if continued, might be a powerful auxiliary to the general policy to which we were now committed. The mine barrage, constantly renewed and supplemented at the outer ends of the German swept channels, created a formidable obstacle to the free movement of the High Seas Fleet. No sortie from the German rivers could be undertaken without long preparation; and it was hoped that these special preparations would be reported, and that we should in consequence have time to assemble the forces necessary for countering the movement.

 

It seemed, moreover, that the chances of carrying out this policy without interruption were extremely good. Early in the month we knew of a move of German squadrons into the Baltic; and rumours of further disciplinary trouble in the German battle squadrons came through to Whitehall at about the same time. If the rumours were true, the move to the Baltic had probably been undertaken in order to give the commanding officers a chance of restoring order. The German squadrons might therefore be kept in the Baltic for several weeks to come.

 

The waiting policy to which the main fleets of both sides were now committed had no effect upon the activities of the forces in southern waters, where the game of attack and riposte went on without interruption. At the beginning of the year the naval authorities in the southern area brought forward proposals for giving better protection to the Dutch traffic in order to disguise the convoy routes more effectively, all vessels were henceforward to be assembled in the Black Deep, and the routes to be followed were only to be communicated after the trip had begun. At the same time Admiral Tyrwhitt made arrangements for the vessels in the Dutch convoy to be preceded by minesweepers on that part of the voyage which was outside the areas covered by the local sweepers and patrol craft.

 

No sooner were these new arrangements working than a force of German destroyers made a flying raid against Yarmouth on January 14. They began shelling the town at about a quarter‑past eleven. It was only an hour and a half later that Admiral Tyrwhitt put to sea to intercept them, and by then the German destroyers had retired. The intercepting forces saw nothing of the enemy and returned to harbour at noon on the 15th. In the southern half of the Flanders Bight there was the same restless activity: the Erebus bombarded Ostend on January 19; four days later the outpost forces on the Belgian coast came into collision with the Zeebrugge Flotilla. The force supporting the drifters consisted of the monitors Erebus, M.26 and destroyers; this force was at the time carrying out tactical exercises near the Thornton Ridge. To the south‑eastward of them, Lieutenant D. L. Webster, R.N.R., was examining the nets from the drifter flagship Clover Bank. Just before eleven o'clock he sighted a number of enemy destroyers which opened fire on him and nearly cut him off. He retired on the

 

Jan.‑Feb. 1918

THE DOVER STRAITS

 

supporting division, which eventually extricated him. This succession of minor engagements culminated, a few weeks later, in an action of more importance.

 

 

1

The Defence of the Straits of Dover. January and February 1918

(See Map 15.)

 

When Admiral Keyes took command at Dover, the Channel minefield ran right across the Dover Straits and the Pas de Calais, and his first concern was to concentrate the patrols upon it. A 12‑inch or 15‑inch monitor, four thirty-knot destroyers, torpedo boats or "P" boats, fourteen trawlers, sixty drifters, four motor launches and two paddle minesweepers were allocated to the patrol. As the German U‑boats generally passed the Straits of Dover after dark, the forces concentrated on the minefield by night were very numerous. The drifters were distributed over the minefield in divisions, a cordon of trawlers was placed round it, and the monitor was kept permanently near the north‑eastern end of the Varne Shoal to support this mass of small craft if they were attacked. The trawlers, which all carried flares, were responsible for the illumination of the minefield; "special areas" in which a submarine was reported were to be swept by the destroyers' searchlights. By day the organisation was more simple, and the watching forces were reduced to the number necessary for keeping the minefield under observation.

 

It was not until the end of the month that these measures met with any success. All through January German submarines operated actively in the Channel and the Irish Sea; four U‑boats of the larger size passed through the Dover Straits on their way out and in, and four other large U‑boats - which had gone to the Irish Sea by the long north‑about route - returned to Germany through the Straits. In addition to these boats of the larger type, fifteen UB‑ and UC‑boats passed through the Dover Straits on their outward and inward journeys. The, patrols only located a submarine on three occasions, so that the Germans made between thirty‑five and forty unmolested passages through the minefields during the course of the month.

 

Although this was in a certain degree disappointing, the actual results were better than any obtained under the old system. Four German submarines were lost in the Dover Straits between January 26 and February 8, which, added to the submarine destroyed on December 19, made a total of five since the new patrol system had been instituted. During the previous two years only two enemy U‑boats had been accounted for in the Dover area. The contrast was therefore striking; and it certainly impressed the enemy, for during the second week in February the Intelligence Division noticed that the U‑boats on the long north‑about route were again increasing in numbers. The German submarine commanders had, in fact, reported that the Dover Straits were becoming exceedingly difficult to pass, and a special flotilla (The second, under the command of Captain Heinecke. See Scheer, pp. 314‑18.) of large destroyers, stationed in Germany, was under orders to attack the barrage forces.

 

The German flotillas had not raided the Dover Straits since April 1917, and Admiral Keyes felt certain that his command would not enjoy this immunity from attack much longer. He was not mistaken, and towards the end of January, when the nights were still long and dark, the enemy began to show signs of activity. On January 23, when the drifter Clover Bank was attacked by a detachment of destroyers near the Thornton Bank, Admiral Keyes took the incident to mean that something more was impending; but as a matter of fact the enemy were not then ready, and three weeks went by before they delivered the expected attack.

 

Admiral Keyes had not altered the destroyer dispositions of his predecessor in any important particular. He still maintained a force at Dunkirk to protect the roadstead, and to cover the left flank of the Allied armies, and another force in the Downs anchorage to protect shipping. Every available destroyer at Dover was employed at night; the resting division was sent to the Downs, where the vessels remained at anchor, under short notice, ready to protect shipping or to reinforce the other division in the Straits.

 

This second division, which was composed of the available flotilla leaders and 4‑inch gun destroyers was distributed over what were known as the East and West Barrage Patrols. Each detachment was under orders to patrol to the south of the old net barrage, which was not then being maintained, on two lines, drawn roughly parallel to the axis of the Straits. The western line ran north‑east from a point four miles south of the South Goodwin light vessel; the eastern from No. 9 buoy; each line was about five miles long.

 

The trawlers and drifters were concentrated upon the deep minefields between Folkestone and Cape Gris Nez. On the night of February 14 the light cruiser Attentive, and the destroyers Murray, Nugent and Crusader were in the Downs; the

 

Feb. 1918

THE BARRAGE PATROL

 

Swift and Marksman were on the West Barrage Patrol, the Termagant, Melpomene, Zubian and Amazon on the East Barrage Patrol. The deep minefield to the southward was patrolled by nine divisions of drifters ‑ fifty‑eight boats in all. This drifter patrol was maintained on a line joining the southeastern lightship of the Folkestone Gate to a buoy some three miles north‑westward of Cape Gris Nez. To each drifter division was allotted a particular section of the line. Six trawlers were stationed to the north‑eastward of the drifter line, and four more on the other side (S.W.) of it. Another group was stationed off Gris Nez. The duty of these trawlers was to burn flares at irregular intervals. Two paddle minesweepers, Lingfield and Newbury, were patrolling between the south‑eastern gate and the Varne lightship; and four motor launches kept watch between the gate and the shore. This mass of auxiliaries was supported by monitor M.26, (It was usual to have a 12‑inch or a 15‑inch monitor commanded by a post‑captain on this station. Unfortunately none was available on this night.) stationed near the north‑east Varne buoy, by the destroyer Racehorse, stationed between the Varne lightship and the Colbart, and by "P" boat No. 50, stationed between lightbuoys Nos. 30 and 31. The French also maintained two torpedo boats in the area between light‑buoy No. 31 and Cape Gris Nez.

 

The area between Folkestone and the Gate was swept all night by the Folkestone searchlight; and the destroyers and "P" boats supporting the patrol were under orders, if a submarine should be reported by the drifters, to switch on searchlights and sweep slowly from north‑west to south‑east. These dispositions had one principal object in view: to make the passage of the Dover Straits as difficult as possible to submarines. But Admiral Keyes had also foreseen that the destroyers on the East and West Barrage Patrols might be unable to stop a surface raid against the drifters and trawlers on the minefield, and had ordered that if enemy surface craft were reported, one‑half of the drifter patrol was to scatter and make for the British coast, and the other half was to make towards the French shore. The presence of the enemy was to be signalled by a green Very light, which was to be fired by whoever sighted them.

 

It was hazy and extremely dark on the night of February 14, and the vessels on patrol could not see far; at some time between 11.30 and midnight, however, Lieutenant W. Denson, R.N.R., the skipper of the drifter Shipmates, sighted a submarine about two miles west‑south‑west from No. 12 buoy. She was going eastwards towards the minefield; Skipper Denson went after her and sent up red and white Very lights ‑

the signal for a submarine ‑ but in a few minutes the submarine disappeared in the darkness. The minesweeper Lingfield and two motor launches at the north‑western end of the minefield detected Skipper Denson's signal. The Shipmates then went back to her station, and the vessels that had seen her signal returned to theirs.

 

At about half‑past twelve the sweeper Newbury reached the Gate lightship and turned to east‑south‑east towards the Varne buoy. No signal or warning for special vigilance had been received, and the commanding officer was in his cabin. A few minutes after the ship had been turned, two destroyers steamed up out of the darkness, on a course parallel to hers, and riddled her with shells. Every part of the ship suffered equally: the steam‑pipes were severed and sent out sheets of steam, the wood‑work caught fire and blazed furiously; the men on deck were shot down. The destroyers passed on rapidly. Lieutenant A. D. Thomson, R.N.R., allowed his battered ship to drift to the north‑eastward until she was out of the minefield and then dropped anchor. He was unable to signal: the Newbury had only just returned from a refit in the London docks, and her stores had not yet been catalogued and arranged. There may have been green Very lights on board, but Lieutenant Thomson did not know where they were; and in any case he could not have entered the storerooms of his shattered and burning ship. (He stated at the Court of Inquiry that he lit flares of "anything he could find": this must have been much later.)

 

Unfortunately, it happened that although nearly every vessel in the Straits heard the German destroyers firing on the Newbury, about half of them were mistaken about the direction from which the sound came. Commander M. R. Bernard, the senior officer of the Termagant's division, heard distant firing and thought that it came from the Flanders battle front; the skipper of the drifter Chrysanthemum II heard firing, from the north‑east, he thought, whereas it must obviously have come from the north‑west. Neither of these officers suspected that enemy destroyers were in the Straits. The war signal station at Dover reported firing to the west-south‑west, and a minute later received a confirmatory message from Folkestone; but both stations had already received the Shipmates' report of the submarine near No. 12 buoy, so that neither they, nor the Vice‑Admiral at Dover, to whom the firing was reported, had reason to suppose that the firing was occasioned by anything but a submarine attack.

 

There was, however, one officer, near the Newbury, who

 

Feb. 1917

THE PATROL ATTACKED

 

grasped that the firing which he heard and saw came from enemy destroyers. Skipper Denson of the Shipmates saw the gun flashes and realised at once that a destroyer attack had begun; but before he could report that the enemy were in the Straits, he was himself in the beams of the German searchlights and his entire division was being swept by a heavy fire. He threw his confidential books overboard and steamed away in accordance with his orders: by about one o'clock he had shaken off the Germans; but he was induced by an unfortunate chain of circumstances to keep his knowledge of this attack to himself. It was not disobedience to orders, but blind fidelity to them, which hampered his judgment at the critical moment. As he cleared the German destroyers, he saw two or three rocket lights go up in the south‑east. He knew that this was the signal for enemy surface craft, and he had good enough reason to know that the enemy were not far off; but he could find no mention of any order to repeat the signal if it had already been made. He therefore sent up no rockets and determined to collect his division. He could indeed have reported the incident by wireless; but he had thrown his confidential books away, so that he could not send his message in code or cipher, and he knew that there was an order against sending messages en clair. Not even in this desperate emergency would he disregard it; he therefore returned stoutly to his patrol station and reported nothing.

 

A number of vessels heard the outburst of fire that accompanied this second attack; but here again the commanding officers failed to realise what was happening. The skipper of the minesweeper Lingfield closed No. 12 buoy, and, as he approached it, actually saw two ships with their searchlights burning and their guns firing. He concluded that the monitor near the Varne and a destroyer were engaging a submarine, and steamed on until the shells began to whistle over his own bridge; then he turned back. (It is doubtful whether what he saw was the attack on the Newbury or the attack on the Cosmos division: it seems probable that it was the latter, as he turned north from the Varne lightship at 12.45, just after the attack on the Newbury had begun, and only sighted destroyers some moments later.) Lieutenant D. V. S. Watson, R.N.R., of the drifter Begonia II, between buoys Nos. 13 and 14, heard firing to the north‑west and north‑east, but formed no opinion as to the cause of it; the commanding officer of the destroyer Racehorse, patrolling between the Varne and the north‑east Colbart, also heard firing and explosions to the north‑eastward: he supposed that Dover was being raided by aircraft. But the most remarkable misapprehension of all was that of the commanding officer of motor launch No. 12.

 

He was patrolling near the south‑east gate lightship and heard the firing, which had gone on ever since the Newbury had been attacked; moreover, he saw that a ship to the south‑westward of him was blazing. Just before, or just after, the attack on the Shipmates, he sighted two destroyers approaching from the north‑east; they opened fire on him, and smothered him with shell; but he escaped into the darkness, firmly convinced that he had been attacked by British destroyers of the Dover command, whose officers had mistaken his motor launch for a submarine. (As he made off the commanding officer spoke the captain of the flare, trawler Goeland II. The trawler skipper thought that the destroyers must have been Germans.)

 

Meanwhile the war signal station at Dover was telephoning to the Vice‑Admiral that the firing in the Straits was now continuous. Admiral Keyes made several inquiries of the officer in command at the station, but no green lights had been seen from Dover, and there was so far nothing to suggest that enemy destroyers were in the Straits. It still seemed both to the Admiral and his Staff that the drifters were engaged in a prolonged fight with a submarine.

 

Whilst Skipper Denson was collecting his division, and the captain of motor launch No. 12 was extricating himself from what he believed to be gunfire of his friends and colleagues, the Germans were delivering another attack at the other end of the minefield. They appear to have been operating in two detachments against this section of the patrol. Just before one o'clock two French torpedo-boats, patrolling near the Quenocs, had sighted the trawler James Pond burning a flare: lit up by the light of the flare, and to the left of the trawler were three strange destroyers steering to the south‑westward. In two or three minutes the destroyers had passed out of the zone of light and were lost in the darkness. Some ten minutes later the Germans attacked the James Pond, and the two southern drifter divisions under the Cosmos and the Clover Bank. The James Pond came first under the enemy's fire: as the shells struck her they ignited all her flares and in a few seconds she was blazing. The Clover Bank was overwhelmed and sunk in a few minutes, and the Cosmos and Silver Queen fared no better; the evidence given afterwards by the few men who escaped amounted only to broken, disjointed stories, of the sudden outburst of fire, the hurricane of shells, the havoc in their ships, and the small number of survivors who had got off in the boats and rowed away from the blazing wreckage. Some of the skippers in the escaping drifters did, however, send up green Very lights; and it was those lights

 

Feb. 1918

ADMIRAL KEYES' ANXIETY

 

that the skipper of the Shipmates saw as he steamed away from the first encounter.

 

The green lights fired from the southern end of the patrol had not been seen from the war signal station; but Commander A. A. Mellin, in the monitor M.26, had sighted them, but although he realised that something serious was occurring he sent no report to the Vice‑Admiral. The rockets and the firing seemed to come from a direction about south by west, and he at once steamed towards them to investigate the disturbance. Before his ship had steamed a mile from her station, the Germans had delivered two more blows against the drifter divisions. The Jeannie Murray's division was first attacked, and suffered severely. The Jeannie Murray herself was lost with all hands, the Violet May and the Treasure were riddled and set alight. In the Violet May only four men were left alive after the second salvo; two of them were so badly wounded that they had to be lifted into the boat, yet these two men afterwards returned to their ship, put out the fires, and stood by her till help arrived, nearly six hours later.

 

Almost simultaneously (about 1.20) the Tessie's division was attacked near No. 12 buoy; and the Begonia's division near No. 14. Again there was the same outburst of firing and the same immediate havoc among our ships and crews. Commander Mellin, who was only a few miles from the Begonia's patrol station, failed to realise what was occurring; indeed, such information as he was able to obtain only served to deceive him. After keeping to his southerly course for nearly three‑quarters of an hour he sighted a drifter and ordered her to close. The drifter skipper admitted that he had seen green lights, and had heard gunfire, which appeared to come from the shore. Commander Mellin then heard an outburst of firing to the north and north‑north‑west, and turned back towards his station near the Varne. He had actually heard the Germans firing the last rounds of the raid against the Tessie's division.

 

Meanwhile, the Vice‑Admiral was becoming thoroughly anxious. At ten minutes past one the port war signal station had reported red rockets to the south‑south‑east; this seemed to confirm his belief that a submarine engagement was in progress, as the signal for a submarine was a red and a white Very light. None the less the continuous heavy gunfire, and the strange silence of all the ships on the patrol, were disturbing and ominous; and at 1.28 he had ordered Commander Mellin to report what was occasioning the gunfire. Ten minutes later he ordered the Downs Division to get under way and assemble at the South Sand Head, and instructed the captain in charge of the destroyers at Dover to put to sea in the Moorsom. The Germans had by then struck their last blow and were steaming homewards.

 

The gunfire had ceased, and the only report that came in from the Straits was an acknowledgment from Commander Mellin of the last order sent him. He also stated that he was on his way to investigate; and the Vice‑Admiral then ordered the Downs Division to return to their anchorage, and cancelled his orders to the Captain "D." A few minutes later he took in a message which strongly suggested that his anxiety had been after all unfounded. The skipper of the Goeland II, a flare trawler on the north‑western end of the minefield, was reporting to the captain of the patrol that it was a fine clear night with a light east wind. It could hardly have been guessed from this that the stout‑hearted but not very active-minded man, who sent in this report, had been seeing and hearing gunfire for the last hour and a half, had spoken the motor launch which had been under fire, and was quite convinced that German destroyers were about.

 

It was, indeed, truly remarkable that the real facts should have been so long unreported, for many vessels in the Straits were, by now, aware of what had happened. The Straits were actually lit up and beaconed by blazing trawlers, and several ships were moving to assist them. Notwithstanding all this the Germans, assisted by a final stroke of good fortune, succeeded in passing the forces which lay along their track at the north‑eastern end of the Straits.

 

At 2.25 am the Termagant's division had reached the north‑eastern end of their patrol line, and were on the turn. The Termagant was leading, and was followed by the Melpomene, the Zubian and the Amazon. Lieutenant Adam Ferguson, the commanding officer of the Amazon, was on the bridge of his ship at the time; the gunner was on watch. Lieutenant Ferguson was the first person on deck to sight destroyers on the port quarter of his ship. He at once ordered the signalman to challenge; the signalman did so, three times; no reply was made, and in three minutes the destroyers had disappeared. Lieutenant Ferguson and the officer of the watch had not the slightest doubt that the destroyers were British, and he reported to the Termagant, at the head of the line, that three British destroyers had passed under his stern steering east. Commander Bernard of the Termagant asked Lieutenant Ferguson why he thought the vessels were friendly, but time and darkness were against him ‑ each signal had to be passed along the line of destroyers before it reached its

 

Feb. 1918

THE END OF THE RAID

 

recipient, and it would then have been useless to pursue destroyers on a bare suspicion and in a direction that could only be guessed at.

 

The result was that it was nearly three o'clock before the Vice‑Admiral was sure that the enemy had raided the Straits. Even then the reports were baffling and uncertain. At half-past two he had received a message from Commander Mellin in the M.26, which was now back at the north‑east Varne buoy, that a drifter near buoy No. 30 had sighted a green Very light. This was certainly the signal for a surface raid, but the message continued reassuringly, "all is now quiet." At three o'clock the commanding officer of the destroyer Syren reported that he had seen the drifter Cosmos abandoned and sinking in flames, near buoy No. 10, about three‑quarters of an hour before. It was, by then, far too late to take action; and it was not until dawn came up that the full extent of the damage was realised. Seven drifters and one trawler had been sunk, five other drifters, one trawler and a paddle minesweeper had been severely damaged; eighty‑nine officers and men were killed or missing.

 

When the German destroyers made off in the darkness they had raided the Dover Straits for the last time in the war. Their destroyer attacks upon the Straits are indeed a brilliant episode in German naval operations. Seven times in all the German destroyers burst into the Straits and inflicted loss and damage on our watching forces; on one occasion only had they themselves suffered. But although the enemy's raiding was well conducted it was never more serious than mere raiding. The shortest interval between any two successive attacks was about a month: the longest nearly nine. The German commander in Flanders was never able to shake our hold on the Straits by continuous attacks, with the consequence that the damage done by any one raid had been made good by the time the next raid was started.

 

The last raid, the most destructive, perhaps also the best executed of them all, laid singular emphasis upon the difficulties of interception. Authentic news that the enemy's destroyers were in the Straits had always been transmitted slowly and hesitatingly for two very natural reasons: commanding officers in the Straits could not be certain that enemy destroyers were about merely because they saw gunfire at no very great distance away; those who were the targets of the enemy's attack generally suffered from it so severely and so rapidly that they had no means of reporting what had happened. As a result, misunderstandings, uncertainties and misleading reports had always accompanied this wild night fighting. But although the commander at Dover had more than once been puzzled by confusing messages whilst a raid was taking place, he had never been called upon to deal with so difficult a situation as that which confronted Admiral Keyes on the night of February 14.

 

From his headquarters near the harbour he could hear continuous gunfire from seaward; its severity convinced him that something serious was occurring, yet all the enlightenment he received was a series of messages from commanding officers in the Straits, telling him that the gunfire was as audible to them as it was to him and the cause of it just as mysterious. It was natural, therefore, that the court of officers which Admiral Keyes convened to inquire into the disaster should have been much concerned at the most flagrant failures to discover and report what was occurring. The miscarriages to which the court drew attention were not, however, the only explanation of the enemy's success. As far as can be judged by experience, it was inevitable that the drifters and trawlers in the Straits should suffer loss if the Germans managed to pass the barrage patrols without being sighted. The trawlers burning flares were exceptionally vulnerable; and it is most doubtful whether any system of reporting, or any distribution of forces could have prevented the Germans from entering or leaving the Straits if they determined to do so. Admiral Keyes admitted this at the Court of Inquiry, and said that all he could do in the circumstances was to station his available destroyers on the barrage and hope that they would get news of an attack upon the minefield patrol and intercept the enemy upon their return.

 

Experience showed, however, that although this might be the best that could be attempted, the chances of executing it successfully were not good. On five previous occasions, night actions in the Dover Straits had been little but a few outbursts of rapid fire, at close range, at targets which loomed up out of the darkness for a few moments and disappeared into it again. And such experience as we had gained elsewhere seemed to show that nothing more satisfactory than this could ever be expected if the enemy's destroyers were brought to action after dark. More than a year previously the Harwich Force had been attacked, in overwhelming strength, across the track of a German flotilla on its way to Zeebrugge. The outcome was that the enemy was brought to action, that each side suffered damage and that the enemy's flotilla passed through our dispositions and reached harbour. The action fought by the Broke and Swift on April 20, 1917, was certainly a notable exception, but it stood alone, and it is never safe to draw conclusions from a

 

Feb. 1918

DIFFICULTIES OF INTERCEPTION

 

single case. If the chances of defeating the enemy decisively by intercepting him during a night raid were slight, the chance of bringing him to action at all was slighter still. It is true that if the green lights which announced that enemy destroyers were about were sent up, seen in other parts of the Straits and reported at once to all ships in harbour and on patrol, then, admittedly, considerable forces would have been on the track of the enemy raiders soon after they began their operations. But if, through unforeseen circumstances, this system broke down, if the vessels attacked had no time to make the signals, or if those who saw the signals did not report them, then the alarm had to be given by the ViceAdmiral on the strength of such information as he had obtained and such inferences as he could draw from them. This was a longer process for it always took at least forty minutes to send a message from the Vice‑Admiral to the Straits and to receive a reply.

 

If, therefore, the attack on the drifters had been at once reported by the skipper of the Shipmates, the destroyers on the barrage could hardly have received the Vice‑Admiral's orders before 1.40 ‑ probably they would have received them later ‑ and some time would have elapsed after that before the destroyers could have moved to their intercepting stations. Now the German raid was over, or nearly over, by 1.40, and the German destroyers were crossing the barrage at twenty minutes past two. All that can be said, therefore, is that if the raid had been reported to Dover at the earliest possible moment, the destroyers of the striking force might have had a better chance of bringing the enemy to action near the barrage; and that if they had done so, the action would probably have been an inconclusive affair; a few outbursts of rapid fire in which blind chance determined the incidence of damage.

 

The raid showed that our system of defence was exceptionally vulnerable; but other facts which became known during the week following also showed that the new system of patrols and minefields was causing the enemy submarine commanders considerable anxiety, and that this anxiety was possibly the real cause of the enemy's desire to shake and damage our watching forces. The efficacy of the Dover Straits defence was generally tested, not in situ, but at the opposite end of the British Isles. If submarines were found to be traversing the Fair Island channel in large numbers, it was assumed that the Dover Straits were, for the moment, thought exceptionally dangerous. An unusually large number of U‑boats were reported on the north‑about route during the week of the raid; and it was hoped that the deep minefields in the Dover Straits were acting as a strong deterrent. This obstacle, however, only mitigated submarine devastations in the Channel.

 

A large number of the U‑boats using the north‑about route were now operating in the Irish Sea and the Bristol Channel, where the losses were severe; and the convoys brought in by the Buncrana flotillas were particularly menaced by this new concentration. Early in the month, the Tuscania, carrying Canadian and American troops, had been torpedoed whilst in convoy, and on February 25 the Tiberia was sunk whilst passing through the boom at the entrance to Belfast Lough. It was clear that a barrier across any one passage would only cause the Germans to change their zones of concentration. If the submarine campaign was to be checked by the deep minelaying which was now the principal item in our war plan, then there would be no perceptible check until both ends of the North Sea were blocked. The order to begin work on the Northern barrage was actually given towards the end of the month, and on the following day Admiral Fremantle, the Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff, visited the Queen Elizabeth to confer with Admiral Beatty.

 

Admiral Beatty in particular was anxious that the duties which were dividing.the Grand Fleet into separate detachments should not be increased in scope or in number. Soon after the January conference, divisions from the battle fleet or the battle cruiser fleet had begun to act as covering forces for the Scandinavian trade; and large forces from the Grand Fleet had been sent to sea on January 3 to cover a minelaying operation near Terschelling. Nor was this all; four vessels of the 1st Light Cruiser Squadron were now fitted as minelayers; three of them had been engaged on January 3, and the entire squadron, with the exception of the Caledon, had been employed more or less regularly on minelaying duties for the rest of the month. As a result the Grand Fleet had been weakened by the withdrawal of an entire squadron; for, if the fleet had been ordered to sea at any time during the previous month, it would have been impossible for the 1st Light Cruiser Squadron to take up its allotted place in the reconnaissance line of the battle cruiser fleet. The discussion between Admiral Fremantle and the Commander‑in‑Chief naturally moved round the practical implications of the existing policy: it was obvious that some limit must be set to the attrition which these additional duties were causing; was it possible to lay down some clearly defined boundary line? Admiral Fremantle was able to give the Commander‑in‑Chief a definite promise that the light cruisers would be freed for their ordinary duties; but on all other points he could give him little satisfaction. It

 

Feb. 1918

ADMIRAL BEATTY'S APPREHENSIONS

 

was now intended to form a special minelaying squadron in the Humber (Abdiel, Legion, Ferret, Ariel and three V‑class destroyers.); and the three fast destroyers which would be the nucleus of the new force would have to be provided from the Grand Fleet. This, however, would not be the most serious call upon the Grand Fleet's forces. Minelaying upon the northern barrage was about to begin; and Admiral Fremantle informed the Commander‑in‑Chief that he would have to provide the destroyer escorts for the minelaying expeditions which would be going on continuously until the end of the year. The Commander‑in‑Chief could only point out that though this new drain upon his forces was inevitable, it might, none the less, create a situation of great danger.

 

The Admiralty seem to have been anxious to repeat the large anti‑submarine operations which had been carried out during the previous year, principally by the Grand Fleet destroyers; but the Commander‑in‑Chief was very doubtful whether they were sound undertakings. They had given very indifferent results and could only be carried out by forces that were numerically very strong. If added to other attritional processes, the outcome of these operations might well be that the Grand Fleet would be held in harbour for lack of destroyer escort.

 

Towards the end of the conference the Commander‑in-Chief spoke at great length about the existing system of protecting the Scandinavian trade. As the weather improved, the convoys would be sailing at absolutely regular intervals. This would make the date and time of each convoy's departure so easy to calculate that the enemy would surely take advantage of it, and as they probably knew already that battleships and detachments from the Grand Fleet were acting as supporting forces, the Commander‑in‑Chief might shortly be compelled to detach not a division but an entire squadron of battleships. If the enemy ever decided to undertake a large operation against the Scandinavian convoys and their supports, could the Admiralty be certain that they would get some kind of warning of their preparations?

 

The question was left unsettled, and a few weeks later the Commander‑in‑Chief raised it again, when Captain K. G. B. Dewar, Assistant Director of Plans, visited his flagship. With a foresight that was remarkably emphasised by later events, Admiral Beatty again argued that the existing arrangements for protecting the Scandinavian trade were a dangerous strategical experiment. Unless the Admiralty could be absolutely certain that they would get timely warning of an impending raid, we were risking disaster to a division of first‑class battleships every time a convoy sailed; for however powerful the covering and supporting forces might be, the Germans could always send out a stronger force unless the Grand Fleet itself put to sea whenever a convoy left harbour. The Admiralty had not been able to give sufficient warning of the last two raids against the Scandinavian convoy; would they be better informed in the future? If not, was the risk that we were taking really justifiable? Captain Dewar could only answer that the existing dispositions had been based on the assumption that the defence of the Scandinavian trade was the really important matter; he doubted whether the decision to protect trade with a detachment of battleships and battle cruisers would have been taken if the naval staff had examined the whole question. Again the question was left undecided; for Admiral Beatty was given no undertaking that warning would be given, nor was he authorised to alter the existing arrangements. A few weeks later, both Admiral Fremantle and Captain Dewar had reason to remember the Commander-in‑Chief's warning.

 

For the moment, however, the general feeling, by land and sea, was expectation: the defection of Russia, the disaster to the Italians in the autumn of the previous year had ruled out all thought of a renewed offensive on the Western Front. It was common knowledge that all through the winter the Germans had been moving their armies from east to west as fast as their deteriorated rolling stock permitted.

 

The British naval authorities were likewise making great exertions to expedite the transport of troops and supplies. Although the American armies were not yet ready, it was felt that the assembling of the American forces on French soil was the most important operation of the moment. The convoy division of the Ministry of Shipping had, for weeks past, been planning an important change in the existing system. There were now, in the Atlantic, some thirty-five ships capable of steaming 12 1/2 knots and upwards, which were assembled regularly at Halifax, for the HX convoys. These vessels were large cargo carriers; but they were also transporting large numbers of American troops. During the last five months of the previous year 48,000 American soldiers had been carried to Liverpool in the fast Halifax convoys.

 

In order to make the utmost use of the fast ships, the Ministry wished to divide them into five squadrons or divisions of about seven ships each, and to base these squadrons upon New York. Slower cargo steamers would be used as substitutes for the services to other ports. The change was, however, an important one; as the fast convoys would henceforward be

 

Feb-March 1918

GREAT GERMAN OFFENSIVE

 

run from New York instead of Halifax, and a convoy committee to supervise the turn‑round of vessels on the American side would have to be established in New York itself. The advantage was that all fast ships would be sailed from the port where the greatest number of troops were embarked, that the carrying capacity of each ship would be raised, that more men would be transported weekly and monthly to the theatre of the struggle. The plan was approved by all concerned and the necessary steps were taken. On March 9 the Admiralty issued the executive order.

 

Meanwhile all England was waiting for the impending onslaught. Whether it would be accompanied by any special operations in the North Sea was a matter of doubt; but the flag officers in the southern area felt it necessary to take special precautions against a renewal of the raiding policy which had recently scored such an unpalatable success. Early in March, at all events, Admiral Tyrwhitt issued orders for keeping a special striking force of two light cruisers and five destroyers patrolling near a rendezous in the centre of the Flanders Bight. Fourteen days later the Germans opened their great offensive and broke the British line near St. Quentin. Their attack was not immediately accompanied by any particular activity at sea. The enemy's submarine commanders made no exceptional effort in support of the army's movement, and adhered to the plan of operating close to the coast, which they had adopted late in the previous year. There was a slight intensification of the inshore attack during the first fortnight of the German offensive; for between March 17 and the end of the month four to five boats were located in the English Channel. The intention of the U‑boat commanders was, presumably, to make the transport routes as insecure as possible, for a concentration of boats at the eastern end of the Channel was noticed during the first week of the offensive. In addition to this, one or more boats hovered off Land's End, probably in the hope of attacking the French coal trade near one of its terminal points. A few days later, however, the German naval forces in Flanders carried out an operation which, as far as could be judged, was correlative to the great German offensive on land.

 

 

2

The raid on the Left flank of the Allied Armies, March 20‑21

(See Map 16.)

 

The protection and security of the sea flank of the Allied armies had been a serious naval responsibility from an early period of the war. The chief danger against which the Commodore at Dunkirk had to provide was a rapid landing on the low shelving foreshore behind the Allied front at Nieuport; but there was also a danger that the Germans without actually landing would raid the line of communications between Dunkirk and Nieuport by a carefully planned naval bombardment.

 

The railway to Nieuport leaves Dunkirk from the southern side of the town and then turns northeastward towards the sea. At the railway halt of Rosendael the line is less than a mile from the coast, and it is only about six miles further along, near le Coin, that it begins to recede from it; Adinkerke, the station before Furnes, is two miles from the foreshore at la Panne Bains. It was obviously easy for ships in the narrow channels opposite the coast to range their guns upon this exposed line of railway. The German staff, at all events, considered that the line was vulnerable and that it could be bombarded and damaged before the forces at Dunkirk could drive off the raiders. On March 18 the Commodore of the Flanders Flotilla issued an operation order for an attack against the Dunkirk‑Bray Dunes line. The raiding force was to be divided into three groups. The first - composed of six torpedo boats ‑ was to take station at the north‑east point of Nieuport Bank, and to bombard the traffic going eastward from Dunkirk; the second, whose composition was not stated in the orders, was to occupy a position on the north‑east point of the Smal Bank and to bombard the Bray Dunes sector of the line. The third group, under the direction of the Commodore, was to bombard la Panne and Adinkerke.

 

In the early morning of March 19, a motor launch on patrol located a group of four enemy destroyers near the light‑buoy at the northern end of the Zuidcoote Pass. They were probably carrying out a preliminary reconnaissance to enable the commanding officers to familiarise themselves with the shore lights and sea marks upon which they would have to depend upon the night of the bombardment. The following night, at all events, was selected for the operation, which appears to have been complementary to the great offensive against the Allied armies on the Somme. (The offensive on the Somme began on March 21.) Torpedo boats A.4 and A.9 were sent out after dark to mark the bombarding position at the northeast end of Nieuport Bank; A.19 and A.7 were sent to the second bombarding position at the north‑east end of the Smal Bank. On the night of March 20, our Commodore at Dunkirk had sent the Swift, Matchless, North Star and Myngs to the East Barrage Patrol in the Dover Straits. In Dunkirk

 

March 1918

DUNKIRK FORCE SAILS

 

Roads the Botha and the Morris, with the French destroyers Capitaine Mehl, Magon and Bouclier, were "at the ready."

 

The beaches to the eastward and westward of la Panne were considered the places at which the Germans would most probably attempt a landing, and a special force was always stationed in the anchorage opposite to the beaches. On the night of the impending attack the monitors M.25 and Terror and the French destroyer Oriflamme were anchored in the Potje, which is the name of the anchorage that lies opposite the beaches. The monitor General Craufurd was in Dunkirk roadstead, where there were also a number of motor boats and auxiliaries.

 

(Botha (flotilla leader), 1,742 tons, 31 knots, 6‑4 inch guns; Morris (t.b.d.), 1,010 tons, 34 knots, 3‑4 inch guns; Capitaine Mehl (t.b.d.), 755 tons, 2‑3.9 inch guns; Bouclier (t.b.d.), 777 tons, 31 knots, 2‑3.9‑inch guns; M.26 (monitor), 540 tons, 1‑6 inch gun; Terror (monitor), 8,000 tons, 2‑15 inch guns; Oriflamme (t.b.d.), 414 tons, 28 knots, 1‑ 9 pounder gun, 6‑3 pounder guns; General Craufurd (monitor), 5,900 tons, 2‑12‑inch guns.)

 

At half‑past one in the middle watch (March 21), Captain C. W. Bruton of the Terror was told by the officer of the watch that three or four small vessels appeared to be hovering about to the northward of Traepegeer No. 1 buoy. Being uncertain whether the Commodore at Dunkirk had stationed a special motor boat patrol in West Deep, Captain Bruton sent a signal to Dunkirk. The Commodore answered that he had not ordered any motor boats to patrol the West Deep, and that he was sending three motor boats to the Potje, which Captain Bruton was to send out towards the Traepegeer to investigate. The next two hours passed quietly; and the motor boats were just approaching the Terror, when the officers at Dunkirk sighted and heard heavy firing from seaward (3.45 a.m.). Commander R. L'E. M. Rede of the Botha ordered star‑shells to be fired to the north‑east and north‑west, whence the gunfire appeared to come; but nothing could be seen. Captain Bruton was more successful. He sighted and heard firing a few minutes after it had been heard from Dunkirk and located the direction from which it came. His first star‑shells, fired towards the Outer Ratel Bank, lit up three or four large destroyers.

 

The Botha and her division slipped their cables and steamed towards the Zuidcoote Pass, just as the Terror opened fire upon the destroyers to the north of her (3.55 a.m.). As far as Captain Bruton could tell, the bombarding ships appeared to be moving to the east. Shortly after he opened fire, the bombardment ceased, and when it began again (4.05), Captain Bruton was informed that the Botha and her division were under way, making for the Zuidcoote Pass. By then Commander Rede had just entered the southern end of the Pass and sighted gun flashes to the north‑eastward. When the division had reached the Traepegeer buoy, the firing ceased, and Commander Rede could only steer up the West Deep, firing star‑shells as he went. At Dunkirk, the Commodore ordered Lieutenant Willett to go towards Ostend with the coastal motor boat No. 20, and attack the Germans as they returned to harbour.

 

Commander Rede took his division across the north‑eastern end of the Smal Bank, and at 4.35 he sighted the enemy. The force he sighted was one of the bombarding divisions of five destroyers, followed by the two small torpedo boats which had been anchored on the Bank as mark boats. These two boats had got hastily under way when they saw from the Botha's star shells that a division of British ships was approaching. The British and French ships at once opened fire, which the Germans returned. The German destroyers passed ahead of the Botha, but the two torpedo boats could not close up; indeed the leading division does not seem to have made any attempt to extricate them. After ten minutes of firing, the Botha was hit in No 2 stokehold and her speed began to fall off. Commander Rede, seeing that the enemy were drawing ahead, turned to port to attack them with torpedoes. Having fired two he closed the enemy's line still further, and rammed A.19, which was hurrying after the division of destroyers with A.7 astern of her. The Botha struck the German torpedo boat amidships and cut her in two pieces; but almost as she did so, a smoke screen from the German destroyers ahead covered a large part of the division. Commander Rede could only see A.7 coming up astern of A.19, which he had just rammed, so he again put his helm over. He missed her, and passed ahead, but raked her almost at point‑blank range with his after guns. At this moment he was still being followed by most of his division; but the smoke screen was now so thick that they could no longer keep in touch. The Botha continued to turn slowly to port; the French destroyers, anxious to engage A.7 as closely as possible, turned very sharply to port in order to put themselves on a course parallel to the enemy; the Morris turned away sharply in the opposite direction. The Botha's fighting lights were now no longer burning, as the electric circuit had been severed during the engagement. A few minutes later Captain de Parseval of the Capitaine Mehl saw what looked like a large destroyer on an opposite course to starboard of him. He thought it was the Botha, but the officer on the torpedo tube could only think that a

 

March 1918

THE IRISH SEA

 

destroyer, approaching without fighting lights, was one of the enemy's division. He at once fired a torpedo and it hit the Botha in the after boiler‑room: she slowed down and then stopped dead. The French destroyers now sank A.7 with their guns, and later formed a screen astern of the Botha, which was taken in tow by the Morris.

 

The German division, which had passed ahead of the Botha, did not return to its base unmolested. Lieutenant Willett, in coastal motor boat No. 20, went up the West Deep at full speed, towards the gunfire to the north‑east. Just after five o'clock, as he was approaching the Stroom Bank light‑buoy off Ostend, he sighted five destroyers ahead of him, sharply outlined against the dawn, which was just breaking. They turned away as he approached them; but he pressed on to the very short range of 600 yards before he fired a torpedo. Both Lieutenant Willett and those on deck thought that the torpedo hit the fourth destroyer in the line. He turned away after firing and put up a smoke screen; he needed all the protection he could get; for he was in a perfect hurricane of fire, but managed to escape and made fast to No. 6 buoy.

 

As far as the Admiralty could judge, this short and fruitless raid against the Flanders coast was the only attempt that the enemy forces in the southern area made to second their great offensive on land. In the Irish Sea and the Bristol Channel, however, the U‑boat concentration was unrelaxed and it began to cause alarm, seeing that our countermeasures were quite unavailing. It was, moreover, a concentration more likely to disturb the workings of the convoy system than any previously attempted; for although every attempt by the enemy to make a methodical attack upon the convoys in the western approaches had failed, the narrow channel which the escorted ships traversed between the Scottish and Irish coasts was a zone in which convoys were far easier to locate and attack. The losses of the previous month, which were followed by the loss of the Calgarian, (Armed Merchant Cruiser, sunk by submarine on March 1.) at all events determined the convoy division to divert the northabout convoys to the southern route, and so evade the enemy's concentration.

 

Six convoys in all were affected; but not all were diverted. The first three (HS.31, HX.25 and HN.52) were escorted right through to Liverpool, and the destroyers accompanying them transferred, temporarily, to Admiral Bayly's command. With these reinforcements he was able to provide escort for the additional convoys (HH.46, HX.26 arrived at the rendezvous March 24. HN.54 arrived at the rendezvous March 26.) which were diverted to the southern rendezvous and brought in through the western approaches. The additional destroyers were also used to escort outgoing convoys from Liverpool, which were specially formed during the critical period. These changes were carried out with the greatest precision, and as soon as the full‑moon period was over the destroyers returned to their ordinary command and the system to its regular working. The diversion was only temporary; but it was a remarkable operation, which illustrated the extent of the control which was now exercised over merchant shipping and the elasticity of the system. By a mere executive order the Admiralty and the Ministry of Shipping were now able to move thousands of tons of shipping from one route to another, and to supervise the execution of their orders in the minutest detail.

 

At sea, the month during which the Germans opened their offensive in France was, therefore, fairly quiet, and it was during this month that the Admiralty began to lay the immense minefield, at the northern exit of the North Sea, which the Allied Admirals, when they assembled in conference in the autumn of the previous year, had considered to be the operation of war most likely to give decisive results. Its chances of success or failure were well balanced.

 

The average rate of U-boat destruction was between five and six boats a month; the Northern barrage, which was an addition to every other agency of submarine destruction, might, therefore, raise this average monthly figure appreciably. The barrage in the Dover Straits was not strictly comparable to the minefields that were about to be laid in the North Sea; distances, depths, currents, weather and the geographical configuration of the land and sea all differed. But the two systems were comparable in that both were devised in order to subject passing submarines to an identical form of danger: that of navigating through a zone of water fitted with mines that had been set to varying depths. In so far as the nature of the danger would be identical, it might, therefore, be hoped that the degree of risk to passing submarines might be roughly the same in the northern barrage and the Straits of Dover, and consequently that about the same number of U‑boats might be destroyed in each zone during the course of a month. Five boats had been lost in the Dover Straits during the first three months of the year 1918, so that, if this rough calculation of chances and probabilities proved correct, between one and two submarines would be lost in the mines of the Northern barrage every month. This would raise the total monthly destruction from about five to six or seven, which would not by any means be decisive.

 

The Admiralty, however, seem to have hoped for more than

 

March 1918

THE NORTHERN BARRAGE

 

this, though the Commander‑in‑Chief was extremely sceptical. During the discussions about the patrol forces that should be allotted to the barrage, he stated that the Admiralty seemed to him to be undertaking too much; they were seeking for a complete antidote, and he, for one, did not think they were likely to find it. In his opinion it would be far better to lay smaller minefields in the Kattegat, the Fair Island Channel, and the northern and southern entrances to the Irish Sea.

 

But the Admiralty were, by now, committed to the scheme and the operation was well in hand. After long preliminary discussions, it had been decided that the minefields should be laid between the Orkneys and the Bergen leads and that it should be patrolled by a special force of sloops, P‑boats and trawlers based at Lerwick and Kirkwall, and placed under the orders of a flag officer. The obstruction was to be divided into three sections. (See Map 17.) The mines in the central section were to be laid by the American navy, and were to be in successive lines which would make the area dangerous from the surface to a depth of 200 feet. This area was to be declared dangerous by a notice to mariners issued by the Hydrographer of the Navy. The mines in the eastern and western sections were to be laid by the British navy, and were to constitute a complex of deep minefields patrolled by surface forces. This immense project could only be undertaken after a considerable amount of preliminary work had been carried out. Mine bases had to be established at Dalmore and Inverness, and special facilities made at Corpach and Loch Alsh for receiving and transporting the material shipped from America. Early in the new year the preparations were so far advanced that a start could be made, and on March 3 the minelayer Paris laid the first field in the western section of the barrage.

 

It was an essential part of the plan that the barrage should be watched by patrol forces sufficiently numerous and powerful to compel submarines to dive into the minefields. Admiral Tupper, who had earned such distinction as the commander of the 10th Cruiser Squadron, was appointed to command the Northern barrage patrol vessels. The vessels of his command had not yet been assembled, and he was for the moment engaged at Whitehall in discussing plans and making arrangements for basing and supplying his forces. As a beginning, however, Captain Bruce, who, in Admiral Tupper's absence, was in charge of the small force which was to be expanded later, stationed his trawlers in the Fair Island Channel to the north of the new minefield.

 

Minelaying continued throughout the month; but on March 22 the sloop Gaillardia blew up whilst buoying the new minefield. The disaster caused the gravest misgivings about the mines that were being used. They had been adjusted to a depth of sixty‑five feet below the surface; the loss of a vessel which drew only twelve feet, and was at the time a considerable distance from the line of buoys, suggested that the new mine was not satisfactory. All work upon the barrage was stopped until the cause of the disaster could be ascertained by experiment.

 

After very searching inquiries, the Admiralty decided, on April 20, to go on with the project. Just as the decision was taken the German High Seas Fleet was committed to what was perhaps the boldest operation undertaken by the German Naval Staff since the war began; an operation, in fact, which carried the German battle squadrons right up to the northern entrance of the North Sea, into the very waters that we proposed to mine and patrol.

 

 

3

The Last German Fleet Sortie. April 22‑25, 1918

(See Map 18.)

 

Whenever the Commander‑in‑Chief had been in conference with representatives from the Admiralty, he had insisted that the giving of protection to the Scandinavian trade by detaching divisions of battleships and battle cruisers involved grave strategical risks, unless the Admiralty could be sure of obtaining early information of an impending move by the High Seas Fleet. He could not believe that the German Staff would remain in ignorance of our dispositions, nor could he believe that they would make no move when they learned that forces detached from the battle fleet were moving across the North Sea unsupported. On both points Admiral Beatty was correct. During the early spring of 1918 the German Intelligence Staff had been busy collecting information upon the effects of the submarine campaign, and of their recent attacks upon the Scandinavian convoy. According to Admiral Scheer they had learned through their agents, and from a careful observation of British wireless signals, that considerable forces had been moved south for escort duty, and that the Grand Fleet crews had been weakened to strengthen the personnel of the anti‑submarine forces in the Channel. The German Staff also learned from their U‑boat commanders that battleships, cruisers and destroyers were now protecting the Norwegian convoy. The reports of the German U‑boat commanders were more accurate than the inferences drawn by the German

 

April 1918

FAULTY INTELLIGENCE

 

deciphering staff at Neumunster. The 3rd Battle Squadron had, it is true, been put out of commission in March to supply trained crews for the anti‑submarine forces; but the 3rd Battle Squadron was not part of the Grand Fleet; its dispersal in no way affected the strength of the Grand Fleet crews. Secondly, no forces from the Grand Fleet were absorbed in anti‑submarine warfare. None the less, this information, though inaccurate in detail, contained a substance of truth: the drain on our destroyer forces, which had been continuous since the war began, was as great as ever. If a sudden alarm were given, the Commander‑in‑Chief might find that he had no more than forty boats available for immediate operations; if the alarm were made at a more favourable moment when the call for destroyers was not so severe, from seventy to eighty boats out of his total complement of one hundred and twenty, might be ready for immediate service. In a general sense, therefore, the German intelligence was correct; in one important respect the Grand Fleet was always below strength, and the Commander‑in‑Chief was always hampered as a consequence. What the U‑boat commanders had reported was strictly accurate: battleship and cruiser forces were actually supporting the Scandinavian convoy. But the supplementary information upon the time at which convoys left and arrived was not so correct.

 

"According to these sources of information," writes Admiral Scheer, "the convoy movement appeared to take place chiefly at the beginning or in the middle of a week." This was incorrect and very misleading, for the Scandinavian convoy was run at perfectly regular intervals, and if the date of one sailing or arrival could be obtained, the dates of all subsequent ones should have been calculable. In one important respect, therefore, Admiral Beatty had over‑estimated the enemy's ability to collect accurate and detailed information, for he had always assumed that the Germans would discover the exact dates and times when our convoys were sailing. It was indeed reasonable to assume it; for this was the least difficult part of the enemy's preparations.

 

The exaggerations in the German intelligence reports seem to have influenced the plan of operations to which Admiral Scheer committed the High Seas Fleet in April 1918; but it is only fair to add that if his information had been rigidly accurate, his project would still have been sound and feasible. He was indeed preparing to act exactly as Admiral Beatty had feared, and was about to execute a plan which the Commander-in‑Chief had always considered possible for the enemy and highly dangerous to ourselves. Admiral Scheer's project bore the impress of his previous plans ‑ it was designed for isolating and overwhelming some part of the British battle fleet. The convoy had twice been successfully attacked in the eastern section of its route: would it not, therefore, be possible to move the High Seas Fleet into this zone ‑ which the British found so difficult to protect ‑ and there overwhelm the convoy and its powerful supporting forces? Admiral Scheer does not say whether he was aware of a very important change that had recently been made in our dispositions for covering the North Sea. On April 12 the Grand Fleet had been moved to Rosyth; and only the 2nd Cruiser Squadron and some destroyers had been left at Scapa. This move south to a new base at least affected Admiral Scheer's plans indirectly. The zone in which he desired to operate was, it is true, rather further from Rosyth than from Scapa; but it was well to the north of the new base, and eighteen hours' steaming, or even less, would always carry the bulk of our battle fleet to an intercepting position between Stavanger and the Horn Reefs channel. This, if he knew it, must have weighed heavily with Admiral Scheer; but he probably relied upon his wireless intelligence to give him timely warning.

 

The success of the German plan was, of course, contingent upon the secrecy with which it could be covered, and the problem of secrecy was not easy of solution. The High Seas Fleet had never been able to put to sea without giving some indications of movement; but recently these indications had been very much reduced. Small detachments had entered the North Sea almost undetected, and had so disguised their movements and intentions that all our dispositions for countering and intercepting them had been based on inference and guess‑work. If, therefore, the methods for preserving secrecy which had worked so well during recent operations could be made sufficiently embracing to cover a sortie of the High Seas Fleet, there was no reason why Admiral Scheer's plan should not end in a resounding success. For to take the High Seas Fleet to the coast of Norway to sink another convoy and its escorting cruisers under the eyes of the neutral skippers; to overwhelm a battle squadron almost within sight of the Norwegian coastguard stations and lighthouse keepers, and to do all this whilst the British armies in Flanders were reeling under the German onslaught, would be a success of the first order.

 

Admiral Scheer knew well that secrecy depended upon the suppression of wireless signals during the preliminary period of the operation. But as wireless signals cannot be dispensed with when large forces put to sea, and concentrate in the free patches and cleared channels of a mine‑strewn area, he had to

 

April 1918

LAST GERMAN SORTIE

 

devise some method of concentrating the fleet, and at the same time of disguising the purposes of the concentration. His stratagem was well conceived; "all available ships were assembled in the Heligoland Bight on the evening of the 22nd under the pretext of carrying out battle practices and evolutions. The commanders of divisions and squadrons were then given their orders and informed of our intentions for the first time." (Scheer, p. 320, Eng. Ed.) The greatest possible restriction of wireless signalling during the operation ‑ which was to be spread across the Skagerrak to the Norwegian coast ‑ was imposed upon all squadron commanders. The day fixed for the attack was April 24, and the first part of Admiral Scheer's concentration was carried out without a hitch.

 

It so happened that Admiral Scheer's first concentration in the Bight was taking place whilst Admiral Keyes was delivering his attack upon Zeebrugge. Admiral Tyrwhitt was patrolling with his force in a covering position between the Brown Ridge and the Texel; and the Admiralty were watching with exceptional anxiety for any signs of movement by the High Seas Fleet. The Commander‑in‑Chief was always given information about any movement that had been detected; but as absolutely no reports of the High Seas Fleet sortie were received during the day, the Commander‑in‑Chief was informed that the Bight seemed quiet. In the north the convoy movements continued regularly. At a quarter‑past one in the afternoon of the 22nd, the home‑bound convoy of thirty‑four ships left Selbjorns Fiord under the escort of the Duke of Cornwall, the Lark and the Llewellyn. They were covered by the 2nd Battle Cruiser Squadron and the 7th Light Cruiser Squadron, which met them outside and steamed across the North Sea to the south of them. When daylight came up on the 23rd the convoy was about one hundred and forty miles to the east of the Orkneys, and Admiral Scheer, with his movement still undetected, was beginning to move his squadrons northwards through the swept channels in the Bight.

 

Almost as soon as they were under way, a dense fog came down and covered the entire North Sea. In the north, the convoy and the covering forces ran into it soon after eight: in the south, Admiral Scheer went cautiously onwards until he reached the inner edge of the British minefields, when he anchored. His preparations for disguising the movement were so well thought out, and emergencies had been so carefully provided against, that this set‑back did not prejudice the secrecy of the Plan. Indeed his original plan of concentrating the fleet for simulated exercises worked admirably. During the day, our directional wireless stations detected no unusual movements in the Bight. At half‑past eight in the evening, therefore, the Commander‑in‑Chief was again informed that the Bight was quiet. Just as the Admiralty sent away the telegram, Admiral Scheer's squadrons were sighted and located for the first time.

 

After the German fleet had been at anchor for half an hour, the fog cleared slightly, and Admiral Scheer again got underway. But the weather was still very thick and the passage through the minefield was slow; it was only towards evening that the fleet cleared the outer limits and that the minesweepers and barrier breakers were ordered back. The German Fleet was now entering the zones watched by our submarines. Four British submarines were patrolling the approaches to the Bight at the time. They were stationed along a rough quadrant between the Texel and Lyngvig. At the western extreme of the quadrant ‑ near the Texel ‑ was V.4 (Harwich); further north, on the south‑eastern side of the Dogger Bank, was E.42 (Harwich); on the north‑eastern side of the line was J.4 (Blyth); on the northern, towards Horn Reefs, was J.6 (Blyth). (E.45 was approaching Heligoland on a minelaying expedition.) As Admiral Scheer's squadrons debouched into the Bight they crossed the area that was being watched by J.6; and Lieutenant‑Commander G. Warburton, the commanding officer, soon sighted them. His submarine had been in the fog all the morning, but in the afternoon it had cleared away, and at eight o'clock in the evening he sighted a group of destroyers and light cruisers. The weather was thick and hazy, and he thought they were British ships, supporting or covering one of the minelaying operations that were incessantly going on at the exit from the Bight. He had been warned, in his sailing orders, that British cruisers might be operating inside the zone that he was watching. Half an hour later he saw five battle cruisers and destroyers steering to the north‑north‑east; and at a quarter‑past twelve he saw heavy ships, which must have been the first echelon of Admiral Scheer's advancing battle squadrons. This procession of vessels, on a northerly course, at the very entrance to the Bight did not rouse his suspicions. He remained convinced that they were British vessels, engaged upon some operation, and sent in no report of any kind to the Commander‑in‑Chief.

 

Admiral Scheer thus slipped out into the North Sea unreported; but the quarry that he was hunting was fast slipping away from him. By dark on the 23rd, the convoy and its covering force had reached the latitude of Buchan Ness. They had struggled through the fog all day, and towards nightfall it

 

April 1918

GERMAN MOVEMENT DETECTED

 

had settled down, thicker than ever. None the less the escort reached the western rendezvous at about the scheduled time, and there was no reason to doubt that the convoy would be brought into Methil on the following morning. No other convoy was due to leave until the 24th, so that Admiral Scheer and his battle squadrons were steaming into a no‑man's sea, abandoned alike by merchantmen and men‑of‑war.

 

In the early hours of the 24th the Admiralty at last began to suspect that something unusual was afoot, and in order to make early provision against a raid on the south‑east coast, the Harwich Force was ordered to raise steam. (The Harwich Force had returned to harbour from their covering Patrol during the operation at Zeebrugge between 3.0 and 4.0 p.m. on the 23rd.) The homeward‑bound convoy was then approaching the Firth of Forth; and the outward‑bound ships were preparing to sail under the escort of the Ursula and the Landrail. The Admiralty did not consider that the vague reports in their hands would justify them in suspending the convoy service. The commanding officers continued to make their preparations, though the fog was still very thick, and the convoy got under way at half‑past six. As they steamed out of harbour, however, the Admiralty warned the Commander‑in‑Chief that the enemy was taking special precautions in the Bight, and that some operation was about to be undertaken.

 

But this large operation, as it proved to be, was then far advanced towards failure. Early in the morning a serious accident occurred in the Moltke's engine‑rooms: she was steaming ahead of the fleet with Hipper's reconnaissance and was at the time about forty miles west‑south‑west of Stavanger. Admiral von Hipper was most unwilling to abandon the operation; so he ordered the Moltke to retire on Admiral Scheer. Later, hearing that the Moltke had come to a complete standstill, he turned back with his whole force. This, however, was not the most serious consequence of the accident: the damage to the Moltke, and the change of plan, had to be reported to Admiral Scheer, and this broke the wireless silence that the Germans had maintained so long and so successfully. Our directional stations at once picked up the signals that were being exchanged between Admiral von Hipper and the Commander‑in‑Chief. As a consequence the Admiralty became aware that a detachment of enemy ships was off the south‑western coast of Norway, and that a large operation was in progress. The reports from our directional stations continued to come in freely, and at a quarter to eleven the Grand Fleet was ordered to put to sea and concentrate east of the Long Forties. (The Commander‑in‑Chief had put the fleet at 2 1/2 hours for steam in the early morning.) Just before the order went out the homeward convoy and its covering forces came into Methil; the Commander‑in‑Chief was thus free to act against any enemy forces that might be reported, and to leave the convoy out of consideration in making his dispositions.

 

Meanwhile Admiral Scheer had got into touch with Hipper and the Moltke. He ordered the battleship Oldenburg to take the damaged ship in tow, and turned back for the Heligoland Bight just as Admiral Beatty received his orders to put to sea. Admiral Scheer was, however, unwilling that the operation against the convoy should be abandoned altogether; and so ordered Admiral von Hipper to press on northwards to intercept it. But when Admiral von Hipper turned his cruisers towards Slotteroe, the convoy and its covering forces were already safe in Methil.

 

In the meantime provision had to be made for supporting the 2nd Cruiser Squadron, which was isolated from the rest of the fleet and was in the Orkneys, and for the battleship Agincourt, which was still at Scapa. At a quarter past twelve, therefore, the Commander‑in‑Chief warned the Admiral Commanding the Orkneys and Shetlands that enemy forces were at sea, and that they might be contemplating an attack upon the islands. He also told him that the St Vincent and the Hercules ‑ then at Invergordon ‑ had been ordered north to strengthen the 2nd Cruiser Squadron.

 

Both the Admiralty and the Commander‑in‑Chief had now to consider whether the independent movements of detached forces should be continued or not. There were two of these movements to be considered: the outward-bound convoy from Methil, and a minelaying expedition from the Humber. The outward‑bound convoy was now past the Firth of Tay. The 2nd Battle Cruiser Squadron was under orders to act as a covering force; and it was an open question whether the convoy and its protecting forces should be recalled or not. The Admiralty told the Commander‑in-Chief to hold back the convoy if he wished to keep the 2nd Battle Cruiser Squadron under his orders; but Admiral Beatty decided to allow both the convoy and its covering forces to carry on. He also ordered the 2nd Cruiser Squadron and the two battleships Hercules and Agincourt to leave Scapa and strengthen the covering force. (The St Vincent was under repairs and could not leave Invergordon, as ordered earlier in the day.).

 

April 1918

GRAND FLEET SAILS

 

In the early afternoon the Grand Fleet put to sea from Rosyth; and by midnight effect had been given to the dispositions ordered during the day. The force that sailed was: 31 battleships, 4 battle cruisers, 2 cruisers, 24 light cruisers, 85 destroyers:

 

Queen Elizabeth:	Flagship, Grand fleet
1st Battle Squadron	9 ships
2nd	8
4th	5
5th	4
6th	4 (U.S.A.) R.‑Ad. H. Rodman.
1st Battle Cruiser Squadron	4 battle cruisers
1st Cruiser Squadron	2 cruisers
1st Light Cruiser Squadron	5 light cruisers
2nd	4
3rd	4
4th	6
Attached to Fleet	5
11th Destroyer Flotilla	20 destroyers (including leaders)
12th	17
13th	21
14th	14
15th	13

 

The Fleet flagship was then ninety miles east of May Island; the 2nd Battle Cruiser Squadron, which had been held back by the fog, was getting under way; the 2nd Cruiser Squadron and the Agincourt were shortening in at Scapa, and the Hercules was steaming northwards to join them. The convoy had just reached the latitude of Buchan Ness.

 

Also E.42 was ordered to steam at full speed to one of the principal channels into the Bight. The exact point that E.42 was to occupy was about forty miles from the north entrance to the channel, and a few miles north of an important junction point in the complex of swept passages through the Bight.

 

By that time our squadrons were moving out against a combination which had failed. When Admiral von Hipper reached the convoy route he found nothing. As he did not know of the convoy which sailed from Methil, he turned back when he reached his intercepting position. Admiral Scheer's battle squadrons had moved south all day, and by nightfall were past the Grand Fleet's line of advance.

 

Submarine J.6, under Lieutenant‑Commander Warburton, was still on her station near Horn Reefs, and at four o'clock in the morning, whilst the minelayers and the Harwich Force were running out of the Bight, he sighted a group of light cruisers and destroyers to the northward, steering south: he dived, and an hour and a half later he saw a larger force which he took for battle cruisers, followed by light cruisers. He watched these ships pass southwards until a quarter‑past seven, when he lost sight of them, and reported by wireless to the Commander‑in‑Chief. He had evidently seen the first echelon of the German fleet approaching the swept channel.

 

Meanwhile E.42, under Lieutenant C. H. Allen, was pressing on towards her intercepting position in the German swept channel. She reached it just before noon, and, as the German fleet made very slow progress through the minefield, she was ahead of it. All that day Admiral Scheer ‑ with all his squadrons now united ‑ worked down the swept channels, and some time after five o'clock the Moltke was allowed to go in under her own steam. The fleet was then abreast of the Lister Deep. At about the time that the Moltke was cast off, Lieutenant Allen sighted "three small tufts of smoke" about six miles to the north‑east. He made off at full speed to the south‑east to get ahead of them, and at about halfpast five he was in position. He fired four times at the procession of ships that was filing past him, and heard a distant explosion after the last torpedo had run its course. He had hit the damaged Moltke; but he did not know it until long after. A few minutes later, however, he had good reason to know that the enemy had located him. His ship was the focusing point of a succession of underwater explosions; he counted twenty‑five in all, and was not clear of his pursuers for a whole hour. By this time (1.41 p.m.) the Admiralty had learned that the High Seas Fleet was returning to harbour, and had told the Commander‑in‑Chief to return to his base when he thought fit.

 

This was the last sortie carried out by the German fleet during the war. It had been planned and executed with great skill; from first to last we were completely baffled, and if Admiral Scheer's intelligence had been more accurate, he would have had an excellent chance of doing enormous damage. Supposing that he had taken his fleet north twenty-four hours sooner or twenty‑four hours later, with the same secrecy, he would then have fallen in with the convoy that left Slotteroe on the 22nd, or the convoy which left Methil on the 24th; and our first warning of his presence off the Norwegian coast would have been news that a convoy had been destroyed and its covering forces overwhelmed. Admiral Scheer failed because, in spite of all his careful preparation, he had not prepared enough. He did not know when the convoys sailed and arrived, and was content to compute the dates by rough guess‑work. Yet he must have had

 

April 1918

FAULTY GERMAN INTELLIGENCE

 

means of collecting the data for a more accurate calculation. Between January 20, when the new system of convoys was started, and April 22, when Admiral Scheer took the High Seas Fleet out of harbour, twenty‑five convoys had arrived in Norway, and twenty‑six had left Norway for Methil. There had been delays and irregularities in the sailings during the earlier part of the year; but the outward sailings for March and April had been very steady, and a German consul's clerk could easily have informed the German naval authorities that the scheduled interval between two British convoys was four days.

 

A. Convoys sailed from Methil:

January 20, 24, 27, 30.

February 2, 6, 9, 14, 18, 22, 25.

March 1, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 31.

April 4, 8, 12, 16, 20.

B. Convoys sailed from Norway:

January 19, 22, 26, 29.

February 1, 3, 8, 11, 19, 21, 24, 27.

March 3, 6, 11, 14, 18, 22, 26, 30.

April 2, 6, 10, 14, 19, 22.

 

Even though they might have been uncertain of the exact date upon which the next convoy was due, the German consular agents could easily have ascertained that Admiral Scheer's information about convoy arrangements was quite wrong. For they must surely have known that the dates of departure were separated by intervals made as regular as the weather would allow, and that the actual days of the week had nothing to do with the dates of sailings or arrivals. It is curious, and possibly explanatory of his failure, that Admiral Scheer does not mention the German consuls in Norway amongst his sources of information. Indeed, as he states particularly, it was from the U‑boat captains that he learned about the convoy movements and the composition of its covering forces. If the U‑boat commanders were his only sources of information, it is truly extraordinary that he or his staff should not have amplified their reports by inquiries from civilian officials. His submarine commanders were competent to ascertain the routes that the convoys followed, their numbers, steaming formations, and the character of the forces defending the merchantmen; but they could not conceivably be relied upon to locate every convoy that sailed ‑ many indeed must have passed the watching U‑boats by night ‑ and they were, in consequence, quite incapable of drawing up a calendar of convoy movements. It is, of course, mere guess‑work to explain Admiral Scheer's failure by assuming that he and his staff relied solely upon U‑boat reports for their knowledge of our convoy movements. On the other hand, it is difficult to find any other explanation for his failure to obtain accurate information on a matter which was essential to his success, and upon which accurate information was easy to obtain, if the request to supply it had been addressed to the proper quarter.

 

 

 

---

 

 

CHAPTER VII

 

THE BLOCKING OF ZEEBRUGGE, APRIL 22‑23, 1918

 

Whilst the High Seas Fleet was searching for the Scandinavian convoy, and whilst the Grand Fleet was sweeping the North Sea in search of the High Seas Fleet, a specially constituted naval force hurled itself at the defences of the Belgian coast in a desperate endeavour to block the submarine bases at Ostend and Zeebrugge.

 

This attack on the Belgian bases was the last survivor of a distinguished family of adventurous projects. The plans which had already been considered must be briefly reviewed, if the genesis and execution of the final project are to be understood. Late in 1916, Admiral Bayly at Queenstown had advocated a combined operation against Borkum, Ostend and Zeebrugge; but neither the Admiralty nor the General Staff considered that the plan was feasible. Even though troops could have been landed and could have entrenched themselves, the difficulty of supplying them would have been enormous. A flow of traffic would have had to be maintained across a submarine‑infested area to an open anchorage on the enemy's coast; the bulky, heavy material necessary to an army in the field would have had to be landed across an open beach or along a few extemporised pontoons and piers; and this mass of transports and their covering forces would have collected off the enemy's coast, within striking distance of their fleet bases. Military objections were equally strong; it was now an axiom of military strategy that troops should only be landed on a coast if they can advance from their landing‑place in sufficient force to engage the enemy's armies. To maintain isolated bodies of troops at two or more selected points on a hostile coastline was almost impossible, and if possible not worth while; in a few days they would be besieged from the land, perhaps from the sea as well.

 

Subsequently a large number of plans were submitted: Heligoland, Sylt, Schellig roads, and Borkum were all recommended as points of attack, but the objections to Admiral Bayly's plan were applicable to those that succeeded it.

 

Towards the end of 1915, Admiral Bacon and the High Naval authorities discussed together a detailed plan for attacking the lock gates at Zeebrugge under cover of a smoke screen. The Admiralty's objections were strong, and although Admiral Bacon had been sufficiently interested in the project to bring it to the notice of the authorities in Whitehall, he agreed with them that the risks were too great.

 

A year later Commodore Tyrwhitt urged the Admiralty to sanction a blocking attack upon Zeebrugge. When he found that this project was not favourably received he submitted another, more comprehensive one, for capturing the mole and the town beyond, which, he suggested, should then be made a starting‑point for a military expedition against Antwerp.

 

Admiral Bacon was asked to give his opinion on this plan; and he stated that it seemed to him to have all the weaknesses of the project which he had discussed at the Admiralty eighteen months before. He did not believe that the parties landed on the mole and elsewhere could penetrate as far as the locks, far less carry the town. The objection to a military expedition against Antwerp was that, as far as he knew, the military authorities would neither approve of it nor undertake it. The Admiralty appear to have endorsed Admiral Bacon's opinion.

 

When Admiral Keyes became Director of the Plans Division, the First Sea Lord handed him a dossier containing a large number of projects for coastal and blocking expeditions, and ordered him to report. On December 3, two months after he had taken up his appointment, he submitted a new plan to the Board. In this project Zeebrugge and Ostend were to be blocked simultaneously by old cruisers under cover of darkness, between March 14 and 17; if the operation was to be carried out at morning twilight, March 18 and 19 were the most suitable dates; but the method and time of attack must be settled by the officer commanding. In order to meet the kind of criticism which had been levelled at so many previous plans, Admiral Keyes reminded the Board that the operation he recommended was not more risky to the men engaged than any massed attack on the Western Front.

 

This plan was submitted to Admiral Bacon, who visited the Admiralty on December 18 with an alternative project. Admiral Bacon's plan differed materially from the one just prepared, in that an assault on the mole, similar to that proposed by Commodore Tyrwhitt, was added to the blocking operation. The monitor, Sir John Moore, was to go up to the mole bows on, and land about 1,000 storming troops across an enormous brow twelve feet wide and forty‑eight

 

Jan. 1918

ADMIRAL KEYES AT DOVER

 

feet long. As the troops were put on the mole, the monitor General Craufurd was to go alongside the mole and bombard the lock gates and the forts. The twelve‑inch shells used in this bombardment were to be fired by specially reduced charges, suitable for the short range. The block‑ships were to be run into the harbour under cover of the monitor attack. After some discussion of the plans before them the Admiralty decided that an attack should be made upon Zeebrugge and that Admiral Bacon should be in charge of it. As soon as approval was given, Admiral Keyes visited the Grand Fleet to raise the necessary officers, seamen and stokers. Admiral Beatty at once promised that the officers and men required should be provided. Later on those who were approached were merely asked whether they were ready to perform a hazardous service. There were no refusals.

 

The names of the ships which subsequently became so famous first appear in the records of this great operation in a minute prepared by Admiral Keyes after his return from the Grand Fleet. In this paper he informed the Board that six blocking cruisers would be required, and urged that they should be selected from the Sirius, Thetis, Brilliant, Vindictive, Intrepid, Hermione, Sappho and Iphigenia (December 27).

 

A few days after Admiral Keyes returned to London, he was ordered to succeed Admiral Bacon at Dover. He arrived at his new command on New Year's Day, but before he left London the new Board confirmed the decision that an attack should be delivered against the Belgian bases, and left Admiral Keyes free to plan and execute it as he thought best. After long consideration, Admiral Keves decided that he must modify his predecessor's plan considerably. Knowing, as he did, that the lock gates were run back into great concrete shelters on the first sign of danger, Admiral Keyes did not consider that their bombardment would serve any useful purpose. Nor could he believe that a monitor with her speed reduced to four knots by false bows and a paraphernalia of special fittings, could ever be brought bows on to the mole, and kept there in a three‑knot current. To land the storming troops across one large brow which might be put out of action by a single shell was to place the success or failure of the whole expedition at the mercy of one lucky shot from the enemy's batteries. Admiral Keyes did, however, endorse one point in his predecessor's project, in that he decided to assist the block‑ship attack by a diversionary assault upon the mole, which had not been part of his first proposal. His main object was to capture the guns at the end of the mole which menaced the blockships' approach towards the canal.

 

To assist the attack, preparations were subsequently made for causing as much damage as possible to the material on the mole and destroying the viaduct which connected it to the shore. He at once took steps to obtain a marine battalion which was to assist the bluejackets to carry the mole. This special marine force was formed on January 8, 1918.

 

Admiral Keyes's preparations were of three kinds

 

(i) selecting and fitting out the storm‑ships and block‑ships,

(ii) collecting and training the officers and men, and

(iii) devising every detail of the final plan.

 

He had at first intended to use a fast handy merchantman with a high free‑board as a storm‑ship, but after long consideration he selected the old armoured cruiser Vindictive. She was fitted with an 11‑inch howitzer on the quarter‑deck and two 7‑5‑inch howitzers for engaging the shore batteries at the shore end of the mole and firing, on the locks and seaplane base, and two large fixed flarnmenwerfers; in the foretop there were two pom‑poms and six Lewis guns for firing over the parapet of the mole to facilitate the assault. In addition, the Vindictive retained two 6‑inch guns on each side of the upper deck; three pom‑poms, ten Lewis guns, and four batteries, each of four Stokes mortars, were placed on the port side. Her mainmast was removed; a large portion of it was, however, mounted horizontally across the quarter‑deck, so that the part which extended for several feet beyond the port side should act as a bumpkin and protect the propeller. Special fenders were fitted along the port side to prevent damage whilst the ship was against the mole, and an enormous fender was fitted to the port side of the forecastle to take the first bump when going alongside.

 

A false flush deck was built on the skid beams, from the forecastle to the quarter‑deck on the port side, and three wide ramps were built leading from the upper deck to the starboard side of the false deck, to facilitate the rapid movement of the storming force when landing. Fourteen narrow brows were fitted, hinging on the false deck, to bridge the gap between it and the parapet of the mole. These were to be lowered on to the mole by rope tackles.

 

Only the first wave of the assaulting force could be carried in the cruiser, and two Mersey ferryboats were selected to carry the remainder. These ships ‑ called the Iris and the Daffodil ‑ were double‑hulled, double‑bottomed boats, and were thus practically unsinkable. They were, moreover, very easy to steer and could each carry 1,500 men; they drew very little water, and could, if necessary, steam over minefields with comparatively small risk. On the other hand,

 

Jan.-April 1918

THE PREPARATIONS

 

they could not go far under their own power, and would, in consequence, have to be towed across the Flanders Bight to Zeebrugge. Also their decks were low, so that scaling ladders had to be fitted to them in order to enable the troops to reach the parapet of the mole which was nearly thirty feet above high water. All three storming ships were provided with large grappling irons, which were suspended from derricks, so that they could be lowered over the parapet and the wires then hauled taut for securing the vessels alongside.

 

Five unarmoured cruisers were selected as block‑ships, the Thetis, Intrepid and Iphigenia for Zeebrugge and the Sirius and Brilliant for Ostend. Enough guns were left in the ships to enable the guns' crews to engage the shore batteries during the approach, but torpedoes were removed. They were each fitted with an additional steering and conning position; their masts were taken out to make them less conspicuous, and cement blocks and bags of dry cement were placed in the position considered best to prevent the cutting away and removal of the block‑ships when sunk. Charges were fitted for blowing out portions of the ships' bottoms for sinking them, and firing keys for blowing the charges were fitted both forward and aft.

 

For the destruction of the viaduct which connected the mole to the shore, two submarines, C.1 and C.3, were selected, and several tons of explosive, with a suitable detonating mechanism, were stowed in their fore compartments.

 

Admiral Keyes had always realised that the success of the expedition would depend in large measure upon the density of the smoke screen which was to be laid across the enemy's batteries and observation posts; and he found on his arrival at Dover that the existing appliances, though simple, had grave defects. The method in use was that of putting phosphorus into an iron pot and igniting it. This certainly made dense smoke, but the flames from the blazing phosphorus were simply beacon marks at night. Admiral Keyes decided to abandon the use of phosphorus and asked Wing‑Commander F. A. Brock to find a substitute. The new smoke screens were produced from a chemical known as chlor‑sulphonic acid. This substance gives out dense smoke when certain gases are applied to it; the exhaust fumes of an internal combustion engine or of a destroyer are equally effective.

 

It is perhaps only when concrete examples are given that an ordinary reader can appreciate the degree to which forces in the field absorb the production of an industrial state.

 

Admiral Keyes required eighty‑two tons of chlor‑sulphonic acid; only one firm in England manufactured the substance, and the managers of the firm stated that this quantity could only be produced if the manufacture of saxin were temporarily stopped. Saxin, as everybody knows, is a synthetic substitute for sugar, and is much used by diabetic patients. The War Cabinet eventually gave orders that the production of saxin should be suspended, and it was only when this was done and when every tea‑drinker in England who used a sugar substitute had been compelled to drink unsweetened tea, that Admiral Keyes could be confident that enough smoke-producing substance would be delivered.

 

The actual operation can only be explained by first describing the defences which these ships were to penetrate. The Germans had mounted fifty‑six heavy, medium and antiaircraft batteries along the Belgian coast. (About 225 guns, of which 136 were from 6‑inch to 15‑inch calibre.) The armament of the Ostend and Zeebrugge sub‑sections was, however, the principal concern of the attacking forces; for it was the guns of these sub‑sections which would cover their approach routes and points of attack. (See Map 19.)

 

At the western end of the Ostend sub‑section were the Aachen (four 5.9‑inch), Antwerpen (four 4.1‑inch), the Beseler (four 5.9‑inch) and the Cecilie (four 5.9‑inch), all emplaced along the sea front; a mile back from the coast at Mariakerke Bains was the heavy Tirpitz battery (four 11‑inch). On the eastern side of the harbour and canal were the Friedrich (four 3.5‑inch and one star‑shell howitzer) and the heavy Hindenburg (four 11‑inch) batteries. The Irene (three 5.9‑inch and one 4.1‑inch) was at the eastern end of the Ostend sub‑section. Just inside the limits of the next sub‑section ‑ (Breedene) - was the Preussen (four 11‑inch) battery, which, though it was controlled from another command, could support the barrage fire on the Ostend approach. About half a mile back from the coast was the Jacobynessen (four 15‑inch) battery, which also could be trained on to the approach route to Ostend. (The correct name of this battery was the Deutschland. It was, however, uniformly referred to as the Jacobynessen in all operation orders and reports of proceedings. It will be referred to by this incorrect, but, to British officers familiar name in this chapter.)

 

The Zeebrugge sub‑section was even stronger. At its western end were the coastal batteries COEsar (anti‑aircraft), Kaiserin (four 5.9‑inch) and the Groden (four 11‑inch); well back from the coast near Donkerklok Farm was the Hessen (four 11‑inch); to the west of the Zeebrugge mole was the Wurttemberg (four 4.1‑inch and an anti‑aircraft battery). East of the canal was the Friedrichsort (four 6.7‑inch) and

 

Jan.‑April1918

GERMAN DEFENCES

 

the Kanal (four 3.5‑inch); near Heyst were the Freya (four 8.2‑inch) and the Augusta (three 5.9‑inch). All these batteries were connected to an elaborate complex of watching, command and signalling stations; and it was this powerful system that our forces had to penetrate.

 

 

Zeebrugge

 

The Zeebrugge mole deserves special description. It was a seaward outpost of the tremendous coastal system that has just been described. The mole itself is in three parts; a railway viaduct, on iron framework girders, runs from the shore to the solid masonry of the mole; it is about 580 yards long and is just wide enough to carry the railway line which went from the shore to the mole. The mole proper, which continues the viaduct, is a magnificent mass of masonry, built on a segment of a circle that curves to the north‑east. It is 1,850 yards long and about 80 yards broad. Its western face is built up to a parapet, the top of which is about sixteen feet above the upper surface of the mole. Projecting from the main mass of the mole is a narrow mole extension ‑ also in masonry ‑ 260 yards long, with a lighthouse at its extremity.

 

The Germans had turned this mole into a minor fortress. On the mole extension, and commanding the approach routes with an unimpeded are of fire there were three 4.1‑inch and two 3.5‑inch guns. (At the time there was doubt as to the mole defences. Admiral Keyes believed them to consist of three 4.1‑inch guns on the mole head and six 3.5‑inch guns on the mole‑head extension. The strength of the batteries commanding the mole was also doubtful: the Lubeck (two 5.9.inch guns) was built after the operation and in consequence of it.) At 150 yards from the end of the mole was a wired‑in position containing two anti‑aircraft guns, and a shelter trench running across the mole. The guns' crews and the garrison of the mole were housed in large sheds of reinforced concrete; on its south‑western end was a seaplane base with its own garrison and concrete sheds.

 

According to the plan conceived by Admiral Keyes, the attack on this fortified mole‑head was to be no mere diversion; for the marines and seamen were to storm the position and hold it until the blockships had passed through. The difficulty of escalading so strong a position as the mole‑head was, in itself, formidable; and it was preceded by other difficulties which made an impressive list of obstacles or impediments that could only be overcome by skill and daring. The ships of the attacking force would have to pass through the barrage from the batteries in the Zeebrugge sub‑section. Having done so they would have to endure continuous fire from the medium-calibre guns of the mole, and from as many more guns in the coast defences as could be ranged on them; and they would have to suffer this concentration of fire for as long as the attack lasted. The storming parties would have to be placed on the top of the high narrow parapet on the western face of the wall; here they would have to place scaling ladders to the surface of the mole some sixteen feet below them; and they would have to establish a bridge‑head under fire from the machine gun nests at the entrance to the harbour, and from the destroyer or destroyers alongside the mole. At Ostend the block‑ships would have to pass through a barrage of from seven to eight batteries, and manoeuvre themselves into a blocking position under a concentrated fire from two or three. This fire would be quite uninterrupted, as the Ostend block‑ships could not be assisted by diversionary attack.

 

It can easily be understood that these immense obstacles could only be overcome by speed and secrecy of movement, and that the selection of the very best place for landing the storming parties at Zeebrugge was, as it were, the base or starting-point of the whole plan. The first condition of success was that the party that stormed the mole should do their work without set‑backs and with the greatest possible precision. After studying aerial photographs and plans of the mole provided by two Belgian engineers who had constructed the harbour, Admiral Keyes decided that the Vindictive ought to be laid alongside the mole at a point just to the westward of the mole‑head battery. If all went well, and the storming parties were put ashore rapidly, all the guns would probably be captured in a few minutes.

 

The next point to be settled was the best position for the block‑ships. It was known that both lock gates were run back into great concrete shelters during bombardments, if the tide permitted, and as the attack was to be delivered at or near high water, Admiral Keyes assumed that the lock gates would be run in on the first alarm. For this reason, he first intended that the block‑ships should be run right into the lock, or, if that proved impossible, that they should ram the lock gate and dislocate it. Later on, however, Admiral Keyes abandoned this plan. The Belgian engineers who were consulted were quite positive that, if the block‑ships were sunk in the deep water of the lock or just outside it, their superstructures could be cut away at low water and that destroyers and submarines would easily pass over what remained of them when the tide was high. Apart from this the Belgians were certain that if the block‑ships were sunk in the entrance to the channel where silt collected, then the channel would be definitely obstructed. This was confirmed by two escaped Belgians who had actually worked in the dredger at Zeebrugge

 

Jan.‑April 1918

THE PLAN

 

during the German occupation. For these reasons Admiral Keyes decided that the leading block‑ships only should make for the lock gates, and that the other two should be placed where the experts suggested.

 

The remainder of Admiral Keyes's plan was simple and natural. The attack on the mole was to be preceded by an aerial bombardment, and this was to be followed by an hour's bombardment of the coastal batteries near Ostend and Zeebrugge by the monitors. Similar bombardments supplemented by attacks by coastal motor boats were to be delivered during the weeks preceding the operation, whenever the weather permitted, so that the enemy would imagine that the bombardment which started the operation and the motor boat attacks which preceded the assault on the mole were no more than incidents in an established routine. During this last bombardment the storming and blocking forces were to approach the harbour. The smoke screen flotillas were to steam ahead of the attacking forces and put up an unbroken curtain of smoke across the objectives (see Plan). Thus far the plans for the two expeditions were identical. At Ostend the blocking expedition had to press into the entrance from the other side of the screen; at Zeebrugge the block‑ships would only make for the entrance after the mole had been stormed. One hundred and sixty‑five vessels of all classes, 82 officers, and 1,698 seamen and marines were allotted to the operation. The distribution of the forces and the duties of the various units were:

 

1. In the Swin, an anchorage in the Thames estuary off the Essex coast about 8 miles south of Clacton and out of sight of inhabited land.

 

for the attack on Zeebrugge mole - Vindictive, Iris II and Daffodil.

block‑ships Zeebrugge - Thetis, Intrepid, Iphigenia:

block‑ships Ostend - Sirius, Brilliant

 

2. At Dover.

 

Destroyers:

Warwick (flag of Vice‑Admiral).

Phoebe, North Star: patrol unit Zeebrugge.

Trident, Mansfield: patrol unit Zeebrugge.

Whirlwind, Myngs: patrol unit Zeebrugge.

Velox, Morris, Moorsom, Melpomene: patrol unit Zeebrugge.

Tempest, Tetrarch: patrol unit Ostend.

Attentive, Scott, Ulleswater, Teazer, Stork: outer patrol Zeebrugge.

 

Monitors:

Erebus. Terror: for long‑range bombardment at Zeebrugge batteries.

 

Destroyers:

Termagant, Truculent, Manly: attending on Erebus and Terror.

 

Submarines:

C.1, C.3: for destroying a portion of the viaduct, Zeebrugge.

Picket Boat: to rescue crews of C.1 and C.3.

 

Minesweeper:

Lingfield: attached to Zeebrugge expedition for escorting motor launches with surplus steaming parties back to Dover.

 

5 motor launches: for removing surplus steaming parties from block‑ships.

18 coastal motor boats.

28 motor launches: for smoke‑screening Zeebrugge expedition, picking up survivors from block‑ships.

 

3. At Dunkirk.

Monitors:

Marshall Soult, Lord Clive, Prince Eugene, General Craufurd, M.24, M.26, M.21: for bombarding Ostend batteries.

 

Destroyers: Faulknor, Mastiff, Afridi, Swift, Matchless: patrol off Ostend.

Mentor, Lightfoot, Zubian: accompanying Ostend monitors.

 

French torpedo boats:

Lestin, Roux, Bouclier: accompanying Ostend monitors.

6 British motor launches: for attending on big monitors.

18 British motor launches.

6 British coastal motor boats: for smoke‑screening the Ostend expedition, and rescue work.

4 French torpedo boats.

4 French motor launches: attending on small monitors, M.24, M.26, M.21.

 

4. At Harwich (under Rear‑Admiral Tyrwhitt).

7 Light Cruisers.

2 Flotilla Leaders and 14 Destroyers: to cover the operation and prevent interference from the northward.

 

Although ships of medium draft can enter Zeebrugge at all states of the tide, the attack could only be delivered at some time near high water. At low water the top of the parapet was about forty feet above the sea, and the entrance' channel was extremely narrow. The assault was only possible if the storming parties could reach the parapet rapidly ‑ which they would never be able to do if it were nearly thirty feet above the level of the Vindictive's deck; and if the block‑ships had water to manoeuvre themselves right athwart the entrance channel. This condition alone made adequate preparation extremely difficult; for if it is added to the other conditions necessary to success, it will be seen that the expeditions had to reach their objectives at or near a night high water, and that the time of high water had to be such that the expedition arrived and left during the hours of darkness. These conditions were fulfilled on about five days in each lunar month; so that the times of arrival and departure

 

April 1918

THE EXPEDITION READY

 

of each unit had to be worked out independently for each of these five days; nor must it be forgotten that these governing conditions were themselves governed by the wind. Unless the enormous smoke screen which was to cover the whole expedition was blown into the German defences, the expedition had little chance of success. To ensure the safe navigation of the force, the greater part of the area was very carefully surveyed and special navigational buoys laid out at various points of the track to be followed. This work was successfully carried out by the two Hydrographic officers on the Vice‑Admiral's staff. (Captain H. P. Douglas and Lieutenant‑Commander F. E. B. Haselfoot.) To prevent the removal of these buoys by the enemy it was essential that they should be laid at the last possible moment, and if the operation had to be postponed they would have to be withdrawn and relaid for the next attempt. The last fifteen miles, however, had to be navigated by dead reckoning with a tidal stream running across the line of advance, and through smoke screens which would blacken the natural darkness of the night. It was, therefore, doubtful whether the Vindictive could be brought alongside the mole at all, and more doubtful still whether the blockships and submarines would reach their destinations; if all did so, it would be a great achievement.

 

Early in April the ships allotted to the expedition were ready and the storming parties were embarked in the Swin detachment. The need for secrecy was now over, and the nature and purpose of the expedition was explained to the men in a lecture at which a plaster model of Zeebrugge mole was exhibited.

 

A week later ‑ April 11 ‑ the expedition sailed, and the attacking ships, seventy‑four in all, joined Admiral Keyes's flag off the Goodwin Sands. Whilst the force was moving across the Flanders Bight the 65th Wing of the Royal Air Force left Dunkirk and carried out the preliminary bombardment. At 12.45 a.m. the force stopped to disembark the men no longer required in the block‑ships: the expedition was now only 16 miles from Zeebrugge mole. Before the ships re‑started the wind died away, and then began to blow lightly from the south ‑ the wrong direction for the smoke screens. The moment was a terribly difficult one for Admiral Keyes. Everything still favoured the enterprise except the wind. In a few minutes the crews would have left the block‑ships and the expedition would again be under way. Should he allow it to go on, or ought he to turn it back? Very quickly, but very reluctantly, he decided that he could not lead so large a force of unprotected ships against a strongly fortified position unless their approach was covered by a smoke screen. As this was now impossible, he ordered the whole force back.

 

When the expedition returned to its anchorage, one coastal motor boat ‑ No. 33 ‑ was found to be missing. No explanation of the casualty could be given, nor has it ever been since discovered exactly why or how the boat fell into the enemy's hands. The loss was more serious than anybody knew at the time, for on board the captured motor boat the Germans discovered papers and diagrams which showed them that a blocking expedition had been planned against Ostend, and gave them a good deal of knowledge about the practical details of its execution.

 

Three days later the force again set out, and again Admiral Keyes ordered it back, owing to a rising wind and sea, in which the small craft could not have operated. These two false starts were extremely trying to officers and men.

 

Between April 22 and April 28, the night high water at Zeebrugge occurred at suitable times. The morning of April 22 was fine; towards noon the wind turned into the north‑east, and according to the latest forecast it was likely to blow from the same quadrant for the rest of the day. The conditions were, therefore, as good as they were ever likely to be. It was four days before full moon, and there was a good chance that the night would be cloudy. There was some uncertainty about the position of the enemy's destroyer flotilla; the last positive news we had received about the Flanders Force was that it had returned to Germany in the middle of February, leaving only a group of small torpedo boats behind. Whether they had returned to Zeebrugge was uncertain. This, however, in no way affected the plans, and Admiral Keyes decided that the moment for launching the expedition had at last arrived, and sent out the necessary signals.

 

All through the afternoon the ships were getting under way and sailing. (See Maps 20 and 21.) Captain C. S. Wills of the Erebus was the first to leave, with the monitors intended for the bombardment of the Zeebrugge batteries (1.10 p.m.). It was, at the time, a clear spring day, rather cold, with a blue sky half covered with grey clouds. But the cloud banks thickened during the next hour, and by the time Admiral Keyes was weighing in the Warwick (4.0 p.m.) the sun was hidden and the sky was overcast. By five o'clock the Warwick had taken up her position as leader of the main force, and Commodore the Hon. A. D. E. H. Boyle, with the Attentive and four

 

April 1918

THE EXPEDITION SAILS

 

destroyers, was well on his way towards the gap in the Belgian barrage, through which the expedition had to pass. At half‑past seven Sir Reginald Tyrwhitt left Harwich, with twenty‑three vessels, to patrol the approaches to the Flanders Bight as an outer guard. The monitors for the Ostend bombardment left Dunkirk at 8.35 p.m. under the command of Commodore H. Lynes in the Faulknor.

 

The entire concentration and the first moves in the operation had thus been made in daylight, a necessary but very serious risk. As far as Admiral Keyes could tell, however, the expedition had started unobserved, and at eight o'clock, just before darkness set in, he made the signal "St. George for England" ‑ a stirring reminder that the fighting would begin on St. George's Day.

 

Nearly an hour later, the Warwick was twenty‑eight miles from Zeebrugge mole. A fine drizzling rain was now falling, but the night was quiet and the wind still blew towards the land from the north and east. Admiral Keyes now signalled to all the detached ships that the operation would be carried out.

 

Just after ten the force reached the gap in the barrage where Commodore Boyle and his destroyers were on patrol. Here the ships stopped for a quarter of an hour, and the superfluous men in the block‑ships were taken off by five motor boats. At the same time all the coastal motor boats in tow of destroyers slipped their tows. When the force was again on its course, the Warwick and the Whirlwind, followed by the destroyers of their respective columns, drew ahead to drive off any outpost vessels that might be met with. Simultaneously, the Ostend block‑ships parted company and steered for the Stroom Bank buoy. The leading ships were now only fifteen miles from the mole.

 

Meanwhile the Erebus and Terror had reached their bombarding positions off West Kapelle. Almost at the same time the monitors from Dunkirk reached their firing positions. They were in two divisions: the Marshall Soult and the General Craufurd (21st), the Prince Eugene and Lord Clive (20th).

 

The organisation of the Dunkirk force was as follows:

 

20th Division.

Big Monitors: Prince Eugene (S.O.), Lord Clive.

Destroyers: Lestin (leader), Roux, Bouclier.

M.L.s: 2 British detailed for each big monitor.

Aiming light attached group: M.26; 2 French T.B.s, 2 French M.L.s. M.21 standing by with an aiming light.

 

21st Division.

Big Monitors: Marshall Soult (S.O.), General Craufurd.

Destroyers: Mentor, Meteor, Zubian.

M.L.; 2 British detailed for each big monitor.

Aiming light attached group: M.24, 2 French T.B.s, 2 French M.L.s.

 

22nd Division.

23rd Sub.: Faulknor, Lightfoot, Mastiff, Afridi.

24th Sub.: Swift, Matchless, (Tempest and Tetrarch from Swin).

 

M.L. Division: 18 (Max. No.) British M.L.s (float and smoke).

C.M.B. Division: 6 C.M.B.s.

 

The Marshall Soult, which had been detailed to bombard the Jacobynessen, Beseler and Cecilie batteries, anchored at the southern end of the Middle Bank; the General Craufurd took up a position about four and three‑quarter miles to the north‑north‑west. Her targets were the Hindenburg, Aachen and Antwerpen batteries. The Prince Eugene and the Lord Clive, whose targets were the Tirpitz and Aachen batteries, anchored at the eastern end of the West Deep, near Nieuport. At ten minutes past eleven these ships opened fire simultaneously. The Zeebrugge monitors began their bombardment about twenty minutes later.

 

The fine steady drizzle of rain was still falling on land and sea, and for this reason the bombardment by the monitors was not preceded by a bombardment from the air. This, though inevitable, was a great disappointment to Admiral Keyes, who had hoped that the bombing would drive the German guns' crews into their dugouts and so leave the guns more or less unattended when the expedition reached the coast.

 

Just before half‑past eleven the coastal motor boats moved off at high speed and laid a preliminary smoke screen across the entire line of advance. Under cover of this the slower motor launches moved to their stations and laid the screens which were to blind the enemy during the last approach. The smoke went up in clumps of murky cumulus from a line that ran roughly parallel to the coast for rather more than eight miles. As it drifted down towards the German batteries and look‑out posts, two groups of coastal motor boats opened the battle. It had been arranged that motor boats Nos. 25BD, 26B and 21B should pass along the western side of the mole and spray it with fire from their Stokes guns, and that Nos. 5 and 7, which were small, forty-foot boats, should go inside the harbour and sink any German destroyers that might be alongside the mole. This attack on the western end of the mole was to distract the enemy's attention whilst the Vindictive approached. The attack entrusted to coastal motor boats Nos. 5 and 7 was more critical; its object was to secure a safe passage for the block‑ships. Enemy destroyers lying alongside the mole might easily torpedo the block‑ships and bring them to a

 

April 1918

THE ENEMY SURPRISED

 

standstill before they reached the harbour entrance; and it was of the first importance that any destroyer capable of impeding the passage should be put out of action before the block‑ships passed the lighthouse.

 

At the time laid down, these two groups left the main force and steamed towards the mole at high speed; their commanding officers may justly claim to have made the first thrust, and to have delivered the first blow in the operation. The smoke screen had already been laid when they approached the mole head; but they passed through it and carried out their orders: motor boats Nos. 25BD, 26B and 21B, kept the western mole under fire; Sub‑Lieutenant C. R. L. Outhwaite, R.N.V.R., in No. 5 fired at what he believed to be a destroyer off the mole, and Sub‑Lieutenant L. R. Blake fired a torpedo at a destroyer lying alongside, and was under the impression that she was hit near the fore bridge. These attacks were, however, less successful than the officers imagined and the enemy paid little attention to them; they heard the first group in the smoke off the mole, but were quite unaware that they were attempting to keep the mole under fire; the detonations of Sub‑Lieutenant Blake's torpedoes were mistaken for shells from the monitors. Sub‑Lieutenant Blake was, nevertheless, under very heavy machine gun fire when he made off to seaward. When he cleared the mole the Vindictive had nearly reached her destination. The Phoebe and the North Star were patrolling off the mole, ready to beat off enemy destroyers. The Vice‑Admiral had taken the Warwick to a position from which he hoped to watch the attack on the mole, and see the block‑ships enter the harbour. The enemy seemed to be taking no special precautions: the two torpedo craft alongside the mole had not got steam up, and no vessels had been ordered to patrol the approaches to the harbour. The entire expedition had reached its destination unreported and unobserved.

 

In fact the enemy were only roused at the very last moment, and then they sent up volleys of star shells from the mole and the batteries behind. The Vindictive and the force approached the mole in a light which seemed to Captain A. F. B. Carpenter to be about as strong as that of early morning twilight. By extraordinary misfortune, the wind changed a few minutes later. It swung round completely, and blew almost straight off shore. The immense clouds of smoke that were being made by the motor units were thus blown right across the approach routes; they severed communication between destroyers on patrol and ships approaching the harbour; each commanding officer was now left to act as he thought best in a blinding pall of smoke which obscured the fo'c'sle of his own ship; whilst the German gunners watched our vessels emerging one by one from the vast curtain of smoke to seaward, into the flare of their star shells.

 

Just before midnight the Vindictive came through the last smoke screen, and Captain Carpenter saw the mole for the first time. The lighthouse was plainly visible and the Vindictive was heading for the middle of the mole extension. Captain Carpenter at once put the helm hard over and increased to full speed. As the ship moved across the narrow strip of water which now separated her from the mole, the German battery opened upon her. The officers in charge of the Vindictive's armament immediately replied with a concentrated fire against the guns on the mole. The German gunners were firing at a target that could hardly be missed, but was moving fairly rapidly across the battery's are of fire. The enemy had little time, but they used it well. Two minutes after the Vindictive had passed through the last smoke screen, Captain H. C. Halahan, in charge of the seamen's landing parties, Lieutenant‑Colonel B. H. Elliot, the commanding officer of the Marines storming parties, and Major A. A. Cordner, his second in command, were all dead; and Commander P. H. Edwards, R.N.V.R., was severely wounded; and Lieutenant‑Commander A. L. Harrison was struck down unconscious.

 

The casualties to the crew and the material damage were equally serious; the crews of the 7.5‑inch howitzers were nearly all killed and the guns themselves put out of action; the flammenwerfers were destroyed, and, worst and most serious of all, a large number of the movable gangways ‑ across which the men were to swarm on to the parapet ‑ were shot away. By wonderful good fortune the ship was only damaged in her upper works and was still seaworthy. None the less the loss of the howitzers deprived the Vindictive of half her power of retaliation: the damage to the gangways kept the storming parties massed and huddled at the foot of two gangways which were too narrow to carry them. Captain Carpenter conned the Vindictive through this hurricane of fire from a shelter on the port side called the flammenwerfer hut. It had been planned that he should lay the Vindictive right alongside the battery, so that the storming parties should rush the guns and the entire mole head position as soon as the gangways were lowered. The ship was actually placed alongside about three ships' lengths beyond this assigned position; (About 300 yards.) as she came to a standstill, the port anchor was let go within a yard of the mole.

 

April 1918

VINDICTIVE ALONGSIDE

 

 

Organisation of seamen storming parties:
In Vindictive	Groups A and B.
In Iris	Group C.
In Daffodil	Group D
Total	8 officers and 200 men.
Organisation of R.M. storming battalion:
In Vindictive	Battalion H.Q.
	Portsmouth (B) Company.
	Plymouth (C) Company.
	Lewis gun parties from M.G. Section of battalion.
In Iris:	Chatham (A) Company.
	2 Vickers gun sections.
	2 Stokes mortar crews.
Organisation of demolition parties:
The whole demolition party was called "C" Company and was divided into three parties (Nos. 1, 2 and 3); Party No. 1 was subdivided into two sections, Parties Nos. 2 and 3 into four sections.
In Vindictive:	Demolition Party No. 2 (Sections G, O, R and S).
In Daffodil	Demolition Party No. 1 (Sections A and B).
	No. 3 (Sections W, X, Y, Z).

 

The extraordinary difficulty of getting a foothold on the breakwater was now patent. The east‑going tidal stream, pressing against the mole, made a sort of cushion of troubled water which forced the ship back from the face of the masonry. "With the helm to starboard her bows came in at once, but the brows would not then reach the parapet. With the helm to port she surged away from the mole." Lieutenant H. G. Campbell, the commanding officer of the Daffodil, brought help in these trying moments. As the Vindictive approached the mole he had steered his ship out on to her starboard beam, and now, as the Vindictive was labouring in the troubled water off the mole face, he approached her bows on, and pushed her in to the mole. These were his orders; but only a fine seaman could have manoeuvred a ferry boat with such wonderful precision at a moment of such confusion. A few minutes later, Commander V. Gibbs brought the Iris II alongside the mole ahead of the Vindictive, and let go the starboard anchor.

 

As soon as the Daffodil pressed the Vindictive alongside the mole, Lieutenant‑Commander B. F. Adams led the first of the seamen storming parties up the narrow swaying gangways. They were followed by the Marine storming platoons under Lieutenants T. F. V. Cooke, C. D. R. Lamplough and H. A. P. de Berry. When these groups of men reached the mole they realised that there could be no thought of rushing the mole head battery as had been intended. The Vindictive had gone past the position assigned to her, and the machine-gun positions and barbed wire were now between the storming parties and the gun positions they had to carry. But as a diversion the attack on the mole might still succeed if the Vindictive and the storming parties could hold their ground notwithstanding that they would be a focusing point for the fire of every German gun that could be brought to bear upon them. The leading Marine platoons therefore formed "a strong post at the shoreward end of No. 3 shed"; platoons Nos. 5, 7, and 8 which had followed close at their heels under Captain E. Bamford, were formed in a regular tactical order.

 

On reaching the parapet, Lieutenant‑Commander Adams endeavoured to place the Vindictive's parapet anchors which Lieutenant‑Commander R. R. Rosoman was working from the ship. He found, however, that the anchor derricks were too short and at once moved off towards the mole head battery with his men. Wing‑Commander Brock was with him. After the party had moved some way they were brought to a standstill at a trench which the enemy was defending with machine guns. Lieutenant‑Commander Harrison now reached the mole, notwithstanding his injuries, and took charge of the seamen storming parties while Lieutenant‑Commander Adams went back to ask Major B. G. Weller for reinforcements. Wing‑Commander Brock fell a few minutes earlier. He was shot down whilst seeking for an enemy range‑finder, which he desired to examine.

 

Meanwhile the remainder of the marines and the seamen demolition parties were getting on to the mole; but it was evident that it could only be held by an extraordinary feat of courage and discipline; for the German gunners in the destroyer alongside the mole were now sweeping the bridgehead that the marines were holding.

 

Although the officers in the shore batteries refrained from firing at the mole while their own men still held it, the Vindictive's upper works were being pounded into scrap‑iron by the battery on the mole, and a fruitless endeavour was being made to place the parapet anchors from the Iris. Lieutenant C. E.V. Hawkings contrived to place a scaling ladder as soon as the ship came alongside and scrambled up it. But as he reached the top, the ship surged away and he was left alone. He was last seen defending himself with his revolver. Lieutenant‑Commander G. N. Bradford now performed an act of desperate courage. Seeing that the parapet anchor could not be made to catch, he scrambled up the derrick from which it was worked and lowered himself on to the swaying anchor. Here for a few moments he swung like an acrobat, and then leapt on to the parapet and placed the anchor. An instant later he was struck down by machine‑gun bullets and fell

 

April 1918

THE BLOCK‑SHIPS GO IN

 

into the dark surging waters between the ship and the mole.

 

Commander Gibbs now decided that it was impossible to get the men on to the mole over the scaling ladders, and took his ship alongside the starboard quarter of the Vindictive. The storming parties in the Daffodil could only be got over the bows in driblets, and very few of them ever reached the mole.

 

Twenty minutes after the. Vindictive had been put alongside, the position was precarious and dangerous to a degree. Thanks to the extraordinary discipline of the Royal Marines, a bridge‑head had been formed opposite the brows, and thanks to the exertions of the seamen storming parties, the Vindictive had been partially secured to the mole; but the difficulties of sending reinforcements to the bridge‑head were increasing with every moment, for the Vindictive's upperworks were rapidly being reduced to a mass of twisted iron. She was indeed receiving terrible punishment and had just been struck in the foretop by a shell which put all the guns in it out of action. Only one man was left ‑ Sergeant N. A. Finch, R.M.A.; he continued to fight his gun with bitter resolution, until he too was struck down by another shell. The foretop had been armed with two pom‑poms and six Lewis guns, and had been manned by a party of Royal Marine Artillerymen under the command of Lieutenant C. N. B. Rigby, R.M.A. Ever since the Vindictive had been laid alongside, these cool‑headed men had fired rapidly and methodically at every point from which the enemy appeared to be firing; in particular at the two German destroyers alongside the mole. The death of Lieutenant Rigby and his artillerymen was a terrible loss to the men on the mole.

 

It was at about this time that the Vice‑Admiral saw the block‑ships moving in a regular, ordered procession towards the entrance channel. A few moments later Captain Carpenter also saw their funnels moving steadily forward on the other side of the mole. He at once went below to the dressing stations and announced that the mole had been stormed and the block‑ships had passed in. He was answered by round after round of cheering from the crowds of wounded and dying men around him.

 

Though it was found impossible to destroy the mole head guns, the attack as a distraction had succeeded. For whilst the Vindictive was labouring against the outer wall, and her upper works were literally being blasted away at point blank range, whilst the storming parties were struggling desperately to keep their foothold on the parapet, the three block‑ships had passed up harbour. The enemy most probably thought that the assault upon the mole was the first echelon of a large landing expedition; and it was against the stormers and the Vindictive that they had concentrated their fire.

 

At about midnight the Thetis, leading the three ships, first came under the fire of the batteries. It was apparently a barrage fire, directed against no particular object, and for the next quarter of an hour the block‑ships steamed through it. They were still covered by a fairly thick smoke screen, for the wind, blowing off the shore, was smothering the approach routes. At twenty minutes past twelve Commander R. S. Sneyd, in the Thetis, sighted the great masonry buttress on the mole head and the lighthouse above it. He was almost on top of them; so he put his helm hard over, signalled to the ships astern of him, and went on at full speed. As he did so, the guns on the mole head extension opened fire on him. The officer in charge of this wave‑lashed outpost of the Belgian fortifications must have been the first German battery commander to realise the character and purpose of the attack. We do not know what he signalled to headquarters, but one thing at least is certain. Just as the German battery officer sighted the block‑ships, a tremendous explosion at the end of the mole severed his telephone wires and cut all communication between the mole and headquarters.

 

Lieutenant R. D. Sandford, in submarine C.3, was the responsible person. As we have seen, in order to prevent reinforcements reaching the mole, Admiral Keyes had planned the destruction of the viaduct connecting it to the shore. For this purpose it was intended to blow up two submarines, loaded with several tons of high explosive, against the iron girders. The boats selected were C.3 and C.1 (Lieutenant A. C. Newbold). They had been in tow of the Trident and Mansfield all night; but the tow‑line of the C.1 had parted and only C.3 had been brought to the starting position provided for in the operation orders, at the prescribed time. C.1, proceeding under her own power, was well behind. After his ship was cast off, Lieutenant Sandford followed the prescribed courses towards the viaduct. The submarine had been fitted with special gyro control gear, so that she could be abandoned after the final course had been set. Lieutenant Sandford, however, left nothing to chance, but rammed the viaduct with the crew on board. He struck it shortly after midnight and jammed the bows of his vessel tight between the girders; he then lighted the fuses to the mass of explosives with which the submarine had been filled, and made away with his men in a motor skiff which had to be rowed as the propeller had been damaged. They were sighted from the viaduct and fired upon

 

April 1918

THE BLOCK‑SHIPS SUNK

 

by rifles, machine guns and pom‑poms; but when they were only a cable's distance from the viaduct, the submarine blew up and blasted away 100 feet of the viaduct. The flash lit up the entire theatre of the struggle, and yet, at that moment, the battle was being fought with such fury and desperation that the Vice‑Admiral saw, but could not hear, the explosion. The roar of the artillery was so intense that it had obliterated the sound of this tremendous detonation.

 

The explosion beneath the viaduct had severed communications between the mole head and the shore; but at least the German battery commander still had three important targets at point‑blank range. The block‑ships were passing so close that in ordinary times the captain on the bridge could have hailed the lighthouse keeper and got an answer from him. The German gunners may have been distracted by a sudden change of targets, for up to then their guns had probably been trained to seaward. At all events, the block‑ships passed through their fire without losing control and steamed on towards the channel. None the less, this short outburst of fire had done terrible damage to the Thetis. As she passed out of the gun‑fire, tons of water were pouring in through the shell‑holes in her starboard side and she had already taken a heavy list. A moment later she struck the nets and obstructions that had been laid across the harbour mouth. She cut through them; as she did so Commander Sneyd saw the piers at the entrance to the channel. Just as he sighted his goal, the engines stopped; the propellers were so fouled by the mass of wire netting from the obstruction that the engines could no longer keep them revolving. Commander Sneyd therefore signalled to the Intrepid and Iphigenia to pass to starboard of him. His ship was now drifting to port, and a few minutes later she grounded on the eastern side of the channel. The engine‑room staff reported soon after, however, that the starboard engine could be worked, and with this Commander Sneyd again got the vessel on the move. She was in a sinking condition and grounded almost at once on the opposite side of the channel; he then fired the sinking charges. Lieutenant H. A. Littleton, R.N.V.R., in motor boat No. 526, was near the Thetis when she sank; he at once went towards her and took Commander Sneyd and the crew on board from the cutter in which they had left the ship. Having done this "easily" ‑ to borrow his own phrase he made towards the canal entrance to assist the other blockships.

 

The Thetis had not reached the lock gates; but Commander Sneyd had done his work. The worst fire from the mole battery had been concentrated against his ship, and he had cleared the obstruction from the track of the two ships in his wake. The Intrepid and the Iphigenia passed on unimpeded; and Lieutenant S. S. Bonham‑Carter, who was now leading in the Intrepid, took his ship well past the piers. The enemy was then concentrating every available gun against the Vindictive and the Thetis, so that the desperate venture against the mole was still serving its purpose. Lieutenant Bonham‑Carter noticed, as he passed between the piers, that practically no guns were firing upon his ship. When the Intrepid was well inside, he put his helm hard a‑starboard and turned his engines so as to bring the ship athwart the channel, and ordered the crews into the boats. When he saw that his ship would turn no further he sank her.

 

It had been impossible to remove the superfluous men from the Intrepid, and the whole crew of 87 men were on board. Most of them got away in two cutters and a skiff. Lieutenant Bonham‑Carter and a party of officers and men paddled away on a raft. Meanwhile Lieutenant E. W. Billyard‑Leake, who was conning the last of the block‑ships, came into a thick smoke screen as he approached the piers; when he cleared it he found that a dredger and a barge were right on his track. He severed the tow‑line which connected them, and then sighted the Intrepid ahead. He saw that her stern was aground on the western bank, and that there was a gap between her bows and the eastern side of the channel. He made for it, but whilst he was manoeuvring into position he collided with the Intrepid, and his ship was temporarily out of control. As he cleared the sunken block‑ship ahead of him another smoke screen smothered the entire channel, and he had to manoeuvre his ship in sulphurous darkness. When he felt his forepart strike against the eastern bank, he realised that his ship must be across the gap between the Intrepid's bows and the shore, and so ordered his men to take to the boats. He then moved his engines to throw his vessel across the channel, and sank the ship. Lieutenant P. T. Dean, R.N.V.R., was off the stem of the ship in motor boat No. 282. Lieutenant Bonham‑Carter was also near by with his raft. Lieutenant Dean took off as many men from the cutter as his launch would carry, and rescued the captain of the Intrepid. He then made off for the harbour mouth with the cutter in tow. He was in a hurricane of shrapnel and machine‑gun fire; for the Germans were now laying a tremendous barrage across the entrance. The Vindictive was being hit several times a minute, and the damage done to her upper‑works was so terrible that Captain Carpenter had to order the Daffodil's

 

April 1918

VINDICTIVE WITHDRAWS

 

commanding officer to sound the recall. His own ship had no searchlights left from which to flash the signals, and no siren upon which to sound them.

 

As soon as the recall was sounded the storming and demolition parties retired over the brows. The Marines then withdrew in groups of six, carrying their wounded with them over the scaling ladders. The men of No. 9 Platoon covered the final retirement and were the last to leave. Meanwhile Admiral Keyes, who had seen the block‑ships go in and was aware that the storming ships were being terribly punished, ordered the commanding officer of the Warwick to close the Vindictive. The Warwick was taken close in to the mole, to the westward of her, and Admiral Keyes saw above the parapet the wrecks of the block‑ships; they were all three lit up by the enemy's star shells, and there could be no doubt that they lay at the entrance to the canal.

 

Captain Carpenter kept his ship alongside for twenty‑five minutes after the recall had been sounded. The storming parties had ceased coming on board for several minutes when the Vindictive and the storming ships made for open water. As they did so, they came in sight of the Warwick, so that Admiral Keyes knew that they had withdrawn. But their punishment was not yet over, for it was at this moment that a group of German guns found the Iris and riddled her with shell. She was hit ten times by smaller guns and twice by the heavy batteries. Her commander, Valentine Gibbs, was mortally wounded, Major C. E. C. Eagles of the Royal Marines was struck down, and Lieutenant G. Spencer, R.N.R., though terribly wounded, had to turn the ship away from the land. When the Iris got out of the gunfire half her bridge was blown away, and she was blazing. The main deck was simply choked with dying and wounded.

 

The German gunners were, indeed, firing with deadly accuracy, and it was at about this time that the destroyers off the mole suffered a serious loss. Some time after one o'clock Lieutenant‑Commander K. C. Helyar, in the North Star, sighted some vessels alongside the mole and closed it in order to torpedo them. He fired all his torpedoes and began to withdraw his ship; but the mole head battery found him, and in a few moments his ship was disabled and sinking. Lieutenant‑ Commander H. E. Gore‑Langton at once brought the Phoebe alongside and the majority of the crew were taken off.

 

Admiral Keyes having seen the storm‑ships withdrawing, and after following them for a few minutes, stood in again towards the mole to cover the retirement of the small craft. Lieutenant Dean, who had now cleared the mole head, sighted the Warwick and steered for her to transfer the block‑ships' survivors. His boat had been repeatedly hit since he had left them, and the living, the wounded, the dying and the dead were all huddled together. (101 persons in all.) But those who were still alive and conscious had seen the block‑ships sunk in the entrance channel, and were swept by the wild emotions which seize men in the hour of victory. As the motor boat staggered towards the Warwick the men in her saw that she was flying an immense silk flag which had been given to Admiral Keyes when he commanded the Centurion. They rose to their feet and rent the air with their cheering. Their shout of triumph was amongst the last sounds of the battle; for the swarm of ships that had appeared off the coast about two hours before was now fast disappearing in the darkness.

 

The attempt to block Ostend failed. Here, as at Zeebrugge, the motor boats put up a curtain of smoke across the entrance, and the wind shifted at the last moment. The results were more serious. The Stroom Bank buoy, from which the block‑ships were to steer for the entrance to the harbour, had been moved a mile to the eastward. In the dense smoke that blew in their faces and with a tidal stream running at a rate subject to considerable changes, the block‑ship commanders could not be certain of their exact position. When, therefore, the smoke lifted and they sighted the buoy, being unaware that it had been shifted, they closed it and steered for the harbour on a course calculated from its normal position, and grounded to the eastward of the entrance. They blew up their ships, which were then under a heavy fire, and their crews were taken off by three motor launches Nos. 532, 276 and 283.

 

Some time before dawn, after the firing had ceased, and the last ships had disappeared in the darkness, German parties began to search Zeebrugge mole for survivors. They found about a score of men near the great shed which stood beyond the wire defences of the mole head battery.

 

By the time the British prisoners were herded together in the convict cells where the Germans confined them, aeroplanes were flying over the entrance to ascertain the positions of the block‑ships. The day was cloudy and the photographs were taken in a bad light; none the less, they showed the two block‑ships lying diagonally to the axis of the hannel, right inside the entrance piers. The Intrepid, which was furthest in, was on the western side of the channel, and the airmen estimated that her bows were about thirty- eight

 

April 1918

EFFECT OF THE OPERATION

 

yards from the eastern bank of the channel. The Iphigenia, which was outside the Intrepid, lay right across the navigable channel: there were nineteen yards of clear space between her extremities and the eastern and western banks.

 

It was impossible for us to determine what the effect of this would be. The German commanders were confident that the submarine campaign would not be impeded, for, after inspecting the sunken cruisers, the officer in command of the 1st Marine Division reported that the channel was "not completely blocked." On the following day Admiral von Schroeder sent a general report to Berlin in which he stated that units of the 2nd "T" Half Flotilla had already used the passage to the west of the block‑ships, and that "Submarine warfare would be neither obstructed nor delayed by the English onslaught." (The 2nd "T" Half Flotilla was composed of small torpedo boats of low draught. When Zeebrugge was reoccupied in October 1918, the harbour and canal entrance were examined by experts, who found that the Germans had dredged a channel through the silt on the west side of the block‑ships after removing two piers on the western bank of the channel. The dredged channel was marked by great iron girders; there was no channel on the eastern side of the block‑ships. See Map 22.)

 

The information actually in our hands justified a rather different conclusion. We did not know that the local commanders had reported so cheerfully to Berlin, but we did know that, on the morning after the expedition, the German authorities had warned all submarines that Zeebrugge was blocked, and had ordered them to return by way of Ostend.

 

This order was, however, more a precaution than a statement of fact and it only remained in force for one day. During the 24th, three submarines left by way of Ostend, and, on the following day, UB.16 went to sea past the blockships in Zeebrugge. On the 27th, entries and exits were made partly by Zeebrugge and partly by Ostend, after which the average number of sailings and arrivals was maintained. These facts were unknown to our authorities at the time, who still hoped that Zeebrugge was practically scaled up, and that a successful operation against Ostend would make the Flanders bases unusable. Though the channel was not sealed the passage which the Germans hoped to keep clear on the western side of the sunken block‑ships was evidently very small, and only passable near the times of high water, for the German engineers hurriedly removed two small piers near the wrecks in order to get more room.

 

 

I

The Blocking of Ostend, May 10, 1918

 

As soon as Admiral Keyes knew that the expedition against Ostend had failed, he informed the Admiralty that he intended to block the port with the Vindictive during the next four days. The necessary preparations were, indeed, completed in this very short space of time, but on April 27 the weather was bad and the operation had to be postponed until the night high water at Ostend occurred at a suitable time.

 

The selection of the new date was a matter of nice calculation. The essentials of the problem were that the blockship should be run into the harbour near high water, that the expedition should sail in total darkness, and that it should get out of range of the coastal batteries before daylight came up. The difficulty of fulfilling these conditions was increasing every day, as the nights were shortening fast. During the first fortnight of May the sun set between half‑past seven and a quarter to eight, and rose between a quarter‑past four and half‑past. The period of twilight was lengthening, and the period of absolute darkness was only three hours (10.24 p.m. to 1.30 a.m.). This, however, was the period of complete darkness which is established by astronomical calculations: for ordinary practical purposes it might be said that effective darkness began at half‑past nine and ended at about three o'clock in the morning.

 

The expedition would cover the distance between Dunkirk and Ostend in two and a half hours, from which it followed that if the attack was to be delivered within an hour of high water, then the days selected must be days on which the night high water at Ostend occurred not earlier than midnight. If the expedition was to clear the coastal batteries before daylight, the latest hour of high water would be 2.0 a.m. The times at which the expedition was to start could not, however, be calculated merely by arithmetic. Fortunately the best local knowledge was available, that of the captains of the Ostend‑Dover packet boats, who had spent many years going in and out of Ostend and whose vessels were then working under the Vice‑Admiral's command. They informed Admiral Keyes and his staff that the tidal streams off the harbour mouth were irregular during certain days of the lunar month and that the east‑going current would not be running at equal strength before and during every high water. As it was always part of the Admiral's plan that this easterly tidal stream should be used

 

May 1918

THE NEW PLAN

 

for swinging the blocking cruiser across the channel, the times of departure in the programme were not separated by equal periods of time. The necessary conditions obtained absolutely between May 11 and 13, and very nearly obtained on the 9th and 14th.'

 

Date.	Time of night H.W. at Ostend (G.M.T.)	Moonrise	Sunrise.	Sunset.	Effective darkness	Latest hour at which expedition could sail from Dunkirk.
May 8	11 p.m.	2.46 a.m.	4.14 a.m.   to   4.00 a.m.	7.30 p.m.   to   7.45 p.m.	9.30 p.m.   to   3.45 a.m.
9	11.47 p.m.	3.18 a.m.				10.30 p.m.
10		3.48 a.m.				11.00 p.m.
11	0.30 a.m.	4.29 a.m.				11.30 p.m.
12	1.12 a.m.	5.18 a.m.				11.30 p.m.
13	1.55 a.m.	6.18 a.m.				11.45 p.m.
14	2.40 a.m.	7.27 a.m.				Midnight

 

The question which Admiral Keyes had to decide was whether these two doubtful days should be included amongst those upon which the expedition was to be allowed to sail. There was little reason for excluding May 9: May 14 was more doubtful, but after long consideration Admiral Keyes placed both nights on his schedule of possible dates.

 

The postponement from April 27 to May 9 made it possible to add another blockship ‑ the Sappho ‑ to the expedition. Admiral Keyes appointed the officers of the old block‑ships to the command of the new ones and placed Commodore Lynes in charge of the expedition.

 

The new plan was similar to its predecessor. There was to be the same carefully marked approach route, the same smoke screens across the batteries, and a brief preliminary bombardment. It was, however, very uncertain whether the enemy would be able to supplement the resistance of his batteries by attacking the expedition with destroyers. We were still without any reliable information about the Flanders Flotilla, as our latest news was nearly three months old. Knowing as we did that it had returned to Germany in the middle of February, it seemed most improbable that it should not have been sent back, yet we had no information about its return. If the flotilla were actually in Zeebrugge we did not know whether the destroyers would be able to pass the obstructions rapidly and attack the expedition as soon as the alarm was given. In the circumstances, it seemed best to assume that the Zeebrugge destroyers would intervene, and to take special precautions in the eastern approaches to Ostend. This covering of the expedition was, indeed, so important that Admiral Keyes determined to see to it himself. He divided the twelve destroyers of the covering force into three independent groups of four, and stationed them on three patrol lines, to the southward and eastward of Ostend Bank. He himself with his flag in the Warwick took the outer station at which the enemy's destroyers would most probably be first encountered. This division of the covering force was the outcome of experience which had shown that larger units lose their cohesion in a night action. Even if the enemy intervened in great strength, the Vice‑Admiral was confident that his small units would be better able to deal with them than a larger, concentrated force.

 

On May 8 everything was ready, and the Commodore sent out a stirring appeal to his force. The previous expedition had been unsuccessful owing to chances of the sea which would, in all probability, never occur again; everybody engaged had carried out their duties with such fortitude and precision that they could be almost certain of success in ordinary circumstances. There was, however, nothing to be done but to wait until the wind and weather were favourable, and to hope that the waiting period would soon be over.

 

The opportunity occurred earlier than had been expected. On May 9, the first of the five possible days, the Vice‑Admiral and the Commodore visited the Belgian headquarters at La Panne. Just after lunch, the Vice‑Admiral noticed that the wind had shifted to the northward and was blowing in towards the shore. Both he and the Commodore left their hosts at once, and returned to Dunkirk as fast as their motor could take them. Here the Vice‑Admiral signalled to the force that the expedition would start that night, and then hurried on to Dover to take command of the destroyer division with which he intended to cover the approach route.

 

The forces sailed from Dunkirk and Dover after darkness had set in.

 

(30th Division:

Monitors: Prince Eugene, Sir John Moore.

Destroyers: Lestin, Roux, Bouclier.

4 large motor launches.

M.27; 2 French destroyers, 2 French motor boats, attached to the 30th Division for marking the position of aiming light.

 

31st Division:

Monitors: Erebus, Terror.

Destroyers: Phoebe, Morris, Manly.

4 large motor launches.

M.23, M.25; 2 French destroyers and 2 French motor boats, attached to the 30th Division for marking the aiming light.

 

32nd Division: Faulknor (Commodore's broad pendant), Nugent, Moorsom

Myngs.

 

33rd Division: Broke, Matchless, Mansfield, Melpomene.

 

34th Division: Warwick (flag of Vice‑Admiral), Velox, Whirlwind,

Trident.

Motor launch Division: 18 large boats.

C.M.B. Division: 5 large, 3 small boats.

Attached C.M.B.'s: 2, for escorting Vindictive.)

 

The enemy had evidently learned that our

 

May 1918

VINDICTIVE OFF OSTEND

 

forces were assembling for some big operation; for just as the block‑ships were leaving the roadstead, the Commodore was informed that all the buoys off Ostend had been removed. This unpalatable information, obtained at the last moment by the Air Service, was confirmed by Squadron Commander Ronald Graham, who made a special reconnaissance. The Commodore had, however, provided against the contingency, and a special light buoy, which was to be laid at the last turning‑point off Ostend harbour, was carried in the force. The German precaution was none the less disconcerting.

 

This, however, was only the first set‑back. Soon after the force left harbour an accident to the Sappho's boiler reduced her speed to six knots.

 

Obviously she could not take part; but, as the original intention had been to block the harbour with the Vindictive alone, as the wind and sky seemed almost to invite the Commodore to go on, he signalled to Commander A. E. Godsal that he had "every confidence he would do his best without the Sappho," and the expedition continued on its way.

 

The divisions of the force moved to their allotted stations during the night; at every moment the Commodore expected interference from the enemy; but the hours went by and no enemy ships were reported. As he approached Ostend the Commodore saw star shells going up from the coast at fairly regular intervals, but that was all. He could detect no signs of exceptional vigilance.

 

At half‑past one every division of ships was at its station and the Vindictive was nearing the turning‑point off Ostend. The motor boats and launches that had been ordered to carry out the inshore operations now moved off, and a quarter of an hour later the Commodore gave the order to begin the bombardment.

 

(The schedule of duties for the mosquito craft was as follows:

 

C.M.B.S Nos. 21 and 22: to mark the Stroom Bank, and when relieved by C.M.B. No. 12 to move off and lay a calcium buoy between the piers.

C.M.B. No. 12: to relieve C.M.B.s Nos. 21 and 22 at the Stroom Bank and then to mark it.

C.M.B.s Nos. 24 and 30: to deliver torpedo attacks on the piers.

C.M.B.s Nos. 5 and 22: to burn red flares near the wrecks of the Brilliant and Sirius.

C.M.B. No. 23: to mark the entrance to the harbour with a special flare if demanded by the Vindictive.

C.M.B.s Nos. 25 and 26: to escort the Vindictive, to mark the direction of the pier heads, and to attack the pier heads with torpedoes.

M.L.s Nos. 254 and 276: to rescue the crew of the Vindictive.

13 Motor launches: to make smoke screen.)

 

From the West Deep the Prince Eugene and the Sir John Moore opened upon the Cecilie, the Beseler, the Antwerpen and the Aachen batteries to the west of Ostend; and from their anchorage north of the Wenduyne Bank, the Erebus and Terror opened upon the Jacobynessen, the Tirpitz and the Hindenburg ernplacements.

 

The officers in charge of the coastal motor boats that had been ordered to mark the wrecks of the Brilliant and Sirius were the first to get in touch with the enemy. Lieutenant W. H. Bremner, in motor boat No. 22, (Lieutenant A. E. P. Welman was afloat in motor boat No. 22 as S.O. of C.M.B.s.) and Sub‑Lieutenant Outhwaite, in No. 5, had some difficulty in locating the old block‑ships; whilst they were searching, motor boat No. 22 fell in with a German torpedo boat and engaged her. After a brief exchange of shots the enemy made away to the eastward.

 

Meanwhile, the other motor boats had started the torpedo attacks against the pier heads. Lieutenant A. Dayrell‑Reed, R. N. R., in coastal motor boat No. 24, penetrated the smoke screen and reached the entrance to the harbour at about a quarter to two. He fired a torpedo at the eastern pier head and saw it explode. Lieutenant A. L. Poland, in motor boat No. 30, was only a few minutes behind his colleague. He saw the explosion against the eastern pier head and fired at the other from a range at about 700 yards. Again the torpedo hit and exploded; but it is most doubtful whether these determined and gallant attacks shook the pier head defences ‑ as they were intended to do ‑ or whether they put the German gunners thoroughly on their guard, and ensured for the Vindictive a hot reception.

 

Whilst Lieutenants Poland and Dayrell‑Reed were delivering these preliminary attacks, the Vindictive was rounding the last turning‑point. As she did so, the Commodore, who was now at his station to the north of the harbour, (See Map 23.) saw with dismay that his ill luck was not yet exhausted. The smoke screen to the south seemed very well laid, but the

 

May 1918

VINDICTIVE GOES IN

 

north‑westerly breeze was just beginning to carry a sea mist towards the land. He knew that it would cover the corridor of clear water between the smoke screens to the east and west of the harbour mouth, and that in a few moments it would envelop the Vindictive. For a time he hoped that the Vindictive would escape it; and a minute or so later he heard a tremendous outburst of fire from the direction of the harbour, and thought that the block‑ship had got in. He at once ordered the destroyers of the 32nd Division to throw star shells over the entrance, and to engage the enemy batteries with high‑explosive shell.

 

The Vindictive was overtaken by the mist; Commander Godsal steamed towards the shore for thirteen minutes and then turned to the westward, for he could see nothing. Yet he must have been very near when he put his helm over; for a few minutes later (2.12) Lieutenant C. F. B. Bowlby, in one of the escorting motor boats (No. 26), sighted the eastern pier head and fired at it. The torpedo struck the bottom and exploded so near his boat that it damaged her badly. Lieutenant Bowlby drew out of a tornado of machine‑gun and shrapnel fire with his launch nearly disabled.

 

Commander Godsal continued to steer through the fog in the greatest perplexity. After making to the westward for a short way he turned sixteen points to starboard; then, when he was certain that he had passed the harbour mouth, he turned westward again, and ordered motor boat No. 23 - Lieutenant the Hon. C. E. R. Spencer ‑ to light the million-candle‑power flare. The light showed the pier heads about a cable away on the port hand. Commander Godsal put the helm hard a‑starboard to enter; as the Vindictive began to swing, Lieutenant R. H. McBean, in motor‑boat No. 25, sighted the pier heads and fired two more torpedoes at them. Both were seen to hit their mark and explode.

 

From the moment when the million‑candle‑power flare lit up the misty darkness and showed Commander Godsal the goal he was seeking, and the German gunners the target for which they were searching the resources of stratagem and cunning were exhausted. The action was now a sheer trial of strength and endurance between Commander Godsal and his enemies. The Vindictive was still turning under starboard helm when she became the focusing point for the fire of every German battery that could register on her. As she turned inside the pier heads, the bursting shells swept her upper‑works and reduced them to scrap iron. The ship was still under starboard helm when Commander Godsal went outside the conning tower to get a better view. His intention was to steady the ship on a course which would put her head on to the western bank, and then to manoeuvre her across the channel with the assistance of the east‑going tide. But almost as Commander Godsal left the conning tower a shell struck it and he fell dead; simultaneously the navigator, who alone could have righted the helm and steadied the ship in time, was struck down unconscious. The ship continued to run under starboard helm, and she was pointing away from the western bank when Lieutenant V. A. C. Crutchley took command. Before he could swing the Vindictive back, she grounded forward on the eastern side and the tide swept the stern away from the axis of the channel. After trying fruitlessly to work the after‑part of the ship across the fairway, Lieutenant Crutchley ordered everybody to leave the engine‑room and he then fired the sinking charges. When the Vindictive sank, she was lying very obliquely to the axis of the channel and was by no means blocking it. (See Map 24.)

 

The rescue launches (Nos. 254 and 276) came alongside with great difficulty; No. 254 had been struck by a shell which had killed the first lieutenant (Lieutenant G. Ross, R.N.V.R.) and had wounded the captain ‑ Lieutenant G. H. Drummond, R.N.V.R.; No. 276 (Lieutenant R. Bourke, R.N.V.R.) was also hit, but her captain kept her alongside the Vindictive for as long as he could; just before he left her he found Lieutenant Sir John Alleyne and three survivors in the water clinging to an upturned skiff. They were all of them badly wounded and could not have survived many minutes longer. (The Germans subsequently found three unwounded men in the Vindictive.)

 

At half‑past two, which was roughly the time when the operation was to be completed, the Vice‑Admiral heard the gunfire die down. He knew, therefore, that the carefully thought out programme had been completed, but he could assume that the German commander at Ostend had, long ago, communicated with headquarters at Bruges, and that the destroyers at Zeebrugge might at any moment loom out through the mist, and make a resolute attack upon the expedition as it withdrew. (The Flanders Flotilla was still in Germany; see ante, pp. 252, 267.) A quarter of an hour after the gunfire had ceased, therefore, the Warwick and her division steamed slowly to the westward, on a course roughly parallel to the shore. The destroyer movements after the operation had been carefully devised to bring the division into the line along which the battered motor boats and launches would probably be retiring; and about half an hour after the

 

May 1918

CHANNEL NOT BLOCKED

 

Warwick had been put on to her westerly course, the Vice-Admiral and the officers on the bridge saw that a distress signal was being flashed repeatedly from a signal lamp on the port hand. The Warwick stood towards it, and came up to motor launch No. 254, carrying the survivors from the Vindictive. There was not a moment to be lost, for the launch was obviously sinking, and most of the men on board would have sunk like stones. A mass of wounded and dying men lay on the fo'c'sle; Lieutenant Drummond crouched near the steering wheel, dazed and exhausted by loss of blood; his second in command lay dead beside him. In the fore part every man who could still move and work was bailing desperately. Lieutenant Crutchley had taken charge and was bailing and labouring with his men; even in the darkness and huddled confusion of living and dying men he seemed a commanding figure. By the time the last man was taken on board, dawn was coming up fast. The Warwick was so close inshore that the German batteries could have sunk her in a few minutes, but the mist was still thick and it covered her. The Vice‑Admiral and his division now made away from the coast towards a gap in the barrage.

 

Admiral Keyes closely questioned Lieutenant Crutchley about the position of the Vindictive, and learned to his bitter regret that she was not blocking the channel. They were still talking together in the bridge cabin when a terrific detonation shook the Warwick; she had struck a mine, and most of the ship's after‑part was shattered. The destroyer took a heavy list but righted later and kept afloat; the Whirlwind took her in tow; the Velox took off all the wounded and secured alongside the Warwick. If, at this moment, the enemy's destroyers had appeared, the crippled division would have been almost defenceless; if the mist had lifted, the enemy's batteries could have swept our destroyers with their shells. But the enemy's destroyers did not move, and the mist still covered the retirement. Towards seven o'clock the Vice‑Admiral considered that he was far enough from the coast to break wireless silence, and ordered the Commodore to send reinforcements. All the available destroyers joined the Vice‑Admiral at a quarter to eight, and by then the worst dangers of the retirement were past. The other rescue launch was also in safety; she had fifty‑five holes in her hull, but Lieutenant Bourke reached the Prince Eugene during the morning watch.

 

The Admiralty staff waited anxiously through the night for news of the expedition; and at half‑past five in the morning, the first telephone message came through from the Chief of the Staff at Dover. He reported that the motorboats were returning, but that he could as yet give no news about the result. Nearly three hours later he telephoned again: the survivors from the Vindictive had just arrived, and he had seen them; they could give little account of what had happened for the time being, but Commander Hamilton Benn, M.P., R.N.V.R., the officer in charge of the motor launches, seemed certain that the Vindictive was between the piers but not blocking the channel. The Admiralty telegraphed this to the Commander‑in‑Chief; but to the public they issued a far more encouraging report; for at 10.45 the Assistant Chief Censor made the following announcement to the Press: "The operation designed to close the ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge was successfully completed last night when the obsolete cruiser H. M. S. Vindictive was sunk between the piers and across the entrance to Ostend harbour ..." This was an over‑statement; and two hours later a further message came in from the Vice‑Admiral to say that, as far as was then known, the wreck of the Vindictive was "taking up one‑third of the fairway." The War Cabinet, to whom the operation was reported during the morning, took the view that whatever the results and consequences of the expedition might be, those who had penetrated the terrible system of fortifications that guarded Ostend, with such indifference to danger and suffering, had deserved well of the United Kingdom. On the motion of the Prime Minister a telegram expressing the gratitude of the Ministers of State was sent to Dover in the first part of the afternoon.

 

When Admiral Keyes landed at Dover (4.30 p.m.), he found that his report about the Vindictive blocking only a third of the fairway had been disregarded, and that the results of the expedition had been exaggerated in the official communiquŽ. He protested vigorously that the plain truth should be published and asked for permission to prepare a third expedition. Within a few days Admiral Keyes was therefore engaged in laying plans for another enterprise which he determined to control himself.

 

These two great operations against the Flanders ports were designed and approved as operations against the submarine campaign, and it is by their effect upon the campaign that they must first be judged. The effect was this. Previous to the operation about two submarines were entering or leaving the Flanders bases every day; during the week after the operation this figure was maintained; for eleven Flanders submarines went to sea, or returned, between April 24 and the end of the month. In May there were fifty‑six

 

May‑June 1918

THE CONSEQUENCES

 

entries and exits, so that the average figure of nearly two passages a day was maintained during the five weeks immediately subsequent to the operation. It was not, in fact, until June that there was any falling off, and then the decline was sharp, for only thirty‑three submarines entered and left the Flanders bases during the month. This was partly due to a bombardment on June 9, which damaged the lock gates at Zeebrugge and put the lock out of action for five days, but in July, when the lock was clear and a channel had been dredged past the block‑ships, the total number of entries and exits was only forty‑four, a figure well below the average for April and May. From this it is clear that the number of submarines working from the Belgian ports fell off during the summer of 1918, and that the decline may have been considerable enough to reduce the intensity of submarine warfare in the Channel and the North Sea. But, as this decline only began five weeks after the expedition against Zeebrugge was over, it cannot be attributed to the blocking expeditions, and must be related to another cause.

 

Submarine operations from Flanders declined during the summer of 1918 because the German High Naval command recalled a part of the flotilla to Germany during the month of June. This was done because the submarine commanders were reporting that the passage of the Dover Straits was becoming increasingly difficult and hazardous. But even though this was why the decision was taken, it is impossible to separate it from the obstructions laid in the Zeebrugge channel. If the patrol in the Dover Straits was so dangerous and difficult to pass, the German remedy was patent: a new succession of those destructive raids which their destroyer commanders had always conducted with such energy and precision. Yet the remedy was never attempted. Why? The explanation can only be that Zeebrugge was no longer as easy of access as a destroyer base must be if it is to be used as a starting and returning point for raiding forces. The stealthy exit, and rapid return of the raiders ‑ which are the first necessities of such operations ‑ were no longer possible.

 

This was far below expectations; are we, on that account, to conclude that the operations were no more than exhibitions of high courage? By no means; for success in war is not always measurable by objectives which have been won, or by purposes which have been achieved in whole or in part. The blocking expeditions were a sort of complement to the measures which Admiral Keyes had been executing with relentless vigour for five whole months, and no estimate of their success or failure would be complete without an accompanying estimate of their contribution to the general war plan. Many weeks before the Vindictive burst through the last smoke screen, or the Thetis led the blockships up harbour, the patrols and minefields in the straits had given the enemy great anxiety: even Admiral Andreas Michelsen admits that the mines, the flares, the searchlights, and the patrol craft were an unpleasant surprise, and he is a writer who shows but little inclination to credit his enemies with either courage or persistence; his admissions are more significant than the tribute of a generous enemy. But if the enemy's first losses in the Straits of Dover were an ominous reminder that their unimpeded passages into the Channel were a thing of the past, their subsequent experience of the minefield and its patrol must have been even more distasteful.

 

Nothing shook the efficacy of Admiral Keyes's measures, and they continued unabated and unmodified after the most destructive raid that had ever been executed in the Dover Straits. Then, after four and a half months of relentless counter‑attack which inflicted regular, steady losses upon the Flanders submarines, a new onslaught, as violent and as sudden as the other was slow and methodical, burst upon the Germans with the force of a hurricane; and all these eruptions of energy were coming from an enemy who, according to the most careful forecasts of the German staff, ought long before to have been prostrate with exhaustion and famine. If those high German authorities who were responsible for the conduct of war made light of these accumulating evidences of a vast stock of unsuspected strength in their enemies, they cannot have been the far-sighted and experienced leaders we have always supposed them to be. The first, perhaps the greatest, achievement of those who planned and executed these blocking expeditions is, therefore, that they impressed the enemy with our power, our resources and our endurance at the very moment when that same enemy was gathering strength for what he believed would be our final overthrow.

 

So much for the effect upon the enemy; there were other consequences equally important.

 

The blocking expeditions were executed during weeks of intense national anxiety, for it was during those weeks that the British armies were yielding one position after another, before an onslaught that seemed irresistible. When anxiety was keenest, the nation was suddenly informed that a naval force had twice entered positions deemed impregnable, and had blocked two fortified harbours. Those who would appreciate the full force of this news should read the leading articles in the contemporary Press, and especially the reports

 

May 1918

THE CONSEQUENCES

 

and comments in the cheap popular journals which express in all countries the sentiments of the mass of common men. A purely military success would never have been reported or received with so transforming an enthusiasm. The feeling aroused was not merely British pride in a British triumph - it spread like fire, from country to country, from continent to continent; it raised the captive Belgians from their dark oppression, it excited fierce joy in the most distant American training camp. But above all it brought about that prevision of victory which often in great conflicts appears to be the deciding force ‑ a prevision which is not confined to the combatants, but comes suddenly to the whole attendant world as a revelation of the inevitable end. After more than three years of deadlocked and alternating war, our force both for attack and defence seemed to have been enfeebled to the last point of exhaustion, when beyond all expectation the great Service which had already borne and accomplished so much for the Allies was seen to rise like a giant from among the wounded and dying and to deliver a blow which resounded with power and significance ‑ the blow of a people whose heart was still unbroken. Possunt quia posse videntur ‑ the great achievement of Admiral Keyes and his force was this light in the darkest hour, this reinforcement of endurance with the consciousness of heroic strength, by which they nerved again the moral power for victory in five great nations and two continents.

 

 

2

The Submarine Campaign, May 1918

 

The lightening of the general gloom was apparent to all, for by this time the U‑boat campaign was practically defeated. Since March shipping replacements had exceeded shipping losses; 13,962,819 tons of shipping had been available for service on April 30; 14,087,186 tons were available on May 31.

 

This gain in tonnage was made up partly by vessels transferred from foreign registers; but for the first time since unrestricted submarine warfare began, the tonnage of new British ships entered for service (194,247) exceeded the tonnage of vessels lost by enemy action (185,577). Moreover, the available shipping, which was now slowly increasing, was sufficient to sustain the tremendous military exertions of the Empire. During the last four weeks, 192,330 British officers and men had been moved to and from the various theatres of war; 750,267 tons of military supplies had been carried to the British armies in France, 38,000 tons of stores and supplies had been delivered to the Allies. More than that, the transportation of the American armies was proceeding without a hitch and at great speed; during the same period 116,404 American officers and men, 1,914 animals and 20,221 tons of stores had been carried across the Atlantic. Every constituent part of our maritime resources was contributing to this immense material effort; the carrying space had been found, in spite of our losses at sea; and safe passage had been given to the men and stores in spite of the presence of from ten to fifteen submarines in the approach routes to the British Isles: British sea power was making its greatest exertion at its moment of greatest trial.

 

Although the enemy were not in possession of these figures, which gave us so much encouragement for the present and so much hope for the future, they were, by now, as well aware as we that the ocean convoy system had been the decisive manoeuvre in the long struggle. Nobody can fix the exact moment at which the German staff became convinced of this; they themselves could hardly attach a date to their conclusions on the matter. It is truly surprising, however, that they made no attempt to shake or disturb the convoy system until nearly a year after its institution, that is, when the mischief done to the German plan of commerce destruction was beyond remedy. And, when delivered, the attack was feeble; it in no way resembled the systematic onslaught that Admiral Sims had anticipated in the previous year, an onslaught which he thought would be delivered with every vessel that the Germans could pass out on to the trade routes, and maintained with a persistence and fury proportionate to the issue. Instead of this a handful of submarines assembled in the western approach routes, and made what our authorities believed to have been the enemy's first concerted attempt to interfere with the convoys passing through the zone. This, as far as we know, was the only occasion on which the German submarine commanders endeavoured to breach that defensive system which was thwarting their operations, and the fortunes of their belated experiment are on that account worth following in detail. (See Maps 25, 26 and 27.)

 

By May 10 the first German concentration was complete: eight submarines were then inside the area; one was watching the bottle neck between the Smalls and the Irish coast, the remaining seven were distributed over the whole zone.

 

May 1918

U‑BOAT CONCENTRATION

 

On that day nine convoys were passing through the danger area. The combined Rio and Sierra Leone convoy (HL.32 and HJL.1) was the one most threatened. It met its destroyer escort during the morning watch, and at five o'clock in the afternoon it was split into three sections: the west portion (five vessels), the troop transports (two vessels) and the east portion (ten vessels). Each one of these sections was menaced, more or less directly, by three operating submarines – U.70, U.103 and UB.72 ‑ which by knowledge or luck had placed themselves across the convoy's line of advance. The outward convoy from Milford (OM.68), which left harbour during the afternoon, was also threatened by UB.65, then lurking off the Smalls. The Admiralty, who had roughly located this concentration during the day, sent out orders for keeping the Gibraltar convoy (HG.73) on a track that would carry to the westward of the three submarines; but they sent no warning or revised orders to the combined convoy, which continued its course. Throughout the whole twenty‑four hours, however, there were no sinkings, nor was any one of the convoys attacked. The three sections of the combined convoy passed the three submarines during the first watch, and each was unconscious of the other's presence. The outgoing Milford convoy cleared UB.65 and held on unmolested.

 

The following day also passed quietly until late in the afternoon. During the day the U‑boats scattered considerably; and towards sunset all except U.86 were fairly well away from the convoy tracks. This submarine, which had been engaged on a most unproductive cruise near the south of Ireland for days past, seems to have sighted the Gibraltar convoy (HG.73) some time during the afternoon, and to have closed it. In his original orders the convoy commodore had been instructed to detach the ships for the Bristol Channel when he reached the South Wales coast; during the previous day, in order to keep him clear of the U‑boat concentration ahead of him, the Admiralty had ordered the convoy to hold straight on for the coast of Ireland, and to turn up towards the Smalls when he reached the 8th meridian. These revised orders contained no word about detaching the Bristol ships, and the commodore sent them away at six o'clock under the escort of two trawlers. One of them, the San Andres, was torpedoed by U.86 nearly three hours later (see Plan). With the exception of this one accident the day passed quietly, and the procession of convoys filed past the watching submarines. Towards midnight ‑ May 11/12 ‑ the German submarines had regrouped themselves: two boats – UB.62 and U.86 ‑ were near or to the west of the St. George's Channel; five others, U.43, U.70, U.103, U.92 and UB.72, were making for the entrance to the Channel, and in the early hours of the morning two of them were sunk.

 

Towards the end of the middle watch H.M.S. Olympic was near the Scillies on a north‑east course: she was one of the great transports employed in the North Atlantic for carrying the American army, and was at the time escorted by four American destroyers. At five minutes to four, when the dawn was just breaking, the look‑out man reported a submarine on the starboard bow; it was U.103, which had been steering all night towards the mouth of the Channel. Captain Hayes put his helm hard aport and rammed the submarine before her captain had time to submerge. Further up Channel, UB.72 was waylaid and sunk in Lyme Bay by British submarine D.4, at half‑past four in the morning.

 

These two disasters left three submarines, U.43, U.70 and U.92, cruising on or near the track of our convoys, and two of them delivered attacks during the course of the day. At half‑past nine in the morning the slow Halifax convoy of thirty‑five vessels (HS.38), moving in nine parallel columns, with an escort of eight destroyers and three sloops, ran into U.70. It would have been imagined that the submarine commander had an exceptional opportunity: it was a fine summer morning, the sea was smooth, and what wind there was blew from the west. The convoy covered a wide front, and should have been a good target: yet all the German could do was to fire two torpedoes, which both missed, at the rear ship of the starboard wing column, and then get out of the way. Later in the day (8.30 p.m.), the Barima, in the outward bound Falmouth convoy (OF.35), reported a torpedo attack, for which U.43 may have been responsible; there was, however, some doubt whether an attack had actually been delivered or not.

 

The U‑boat captains (May 12‑15) seem to have been quite unable to ascertain what tracks the convoys were actually following; they knew that they must be passing through the zone they were watching; but their movements bear no trace whatever of a combined plan for discovering the exact places in which convoys could be met. For the next three days they were scattered all over the area, and not one of them so much as located one of the convoys. On the 15th the distribution of the U‑boats was more promising: there were now eight boats in or near the convoy approach routes; three of them were exceptionally well placed. U.92 and U.70 were lying across the track of the combined Rio‑Dakar convoy (HJD.5 and HD.83);

 

May 1918

CONVOYS NOT DETECTED

 

UC.56 was about thirty miles to the north of the coast of Brittany, steering towards Ushant on a course exactly parallel to that of the incoming Gibraltar convoy (HG.74). As far as can be ascertained, this UC‑boat passed the whole convoy late in the afternoon, and was either unaware of its presence or unable to get near it: the escort commander and the convoy commodore had nothing to report when they reached harbour a day later. Yet it would have been imagined that the convoy could have been attacked successfully. It could only steam at seven and a half knots - a speed which gave a submarine commander exceptional opportunities of manoeuvring to a good attacking position; its escort consisted of two destroyers and ten trawlers. The other convoy (HJD.5) passed the two submarines that were on its track in the same uneventful way: it was split into two sections at half‑past three in the afternoon (see Plan), and each section must have been very near the two waiting U‑boats. If eighteen months before two hypothetical cases of submarine attack had been constructed, and if the essential data of each case had been the positions of these convoys, the strength of their escorts and the positions of the watching boat upon the convoys' line of advance, then many an experienced naval officer would have said that the convoys would inevitably be discovered and attacked and would certainly suffer heavy losses. That would have been the orthodox answer to the tactical problem. Indeed, hardly any other answer would have been possible, for no naval officer, however far‑sighted, could have foreseen the extraordinary and baffling power of evasion that a convoy in good formation possesses. In theory it should have been a bigger and more convenient target: in practice it was a will‑o'‑the‑wisp.

 

There is no need to continue the narrative in detail; the concentration of U‑boats on or near the convoy routes was at its greatest strength on May 17 and continued until May 25, when it was somewhat relaxed. The outcome was always the same; the initial situations at daybreak on each successive day seem often enough to promise exceptional opportunities to the U‑boat captains; but the opportunities slip mysteriously away as the day goes by, and ‑ more important ‑ the steady uninterrupted flow of convoys slips the U‑boats at the same time. On one day only did the U‑boat captains score anything that resembled a success. Early in the afternoon of the 17th, the commanding officer of U.55 sank the steamship Scholar, leading ship of the port wing column of a Gibraltar convoy (HG.75). The convoy was, at the time, well protected, and the U‑boat captain must have manoeuvred into a position right ahead of the formation, for the torpedo came across the front of the convoy. This occurred so rarely that it was undoubtedly a difficult feat of manoeuvre. Nor did the U‑boat captain's success end there.

 

When he sank the Scholar, a combined convoy of six ships (HL.33 and HJL.2) was passing to the south of him. Just after two o'clock the escort captain in the City of London (Lieutenant‑Commander Foote) received messages from HG.75 telling him that a submarine was about, and that a ship had just been torpedoed. He swerved his convoy to the eastward, but the submarine commander was too quick for him, and about a quarter of an hour later the Denbigh Hall was torpedoed and sunk. She, like the Scholar, was the leading ship of the port wing column; but on this occasion the shot was fired from the ship's port bow. Unquestionably these two successive attacks were delivered by a good seaman; but something more than good seamanship and courage were needed to redress the succession of failures. Since May 10 the U‑boats had sunk and damaged only five vessels in what, a year before, had been their most productive zone: three of these ships had been in convoy, it is true, but during the same time 183 convoyed vessels had reached harbour safely, and 110 had been escorted outwards through the danger zone.

 

To the authorities responsible for the conduct of the campaign at sea, the failure of this U‑boat concentration was no more than an incident in the victory at sea that had been an accomplished fact since the early months of the year. The Director of the Anti‑Submarine Division reported the concentration in his monthly report, the French Naval Staff did the same, and no further attention was drawn to it. The matter was not thought important enough to deserve special comment, but when placed in historical perspective it assumes a rather sharper outline than was given to it in the contemporary records. The operations of the German submarines between May 10 and 25 were the most methodical and elaborate attempt that the German Staff had as yet made to interfere with the convoy system. The attacks on shipping in the Irish Sea and the Channel, begun in November 1917 and continued until the spring of the following year, had been made mainly against ships after they had dispersed, or whilst they were dispersing from convoy. The U‑boat concentration in May was directed against the convoy system itself; its objective was the mass of shipping steaming in formation, and under escort through the zone of concentration. When its failure is related to other outstanding facts of the general position on land and sea, the extent of that failure becomes

 

May 1918

THE ENEMY'S FAILURE

 

apparent indeed. To all outward appearances the flow of German victories could neither be stemmed nor interrupted; for the German armies were still pressing their attacks upon the Allied fronts with alarming success. The British disasters in Picardy and Flanders had been followed by a disaster to the French armies on the Aisne. On May 27 the German armies burst the French front at Craonne and pressed on towards the Marne.

 

This was brilliant and spectacular; and if, when the public were told that the German armies were marching through towns that had been in French hands since the first months of the war, they had also been informed that, during the previous ten days, an exceptionally heavy concentration of German submarines had failed to interrupt the flow of shipping in the approach routes, they would, presumably, have thought that their attention had been drawn to an unimportant minor success in order to divert their minds from a great calamity. Is this the relative importance of the two incidents? Hardly, and for the following reason. By the end of May over seven hundred thousand American soldiers were under arms in France. They were not ready to give immediate relief to the shaken armies on the front; but they were assembling in such numbers and with such rapidity that the final conclusion of the great battles on the Western Front could no longer be doubtful. The concentration of U‑boats in May 1918 had been directed against a system of defence which directly or indirectly was responsible for the transportation and maintenance of the enormous reserve which was massing behind the Allied fronts. Its failure was illustrative of the failure to interrupt the action of those forces which were slowly gathering strength and combining for the final overthrow of the Central Empires.

 

During this same month of May the German submarine attack upon the trade routes in the Eastern Atlantic came to an end. Since January it had been carried out by four large U‑boats, and the zone of attack had been very large. At the end of January, Gansser in U.156 was near Grand Canary; his cruise was coming to an end, and another large submarine under Commander Kolbe was just approaching the Canaries zone. Valentiner in U.157 was far out in the Atlantic to the south of the Cape Verde Islands. He closed the west coast of Africa, and cruised slowly along it. He was off Grand Canary by the middle of March, when he also began his return journey.

 

Meanwhile, U.155, under Commander Eckelmann, had taken station further north. After cutting two cables off the Tagus early in February, Eckelmann took his submarine to the west of Gibraltar, and later shifted his ground further to the westward, and cruised between the 15th and 20th meridians, whilst Kolbe, further south, hovered off the west coast of Africa, between southern Morocco and the Canaries.

 

There was a very great difference in the destruction carried out by each of these four U‑boat commanders. Gansser sank 21,482, Valentiner 10,095, Kolbe 80,856 and Eckelmann 50,926 tons of shipping. (See Map 28.)

 

The German staff issued communiquŽs which accurately reported the tonnage destruction of all these U‑boat commanders except Valentiner. They thought it best to keep silence about his poor performance; and stated only that he had sunk five steamers and two sailing ships and that the cargoes he had destroyed were particularly valuable. But thoughtful men on the German Naval Staff may have doubted seriously whether the total cost of any one of these long cruises, that is, the oil expenditure and the wastage of machinery, had been worth while. During the first six months of 1918 each operating U‑boat in Home waters was destroying shipping at an average daily rate of 280 tons. Gansser's average daily yield was 190; Valentiner's 74, and Kolbe's 270. Eckelmann had the distinction of reaching a destruction figure which exceeded the figure of the ordinary U‑boat in Home waters; but he had been assisted by the heavy tonnage of the ships he sank: his numerical yield, 0.15 ship per day, was very slightly above the average figure in Home waters (0.13). Eckelmann was, however, by far the most successful of the U‑boat captains on the outer routes.

 

Apart from his tonnage destruction, he had on two occasions contrived to locate a convoy and attack it, and in one case his attack was successful. (S.S. Nirpura sunk west of the Burlings on April 16.) Yet even Eckelmann's achievements only emphasised the failure of these U‑boat cruisers to effect anything of major importance. That failure is most emphatically recorded in the volume of trade which passed through their zones of operations unhindered. Between February and the middle of April, five Rio, nine Dakar, nine Sierra Leone and nineteen Gibraltar convoys steamed through some part of the area that was being searched by these U‑boat captains. Of the 597 ships in these convoys, one, the Nirpura, was sunk; it would be difficult to collect more convincing proof that the success or failure of submarine operations against commerce depends solely upon the system of defending trade. Those operations are successful only if the defensive system is wrongly conceived.

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

CHAPTER VIII

 

THE MEDITERRANEAN. APRIL TO SEPTEMBER 1918

 

The Germans opened their great assault upon the Western Front on March 21, and within a few days the British High Command was collecting reinforcements for the stricken armies from every part of the Empire. In the Mediterranean the troop movements were heavy. General Allenby was informed that he must at once send home the 52nd Division and the artillery of the 7th Indian Division. In addition to this, eight Yeomanry regiments were to be formed into machine‑gun units and sent to France; and as soon as the 3rd Indian Division reached his front he was to send another British division to Marseilles. General Allenby answered that the 52nd Division would be ready to embark early in April and that he intended to send the 74th Division at once, without waiting for the Indian division which was to replace it.

 

The naval command in the Mediterranean had, therefore, to provide escort for safeguarding these exceptional troop movements during the first days of April. On the 4th, the first echelon left Alexandria in the Kingstonian and Manitou. It was many months since the enemy's submarine commanders had successfully attacked our transports; and in the Channel they now made no special concentration against the flow of reinforcements to the threatened front in Flanders. They appear, however, to have determined to make a more strenuous effort against the Mediterranean troop‑carriers during these critical months. The Kingstonian was torpedoed on April 11, and was beached with great difficulty near the south‑western corner of Sardinia. On the same day the second group of transports left Alexandria with the bulk of the 52nd Division under the escort of six Japanese destroyers. A German submarine was waiting for them outside Alexandria; her commander made an attack, but it was unsuccessful, and owing to the vigilance of the Japanese destroyer captains he was unable to deliver another. The first reinforcements were safely landed in Marseilles on the 13th and 17th of the month. Very few lives had been lost when the Kingstonian was torpedoed, so that the supply of troops to France had not been interrupted.

 

Meanwhile the forces for the barrage operations in the Straits of Cattaro were assembling fast, and on April 15 Commodore W. A. H. Kelly was ready to begin. (The Italians had agreed that the barrage forces should be under a British officer. Admiral Acton was now the Italian Commander‑in‑Chief at Taranto, and Admiral Cusani‑Visconti at Brindisi.) The actual dispositions of ships varied from day to day, but the constitution of the barrage itself was maintained without any great changes. (See Map 29.) An outpost force of six submarines watched the approaches to Cattaro; to the south of them a force of destroyers patrolled a line drawn across the central part of the straits between point Samana, on the Albanian side, and Monopoli; by night they patrolled a line some twenty miles further to the south. A number of trawlers, fitted with hydrophones, occupied the narrowest part of the straits between Otranto and the coast to the south of Cape Linguetta; immediately to the south of them was what was called the main auxiliary patrol line of drifters and trawlers. It was thought that every passing submarine would be at least detected by the ships upon the first line that she crossed, and that from then onwards she would be pursued and harried without respite.

 

Otranto Barrage Force, 1918.

 

	15 May.	15 June.	15 July.	15 Sept.
Destroyers (Brit. and French)	27	31	27 (no French)	31 (no French)
Submarines (Brit. and French)	15	15	12	8
Sloops (Kite Balloon)	1	4	4	6
Torpedo Boats	-	-	3	4
American S/M Chasers	-	30	36	36
Hydrophone Trawlers	18	18	38	38
Trawlers	18	20	14	14
Drifters	102	109	107	101
Motor Launches	40	40	40	41
Yacht	1	1	1	1

 

Submarines were sighted and engaged by the first groups of ships on the barrage; but these encounters gave no promise whatever of being the opening skirmishes of a long and continuous action. The engagements reported were as brief and as unsatisfactory as those reported daily in any other theatre; there were the same opening shots, the same dropping of depth‑charges, and the same hopeful but unsubstantiated reports of submarine destruction. Nothing suggested

 

April 1918

THE OTRANTO STRAITS

 

that the offensive operations upon which such very large forces were employed, and for which such tremendous preparations had been made, would be more successful in these narrow waters than elsewhere. The German submarine commanders indeed seemed able to maintain their ascendancy over the attacking forces. Further west, however, similar operations were slightly more successful. On April 17 Admiral Heathcoat Grant ordered such vessels as he could assemble for the purpose to occupy successive patrol lines near the Straits of Gibraltar, and four days later UB.71 was sunk by motor launch No. 413 (Lieutenant J. S. Bell) whilst on her way to Pola to reinforce the Adriatic Flotilla.

 

Although the French and Italian High Naval Commands had given their approval to Admiral Calthorpe's plan of prolonged offensive operations in the Straits of Otranto, they had never lost faith in their own plan for placing a permanent net obstruction across the Straits. The net which had been tested during the last months of the previous year was of an English pattern, and both the French and Italian experts were convinced that its design was faulty. The best brains in the two Latin navies had continued to study the problem, and a week after the barrage forces moved to their stations the French began to lay a net between Fano Island and the Otranto coast line. Only a short section could be laid at a time, so that no results could be expected for some weeks. By the end of the month, however, two separate plans for barring the Straits of Otranto were in process of execution, and the Austrian naval command realised at once that the mass of light vessels now concentrated at the southern end of the Adriatic was an easy target for a raiding force. Before our new dispositions had been in operation for a week the barrage was attacked.

 

On the night of April 22, six destroyers were patrolling the centre of the Straits in the latitude of Missipezza rock. Their patrol line was thirty miles long, and was divided into three ten‑mile beats. At the eastern end were the Cimeterre and Alarm; the Comet and Torrens were in the centre, the Jackal and Hornet were patrolling the western section. Each of these subdivisions reached the eastern extremity of the line allotted to them at ten minutes past nine and they turned westwards more or less simultaneously. After the Jackal and the Hornet had been on their westerly course for about a quarter of an hour they sighted five destroyers to the north of them steering about south, and within a couple of minutes both commanding officers realised that these were hostile, for they turned sharply to starboard and opened fire.

 

The British destroyers at once replied and turned through west to south in order to draw the enemy to the southward, in accordance with the standing orders.

 

The gunfire was immediately heard in the destroyers of the central beat, and Lieutenant‑Commander H. D. Pridham-Wippell of the Comet turned towards it. Indeed the gun flashes were so bright and the firing so heavy that he felt certain the enemy's light cruisers were out. At 9.34, therefore, he reported to Brindisi that enemy cruisers were in sight; simultaneously Lieutenant‑Commander A. M. Roberts of the Jackal reported that he was in touch with five enemy destroyers. All the light cruisers and destroyers in harbour were immediately ordered to raise steam.

 

Meanwhile the Jackal and the Hornet, which were very much outnumbered, were receiving severe punishment. The Jackal was hit twice and her mainmast was brought down; the Hornet became the focusing point for the fire of at least three destroyers and suffered terribly. She was hit by an entire salvo, which started fires in the forward shell‑room and the foremost magazine: a cordite explosion killed or wounded nearly every man in the supply parties and all the 12‑pounder gun crews. Another shell struck the forebridge and disabled the control officers; the mast was then shot down and the commanding officer was severely wounded in both arms. At that moment the tiller jammed, and the ship began to circle helplessly. To make matters worse, the wreckage from the fallen mast started both sirens; a continuous and strident hooting drowned every order and every sound but the detonations from the enemy's shells. By this time, however, the enemy had turned back and settled on a northerly course, with the Jackal in full pursuit.

 

Shortly after ten o'clock, Lieutenant‑Commander Pridham‑Wippell, who was leading his subdivision northward towards the gun flashes, was joined by the Cimeterre and the Alarm. A few minutes later the four destroyers sighted the Hornet; as they passed her she made a signal that she had suffered damage and was making for Valona.

 

All this time the Jackal was engaging the enemy as they retired northward, but the crisis of the action was over. The enemy destroyers were steadily drawing ahead, and the firing was becoming slower and more intermittent. The Comet and the remaining destroyers were sighted at ten minutes past ten, and the irregular stern chase was continued until after midnight; the pursuing destroyers were to the west of Cape Pali when they finally turned back.

 

April 1918

THE ALLIED NAVAL COUNCIL

 

It was impossible to say whether this reconnaissance was preliminary to a serious and concerted attack against the barrage; but, at the time, any sign of fleet activity was made significant by the news which was coming in from another theatre. The German Government had recently recognised the independence of the Ukraine; and as soon as they had made peace with the new republic, their forces began to occupy the country. The pretext was to protect it against invasion from Bolshevik Russia; but the military occupation was carried out so rapidly and systematically that it seemed as though the Ukrainian authorities were for the time being completely subjected, and that their independence was purely titular. On April 19, German forces entered the Crimea and marched against Sevastopol. The Allies knew that when they reached it, the Black Sea Fleet of old Imperial Russia would fall into their hands; and that our strategic distribution of battle squadrons in the Mediterranean would need drastic revision. A very serious question of policy was thus laid before the Allied Naval Council which assembled in Paris on April 26.

 

The Allied Admirals realised that, even with this new accession of strength, the enemy's naval forces in the Mediterranean would still be weaker than our own. The two Russian dreadnoughts, Volya and Svobodnaya Rossiya, were each of 23,700 tons; and if added to the Austrian dreadnought fleet of four "Szent‑Istvan" (20,010), the total force was still inferior to the seven French dreadnoughts at Corfu (three "Lorraines," 23,177 tons; four "Courbets," 23,095). The four Italian dreadnoughts made the preponderance of force even greater. The Entente Powers were equally strong in pre‑dreadnought battleships; for the French squadron of ten vessels of the "Vergniaud" and "Patrie" class was, in itself, a more powerful squadron than any the enemy could bring against it. The general position was, therefore, quite secure; the weakness only local. If the Russian Black Sea Fleet were re‑equipped and manned from the German navy, it would be considerably stronger than the British Aegean Squadron immediately opposed to it, for the Anglo‑French force of four battleships based at Mudros and Salonica (Agamemnon, Lord Nelson, VeritŽ and Patrie) would be no match for the two Russian dreadnoughts and the three smaller vessels of the "Estafi" class, which the Germans would have at their disposal if they decided to make a sortie through the Dardanelles.

 

To readjust the forces was not in itself difficult. Any redistribution which gave the Admiral at Mudros a squadron with a striking power of thirty‑two 12‑inch guns would make the situation safe. The French High Naval Command were quite ready to send a reinforcement of six battleships to Mudros; but they claimed that their battle squadron at Corfu ought then to be strengthened by at least four Italian dreadnoughts. This reinforcement of the Corfu Fleet was, in their opinion, highly necessary. If the Austrian fleet should ever make a serious sortie, either to break up the barrage or to join hands with a squadron from the Black Sea, then the forces opposing it ought, if possible, to be in overwhelming strength. A French fleet weakened by detaching six modern battleships to the eastern Mediterranean might not be strong enough to force a really decisive action. It was not sufficient that the Italian dreadnoughts should be ready to assist if assistance were asked for; they ought to be trained and practised with the French fleet if the Commander‑in‑Chief at Corfu was to be ready to deal promptly with an extreme emergency. The French view was strongly supported by the British and American representatives, who stated that, when the American squadrons arrived at Scapa, the British methods of signalling and fire control had at once been adopted in American ships, not because the United States officers thought them better, but because they realised that if a fleet is to be an efficient fighting force, it must be trained on a uniform system.

 

But the Italian High Command had no wish to impose a similar self‑denying ordinance upon their battle neet. Admiral Thaon di Revel stated in reply, that although he entirely agreed that the Agean Squadron ought to be reinforced, he did not see any reason for redistributing the battle squadrons in the Adriatic. The contingencies against which the Allies were making provision were too distant. He did not believe that the Russian fleet would be ready to make a sortie for many months, and he was even more sceptical about a serious move by the Austrian fleet. The Council therefore dissolved with the main question settled; but with certain derivative questions undecided, since it was still uncertain from what sources the light cruisers and destroyers for the reinforced Aegean battle fleet would be drawn. The Italians were convinced that they would not be justified in releasing the British Government from the obligations imposed by the Naval Convention of 1915. In their opinion the naval reinforcements supplied to Italy under the Agreement were as necessary to the national security as on the day when the instrument was signed.

 

The Italians, moreover, had right on their side when they maintained that the Allies were taking more elaborate

 

April‑May 1918

RUSSIAN BLACK SEA FLEET

 

precautions than the situation called for. The German troops were approaching Sevastopol whilst the Allied Council was deliberating; but the Russian Black Sea Fleet was, as yet, far from captured. As the Germans marched towards the town, the Russian sailors begged Admiral Sablin ‑ who had left the fleet ‑ to return to his old command. He did so, and steamed away to Novorossisk on April 30 with the two dreadnought battleships and about fifteen destroyers. (See Hermam Lorey, p. 362.) When the Germans took possession of the town on May 2, they found three pre‑dreadnought and three much older battleships in the harbour, together with the old cruisers Pamyat Merkuriya, Ochakov and the old Turkish cruiser Medjidieh. The most powerful ships of the squadron had therefore escaped them. Even the older, weaker ships that had fallen under German control were by no means German property. By the treaty of Brest‑Litovsk the Germans had the right to disarm them, but no more; and the German authorities had no intention of raising new difficulties for themselves in Russia by violating a treaty which they were anxious to see executed with the least possible delay and friction.

 

At the time, however, when so little was known about the relations between Berlin, Moscow and the new Ukrainian State, it was considered prudent to ignore everything but the bare facts of the military position, and to assume that as the German armies were in the Crimea, the Russian Black Sea Fleet would soon be a German naval squadron. The high military authorities took as serious a view of the resulting position as the admirals themselves. During a meeting held at Abbeville on May 1, the Supreme War Council passed a resolution in which they urged the Italian Government to agree to the redistribution of naval force demanded by the French navy.

 

By now the forces on the mobile barrage had been operating for nearly a fortnight, and the results were by no means promising. The Mediterranean staff, who examined and analysed the reports with the greatest care, came to the conclusion that submarines had been heard through hydrophones on twelve occasions, and sighted on thirteen. On five occasions only had the patrol craft been able to fire their guns or to drop depth charges. No in‑going or out going submarine had been sunk. These figures meant, therefore, that in five cases out of twenty‑five a submarine commander would be annoyed or slightly inconvenienced whilst he passed through the Straits. The shipping losses for the month were not appreciably diminished, and the submarine attack upon the transports moving between Alexandria and Marseilles was continued with considerable success.

 

Our reinforcements for France were still being hurried across the Mediterranean. On May 1 seven transports left Alexandria with the supernumeraries of the 52nd Division and the bulk of the 74th; two days later five more sailed with the remaining formations. Two of these transports the Omrah and the Pancras ‑ were torpedoed during their return voyages, so that during the course of one month the German submarine commanders reduced the transport fleet in the Mediterranean by three ships. The transports sunk or put out of action by submarine were:

 

Kingstonian, April 11, beached.

Pancras, May 3, reached port, damaged.

Omrah, May 12, sunk.

Leasowe Castle, May 26, sunk.

 

Their successes against these purely military targets were still further emphasised by the torpedoing of the destroyer Phoenix towards the middle of the month. She was the first British ship lost on the barrage; and her loss, occurring at such a time and in such a place, was an ugly reminder that our naval counteroffensive was, as yet, not so much an attack upon the enemy as the exposure of more forces to the enemy's attack.

 

The American naval authorities had always advocated a more embracing and comprehensive counter‑attack than could be undertaken by a special concentration of destroyers and patrol craft; but as their plan could only be executed by naval and military forces acting in conjunction, it was referred to a joint committee of Allied experts who met in Rome on May 15.

 

The plan laid before the experts was bold and comprehensive. By land Cattaro was supplied along a poor coastal road and a light mountain railway; as these communications were insufficient for the needs of an advanced naval base, the sea route between Cattaro and the bigger northern ports was a very important line of supply. If it were severed, and if at the same time the land communications of the Austrian base were made precarious by continuous raiding, the American staff believed that Cattaro would be almost untenable. Their plan was, therefore, to seize the Sabbioncello peninsula to the north of Cattaro and establish a fortified line across the isthmus. Simultaneously Curzola was to be carried, and a defended naval base established in the anchorage between the island and the peninsula. The naval forces stationed there would establish a strong patrol and

 

May-June 1918

A NEW PLAN CONSIDERED

 

stop all traffic between Cattaro and the north. The military forces of occupation would issue from their fortified lines, at chosen moments, and raid the railway which comes nearest to the coast‑line opposite Sabbioncello. This, however, was only the first part of the plan. The occupation of Sabbioncello and Curzola would be followed by the occupation of the neighbouring islands: Lagosta, Meleda, Cazza, Lesina, Pelagosa and Lissa, and an immense mine barrage laid across the Adriatic from Gargano Head to Curzola Island.

 

The joint committee who examined this plan were only called upon to report as to its feasibility, and the forces that would be required if the Allied High Commands decided to execute it. They reported that the islands could be carried and held by a force of about 30,000 men; but that the naval forces stationed at the base ought to be as powerful as the whole Austrian fleet. This was a point which the British representatives thought most important. If only an advanced squadron of light craft were stationed at Sabbioncello, the battle fleet at Corfu would be "continually rushing to sea at short notice," and the advanced force itself would have to be kept constantly ready. The British delegates were, however, entirely convinced ‑ more so than the committee as a whole ‑ that the plan, if executed, would give all the results that the Americans claimed. They endorsed the American opinion that the laying of the deep minefield and the seizing of the Sabbioncello base would practically isolate Cattaro.

 

There were, however, strong objections to the plan. It would involve great alteration in the existing system of commands. The battle squadron at Sabbioncello would have to be a combined Franco‑Italian force, for whilst the committee was sitting, the French were making the last arrangements for sending reinforcements to the Aegean from Corfu. Four French submarines reached Mudros on June 5; they were followed by the battleships Diderot, Mirabeau and Vergniaud and six destroyers under the command of Vice-Admiral Darrieus. This additional strength made the forces in the eastern Mediterranean sufficiently powerful to deal with any sortie by the Black Sea Fleet, which had recently fallen into German hands; but it also raised a delicate question of local naval pre‑eminence.

 

The French had long ago agreed that the entrance to the Dardanelles should be a zone under British command; they had now sent into it an officer of higher rank than Rear‑Admiral Lambert. (Appointed to succeed Rear‑Admiral Hayes‑Sadler, February 24, 1918.) Indeed they were compelled to do so; for they had been invited to assist us with a battleship force, which in the French service would normally be commanded by a Vice-Admiral. The difficulties of the position were, however, considerably relieved by the French High Command, who instructed Admiral Darrieus that he was to command the French squadron, but not the Allied naval forces as a whole. Admiral Lambert was still to administer the zone. This arrangement, however, would have left Admiral Darrieus with no control whatever over the two British battleships which would be so important a part of his command if the Black Sea Fleet ever made a sortie. The French orders were, therefore, supplemented by a British order to the Commander-in‑Chief, telling him that Admiral Lambert was to employ and station the British forces as the French Admiral desired.

 

But these elaborate precautions were being taken against an imaginary danger. Admiral von Rebeur‑Paschwitz had gone to Sevastopol in the Goeben and put her in dock; his Government had come to an agreement with the Soviet authorities about the Black Sea Fleet. The dreadnoughts at Novorossisk under Admiral Sablin were to be brought back and disarmed, but the fleet, as a whole, was to be treated as Russian property, and returned to the Moscow authorities at the end of the war. (See Hermann Lorey, op. cit., pp. 365, 369.) In the meantime, they would be used for peaceful purposes, such as minesweeping and patrolling, and in case of pressing necessity might be put into full commission. When this arrangement was notified to them, the Russian sailors in Novorossisk destroyed the dreadnought Svobodnaya Rossiya, and Admiral Sablin went ashore. Captain Tichmenew brought the Volya and six destroyers to Sevastopol on June 19, and placed them in the hands of the German disarmament commission. The result of the transaction was, therefore, that one dreadnought and six old battleships came under German control. The Germans interpreted their agreement with the Soviet authorities very freely, and used the Pamyat Merkuriya as a U‑boat depot ship, but for the time being they made no attempt whatever to create a fighting squadron out of the battleships and cruisers.

 

But the Allied admirals, who were not aware of these facts, still thought the reorganisation of the commands so important that they laid the matter before the Supreme War Council, when it assembled at the Trianon, on June 1, under the presidency of Monsieur Clemenceau. The French and British admirals repeated all that they had said previously about the importance of concentrating a Franco‑Italian

 

April-June 1918

FRUITLESS OPERATIONS

 

battle fleet at Corfu. Admiral di Revel repeated all his objections and argued with great force that a sortie by the Austrian fleet was now more unlikely than ever. There was thus no unity in the contentions laid before the Council, and M. Clemenceau stated that as the technical experts disagreed so radically, the question must be treated as a question of high policy and settled by the heads of Governments. The discussions between the Allied premiers terminated in a rather vague proposal to appoint an Allied commander‑in‑chief to the Mediterranean. Later, Lord Jellicoe was suggested. But the proposal came to nothing, and the intricate system of commands was not altered.

 

Meanwhile the barrage forces had been operating at full complement for more than a month, with great energy but to no useful purpose. There was the same record of submarines sighted and chased and the same record of submarines proceeding on their way unmolested. During April and May there had been well over fifty passages of submarines through the straits and on practically every occasion they had been sighted or detected. But there had only been fourteen attacks and only one submarine had been sunk, so that the barrage had proved itself little but an elaborately organised observation post. A submarine's chances of escape were about 55 to 1 in her favour. Nor was there any trustworthy indication that the enemy's attacks upon commercial traffic were in any way affected. (See Appendix C ‑ Submarine Warfare on the Otranto barrage.) Indeed there were grounds for supposing that the enemy was keeping a greater number of submarines at sea; for the sinkings were exceptionally heavy, (See Appendix C ‑ Submarine Warfare in the Mediterranean.) and the submarine attacks upon the military transports had reduced them by yet another ship, the Leasowe Castle. The barrage forces were, moreover, conducting their fruitless operations at growing risk to themselves.

 

Early in June, the Austrian Naval Staff determined to raid the masses of light forces which they knew to be exposed to attack in the southern Adriatic; and at some time on June 9 two dreadnoughts from the Pola Battle Squadron put to sea. The enemy gave no indications of their departure, and but for an extraordinary chance would probably have reached the barrage line in overwhelming strength during the first watch on the following day. In order to keep his movements as secret as possible, the Austrian Admiral steered south through the Dalmatian Archipelago, and just before dawn on June 10 his squadron was off Premuda. By the merest accident, two Italian motor boats were across his track, for at the time Commander Luigi Rizzo and another Italian officer were cruising off the northern islands. The Italians were about to turn for home when they sighted heavy clouds of smoke to the north of them. After waiting for some moments, Rizzo and his colleague realised that battleships were approaching, and determined to attack them. It was a decision which only men of desperate courage could make, for the motor boats could only do twenty knots through the water, and could therefore be run down in a few minutes by the Austrian destroyers on the battleship screen. Dawn was nearly breaking when the Italian motor boats rushed fearlessly against the Austrian squadron. Rizzo hit the Szent‑Istvan with two torpedoes and she sank; his colleague twice missed the Tegetthoff by a tantalisingly narrow margin; both escaped by dropping a number of depth‑charges which exploded as the pursuing torpedo boats steamed over them.

 

The Szent‑Istvan was the only dreadnought battleship sunk in action during the war; she was destroyed by the puniest opponent that could have been sent against her ‑ a mere boat with only sufficient buoyancy to carry a large internal combustion engine and a torpedo dropping gear - a craft so frail, so lilliputian, that she had been towed to her cruising ground by a larger vessel.

 

This act of high courage and its extraordinary results were reported at the Allied Naval Council which assembled in London on the following day. The Admirals were convinced that the Austrians had determined to raid the barrage because it was endangering their submarines. This, however, was an assumption which the known facts hardly substantiated. Since the forces on the barrage had started their operations, they had seen or heard submarines on fifty-eight occasions, and had attacked them upon fourteen. One submarine had been sunk, and upon the remaining forty-three occasions the U‑boat commander had continued upon his way unmolested. (See Appendix C ‑ Submarine Warfare on the Otranto Barrage.) During this same period the submarines had destroyed nearly as much shipping as they had done a year previously. As these were the dominating facts of the situation, it would surely have been more logical to conclude that the barrage forces were not seriously endangering enemy submarines, but that they were exposing themselves to grave danger which only an extraordinary chance and the valour of two Italian officers had averted.

 

But as these were their convictions, it is not surprising that the Allied Admirals continued to discuss questions arising out of the administration and disposal of the barrage

 

June 1918

REDISTRIBUTION OF FORCES

 

forces. The redistribution of forces was completed, for six French battleships were now concentrated at Mudros under Vice‑Admiral Darrieus. But the Anglo‑French Squadron, though powerful in itself, was very weak in light craft; and Admiral de Bon invited the Council to decide from what sources a proper allocation of light cruisers and destroyers should be drawn. His own suggestion was that they should be taken from the barrage, and that ten French destroyers now working under Commodore Kelly should be sent at once to Mudros. This, however, was only part of the difficulty. Admiral Gauchet at Corfu would need reinforcements of light cruisers and destroyers if the Austrian fleet were to be dealt with. Should he not, therefore, be given freedom to use the British light cruisers and destroyers working on the barrage under Commodore Kelly if an emergency arose? These suggestions raised another of those intricate and delicate questions which were liable to embarrass a mixed command.

 

Commodore Kelly was under the naval jurisdiction of the Italian Commander‑in‑Chief; but the operations for which he was responsible had been left so entirely in his hands that the Italians were ready to grant that the withdrawal of the ten French destroyers was a matter for the British authorities to settle. If they agreed, the Italian staff would raise no objections. But they were not prepared to consider any suggestion that the British light cruisers should be transferred, even temporarily, to Admiral Gauchet's command. Admiral de Bon gave an undertaking that the French commander would not disturb existing arrangements and would only summon the British light cruisers to his flag if an Austrian sortie was imminent. The Italian representative answered that they had been lent to Italy by virtue of a written Convention, and that he was sure his Government would never agree to any alteration in it. The Italian High Naval Command would consent to Admiral Gauchet's reinforcement by twenty‑seven British destroyers in a real emergency; but they, not he, must be satisfied that the emergency had arisen and was pressing. The Council, by the rules of their constitution, had to be unanimously agreed before any executive decision could be taken, and as the Italians stood firmly to their contention, the only decision taken was that ten French destroyers should be sent to Mudros without delay. The American plan of operations against Sabbioncello was found to be impracticable for the time being. The Council therefore decided to weaken the barrage forces in order to provide against a distant contingency; they did not consider whether those forces were really impeding the operations of any submarines, or whether they might do so if they were put to a different employment. Statistics, if they proved anything, proved that this was the strategical problem of the moment. The Black Sea Fleet might become formidable later; the enemy submarines were actually so. Their operations were the immediate and urgent danger.

 

Fortunately, however, that danger was now on the wane; whilst the Council were discussing these questions of high naval policy, the officers in charge of mercantile shipping had devised a plan for making the convoy system more comprehensive; four hundred more sailings were escorted than in the previous month, and by then the total number of convoy routes had been increased to eighteen.

 

Local Convoys in the Mediterranean.

 

November 1917	March 1918	June 1918
Bizerta‑Alexandria.	Bizerta‑Alexandria.	Bizerta‑Malta.
Bizerta‑Malta‑Milo.	Bizerta‑Malta-Milo.	Gibraltar‑Oran.
Milo‑Alexandria.	Marseilles‑Bizerta.	Gibraltar‑Spain.
Marseilles‑Bizerta.	Marseilles‑Algiers.	Spain‑Cette.
Marseilles‑Algiers.	Gibraltar‑Genoa.	Cette-Marseilles.
Bizerta-Corfu.	Gibraltar‑Bizerta.	Marseille-Genoa.
Gibraltar‑Oran.	Malta‑Alexandria.	Genoa‑Naples.
	Alexandria‑Port Said.	Naples-Sicily.
	Milo‑Port Said.	Sicily‑Bizerta.
	Milo‑Salonica.	Bizerta‑Bona.
	Oran‑Marseilles.	Bizerta‑France.
		Algiers‑Oran.
		Algiers‑France.
		Malta‑Egypt‑Corfu- Sicily‑Milo.
		Egypt‑Milo.
		Milo‑Aegean.
		Milo‑Corfu.
		Corfu‑Patras.

 

The consequence of this gradual development of the convoy system was that each escorted ship was given armed protection for a longer period.

 

The effects of this progressive reorganisation were first felt during the month of June, when sinkings were reduced by one half. The dangerous figures of the previous month fell at once to the reassuring totals of twenty‑four ships sunk and five damaged, and of seventy‑eight thousand tons of shipping sunk and damaged. This was due to no relaxation on the part of the enemy. They had not been able to maintain quite as many submarines at sea as during the previous month; but the total number of days spent by submarines on cruise ‑ the figure which gave the truest measure of the enemy's exertion ‑ was not below the average.

 

June‑July 1918

NAVAL VICTORY

 

They had expended the same amount of oil, machinery, courage, cruelty, ingenuity and labour in destroying seventy-eight thousand tons of shipping as they had in sinking one hundred and seventy‑six thousand a few months previously. The setback was final: the enemy never restored the position by a counter‑attack or a special exertion. It can therefore be said that during June the naval campaign in the Mediterranean ended in an Allied victory second in importance only to the victory in Home waters. Never in the history of warfare has a great victory been reported with so little clamour and emotion. The figures of shipping losses which recorded the achievement were printed in a few statistical returns; those returns were circulated to the persons who were entitled to read them, and that was all. The reason is that nobody could say that the victory was won on a particular day or that it was connected with a particular event in the daily succession of events at sea. There is nothing by which to remember it. It was, moreover, the outcome of a vast composite exertion, in which the Allied admirals of the Commission de Malte, the officers of the subordinate committees, and the officers and men at sea conjointly contributed. No single individual had a right to say quorum pars magna fui and none claimed the right. The splendour of the achievement cast an equal lustre upon all.

 

This dateless victory at sea was decisive according to the strictest definitions of decisive victory. Shipping losses rose slightly in the following month of July: they fell again in August to an even lower figure than that of July; and they were still falling in September, when the Allied Naval Council assembled in Paris. (September 13.)

 

The Franco‑Italian net barrage was, by now, nearly completed, and one submarine – UB.53 ‑ had been caught and destroyed in it. The French and Italian Admirals considered that the obstruction they had laid ought to be supplemented by deep minefields further north, and authoritative naval opinion in Great Britain seems to have supported their view. Projects for laying deep minefields on the model of the Northern barrage were, at this time, the most important items in the general war plan. The American staff desired to lay them in all the narrow parts of the Agean and in the central part of the Mediterranean, between Sicily and Africa. Commodore G. H. Baird, (Appointed Director of Shipping Movements, Mediterranean, April 6, 1918. Previously to Commodore Baird's appointment the convoy organisation had been under the control of Admiral Fergusson, the British Admiral of Patrols.) who was now in charge of the convoy organisation, showed, in an extremely able paper, that it would be most dangerous to lay a minefield right across the track of the most important convoy routes in the Mediterranean. The plan was therefore dropped; but the major project of laying barrages in the southern Adriatic and off the Dardanelles was approved in principle. Then whilst the Council was making its final decisions, a sudden and surprising victory on land gave a new direction to the course of operations at sea.

 

On September 15 General Franchet D'Esperey opened his assault upon the Bulgarian army. Within a few days the Bulgar front was breached and the road to Sofia was open to the Allies. On September 26 a delegation of Bulgarian officers entered General Milne's lines under a flag of truce to sue for an armistice. Their instructions were somewhat peculiar; for they bore a message to the British Commander-in‑Chief, who was asked to act as mediator between the Bulgarian army representatives and General Franchet D'Esperey. General Milne sent the Bulgarians on to the French Headquarters, but did not accompany them himself. At four o'clock in the morning of September 30 the French authorities telegraphed to him that an armistice had been signed, and that hostilities were to cease at noon on that day. Two days later General Milne learned, through London, that the Bulgarians had agreed to demobilise their army, to evacuate those parts of Greece and Serbia which they still occupied, and to place their ports and railways at the disposal of the Allied armies. The fortified ring which encircled the Central Powers was broken; the roads and railways which lay behind the breach led straight to the capitals of three Empires.

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

CHAPTER IX

 

RUSSIA

 

(The present chapter is a narrative of the operations in North Russia in which British naval forces were directly or indirectly engaged, and a description of any local conditions which affected the conduct of those operations. No attempt has been made to describe the discussions and negotiations between the Entente Powers which occasioned the expedition to North Russia, and the retention of large forces in that theatre. )

 

The onerous task of supplying Russia with coal and munitions was rendered doubly difficult by the fact that Archangel, the only port of access in Europe, was ice‑bound from November to May. Nevertheless, during the summer of 1916 over six hundred steamers ‑ roughly four a day ‑ had arrived, bringing a million tons of coal and a million and a half tons of munitions, food and other materials. A vigorous effort was being made to increase the rate of supply. At the extreme north of the Murman Province, where a branch of the Gulf Stream keeps the Kola Inlet free from fixed ice, a port was being constructed, and from it a railway was being laid to connect it with Petrograd. This was a difficult undertaking in a land of river, lake and marsh. Wood could be supplied from local resources for the permanent way and the innumerable bridges; but all the railway metal and apparatus had to be brought by sea from England. Not till the end of 1916 was this line complete; in the meantime the only communication from the Kola Inlet to the interior was by road. For the transport of ammunition and light articles a large number of reindeer were available, and the endless stream of reindeer sleighs winding over the snowy plains of Lapland was one of the most picturesque episodes in the war.

 

At the end of the summer of 1916 the German submarine attack on shipping was extended to the Arctic Ocean, and in the last four days of September ten Norwegian steamers bound from or to Archangel were sunk between the North Cape and the entrance to the White Sea. Before the end of the season at least five German submarines had made cruises in the approach to the White Sea. One of them, U.56, was attacked on November 2 by four Russian patrol vessels, including the destroyer Grozovoi, near Vardoe. The U.56 had on board the crew of the Norwegian s.s. Ivanhoe, which she had sunk, and landed them on the 3rd, but subsequently she herself sank, owing to damage received in the action. That the remainder should have escaped without serious attack is not remarkable. The British forces and the few Russian vessels acting under British directions had 630 miles of route to guard and keep clear from mines, while the submarines were free to attack at any point. They operated mainly at the Norwegian end of the route: there they sank twenty‑four vessels, mostly Norwegians bound to or from Archangel. In November the port itself froze, and all transport by sea came to an end. The British naval force was withdrawn to England, except a few vessels left in Kola Inlet. Commodore Kemp, the British Senior Naval Officer, had his headquarters on board one of the steamers frozen in at Archangel, where he was better able to keep in touch with the Embassy and the Russian authorities.

 

Before the ice at Archangel melted a profound change came over the political situation in Russia. A revolution broke out in March 1917; the Tsar abdicated and the Government passed to the Duma, which appointed a Committee representative of all parties except the most extreme. Of this Committee, Kerenski, a young lawyer gifted with extraordinary eloquence, soon became a leading member. The efforts of this provisional Government to maintain order were consistently undermined by the extremists, who called to themselves delegates representing each a thousand workmen or soldiers and, forming a Soviet, ("Soviet" means Council.) issued manifestos to the people and troops. The first of these, known as Prikaz No. 1, published on March 14, ordered the Army and Navy to cease saluting officers, from whom all disciplinary powers were taken, and to form committees among themselves to manage their own affairs.

 

The result was a disorderly demobilisation. The Russian soldier did not know for what or for whom he was now enduring the miseries of war. Before the revolution he had been fighting for the Tsar, who personified Russia to him. Now that the Tsar had gone, Russia to the soldier was represented by his own small village; and men, tired of the conditions at the front and no longer under discipline, slipped away in thousands to seek their homes.

 

In the navy the demoralisation took a more criminal shape. The seamen set to work to get rid of their officers. In the course of a few days two hundred, including many of

 

DEMORALISATION

 

high rank, were murdered, often with circumstances of brutal cruelty; three hundred more were imprisoned. A committee of sailors took nominal charge of the affairs of the fleet and appointed some of the remaining officers to carry out their instructions; but order and discipline were at an end. The danger to Russia from this crumbling of her defences was at first not fatal. So long as the Baltic remained frozen, the German navy could reap little advantage from the cessation of organised resistance. But when the summer came Riga and its sea communications fell to the enemy; Russia's right flank was turned; and Petrograd itself was within reach of the victors.

 

At an inter‑Allied conference held in Petrograd shortly before the fall of the Tsar, Lord Milner had discussed the supply arrangements for the 1917 season, and the Allies had consented to land three and a half million tons of munitions, coal and other essential materials at Archangel and at Murmansk, the new port in Kola Inlet. But the inefficiency of the Provisional Government and the growing interference of the Soviet in national affairs of the highest importance soon made the Allies doubtful of the wisdom of supplying Russia with military stores from their own insufficient stocks, for it appeared more and more probable that the munitions might eventually be captured or handed over to the Germans. But Kerenski, who was confident that the power of the Soviet would die away from natural causes, repeatedly urged the fulfilment of the contract for supplies; and for fear lest Russia should have an excuse for making a separate peace, fresh supply ships were sent to Archangel as soon as the ice broke.

 

The Germans, beyond consolidating their position at Riga and capturing the islands at the entrance to the gulf, made no direct onslaught on the Russian armies, but it was clear from the beginning that they meant to include the Archangel route in their unrestricted attack upon shipping.

 

On the White Sea Station itself vessels were collected into convoys and escorted whenever possible, the first of these convoys consisting of eight ships escorted on June 5 by five trawlers from Kola Inlet as far as the offing of Iokanski, half‑way between Murmansk and Archangel. At the beginning of July ships from England were directed straight from the Arctic into Iokanski, and thence despatched in convoys to Archangel. It had been arranged that naval operations in the White Sea itself, such as sweeping and escorting convoys, should be done by the Russian navy; but in practice it was soon found that, with some honourable exceptions, Russian sailors were disinclined for warlike operations or cruising of any kind. Consequently all the work fell upon the small British squadron and the few Russian vessels which were willing to help. Kerenski, now Minister for the navy and the army as well as head of the Government, had every intention of continuing the war against Germany, though he would not restore the former discipline, for fear the army should become an agent in a Tsarist counter‑revolution. He believed that by speeches to the troops he could stir up sufficient enthusiasm for an attack on the German positions, and he demanded an increased supply of munition from the Allies to enable the operations to have some chance of success.

 

Throughout the summer vessels continued to arrive at Archangel and the other entry ports, where stores of the utmost military value accumulated in heaps, waiting often in vain for the Russians to take them away; for the prevailing lack of order was felt in the transport system as well as everywhere else. Throughout that season, in spite of the unsettled state of Russia and the doubts as to her ultimate good faith, the Allies, in the height of the German unrestricted submarine campaign, managed to land in Russia over two million tons of military stores. (Fayle: Seaborne Trade, Vol. III., p. 239.)

 

At the end of the 1917 season one man of war, the little light cruiser Iphigenia, remained to be frozen in at Archangel, where Admiral Kemp and the transport office staff proposed to remain. But as the winter hardened, the activities of the Soviet increased in vigour and the political condition of Russia became more and more confused. There arose a spirit of antagonism to the Allies; it became possible that the British community would have to stand a Russian attack. Since the Iphigenia, if alone, was capable of only a feeble resistance, and it was not possible to despatch suitable vessels to reinforce her while passage through the ice was still practicable, the War Cabinet decided to withdraw her and the whole naval personnel from Archangel to Murmansk. She arrived in Kola Inlet in the middle of December, having seen yet another revolution in disordered Russia.

 

Kerenski's Government, never stable, had tottered and fallen. On November 7 the Military Revolutionary Committee seized Petrograd and transferred the Government to the All Russian Congress of the Soviets of Workmen, Soldiers and Peasant Delegates. The principal men in this congress were Lenin, First Commissary, and Trotski, Commissary for Foreign Affairs. Kerenski had hoped by his eloquence to

 

Nov.‑ Dec. 1918

PEACE PROPOSALS

 

make the Russian army continue the war against Germany. The new leaders had no such intention. To them the war was merely one of the methods by which the rulers of the nations exploited their peoples. They were convinced that the world was weary of war, and that if they showed the way, the suffering millions in every country would imitate Russia and lay down their arms. On November 21 they sent out by wireless a message to all the nations at war urging an immediate armistice for the conclusion of a "democratic peace." This was defined as "a peace without annexations or indemnities, based upon the principle of the freedom of each nation to determine for itself the nature of its own development."

 

A letter to the same effect was sent to all the representatives of the Allies in Petrograd; and, as the first practical step, the Russian Commander‑in‑Chief in the field was instructed to treat with the German army for an immediate cessation of hostilities. Both Germany and Austria, Russia's principal antagonists, agreed to discuss the terms of an armistice; but though Count Czernin, the Austrian Foreign Minister, indicated that Trotski's outline of a "democratic peace" would form an appropriate basis for discussion during the negotiations, neither he nor Baron von Kuhlmann, the German Foreign Minister, made any declaration of adhesion to the Russian formula. A still greater disappointment was that none of Russia's official Allies betrayed the slightest desire to participate either in the armistice negotiations or in the peace conference which these were to prelude.

 

All hostilities now ceased on the Russian front, and on December 3 the officials who were to discuss the armistice terms, and ‑ as Trotski hoped‑ the peace arrangements also, met at Brest‑Litovsk, on the Polish war front. The Russian delegates, headed by Joffe, eager for peace according to their own formula, found themselves ranged opposite a party of soldiers commissioned to negotiate only a military armistice; and however earnestly, and at whatever length they spoke on the subject of the abstract ideals of their peace, their opponents brought back the discussion to the concrete details of areas of occupation and movement of troops. They had to accept the German terms; and with an agreement that all hostilities on the Russian front should be suspended from December 7 to 17 they returned to Petrograd to report. Their perfectly sincere desire for a general democratic peace seemed no nearer fulfilment than when they had set out for Brest‑Litovsk. Yet they had secured an armistice which was not oppressive. Germany had demanded no cession of war material, no disarmament of any part of the Russian forces. The boundary line which it was agreed neither side was to cross coincided with the barbed‑wire lines between the armies, and, in the Baltic and Black Seas, with the delimitation of the areas actually in occupation by the Fleets. There had been no mention of the White Sea, nor any demand, as yet, for the expulsion of the British forces from Murmansk.

 

The armistice was extended to January 14 and was to lead immediately to negotiations for peace. The delegates from Germany, Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey arrived at Brest-Litovsk in time for their first meeting with the Russian delegates to be held on December 22. Baron von Kuhlmann took the chair at this session, and in his opening speech, mainly occupied with good wishes, shrewdly suggested to the delegates that they should take into account what had actually happened. M. Joffe, the head of the Russian delegation, then put forward the principles with which an acceptable peace must accord. These were:

 

(1) The union by violence of territories conquered during the war will not be permitted and the troops occupying them shall be withdrawn.

 

(2) Peoples which have lost their political independence during the war shall have it fully restored.

 

(3) National groups desiring political independence shall be allowed a free referendum.

 

(4) In a territory of mixed nationality the minority shall be permitted to keep its national culture.

 

(5) There shall be no indemnities, and requisitions made shall be returned.

 

(6) Colonial questions shall be decided in conformity with the first four clauses.

 

Further, economic oppression of weak nations by strong is not permissible.

 

It was obvious that the representatives of the Central Powers must have time to devise an answer to this statement of principles, which, indeed, in some clauses was an indictment of their past and present actions. Kuhlmann therefore adjourned the conference to meet again on Christmas Day. It had been arranged that representatives of each nation should preside in turn; it fell to Count Czernin, the Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, in the name of the Central Powers, to deal with the Bolshevik six points. He announced that there was no intention of forcibly appropriating occupied territories. As regards the withdrawal of troops, this must be settled separately for each place. The second point the

 

Dec. 1917

GERMAN PROPOSALS

 

Central Powers accepted unreservedly; but the question of the self‑determination of their own independence by national groups within a State should be solved only by that State itself. The protection of the rights of minorities was a component part of the principle of self‑determination, the validity of which, so far as it was practically realisable, the Central powers would grant. The principle of no indemnities they would also accept. The inhabitants of German colonies had, in the opinion of the Central Powers, shown themselves so much attached to their German rulers that it was unnecessary to ascertain their wishes by a vote. As for the addendum, the Central Powers had always advocated the exclusion of all economic oppression.

 

Thus it seemed from Count Czernin's reply that there could be no divergence between the Bolsheviks and their opponents as to the broad principles on which peace was to be based. Both sides appeared anxious for the democratic peace with its corollaries of self‑determination, no annexations and no indemnities. There was, however, this remarkable proviso: the Central Powers could not bind themselves to these conditions unless within a reasonable time the Allies of Russia would agree to recognise and carry out similar conditions when peace with them was negotiated.

 

The German offer was finally embodied in two articles put forward on December 28. In the first the Central Powers agreed to evacuate Russia proper after Russian demobilisation; in the second they called upon Russia to recognise that the populations of Poland and the Baltic States desired independence, and could ratify their proclamations of separation by a plebiscite which should be arranged by a committee from the peace conference. This was the first rebuff to the hopes of the Russians. A plebiscite held while German armies were still in occupation was unlikely to have a result opposed to the wishes of the occupiers; and in the public Press the Bolshevik Government proclaimed the two proposed articles as contrary to the principle of free self‑determination.

 

After a few days had been spent in dealing with a Russian attempt to transfer the negotiations to neutral territory, January 5 (1918) was reached. Ten days had elapsed since Count Czernin had announced the intention of the Central Powers to adhere in principle to the democratic peace policy of self-determination and peace without annexations or indemnities, on condition that the other belligerents agreed to the same formula. These were the ten days allowed to Russia for obtaining declarations of adherence from all her Allies. But there was no sign that any country except Russia intended to cease fighting; and the negotiations for peace, though started with speeches full of noble and unselfish ideals, were taking a course which to the Bolsheviks was widely apart from the sentiments expressed.

 

When the Russian delegation, now headed by Trotski himself, returned to Brest‑Litovsk, they were embarrassed to find there representatives of the People's Republic which had proclaimed the Ukraine to be independent of Petrograd. Further, the tone of Baron von Kuhlmann's opening speech on January 9 differed slightly from his previous manner. He brushed aside the suggestion to conduct the negotiations elsewhere than at Brest‑Litovsk, and stated that the Central Powers were no longer bound by their Christmas declaration. Above all, Count Czernin observed that the negotiations could only be continued on the basis of the two articles of December 28. "If not," he said, "then things will take their necessary course; but the responsibility of the war will then fall exclusively on the gentlemen of the Russian delegation."

 

This was, of course, an ultimatum. Trotski, struggling in the web of insincerity woven by his opponents, replied with bitter bluntness. "Do you agree," he cried, "to evacuate Poland, Lithuania and Courland and to leave the people freedom of decision? Do you renounce the idea of tearing away these territories, of imposing military and customs conventions upon them, and of establishing a monarchical government on the strength of the decision of little groups of exploiters?" The questions were rhetorical. Trotski knew that the answer to both was "No!" But the web encircling him was of steel. There was no escape from it. He could only accept the German terms and resume his seat to hear what more might be said.

 

Hereupon the representative of the Ukrainian Republic stepped in. This Republic, he said, had been proclaimed on November 20, and was now negotiating with the Central Powers for peace as a separate State independent of the Petrograd Government. This prompted an awkward question. "Until now," said Kuhlmann, "we have been treating with the Petrograd delegation regarding the entire Russian territory. Does M. Trotski intend also in future to represent the whole of Russia?" Trotski fenced with this question, and produced a reply so obscure that only long discussion elicited from him the acknowledgment that the Ukrainian delegation was definitely an independent body. The point was important, since the Ukraine extended to the Black Sea and was reputed to contain large quantities of corn.

 

Dec. 1917‑Jan. 1918

NEGOTIATIONS ADJOURNED

 

For several days the discussion revolved round the question of the Baltic provinces and their status. Russia had recognised the independence of Finland on January 4, and of the Ukraine, reluctantly enough, on January 10. But so long as the German armies overran Poland and the Baltic Provinces, Trotski would not acknowledge their claim for independence. At length, after a prolonged philosophic inquiry as to the precise means by which the principle of self‑determination is expressed and to what extent of territory it applies, the Russians produced a document giving their idea of the procedure they thought necessary in those particular provinces. It merely reiterated their original proposition: first withdraw the German troops, then return fugitives and populations removed in the course of the war, and finally hold a referendum of the whole of the people free from any military or police pressure of any kind.

 

General Hoffmann could bear it no longer. After all the talk to which he had been forced to listen, nothing resulted but this preposterous document. "I must protest," he said, "against the tone of these proposals. The Russian delegation talks to us as if it stood victorious in our countries and could dictate conditions to us. I would like to point out that the facts are just the reverse; that the victorious German army stands in your territory. I would like, further, to state that the Russian delegation demands for the occupied territories the application of a right of self‑determination of peoples in a manner and to an extent which its government does not apply to its own country. Its government is founded exclusively upon violence, and suppresses by violence every opinion but its own. That is how the principle of the right of self‑determination appears in practice under the Bolshevik Government."

 

To him, the occupied territories, even the islands in the Gulf of Riga, had already exercised their right of self‑determination, and had all declared against union with Bolshevik Russia. Then, when Trotski suggested that representatives of the occupied territories should participate in the negotiations, Kuhlmann asked whether this meant that Russia accepted their independence; and Trotski, once more out‑manoeuvred, let drop that suggestion also. On January 19 he went back to Petrograd, leaving Joffe again in charge of the Russian side of the negotiations, which for the next few days were concerned mainly with legal and economic details, while Kuhlmann and Czernin returned to Berlin and Vienna respectively.

 

When the conference reassembled at the end of January under Czernin's guidance, the apparently interminable discussion of territorial questions was resumed. It reached at length one definite point, when, on February 9, a peace treaty was signed between the Central Powers and the Ukraine, in spite of Trotski's declaration that it was not accepted as valid by the Russian Government, a declaration which Czernin brushed aside as merely a matter between the Ukraine and Petrograd Governments, and of no interest to the Central Powers. And now Kuhlmann announced that with Russia also a decision must be reached promptly. He put forward the German demands, thinly disguised as proposals, that Russia must acknowledge the independence of the occupied territories and that their future destiny would be settled by the countries themselves in agreement with Germany. Instead of the democratic peace so repeatedly demanded by the Bolsheviks, it was a German peace that was offered.

 

Trotski, confronted now with the necessity for decision, not discussion, determined to appeal to the world with one last moving, if somewhat theatrical, gesture. "This war ceased long ago to be a defensive war. .... We do not agree to shed any longer the blood of our soldiers in defence of the one side against the other. We are giving the order for a general demobilisation of all our armies .... in the strong belief that other peoples will soon follow our example. ... The Governments of Germany and Austro‑Hungary are determined to possess lands and peoples by might. Let them do so openly. We cannot approve violence. We are going out of the war. But we will not sign the peace treaty."

 

Thus on February 10 came to an end the negotiations for peace between Russia and the Central Powers. On the 18th the German army resumed hostilities and began to advance on Petrograd. The Bolshevik Government immediately forgot Trotski's noble gesture, and in a hurry offered by wireless to Berlin to sign the treaty dictated by the Central Powers at Brest‑Litovsk. General Hoffmann demanded an official confirmation of this message, and it was speedily sent him by special messenger. The Bolsheviks begged for a renewal of the armistice. But this was not granted; and on March 1 the Russian delegation was given three days to digest the formal peace treaty. Although the surrender of Russia was now practically unconditional, the Germans had added little to the peace terms which had so long been debated; the chief addition was the detachment from Russia of the Black Sea regions of Georgia and Kars on the pretext that they had self‑determined on separation and independence. The Russian delegation, of which M. Chicherin was one member,

 

Feb.‑March 1918

TREATY OF BREST‑LITOVSK

 

still endeavoured to maintain some sort of dignity. It refused to read the treaty, as if to show that it was constrained only by force to sign. No such demonstration was needed, since it must submit to whatever the Germans might think it advisable to demand; and thus on March 3 peace was given to Russia by the treaty of Brest‑Litovsk. By it Russia pledged herself to abstain from interference in the separated regions and from propaganda against German institutions there; she agreed to demobilise her armies, to keep her own and Allied warships acting with her in Russian harbours, and to remove mines; she guaranteed to withdraw her troops from the Ukraine, the Baltic provinces, Finland, the Aaland Islands, and the Black Sea provinces already specified; economically she was compelled to accept in an aggravated form a commercial treaty favourable to Germany and to pay interest on Austro‑German loans to the Tsarist Government; and, what seemed perhaps worst of all to the delegation, she was forbidden all revolutionary agitation directed against the Central Powers and their military authorities.

 

The day before they signed the peace treaty the Russian delegates had wired to Petrograd for a special train. This seems a natural request; but Lenin, in the state of panic to which the Bolshevik Government had been reduced, interpreted it to mean that the Germans had refused to conclude peace. He sent out a wireless message to all the local Soviets, which ended, "We must be ready for an immediate German advance to Petrograd and on all fronts generally. All the people must rise and strengthen the measures taken for the defence." To the Soviet in the north at Murmansk he was more definite, for there at any rate was a nucleus from which resistance might be built up. On March 2 the authorities at Murmansk received the following, signed by Trotski:

 

Peace negotiations apparently broken off. Danger threatens Petrograd. Measures are being taken to defend it to last drop of blood. It is your duty to do everything for defence of Murman line. Germans are advancing in small bodies. Opposition is possible and compulsory. Nothing must be left to the foe.

 

You are ordered to co‑operate with Allied Missions in everything and to put all obstacles in way of advance of Germans. The robbers are attacking us. We are obliged to save the country and the revolution.

 

In obedience to this very definite instruction, the Murmansk Soviet approached Admiral Kemp with a scheme of united action which they begged him to accept.

 

The Admiral had under his command only the small naval force which, as in the previous winter, had been left in Kola Inlet; it consisted at this date of the battleship Glory, the cruiser Vindictive and a group of six trawler minesweepers under Commander The Hon. E. A. G. Gore‑Langton. The question of removing even this force had been debated in January, and the decision reached at the end of that month was that they should remain at Murmansk, but in complete readiness to leave if the necessity should suddenly arise. There were three principal reasons for keeping in North Russia some force representative of the British navy: at Archangel there remained 12,000 tons of explosives and 200,000 tons of metals, shells, tractors, motor cars, clothing and other valuable stores of which the Germans would undoubtedly try to get possession; in the White Sea were also many Russian naval vessels which we were anxious to keep from the enemy, who might in the peace terms have insisted upon their surrender; and refugees of various Allied nationalities were congregating at Murmansk, which could still be reached by railway. Among these last were many French and Belgians; of the two thousand refugees at Murmansk when the peace negotiations were broken off and the Germans began to advance again, about a third were of these two nationalities, and every day their numbers increased as stragglers kept coming in.

 

At that time it seemed probable that the Germans would seize Petrograd; in that case nothing could prevent their occupation of Kola Inlet except the presence of a British expeditionary force, which Admiral Kemp thought should be sent at once and should consist of at least 6000 men. The Russian garrison at Murmansk could only be relied upon to back the winning side; if the British seemed stronger they would resist the Germans, if the Germans came in greater force the Russians would eject the British. The Murman district was so much isolated from the rest of Russia that the Bolshevik Government was not actually in power there till after the middle of February, when the command of affairs in Murmansk was definitely taken over by a Soviet owning allegiance to Petrograd. This Soviet at once affirmed its desire for a continuance of friendly relations with the Allies; there is little doubt that it was largely influenced by the fact that from the Allies alone was there any chance of obtaining supplies of food.

 

In those critical last days of February the problem to

 

Feb. 1918

ADMIRAL KEMPS COMMAND

 

be solved was a complicated one. The German advance was unopposed and its limits could not be foreseen. Nor could the nature of the peace conditions; it was most probable they would include the expulsion of the British force and the surrender of Kola Inlet, which would then be utilised as a base for submarines. At Archangel the heaps of ammunition and immensely important stores were still lying; it would be disastrous if, after all the trouble and danger involved in getting them to Russia, they should be used against our own soldiers. It was, further, a moral duty of the Allies to save their national refugees from the fate that in Bolshevik Russia under German domination was likely to be awaiting them. Added to all these anxieties was the fact that the Bolshevik Government had not been recognised by any of Russia's former Allies, and might at any time be overthrown by a popular rising or replaced by a German dictatorship. Amid all this confusion there were two hopeful facts: the Bolshevik Government had not, of its own accord, demanded the withdrawal of the British force at Murmansk, and the Germans showed as yet no sign of attempting an advance on Kola Inlet.

 

The Admiralty met the situation by immediately despatching the cruiser Cochrane to join Admiral Kemp, and by asking the French and American Governments each to send a similar ship. This they considered should give the Admiral a force sufficient to ensure respect from the local Soviet and to deal with any raid on Murmansk. At the same time two vessels were sent to bring away refugees and to convey to Admiral Kemp a party of Royal Engineers, who, in case of necessity, would blow up bridges or destroy the stores. None of these reinforcements had arrived when, on March 8, the Murmansk Soviet approached Admiral Kemp with urgent requests for assistance in response to Trotski's telegram. They proposed to him and to the French representative that the Soviet should have supreme control of the defence force, but that the Executive command should be vested in three persons, one appointed by the Soviet, one by the French and one by the British representatives respectively; the last two would not interfere in internal affairs, but should provide the armed force, equipment and stores for the defence.

 

However much the British Government may have wished to accede to Trotski's appeal for assistance, the despatch of troops from England seemed at the moment to be impossible. The Allies could not undertake the military defence of Murniansk, nor could they support any operations beyond the reach of the ship's guns. What was possible they were prepared to do. If the Russians would defend themselves, British bluejackets could be landed to stiffen the resistance against the Germans, but Admiral Kemp was not to share the executive command of the Russian forces, and must not forget that his main interests were the safety of the Russian men‑of‑war, the repatriation of refugees and the preservation of the Allies' stores at Archangel. The Cochrane arrived at Murmansk on March 7, and the French cruiser Amiral Aube on the 19th, the two together forming a considerable reinforcement. On April 8 a German expeditionary force landed in Finland and proceeded to occupy Helsingfors and Abo. (On their arrival the British submarines in the Baltic which it had been found impracticable to withdraw were blown up and sunk by their officers, to prevent the boats from falling into the hands of the enemy.)

 

The Murmansk Soviet begged once more for assistance. They wrote urging Admiral Kemp to promise armed forces for the prevention of disturbance and anarchy. Since the local Soviet had no organised police or armed forces, he was disposed to agree to this upon certain conditions, amongst which were the publication in the local Press of all the correspondence on the subject, indemnification of the Allied forces against claims for injury, and confirmation by the Central Government. The Allies were still averse from intervening in purely internal affairs except upon direct request of the Russian Central Soviet to the British Government, but the Admiral was given discretion to employ Allied forces under his command to prevent disturbance or anarchy locally if Allied interests were involved or threatened. In spite of these rebuffs, the relations between the Murmansk Soviet and the Allies continued on a most friendly footing.

 

The necessity for collaboration was soon apparent. The Finns, whose independence Russia acknowledged, were not content with their seaboard on the Baltic and were credited with a desire to increase their territory by the inclusion of the provinces between Finland and the White Sea, an extension which would give them the Murman coast with its ice-free harbours and also most of the Murman railway. There were two political parties in Finland: the "Whites," anti-Bolshevik and pro‑German, the "Reds," pro‑Bolshevik and anti‑German. In the Finnish republic the "Whites" predominated and the "Reds" were rebels; in Russia the Bolsheviks were in power, and such groups as were of "White" politics were kept quiet in the ruthless grip of Lenin and his Soviet. By the Treaty of Brest‑Litovsk Russia had guaranteed to demobilise her army, but, to protect the railway from attack by small parties from Finland intent on damage,

 

March‑May 1918

FIRST OPERATIONS

 

Lenin raised a force of railway defence troops which soon became known as the "Red Guards." Some sort of discipline was enforced among them; their officers were appointed from Moscow, (After signing the Treaty of Brest‑Litovsk the Russian Central Government moved to Moscow, thinking Petrograd too near the German armies.) and not elected, on the earlier Bolshevik model, by the men themselves. They were distributed along the railway, various parts of which were reported from time to time as being threatened by raiding parties from Finland.

 

It was elsewhere, however, that the first encounter took place. On May 3 the Murmansk Soviet learned that a party of armed "White" Finns was advancing on skis, with guns drawn by reindeer. Its objective was Pechenga, the first harbour of Russia east of the Norwegian border. The place had special importance, since it was only an hour's steaming from Vardoe across Varanger Fiord, and as soon as navigation reopened it was to be the assembly port of the escort of the convoys between Vardoe and Archangel. At the request of the Murmansk Soviet, Admiral Kemp embarked a party of "Red Guards" in the Cochrane and sent her to the threatened harbour with orders to land her passengers and operate in the immediate vicinity of Pechenga for the defence of the town, and to disperse or capture any armed Finns who might be encountered.

 

The Cochrane (Captain J. U. Farie) reached Pechenga Bay on May 3, and the Russian troops she had brought from Murmansk and a detachment of Royal Marines were at once landed to take up positions of defence. By arrangement with the local Soviet, Captain Farie then landed a party of 144 seamen under Commander John W. Scott, whom he put in charge of the local defences. It was not till the 10th that the enemy appeared. A small advanced party of Royal Marines met sixty or seventy Finns, and had to fall back; this was an operation of some difficulty, as the enemy, on skis, could move rapidly, while our men were floundering in deep snow. A force of about 120 Finns was driven off on the 12th. The Russians, mostly seamen from the Askold, who had quartered themselves in a monastery eleven miles away, took little part in these operations, though the only man killed among the defence parties was a Russian frontier guard. No further fighting took place till June 20, when our men captured a boat with machine gun on a lake inland.

 

Although the Murmansk Soviet looked with gratitude to the Allies as their friends and defenders against Finnish aggression, there was now a marked coolness in the attitude of the Moscow authorities towards us. Trotski had been succeeded as Commissary of Foreign Affairs by Chicherin, who, after his experiences at Brest‑Litovsk, felt unable to oppose more than a formal resistance to German demands. Telegrams began to pass from Moscow to Murmansk repudiating any desire for assistance from the Allies and accusing the northern Soviet of counter‑revolutionary leanings. These messages might well be the prelude to an ultimatum demanding that the Allies should withdraw, and proposing the substitution of a new Soviet more amenable to Moscow and Germany. But instead of the expected demand for evacuation, there followed, a week later, merely an instruction from Chicherin to the northern Soviet that it should not apply for the assistance of one Imperialistic Coalition against another; he ended his telegram, "It is possible that the English will themselves resist advancing White Guards, but we must not come forward as their Allies, and we will protest against their operations on our territory." Admiral Kemp construed this to mean that any action taken by the Allies would be met only by protest, and not by armed interference.

 

The position was entirely altered in the middle of May, when a submarine began operating off Vardoe. Three small Russian steamers were sunk by it. One of these was at anchor in Vaida Bay on the Russian side of Varanger Fiord; the submarine opened fire on her and on the boats containing her crew and passengers, killing eight and wounding five more. As a further effort of terrorism the submarine then bombarded a Russian signal station, and sank two more small Russian steamers and five Norwegian fishing vessels, thus putting a stop temporarily to the fishing on which North Russia was at this time mainly dependent for food.

 

By the Treaty of Brest‑Litovsk Germany had reserved the power to continue the submarine blockade of the Arctic until the conclusion of a general peace; and when Lenin protested against the destruction of Russian ships, he received the reply that the sinkings would cease when the British withdrew from Murmansk. Chicherin therefore called upon the Murmansk Soviet to demand the withdrawal of the Allied force in order to assure safe passage for Russian merchant ships. This course was not acceptable to Russians in the north; the sympathy of the population was with the Allies. The Allies, not the Moscow Government, were defending the province against the Finns; the Allies, not the Moscow Government, were feeding the people and helping them with large supplies of fishing tackle. All this was pointed out to the Moscow Government, with the addition that it was impossible to eject the Allies without a force for the purpose. In fact, though

 

May 1918

THE ADMIRALTY'S ORDERS

 

it was not expressed in this correspondence between Moscow and Murmansk, there was a feeling in the north that the Murman province was being used as a pawn in the game of German aggression. It was known that Finland, now frankly a German protectorate with 20,000 German troops in it, wished to extend its borders to the White Sea, and there was a rumour that Chicherin had already arranged to give up Pechenga to Finland in exchange for some Baltic ports. The Murman Province, however, had no wish to have as its master a Germanised Finland, which could certainly not provide food; and the Murmansk Soviet had already thought of declaring themselves autonomous in imitation of the Baltic States and of requesting regular protection from the Allies.

 

Admiral Kemp was well aware of what was passing. He had the advantage of a thorough knowledge of the Russian language, and his relations with the local officials were so cordial that they kept him fully informed of the situation. What he did not know was the extent to which the Allied Governments wished him to respond to the trust placed in him by the Murmansk Soviet. It was therefore a relief to him when, on May 18, the Admiralty clearly laid down his duties. They were:

 

(a) to protect Allied refugees,

(b) to resist attempts made by local Russian forces to compel the Allies to evacuate North Russia,

(c) to defend on behalf of Russia the coast of Russian Lapland between Kola Inlet and the Norwegian border against Finnish or German invasion,

(d) to hold for Russia as much of the Murman railway as possible.

 

The smallness of the force for these purposes was fully realised at home, and certain reinforcements were about to leave England; food supplies for sale or exchange were being provided, and equipment for developing the fisheries on a large scale would soon arrive with skilled men to train the local fishermen in its use.

 

Another element in our policy must be mentioned here. One of the provinces of the Austrian Empire was Bohemia, inhabited by Czechs, a race of Slavonic affinities, more or less openly hostile to Austrian rule. Regiments raised in Bohemia had surrendered or deserted to Russia whenever Possible, till in the prisoners' camps behind the Russian lines were large numbers of Czechs, whose main desire was to free their native land from foreign domination. With the Peace of Brest‑Litovsk they ceased to be prisoners. They began to assemble at Omsk in Siberia. By the middle of April there were reported to be as many as 60,000 Czechs along the railway near Omsk; and being more or less organised as an army, they dominated the situation in Central Siberia. To a certain extent they were under French direction; and feeling it impossible to do any useful work in conjunction with the Moscow Government, they expressed a wish to be transported from Vladivostok to France, in order to fight the Germans on the Western Front. It seemed, however, that they could be more quickly useful if they moved westward along the railway to Archangel, where they would be at hand to oppose German aggression in the Murman region; and our representative in Moscow, Mr. Lockhart, was instructed to endeavour to obtain Trotski's authorisation for making the necessary arrangements. By the middle of May these seemed to have been satisfactorily settled. One Czech Corps proceeded eastward towards Vladivostok, but a second corps was reported to be coming to Archangel, and a French officer who arrived at Murmansk at that time proposed to station 5000 Czechs at Archangel and another 4000 along the Murman railway.

 

There can be no doubt that the Supreme War Council always kept before their eyes the paramount reason for Allied intervention in Russia: to prevent, as far as possible, the withdrawal of German forces from Russia to France. The War Cabinet, therefore, now decided to send a small military force, really little more than a staff of instructors, to train the various anti‑German elements in North Russia. In command was General Poole, who was to be stationed at Archangel and have under him 500 British officers and men, by whose aid he was to train and organise the Czech corps, expected to number about 20,000 men, which would then be employed for the defence of North Russia. As its position at Archangel would be most precarious unless communications with England and France were kept open, another small force of 530, under Major‑General Maynard, was to be landed at Murmansk; this, with the assistance of the French, the 600 Royal Marines on the station, and such "Red" Finns and Russians as chose to join them, would, it was hoped, be sufficient to beat off any German‑Finnish attempts to seize the ice‑free ports and convert them into submarine bases. Three months food, not only for 2000 British but also for 25,000 foreign troops, would come in the transports bringing the two parties.

 

When General Poole arrived on May 24 in the United States cruiser Olympia, which had been sent to swell the Allied naval squadron, no obstacles were placed in the way of his landing or of the disembarkation at Murmansk of the small British party that accompanied him. He found that the total force available for defence consisted of 400 Frenchmen, 600 British Royal Marines, 2000 Russian railway troops, and 1200

 

May 1918

THE RUSSIANS DIVIDED

 

Serbians, only half of the last having rifles. It was not known at Murmansk where exactly were the Czechs he had come to train; but a few days later he learned that they were held up by a Bolshevik army in Eastern Russia. By June 20 the chance of any detachments of Czechs reaching Archangel had become extremely slender.

 

The Murmansk Soviet was becoming increasingly discontented with the Moscow Government, which they considered to be under German domination. At the end of June there arrived information of the despatch from Petrograd of a Bolshevik force of 1500 men under Natsaremus; this official instructed the Murmansk Soviet to make a formal protest against the presence of the Allies, and the object of his force was presumably to eject them from the province. This proved to be the deciding factor. At a mass meeting of the inhabitants held at Murmansk on July 1 it was unanimously decided to defend the town against the threatening advance, and not to obey the Moscow Government; the Allies were asked to co‑operate fully in both military and economic measures. The only line of advance open to Natsaremus was by way of the Murman railway, which emerged on to the shore of the White Sea at Soroka, at Kem and at Kandalaksha, respectively about 445, 420 and 200 miles from Murmansk. Early in June the Amiral Aube had been ordered to Kandalaksha to assist in repelling an anticipated raid by Finns, but she had been unable to get through the ice in the narrow neck of the White Sea. Accordingly, 150 Royal Marines had been sent to Kandalaksha by train. Possibly their presence had a deterrent effect, for no raid then developed.

 

By the end of June the ice had almost cleared, and the light cruiser Attentive (Captain E. Altham), which had recently arrived from Scotland, and had been at Murmansk since the 11th, was able to get to Kandalaksha by careful steering among the icepacks. The place had been disarmed by an Allied force, and the situation was well in hand. As there was a threat of attack from the south, Captain Altham proceeded to Kem, where he found also a military force just arrived and in friendly possession. On July 6 the authorities at Kem received from Soroka an appeal for help against a Bolshevik force which had burned some bridges and was threatening to burn Soroka itself. The Attentive proceeded there at once. Her appearance at Soroka was enough for the hostile forces; they hurriedly retired towards Petrosavodsk by train, burning the railway sheds as they left. Their departure and Captain Altham's arrival were warmly welcomed by the people. It was here that the first exchange of shots with the Bolsheviks occurred.

 

Captain Altham was making a personal reconnaissance of the lines of approach south of Soroka in a seaplane from H.M. carrier Nairana which had arrived on July 19. When over Parandova, fire was opened from two troop trains filled with Bolshevik troops. Captain Altham returned and silenced the fire with the seaplane's Lewis gun. The machine was considerably damaged but the occupants untouched; the Bolshevik casualties are not known. General Maynard did not intend to hold the line further south than Kem; and as soon as a railway bridge between Soroka and Kem, which had been burned by the Bolsheviks, had been repaired, and an extemporised armoured train with a naval force from the Attentive, and some Allied representative had carried out an armed reconnaissance south of Soroka, Captain Altham returned. The Attentive was back at Murmansk on July 29, ready for another important operation.

 

The chief object for which General Poole had come was the occupation of Archangel and the safeguarding of the railway from there to Vologda, where it makes connection with lines to European Russia and Siberia. This section he was to hold against all attempts to drive him out, with the double purpose of preventing the removal of the military stores and of being in a good position should the Allies decide to help the anti‑German elements in Russia in reconstructing a new war front. So far, the ice in the White Sea had precluded any forward move, but the First Lord, Sir Eric Geddes, who came in the Southampton to confer with the officers on the spot, advised the War Cabinet to order a landing at Archangel as soon as it was practicable. The British forces for Murmansk and Archangel ‑ 1000 men and 150 officers - arrived with him on the same day (June 23); they were to be followed, in accordance with a decision of the Supreme War Council, by a battalion of French infantry, by two of Italian Alpini who would be practised in moving on skis, and later by three battalions of Americans well accustomed to rigorous cold.

 

 

Plan - Railway System in North Russia

 

Although the Murmansk Soviet had on July 6 signed a friendly agreement with the Allies, the Archangel Soviet still adhered to the Moscow Government. Some resistance might therefore be expected, and General Poole decided that it would be unwise to attempt a landing at Archangel with only the small force of British troops. The French battalion was to arrive before the end of July, and he determined to wait for it. It was impossible to forecast the reception that would be accorded to the Allies. There

 

June‑July 1918

PROTECTION OF STORES

 

were counter‑revolutionary disturbances in various parts of Russia, whether anti‑Bolshevik or only anti‑German it was hard to tell. In a rising at Moscow, Count Mirbach, the German Ambassador, was killed, and about the same time a town between Vologda and Moscow was seized by an anti-Bolshevik organisation. From these and other indications it seemed possible that Lenin was losing his hold on Russia, and that a party more inclined to oppose Germany might seize the reins: in the country east of the Urals and in the south‑east various forces had risen and driven out the Bolshevik Commissaries; and, most tragic symptom of all, the imprisoned Tsar and all his family were murdered in cold blood on July 16, for fear lest they should become the focus of a monarchist revival.

 

One of the plans whereby it was hoped to prevent the military stores at Archangel from passing into the hands of the Germans was the despatch of supplies of food to be bartered for adequate parts of the stores. Two ships filled with provisions and other supplies came out from England in the early spring, and were got to Archangel with the help of a British armed ice‑breaker, the Alexander. But though every effort was made to carry through the plan of barter, it was impossible to obtain the consent of the Moscow Government, without whose permission the stores could not be moved, and which was, in fact, steadily sending them away by rail into the interior. By June it appeared that most of the military stores had been removed. Early in July Admiral Kemp went to Archangel to ascertain the position of affairs and to make some definite arrangement with regard to the Alexander, whose presence for the purpose of protecting the food from raids was resented by the Central Soviet. The Admiral learned that shortly before his arrival there had been an ugly demonstration against the Alexander by all the armed vessels in the port, and even field‑guns ashore. The cool and firm conduct of her commanding officer, Captain Hurt, and the personal hold he had obtained over the Russian seamen serving under him in the trawler fleet the year before, succeeded in averting the immediate danger. But such incidents might be repeated, and the Admiral sent her away to Murmansk.

 

All efforts to obtain ammunition in exchange for food failed. The Archangel Soviet refused to hand over the stores without orders from Moscow. But there were at hand other elements of a bargain. A number of Allied refugees, cut off from Murmansk when the line was damaged by the retreating Bolsheviks, had congregated at Archangel, and by orders from Moscow were being detained there almost as if they were hostages. In order to secure their freedom and also to create a friendly feeling, the Admiral, with the concurrence of General Poole and the Consul at Archangel, agreed to hand over part of the food cargo to the local cooperative societies for distribution among the starving people of the town and district. He also made arrangements with the Soviet for the exchange of goods in the future, bearing in mind that the presence of British ships in Archangel would enable us to continue stationing men‑of‑war in the harbour, for the ostensible purpose of defending them.

 

On the arrival of the French battalion at Murmansk on July 25 it became possible to make arrangements for the landing at Archangel. The mouth of the River Dvina here debouches into the White Sea in a delta of many low‑lying islands, the town itself being on the principal arm of the river and twenty‑five miles from the open sea. The only practicable passage over the bar of the Dvina is flanked by a long, narrow island named Mudyugski, on which there were known to be formidable batteries. A landing at Archangel in face of organised opposition was scarcely feasible. A few machine guns on the banks of the long, narrow channel; the facility with which mines protected by hidden guns could be laid in the river; the difficulties of actual disembarkation ‑ all these seemed to the Admiralty Staff to render such an operation impossible in face of firm resistance. But they felt it desirable to secure a position whence immediate advantage might be taken of a favourable turn of events ashore; and they therefore suggested that the first step should be to seize Mudyugski Island, for which the naval force on the station seemed sufficient, and then, by playing on the threat of seaplane bombing and the attraction of the food supplies, to induce at Archangel a favourable reception for the transports containing the troops.

 

This plan evidently contemplated the lapse of some time between the seizure of Mudyugski and the occupation of Archangel. General Poole, however, thought it inadvisable to have any considerable interval between the two operations. The tortuous channel between Mudyugski Island and the town could easily be obstructed, and any action which should forewarn Archangel might lead to irreparable delay. The plan, therefore, jointly decided upon by General Poole and Admiral Kemp, was for the fort to be attacked and if possible captured only eight hours before the arrival of the transports containing the main body of the troops.

 

The expedition was timed to start from Murmansk on August 3, but the trend of events hastened it by several days.

 

July‑Aug. 1918

MORE REINFORCEMENTS

 

On July 30 a steamer arrived at Kandalaksha from Archangel, bringing the staffs of the Allied Embassies, who, when the Bolshevik Government fled from the Germans to Moscow, had retired to Vologda. They were now seeking safety in the Murman region, and a message was received from them saying that an intended rising at Archangel could no longer be postponed, as the Bolsheviks were constantly arresting its promoters and breaking up the organisation. This news decided Admiral Kemp and General Poole to start at once. A hundred French troops were embarked in the Attentive, two hundred in the seaplane carrier Nairana, and two hundred more in the Amiral Aube. The French ship carried also a hundred British Royal Marines, and being the most heavily armed vessel of the three, was allotted the task of battering the forts. Half a dozen trawlers preceded the squadron, which left Murmansk at 9 p.m. on July 30. In the Gorlo, the narrow neck of the White Sea, they ran into thick fog in which the ships became separated. Shortly afterwards Admiral Kemp received from the Amiral Aube a wireless message that she had run aground.

 

This was a serious misfortune. The Amiral Aube, on whose guns the expedition relied for the silencing of the fort, and which also carried most of the landing party, had dropped out. Admiral Kemp and Gen. R. G. Finlayson, in charge of the troops, were both in the Nairana. After a consultation they decided to attack on the original plan without the Amiral Aube, trusting that she would be able to refloat herself and join them later. Accordingly about 3 a.m. on August 1 the two British ships having regained touch, the Nairana anchored fifteen miles from the island, while the Attentive, by Admiral Kemp's orders, went on to the lightship which marked the entrance to the Channel. Captain Altham boarded the light‑vessel, and from there, communicating by telephone with the commandant of the fort, delivered an ultimatum that unless the island were surrendered unconditionally in half an hour it would be bombarded by the ships and bombed from the air. In token of surrender the commandant was to hoist white flags and muster his whole garrison on the foreshore, where he would be under the guns of the ships while the troops landed. After some delay the commandant capitulated unconditionally, and Captain Altham returned to his ship, which then steamed in towards the lighthouse. Meanwhile, the Nairana having flown three seaplanes, the two British ships also closed, and prepared to land the troops. At this moment a tug put out from the lightship, signalling that she had an urgent message for the Admiral; it proved to be a complete reversal of the previous submission, and in it the commandant threatened to resist any attempt at landing.

 

It was obvious that the Bolsheviks were still in power at Archangel, and were determined to oppose the Allied force. But to Admiral Kemp it seemed imperatively necessary that the original plan must be carried through. He therefore decided to attack the island from the northward. The troops were re‑embarked and the Attentive moved up close inshore steaming leisurely across the line of batteries to a position about 5600 yards from the northernmost battery, where she anchored. The Nairana also anchored further to seaward. At 10 a.m. the Attentive was ordered to open fire and the seaplanes to bomb. The enemy had two batteries of four 6‑inch guns each and one of four 4‑inch. The Attentive could bring to bear two 6‑inch and three 4‑inch on a broadside, and had the task, inevitable in all engagements between ships and forts, of knocking out the actual guns and mountings, while the ship herself was a clear and vulnerable target to the shore gunners. Fortunately, the enemy failed to make good use of their advantages. " For the most part," writes Captain Altham, ("The Dvina Campaign," in the Journal of the Royal United Services Institution, May 1923.) "the batteries' shooting was wild; but one 6‑inch gun was evidently in expert hands. One shot skimmed over the forecastle, the next whistled over our heads on the bridge, and the next plunged into the base of the foremost of our four funnels, and burst there, putting two boilers out of action and doing other damage." This, however, was the only hit made by the Bolsheviks.

 

The fort endured for only ten minutes the shells of the Attentive and the bombs of the seaplanes: it then ceased fire and the troops began to land. Captain Alliez, the French officer in charge, found some slight opposition from rifles and machine guns; but by 8 p.m. the garrison had fled in boats up the river, leaving Mudyugski Island in our possession at the cost of two or three wounded. What was a strong position which might easily have repulsed this slender force had been carried, in Captain Altham's phrase, "by sheer effrontery." In the south of the island was found a station from which a minefield could be fired. Now that the station was occupied the mines were harmless. In the course of the afternoon the Amiral Aube arrived; the object she had fouled was not a sandbank, but an old wreck, and she had soon been able to free herself. General Poole, in the yacht Salvator, came up at 4 p.m.; and the five trawlers, who had only 10 knots speed,

 

Aug. 1918

ARCHANGEL OCCUPIED

 

joined in the evening. Soon after the whole island was in our hands.

 

Next morning, August 2, the squadron proceeded up river for Archangel. The resistance of Mudyugski Island had robbed their visit of any element of surprise, and some resistance was expected, especially from two armed icebreakers known to be in the port. These were duly sighted approaching as day broke, but instead of engaging were sunk across the channel; the operation seemed to have been performed in a hurry, and there remained sufficient space between them for the squadron to pass. Eight pilots found on board the lightship were brought back to the Attentive to pilot the squadron. No incident marred the procession of ships up the river; and, after landing detachments of French troops at one or two important points, the squadron anchored off Archangel. The whole waterside of the town was black with cheering people, greeting its arrival in a frenzy of acclamation. General Poole and Admiral Kemp landed and were received with enthusiasm. Everywhere the red flag of the Soviet had been hauled down, and in its place flew the old Russian tri‑colour or the Russian naval flag with its St. Andrew's Cross.

 

The Allied force with the squadron was insufficient to oppose any real attack, and until the four transports with the remainder of the troops should arrive their position was none too secure. A Bolshevik armed yacht was firing on the town round a bend; but the Attentive soon captured her, and Captain Altham's return with this prize brought to a close the operations of August 2.

 

Early on the 3rd Admiral Kemp learned that a party of red troops were approaching Bakharitsa, on the opposite side of the harbour, by rail. This was serious; for at this railway terminus on the west bank of the Dvina were the immense warehouses containing the warlike stores and what remained of the food supplies. These might be the immediate objective of the advancing red troops. Admiral Kemp sent the Attentive, supported by seaplanes, to keep them back. Captain Altham landed a party of seamen to hold the railway terminus, the approach to which he commanded with the ship's guns. Later in the day the little naval party was reinforced by French troops and local Russian volunteers. It was mainly due to the Attentive's gunfire that any red advance was prevented during the dangerous hours till the arrival in the late afternoon of the four transports, which berthed alongside the railway terminus and relieved the hard‑worked naval landing party. To assist the military forces to stabilise their position two naval 12‑pounders were landed from the Attentive, and their crews sustained two casualties in warding off a flank attack after the ship had returned to Archangel. The occupation of Archangel was thus complete.

 

Now that the Bolsheviks had fled back to the southward, the province of Archangel set up a new council under a president named Chaikovski. Before long the Murman Region and the other northern provinces, Vologda and Perm, showed signs of wishing to join Archangel and form a northern confederacy independent of the Bolshevik authorities in Moscow.

 

At the far eastern end of what had been the Tsar's dominions at Vladivostok a parallel series of events had been taking place. There, as at Archangel, large quantities of munitions and military stores had been landed, and affairs at the port were watched by an Allied naval force, of which the cruiser Suffolk was the British representative. Parties of Czech troops straggled in to Vladivostok, but the main body of them was held up by Germans, prisoners freed by the Treaty of Brest‑Litoysk who had seized arms and taken possession of Irkutsk, on the Siberian railway, thus cutting the communications between the eastern and western portions of the Czech army. The only Allies who could spare men to help extricate the Czechs in western Siberia were the Americans and the Japanese, but President Wilson refused any effective assistance, and the Japanese, when they landed, had orders to go no further west than Irkutsk. One British battalion, the 25th Middlesex, under Colonel John Ward, landed at Vladivostok on August 3, simultaneously with the other landing at Archangel, and though it penetrated as far inland as Omsk, and spent Christmas there, the only Allied force to reach the line held by the Czechs west of the Urals was an armoured train mounting two of the Suffolk's 12‑pounder guns, in charge of a gun's crew from the ship. In mid-October the train was at Ufa, 4350 miles from Vladivostok. The Navy has often landed men to assist in military operations, but never before has such a party gone so far from its parent ship.

 

Though the dispirited Czechs looked in vain for support from the east, the Allies were endeavouring to get in touch with them from the White Sea bases.

 

On August 10 General Poole at Archangel received fresh instructions from the War Office defining the policy he was to carry out. He was to co‑operate in restoring Russia, with the object of resisting German influence and penetration and enabling the Russians again to take the field side by side

 

Aug. 1918

THE DVINA COUNTRY

 

with their Allies. In order to effect this object his immediate aim was to establish communications with the Czechs; and with their assistance to secure control of the Archangel-Vologda‑Yekaterinburg railway and the river and railway communications between Archangel and Vyatka.

 

In fact, these two routes, the railway and the river, were the only lines along which it was possible to hold out a helping hand to the Czechs. The White Sea is a deep indentation in the tundra belt of the globe which connects the polar ice cap to the forest zone. The tundra is a land of six months frost and six months thaw. When not ice‑bound it is a swamp. Its vegetation, apart from occasional masses of pines which have invaded it from the south, consists of moss and bog‑herbs, starred, in the brief season of perpetual day, with innumerable tiny flowers. Over such a terrain as this the only tracks are those connecting the scattered islands of higher land; roads as we understand them in England are non‑existent. When General Finlayson himself went up the river he found a fertile strip of land along each bank; elsewhere there were either thick pine forests, rivers, lakes, or immense stretches of bog looking like sticky porridge. On ground of this nature it was impossible for troops to march or manoeuvre; yet it was in this region of swamp and morass that General Poole's force had to conduct its operations. Part of it had already begun to move southward along the railway towards Vologda, repairing the bridges as it advanced. But it met with considerable opposition, and by September 4 was held up at ‑ Obozerskaya, about 75 miles south of Archangel.

 

The advance up the Dvina towards Kotlas began on August 6, when a detachment comprising 150 French, 50 British, 160 Russians and 40 Poles left Archangel in three river steamers, under the command of Major Ringue of the French army. It carried a month's provisions; and the intention was, if possible, to push on to Kotlas, 390 miles up the river, by the channel. Major Ringue found no signs of the retreating Bolsheviks as far as Ust‑Pinega, and reached Bereznik on August 8, capturing a tug just north of the village. His river steamers were each armed with a gun, which in such frail craft proved to have dangers for the gunners as well as for the enemy; the recoil of the first round fired unseated the gun and sent it down into the cabin below. But Major Ringue had reported from Ust‑Pinega that he expected some slight resistance at Bereznik, so a small naval party from the Attentive was organised to man a couple of river steamers as extemporised gunboats each carrying a 12‑pounder gun. These two gunboats, called the Advokat and Gorodok, left Archangel on the 10th, towing a barge in which were a couple of seaplanes and three 12-pounder guns, the personnel of the latter being supplied from the Nairana. Commander Cowan of the Nairana set off from Archangel in a fast motor boat to reconnoitre ahead of Major Ringue's force. (See Map 30)

 

On arrival at Bereznik he found the force there in a serious predicament. It had been attacked by four Bolshevik craft armed with long‑range guns. Major Ringue and other French officers had been wounded and the expedition was brought temporarily to a standstill. By Commander Cowan's advice the troops entrenched ashore, where they obtained protection from the fire of the Bolsheviks, to which they had no means of effective reply. The Advokat's party were meanwhile making their way up river; but Bereznik is 180 miles from Archangel, and they did not reach the expedition till the 12th, when, to the surprise of Lieutenant H. J. F. Cavendish, in command, he learned that the troops had been three days under fire. Proceeding further up river, he met and drove off the Bolshevik craft; they retired so far that the seaplanes failed to sight them the next day. On the 13th the command of the force ashore was taken over by Colonel Josselyn, and the gunboats proceeded on reconnaissance up the river. Several times enemy ships were sighted and chased, but could not be caught. In the last of these chases the gunboats, after passing the village of Troitsa, were suddenly ambushed from a wood which came down to the river bank, and immediately found themselves the centre of a "perfect cauldron" of fire. They managed to turn without serious loss; but till this position could be destroyed further progress was clearly impossible.

 

The news of this set‑back in the advance to Kotlas, which had been regarded as a promising operation, showed that a more cautious programme was advisable. The new plan was first to establish an advanced base at Bereznik; when a reinforcement of 100 rifles could be got to that base the force would seize Seltso, a few miles beyond Troitsa; a further reinforcement of 400 rifles should suffice to carry the expedition on to Krasnoborsk, the last important place before Kotlas; and finally with 500 more men it would be possible to attack Kotlas itself. Captain Altham at Archangel had by now fitted out a third paddle‑steamer as a gunboat with two 12‑pounders; and another craft, called the Opit, was organised as a kind of monitor with four Austrian 3‑inch guns (76.5 mm.) and a

 

Aug. 1918

ADVANCE TO BEREZNIK

 

small howitzer. The four best motor launches also were armed with light guns and maxims.

 

By this time a couple of British monitors, M.23 (Lieut.-Commr. St. A. O. St. John) and M.25 (Lieut.‑Commr. S. W. B. Green), had arrived at Archangel from home. They first visited Kandalaksha, where M.23 remained in support of General Maynard's force, while M.25 returned to Archangel to join the river flotilla. By special arrangements she was lightened sufficiently to enable her to navigate the shallow channel; and to the river force she appeared a veritable dreadnought. Before she started up river, the dangerous battery at Troitsa was captured on August 18. The combined land and river force then advanced along the banks till on the 20th it was held up by a new battery and by four enemy vessels, which were kept off by the Advokat and Gorodok. Further advance proved too difficult for the small force, and at the end of August it withdrew to Bereznik, although the river flotilla had been increased by another gunboat, the Razliv, and the monitor M.25.

 

The monitor was soon in action. She went up river reconnoitring on August 28,and came under fire. Most of her own ammunition had been landed to give her the requisite shallow draught; but she managed to silence the enemy battery at the cost to herself of 4 killed and 7 wounded. Among the latter was Surgeon John Greenlan Dobson, RN, who, though he had lost one eye and had numerous shell splinters in his body, continued operating on and dressing the wounded for four hours without showing any sign of the agony he must have been suffering. (He was awarded the D.S.O.)

 

On the last day of the month Captain Altham, who had been appointed Senior Naval Officer, Dvina River, arrived in a motor launch and took over the command of the flotilla from Lieutenant Cavendish. At the same time the scanty little band of troops was reinforced by a battalion of Royal Scots and another of American infantry; and the expedition, which till then had been little more than a daring raid, took on some appearance of solidity. But in opposition to an advance there was, in addition to the Bolshevik resistance, the approach of winter when the ships would be useless for offence, and moreover almost defenceless against strong attack. The Admiralty had already signified their intention of withdrawing all naval units before the ice formed, and all that seemed possible was to consolidate a position and await reinforcements for the renewal of the campaign in the spring. General Poole abandoned all idea of pushing on to Kotlas before the winter, and decided upon Bereznik as the best site for his winter quarters.

 

It lay near the junction of the River Vaga with the Dvina, and the first step was to clear all enemy parties out of the V‑shaped tongue of land between the two rivers. The operation began on September 14. One party of troops began to march up the right bank of the Vaga, while another advanced along the left bank of the Dvina, the objective of the latter being Chamovo, about 15 miles up river from Bereznik. Two gunboats preceded the Vaga force, and the remainder of the flotilla ‑ the big monitor, two more gunboats, two motor launches and a tug - set off in thick fog to cover the advance of the larger party for Chamovo. Monitors are notoriously unhandy craft. M.25 was no exception, and to keep her in the channel with a strong current swirling among the islands and shoals of the Dvina, and with a thick fog concealing the banks, was a task which called for navigational skill and courage of the highest order. About two miles before Chamovo was reached the flotilla surprised a large Bolshevik gunboat, the Moguchi, moored alongside the bank. She quickly made off, and having better speed than the flotilla, was likely to escape, when a couple of well‑directed 7.5 shells from M.25 put her out of action. Her crew took to the water and were picked up by the British flotilla. Just then the fog lifted, and more enemy ships could be seen fleeing up river. They too had the better speed, and were soon out of sight round a bend.

 

The village of Chamovo was surrounded by thick woods, affording an enemy excellent cover. The plan of operations pre‑supposed that as soon as gunfire from the shore was silenced by the bombarding ships the troops would be in a position to occupy the village from the rear. But the fog which had delayed the naval advance several hours beyond the scheduled time even more seriously hampered the troops ashore. There was no sign of them; and as the position of the ships, surrounded at short range by thick woods which might conceal enemy batteries, was felt to be uncomfortable, Captain Altham decided to land a naval party to hold the village till the troops should arrive. The party were no sooner half‑way through the village than they came under heavy fire; the ships could not themselves use their guns for fear of hurting their own men, and Captain Altham had to order a retirement to give his guns a chance to attack. He halted the landing party at the river bank, and firing over their heads, soon reduced the attackers to silence. Still the troops, now hours overdue, showed no signs of their presence; the ships again came under fire from concealed guns in two

 

Sept. 1918

ADVANCE TO PUSHEGA

 

directions, and since ships alone cannot hold territory, Captain Altham decided to withdraw to Bereznik. The fog had cleared, and on the way back the flotilla was frequently fired on by concealed guns on both banks.

 

Although the operation seemed at the moment to have had no better result than the sinking of a Bolshevik gunboat, it had been a real success. That evening, after the withdrawal of the flotilla, the Royal Scots entered Chamovo without resistance. Further, the moral effect was such that enemy river craft no longer attempted to stand, but in subsequent encounters used their superior speed solely to escape. Hearing that Chamovo was occupied, Captain Altham next day sent the monitor up in support; she arrived in time to sink a Bolshevik steamer which had attacked an outpost ashore. The whole flotilla then moved up to Chamovo. On the way the leading gunboat reported mines in sight, and Captain Altham embarked in a motor launch to investigate. One of the mines could be seen above the surface; and just as all was ready to sink it, the boat's engines failed, and the current carried her right on to the horns. The explosion blew off the stern of the motor boat and killed two of the crew; Captain Altham, almost miraculously, escaped with bruises and torn clothes. He rapidly improvised a sweeping service, which, by the end of the month, destroyed twenty‑four mines and cleared the channel as far as Pushega, some 50 miles above Bereznik. (See Map. 30.)

 

The difficulties and dangers overcome by the river flotilla were equalled by those confronting the land forces. In the finest weather the almost pathless tundra, with its treacherous bogs and equally treacherous woods where an enemy can lie ambushed, is trying ground for troops on the march; but when, in addition, its uncertainties are magnified by thick fog, and myriads of summer mosquitoes madden the men, an advance becomes a nightmare. On the river the crews of the flotilla were comparatively comfortable; the more serious physical trials fell on the rank and file ashore. It was a fine achievement that in a few short weeks they cleared the surroundings of the winter quarters at Bereznik of the enemy and converted the place into a strong military position. But the ice period was now rapidly approaching; and, in accordance with Admiralty orders, the flotilla was withdrawn from the river by October 7. Before leaving, Captain Altham landed several of its guns and their naval crews mounted them ashore in order to augment the small artillery force at Bereznik.

 

It needed all the guns available, for though Archangel was about to freeze up, the Dvina itself remained navigable for at least ten days longer. The Bolsheviks were therefore able to bring gunboats down to assist their land forces; and they so harassed the advance posts 60 miles from Bereznik that on October 17 it was decided to withdraw to the line Kurgomin‑Tulgas, 20 miles further back. Even a fortnight after the departure of the naval flotilla, the river did not freeze. Winter was exceptionally late that year, and the position had to endure two severe attacks before the welcome ice appeared. In the last assault, on November 11, a force of 1000 Bolsheviks supported by gunboats delivered an attack on both sides of the river. It ended in disaster for the enemy; and the Royal Scots, by capturing the road on the left bank, cut the normal line of retreat for most of the Bolsheviks. Only the woods and swamps were left to them; many died from hunger and exposure; and eighty who reached the Vaga in sad condition surrendered gladly to our force. (Major John Ewing: The Royal Scots, Vol. II., p. 752.) Then came the frost and winter, and all movement ceased for the year.

 

In France the course of events throughout the summer and autumn had been so disastrous for Germany that early in October most of the German troops in Finland were moved to the French front and strong attacks on the Murman railway were no longer probable. Parties of aggressive Finns were defeated at intervals by the Korel troops serving under General Maynard, who by November 11 held the railway as far south as Soroka and was guarding the frontier between Finland and the Korel province. In effect, therefore, the Allies were helping to protect the independence, as against the Bolshevik Central Government, of the region bounded by a line drawn along the Finnish frontier, thence across to the shores of the White Sea and south from Archangel to Obozerskaya on the railway and Kurgomin on the Dvina. They had been unable to join hands with the Czechs, who, though they were west of the Urals, were held up on the Ural river. Siberia was now an independent state, in which large numbers of Siberians and Cossacks were drilling more or less regularly. In the south an anti‑Bolshevik force under General Denikin occupied the region between the Black Sea and Volga. Elsewhere in European Russia the Bolshevik military hold on the country was unchallenged. Even if the Allies decided upon active intervention in Russia it was improbable that any advance from Archangel would be possible unless major operations from the south or east brought about a practical

 

Oct.‑Nov. 1918

RUSSIA AND THE ARMISTICE

 

collapse of the Bolsheviks. If that should occur, a well-trained Russian force at Archangel, stiffened by a small proportion of Allied troops, might accelerate their complete downfall; General Poole was therefore ordered on November 5 to confine himself to the defensive and to concentrate on the training of a Russian army.

 

It was to help to organise the Russians for defence against the Germans that he had been sent. Unfortunately, the mass of the Russian people showed little desire to help themselves. Their attitude was fatalistic; they were ready to accept whatever might happen to them, without taking any steps to influence the course of events. From the Murman region. certainly a sparsely inhabited area, only 360 Russians had volunteered to serve; but even in the Archangel district, with a vastly larger population, the total number of Russian recruits was only 1900. The Korels in the Murman region, separate from these, did not object to defend their own province against invasion, but they refused to fight outside it. However, it was doubtful whether the Russians would fight anywhere, without support; the only certainty was that Trotski's formidable Bolshevik army would reoccupy and absorb the northern regions as soon as the Allies withdrew. To judge from the usual behaviour of Bolshevik troops, it would be a terrible day for Russians who had been assisting the Allies, when the Allies departed. This, then, was the dilemma in which the Allies found themselves when Germany laid down her arms: either their friends must be abandoned to the ferocity of Trotski's bands, or the inglorious, expensive and apparently fruitless campaign in North Russia must be continued ‑ how long and with what final result, no one could say. For the moment, however, evacuation of the Archangel forces was in any case impracticable. They were imprisoned in a wall of ice until the summer of 1919 should open up the sea approaches again. For strategical, as well as for political reasons, withdrawal of the Murmansk forces could not be contemplated while Archangel was isolated.

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

CHAPTER X

 

AFTER ZEEBRUGGE ‑ THE MINING OPERATIONS IN THE NORTH SEA AND THE U‑BOAT OPERATIONS ON THE AMERICAN COAST

 

The concentration of U‑boats upon the outer approach routes during the second half of May was accompanied by an attack against traffic running from the great American ports of shipment:‑ the starting‑points of the great procession of armies which were moving across the Atlantic with such stern and ominous regularity. The attack was started, late in May, by U.151. (See Map 31.) The Americans had been warned of her approach and were ready; ships moving northwards to Halifax to join the transatlantic convoy, were formed into a coastal convoy and put in charge of a small cruiser. The first of these convoys sailed on June 6, after which a series of coastal convoys sailed at regular intervals. The movements of troops and supplies were thus uninterrupted.

 

The anti‑submarine campaign was now being prosecuted on both sides of the Atlantic, and the operation at the eastern extreme of this great theatre ‑ the mine barrage in the North Sea ‑ was well advanced. On June 8 the British minelayers, under the direction of Rear‑Admiral L. Clinton‑Baker, laid the first mines in the eastern section; simultaneously, the American minelaying squadron put down a very large minefield in the central portion. (See Map 17.) But it was not long before disturbing reports began to come in from the ships which Admiral Tupper had stationed on the fields. The first was from the trawler Tenby Castle, whose skipper reported that between June 8 and 15 he had heard twenty-eight distinct and about thirty distant explosions, while patrolling on the western end of the minefield.

 

The matter was at once brought to the notice of Rear-Admiral J. Strauss, the commander of the American minelaying forces. He answered that these premature explosions would not "materially affect the efficiency of the minefield" 3385 mines had already been laid and only 150 had exploded.

 

June 1918

THE NORTHERN BARRAGE

 

This proportion would be reduced by a special mechanical device which was then being delivered.

 

Meanwhile the local authorities at Scapa and Kirkwall were writing urgently to Whitehall about the unsuccessful operations of the northern patrol. Captain H. T. Walwyn, who had been appointed to the Implacable as an expert in hydrophone operations, reported that communications between the patrol craft were rudimentary owing to lack of appliances, and that the force needed a better supply of equipment, and, above all, more supporting ships. The Commander‑in‑Chief endorsed this opinion and added to his letter a piece of technical criticism which requires explanation. In Admiral Tupper's general plan of operations, the divisions of hydrophone trawlers were concentrated in three zones ‑ each twenty miles square ‑ which covered the corner round Fair Island. The ordinary or "sentry" trawlers were distributed over zones to the east and west of this central group. The purpose of these dispositions was to drive all passing submarines towards the centre of the channel, where the sound of their engines could be detected by the hydrophones. Each hydrophone division was supported by a sloop, which could press the chase. During the operations to the north of the Shetlands, it had been found that the outpost trawlers hampered the hydrophone units more than they assisted them, and the Commander‑in‑Chief now urged that they should be withdrawn altogether.

 

The Admiralty replied that the persistent hunting of submarines had proved that U‑boats could be followed for a considerable length of time, provided the hydrophone apparatus were used intelligently; and this continuous harrying of eastbound and west‑bound submarines justified the maintenance of the patrol. On the question of outpost trawlers they agreed with the Commander‑in‑Chief, and ordered that they should be dispersed to the areas from which they had been taken.

 

The rapid progress in the laying of the Northern barrage was accompanied by another development in our defensive system. It has been shown that the destroyer escorts of the fast American convoys were now taking ships right through the Irish Sea and the Channel, to their ports of entry. It had for some time been considered advisable to give this additional protection also to the slower convoys from Hampton Roads and Sydney, and before the end of June the new system was working. Henceforward the Buncrana escorts for the Hampton Roads and Sydney convoys went direct to the rendezvous, and on approaching the North Channel were met by two additional destroyers. After receiving this reinforcement, the convoy was divided: one section of the escort took the Clyde ships to Cumbrae, and the other went up to Liverpool. The Clyde section of the escort then went on to Lamlash to take out an outward convoy composed exclusively of ships from the Clyde and Belfast, and dispersed them on or beyond the tenth meridian. The escorts which had gone on to Liverpool conducted a slow outward‑bound convoy called OLB, and returned to Buncrana after its dispersal. By the end of June, therefore, nearly all ocean‑going vessels in the Irish Sea were under escort.

 

There was a sharp fall in the losses incurred in the Irish Sea during the month; but this was due rather to the return of the U‑boats to the outer approach routes than to the stiffening of our defensive system. The number of operating U‑boats was not appreciably lowered, and the Northern barrage and the patrol forces stationed there were, as yet, proving no obstacle.

 

To all outward appearance the war at sea was still a quite indecisive succession of attacks, ripostes, counter-attacks and counter‑ripostes, yet it was during these monotonous days that the naval campaign was definitely won. The exact date of the Allied naval victory is difficult to determine, for it is not announced in the despatches of a naval commander, or in the log books of vessels engaged in a great action, but in a few columns of statistics kept in an office in the centre of London. The historical importance of these figures is equal to that of Collingwood's despatch after Trafalgar or Joffre's Order of the Day before the Marne. Since the beginning of the year the monthly balance sheet of British mercantile tonnage had shown a fluctuating return of losses and gains. There had been a net loss in January and February and a net gain in March and April. In May there was a loss, though a smaller one; and in June a slightly adverse balance was declared.

 

Notwithstanding this, there were more ships available for service at the end of the month than at the beginning. The reason was that the building of new ships and the repairing of damaged ones were now very much accelerated; about one hundred and forty thousand tons of shipping were now being built month by month in British yards, and about seven hundred thousand repaired for wear or for damage. These figures proved that the British Empire, alone and without assistance, was now holding the submarine campaign, for only about one hundred and seventy thousand tons were now being lost monthly, from all causes. But the British figures of losses and gains were not the only relevant statistics. Nearly a year before Erzberger had pointed out that the success or failure of the submarine

 

June 1918

VICTORY AT SEA

 

campaign would be settled by the reduction of the world's shipping rather than by that of Great Britain alone. When uttered, Erzberger's opinion was rather wide of the mark; but in June 1918, when the merchant navies of neutral Europe were practically running under British charter, when the United States were throwing the output of their yards and industries into a common pool, the world's output of shipping was in fact the decisive figure, and during this second quarter of the year 1918 it exceeded the losses for the first time since 1914. (The excess amounted to over 280,000 tons. For the exact figures, see Fayle, Seaborne Trade, Vol. III. p. 467.) This was success in its most comprehensive sense; and from mid-summer 1918, British operations at sea may be regarded as measures for holding that accumulation of small advantages which taken together constituted victory.

 

This great victory at sea had passed almost unrecognised. Public attention was still divided between the battles in Flanders, where the Allied armies were still staggering and reeling under the German onslaught, and operations at Zeebrugge and Ostend, which had just been announced as far-reaching successes. The columns of figures that recorded the victory were not suitable for issue as bulletin news: even if they had been published, few persons would have grasped their immense significance. To give them their proper emphasis, to show that they registered a victory as remarkable as any in British history, was impossible in the circumstances. It would have been necessary to relate those figures to all that was taking place by land and by sea.

 

Moreover, the victory had been gained by a composite exertion. With the exception of the convoy system, which was still an unqualified success, and to which the Germans had discovered no counter, every single measure at sea had been more or less disappointing. The mining of the Bight had, in the end, given a definite result; since February, submarines from the German bases had practically abandoned the Bight routes, and had used the Kattegat almost exclusively. The minefield laid in the Kattegat itself had not stopped them. This had shortened the productive period of each submarine cruise by something like four days, and had been partially responsible for the fall in the sinkings in Home waters. It was none the less disappointing that the only result of a measure upon which such immense quantities of material had been expended should have been that German submarines took rather longer to reach their cruising Stations. The Germans had, moreover, made the exertion necessary for neutralising the disadvantages of the Kattegat route; by hurrying on repairs, hastening reliefs and shortening the leave given to crews returning from the cruising grounds, they had contrived to keep about the same number of submarines in the approach routes.

 

The Northern barrage was not yet very far advanced. (See Map 17.) Admiral Tupper's patrol squadron now numbered some seventy‑six units. During the month of May, his squadron had worked continuously on the western side of the barrage, and had successfully harried the German submarines on the north‑about passage. But the operations had been little but exciting and well‑organised chases. In the words of the captain of the Implacable, the weak point had been the actual killing.

 

Elsewhere the purely naval campaign against the submarines was also a disappointing record. During the month of May the enemy's submarine losses had, it is true, been exceptionally severe: seventeen German boats had been lost from all causes; that is, nearly three times as many as had been destroyed in the previous month. But a careful examination of these losses showed that the enemy had suffered from extraordinary misfortune, and that we could not possibly count upon keeping the monthly destruction at such a figure. The losses in Home waters were:

 

U.103, rammed by H.M.S. Olympic in the Western Channel.

U.154, sunk by submarine E.35 in the Atlantic.

UB.16, sunk by submarine E.34 in the southern part of the North Sea.

UB.31, Dover Straits minefield.

UB.72, sunk by submarine D.4 in the Channel.

UB.74, sunk by a depth charge from the yacht Lorna in Lyme Bay.

UB.78, rammed by the transport Queen Alexandra in the Channel.

UC.49, bombed by aeroplanes, trawlers and destroyers in the North Sea.

UC.75, rammed by H.M.S. Fairy in the North Sea.

UC.78, Dover Straits minefield.

UB.119, lost: causes and position doubtful.

 

It was indeed about to fall sharply.

 

The intensive patrol on the deep minefields in the Dover Straits, which Admiral Keyes had instituted in January, had been subjected to all the hazards of the sea. Yet in spite of these setbacks, the patrol had given better results than any other operation or complex of operations against the German submarines, in that it had inflicted regular and continuous loss upon them. Since the beginning of the year ten German submarines had been destroyed in the Straits, an extraordinary contrast to the destructions during the previous year. (See Appendix E.) In consequence of this, all the larger

 

Jan.‑May 1918

A REVIEW OF RESULTS

 

German submarines had been ordered to use the north‑about route.

 

Since February, therefore, when the order was issued, about six days of each U‑boat cruise were spent unproductively. This was certainly a great result, but it was not the only one. As has been explained, (Ante p. 275.) the German High Command recalled a part of the Flanders submarine flotilla to Germany during the summer because the difficulties and dangers of the Dover Straits had become so great that it was thought best to reduce the submarines operating in the Channel, and to open a new zone of operations off the east coast of England. In this new zone UB‑ and UC‑boats of the smaller type operated with some success to the end of the war, but never with such destructive effect as in the Channel. The minefield patrol designed by Admiral Keyes must thus be regarded as the most successful of all the offensive measures taken against the German submarines. He and his officers had succeeded in subjecting the enemy to that continuous harassing attack which is the essence of offensive warfare by land or by sea; by so doing they had compelled the enemy to reconsider their plans, to redistribute their flotillas, practically to abandon an entire zone of operations, and to substitute for it another, not nearly so fruitful. No other plan of counter‑attack had given results comparable to this, so that it is no exaggeration to say that the plan of operations conceived in the winter of 1917 and prosecuted with such ruthless energy to the end of the war was both a model and an incentive to the entire service.

 

Yet, it is evident that, as all measures combined were not inflicting an average monthly loss, which was greater than the Germans could bear, the general counter‑attack upon the enemy's submarines was still indecisive, indeed it may be said to have failed. The enemy's submarine fleet had not, in fact, been defeated, but the campaign they were conducting had been mastered.

 

In the early months of the unrestricted submarine campaign the German U‑boat captains had been sinking 700 tons of shipping a day; the figure had fallen to 330 during the last quarter of 1917; it was now at about 275 and was still declining. Twelve months previously, therefore, the German submarine commanders had been a danger to the Empire and to the Alliance: they were now only a danger to unescorted ships and their crews.

 

The mine barrage across the North Sea was still the principal operation in the British war plan. Early in July, the Northern patrol was strengthened by the leader Marksman, which was detached to Lerwick from the 12th Flotilla. Three days after she arrived (July 7), Captain Walwyn sailed in her to take charge of an operation which seemed as promising as any that the Northern patrol had as yet undertaken. The Admiralty had information that a large cruiser submarine would be passing south of the Faeroes, homeward bound, on about July 12. Late in the afternoon of that day, therefore, a composite flotilla of destroyers, sloops and trawlers:

 

(Leader Marksman.

Sloops Harebell and 2nd Division of trawlers,

Aubretia and 4th Division of trawlers,

Syringa and 11th Division of trawlers.

T.B.D.s Beagle (detached from Devonport) and 13th Division of trawlers,

Foxhound (detached from Devonport) and 15th Division of trawlers.

 

... reached a point about seventy miles north of the Shetlands, which was believed to be the eastern end of the submarine's most probable track between the two groups of islands. From here they began to sweep westwards, in a rough quadrilateral formation sixteen miles broad and seven miles deep. When the hunting flotilla reached its patrol line the weather was wild and stormy, and all that night and the day following the trawlers, sloops and destroyers pounded through a tremendous sea which swept their decks and smothered them in spray. There was no thought of putting out the hydrophones, and indeed towards noon Captain Walwyn ordered the trawler divisions to close the centre of the formation, as thick banks of mist were then being blown across the squadron by the gale.

 

It was not until six o'clock on July 13, when the flotilla was nearing the western end of its sweep, that Captain Walwyn was able to order the hydrophones to be put out; by noon the flotilla had actually reached the limiting point of its search, and turned sixteen points. Two hours later the Syringa and the 11th Division of trawlers, in the centre of the line picked up the sounds of a submarine. The Marksman closed them, and the hunt went north‑westwards towards Trangisvaag Bay in Sydero, the southernmost island of the Faeroes. All that afternoon, and during the night that followed, the sounds came intermittently from the direction of the bay; early on the morning of the 14th a trawler thoroughly searched the bay, but found nothing.

 

 

Plan - Anti-Submarine Sweep, July 12-14, 1918

 

The remainder of the flotilla had remained near the eastern end of the line of sweep; and whilst the trawler was searching in Trangisvaag Bay, the 18th Division reported that they had picked up a submarine about twelve miles to the

 

July 1918

A TYPICAL CHASE

 

south of Sydero Bank. Captain Walwyn now stationed the 11th Division across the mouth of Trangisvaag Bay and rnade away to the south to follow the new scent. He came up with the flotilla at about three in the morning and found that they were in perfect formation, chasing north‑eastwards after a submarine which sounded very near. Just after seven o'clock the direction of the chase turned sharply to the southeastward. The U‑boat seemed hard pressed; the hydrophone listeners reported that the Germans were alternately starting and stopping their engines, and were less than three miles away. At a quarter‑past ten, the commanding officer of the Beagle, on the lower, left‑hand corner of the formation, estimated that the submarine was 600 yards ahead on a steady course. He at once began to run a line of depth charges in her direction.

 

Captain Walwyn considered that the depth charges had been put down too soon; and so it proved, for the sounds of the submarine's motors were next heard from the northwestward, the rumble in the hydrophones was faint, and she had evidently increased her lead. None the less, the sounds were strong enough to enable the chase to continue; and all that afternoon the flotilla followed the submarine on a track which ran to the south‑eastwards with frequent deviations. The 11th Division, which was still off Trangisvaag, reported that all was quiet, but Captain Walwyn ordered it to remain where it was.

 

Just after four o'clock the flotilla seemed again to have got near to the submarine, and for two hours the sounds were very distinct. At six o'clock it appeared almost certain that the submarine was ahead, and ten minutes later the commanding officer of the Beagle ran a second line of depth charges. The submarine was not heard again; and she evidently escaped whilst the flotilla lay to, waiting for the result of the depth charge attack. At nine o'clock a dense fog came up from the south‑east and the hunt was over.

 

This long chase was typical. The flotilla, supported by three fast vessels, had been continuously on a submarine's track for about sixteen hours, and had presumably caused the U‑boat commander and his crew great anxiety during the whole period. If there had been any means at all of keeping on the heels of the U‑boats during their effective cruises, this hunting and tracking would have reduced shipping losses to almost nothing; for if a fleet of unarmed merchantmen had been passing over the U‑boat whilst Captain Walwyn and his flotilla were on her track, the German could have done nothing.

 

But a sixteen hours' chase, in a zone where there was no merchant shipping to be attacked, did not affect the destructive capacity of a U‑boat which might be thirty, or even ninety, days at sea. It was at the least an annoyance, at the most an anxiety to the quarry. As for the repeated appeal that more fast vessels should be allotted to the patrol, it was natural that officers who would cheerfully remain on watch for eighteen whole hours at a time, and never slacken their vigilance so long as a submarine was thought to be near, should ask for more ships and men. Their thoughts were dominated by the keenness of the chase, and the keenness of their disappointment when time after time the quarry got away, as it seemed by a narrow margin. But during this last operation fast ships had been attached to the flotilla, and the result had been a longer hunt, and a proportionately greater disappointment. The Admiralty, who could place the daily incidents of the submarine campaign in a wider perspective than officers stationed in a particular zone and absorbed in the actual operations, were probably aware that Captain Walwyn and the Commander‑in‑Chief were complaining not of material and equipment but of the difficulties of submarine war; and that an improvement in hydrophone design, or an allocation of more destroyers to the patrol, would produce nothing but longer and keener hunts, which would not lead to any decisive results.

 

Meanwhile minelaying upon the barrage was continued with relentless energy by the British and Americans, but the mechanical device, upon which Admiral Strauss depended for reducing the number of premature explosions in the American minefields, did not seem to improve matters. During July the trawler skippers had the same story to tell of explosions that were sometimes heard loud and close at hand, and at other times faintly and distantly.

 

On July 20, Admiral Tupper sent to the Commander‑in-Chief a tabulated list of all the explosions heard during the previous week. Soon afterwards he sent in another paper, more systematically divided than the first, and if he had remained on the northern patrol for much longer, this journal of premature explosions in the American minefields would presumably have been sent in at regular intervals, and as a matter of course.

 

The Commander‑in‑Chief also doubted the minefield's efficacy, though for other reasons. On July 15 he wrote to the Admiralty to say that two of the most recently laid American minefields, which were eighty feet below the water,

 

July 1918

THE BARRAGE CRITICISED

 

could not be relied upon to do more than shake a submarine passing over them on the surface. He had only agreed to the laying of this immense barrage inside the Grand Fleet's zone of manoeuvre because he had been assured that it would be an obstacle which no German submarine could traverse, and was correspondingly disappointed when he found that the Grand Fleet's freedom of manoeuvre had been seriously restricted for a doubtful advantage. The Admiralty admitted that a mine would only destroy a submarine upon the surface if it exploded within fifteen feet of the hull; and added that double the number of mines that were actually being laid would have to be put down if the barrage were to be made effective, in the sense that the Commander‑in‑Chief gave to the word. The Admiralty stated, however, that German submarine commanders were avoiding the central area altogether, which proved that they at all events considered the barrage to be a real danger. The project was, therefore, well worth completing.

 

Meanwhile the German U‑boats were operating in the outer approach routes in two groups. The first was in the north‑western approaches to the northern entrance to the Irish Sea, the second in the quadrilateral between Ireland, Land's End and Ushant. The German submarine commanders were evidently not deterred or discouraged by the failure of their attacks against the convoys in May; and though their second attempt was not appreciably more successful than the last, they showed that they had learned by experience, and were able to subject incoming convoys to repeated and successive attacks. (The torpedoing of the large liner Justicia on July 19 was a typical instance of concerted submarine attack.) As there was every chance that these attacks would increase in intensity, the Admiralty decided to move the northern patrol to Buncrana. In its new station it would at least bring relief to the incoming convoys by keeping a certain number of submarines engaged in their own defence. Admiral Tupper was therefore ordered to turn over his command to Captain Walwyn.

 

Enemy submarines were still operating off the American coast, the extreme edge of the submarine theatre; but although they were attacking shipping with complete immunity to themselves, the damage they were doing was trifling. They were certainly destroying a fair number of sailing ships and steamers engaged in coastal traffic; but overseas ships and the transatlantic convoys were untouched. The local convoys continued to run to Halifax without molestation; and actually the American authorities increased the scope of the convoy system whilst this submarine activity on their coasts was rising in intensity. The numbers of ships in the New York, Hampton Roads, and Sydney convoys had increased steadily during the year. During June, Captain P. N. Layton, R.N.R., of the Dara, had brought a convoy of forty‑seven ships safely across the Atlantic, a truly wonderful piece of good leadership. (The escort ship was U.S.S. Columbia.) But elastic as the system had been, there were some strains that it was obviously unwise to impose indefinitely. In order to reduce the size of these great mercantile convoys, therefore, the Americans agreed that all ships which were capable of maintaining nine knots and were bound for the Bay of Biscay ports should be taken from the New York convoys and put into the American Bay of Biscay convoys. This new arrangement came into force on July 24, whilst U.156, the latest arrival, was operating off Boston.

 

When the Admiralty decided to move the forces of the Northern patrol to Buncrana they restricted the scope and purpose of the Northern barrage. The plan as conceived and originally executed was a project for forcing submarines into deep minefields by harrying them whilst they were on the surface. When the patrol craft were withdrawn, one‑half of the plan was virtually abandoned, and from then onwards the mine barrage was more a dangerous obstacle than a death‑trap into which our surface forces were to drive the German submarines. But this alteration of plan was accompanied by no relaxation of effort. The American minelaying squadron was now at full complement and was working with great regularity.

 

There were, moreover, now two barrages in the North Sea, the northern one, which has already been described, and the southern one, across the Heligoland Bight. This second, older barrage, which had originally been laid to keep submarines in harbour, and had proved useless for the purpose, was still maintained as an auxiliary to the Admiralty's policy of postponing a fleet action. The allocation of the large minelayers to the Northern barrage threw the work of maintaining the other barrage upon the minelaying destroyers in the Humber, and upon the minelaying submarines at Harwich. The south‑western exits from the minefield were patrolled from Harwich, the north‑eastern from Scapa, and thanks to the development of small craft design, and the growth of the air service, means had now been discovered of conducting

these minefield reconnaissances inside the mined area. Since June, Rear‑Admiral Tyrwhitt had been sending coastal motor boats across the mines, towards the mouth of the

 

Aug. 1918

MINOR OPERATIONS

 

Ems, with orders to attack all the sweepers that they could find. The fifth of the reconnaissance sweeps began at 9.0 p.m. on August 10, when four light cruisers and thirteen destroyers:

 

Light Cruisers: Curacoa, Coventry, Concord, Danae.

Destroyers: Spenser, Tempest, Sharpshooter, Radiant, Bruce, Stork, Springbok, Tetrarch.

Retriever}

Thisbe }with seaplane lighters

Teazer }

Redoubt }towing an aeroplane on a lighter.

Starfish }

 

... sailed from Harwich for a point about twenty‑five miles north‑west of Vlieland. This point was reached just after six o'clock on the following morning, and the motor boats started at once on a run which was to take them past Ameland. The seaplanes could not get away for a somewhat unusual reason: it was a very fine morning, and the planes were unable to get off the water because not a breath of wind was stirring. The coastal motor boats therefore made their start to the eastward with no aeroplane escort.

 

Admiral Tyrwhitt did not recall them, as arrangements had been made for a flight of planes from Yarmouth to meet the force. They did arrive shortly after seven o'clock, but Admiral Tyrwhitt's signals to them did not get through, and they acted independently for the rest of the morning. Meanwhile the six coastal motor boats had reached Terschelling and were moving at high speed close to the shore. They were cruising in pairs arranged in a rough quarter‑line, for the water through which the boats moved was so churned and beaten by the enormous bow wave, and by the commotion of the propellers, that no boat could steer in another's wake. As the flotilla swept past the low sand dunes of Terschelling, which were bright and clear in the sunlight, six aeroplanes were sighted: three were ahead and three astern. LieutenantCommander A. L. Coke, who was in charge of the flotilla, at first thought they were friendly, but in a few moments he saw large black crosses ‑ the distinctive marks of German aireraft ‑ upon the under side of the wings. The flotilla now closed, so as to concentrate the fire of their Lewis guns; and the aeroplanes ‑ there were by this time eight of them ‑ opened fire with their machine guns. LieutenantCommander Coke decided to go on with his reconnaissance,

 

It seemed to me," he wrote, "that I was bound to be attacked by other machines whatever I did," ‑ and for half an hour the fight continued without much result. The aeroplanes swept up towards the motor boats from astern, firing through their propellers; when they reached the motor boats they rose sharply, and flew back to a position well in the wake of the flotilla. The coastal motor boats were moving through the water at well over thirty knots: the aeroplanes through the air at about sixty or eighty. It was certainly the fastest action ever fought at sea. From time to time the German aeroplanes dropped bombs, but none made a hit, and just before eight o'clock Lieutenant‑Commander Coke turned to the westward. Ameland lighthouse was then abeam. Up to now the flotilla had held its own; it had suffered no serious damage and one of the enemy's planes had been seen to come down sharply; but as soon as he turned to the westward, Lieutenant‑Commander Coke saw that the fight was likely to go against him. The Germans now had the sun behind them, and were reinforced by four small fast aeroplanes each armed with two guns. These machines, according to Lieutenant‑Commander Coke, "caused more trouble and did more damage than the eight that had appeared previously."

 

During the next quarter of an hour the coastal motor boats suffered, and at 8.15 they had practically ceased to fire: in some the guns had jammed; in others the ammunition was gone. The Germans now flew over the boats almost at point‑blank range. The crews of two boats Nos. 40 and 44 ‑ were then firing their last rounds; they hit one of the German planes heavily and she crashed into the sea. A few moments later the last of the boats ceased firing and the engines of all began to give out. Besides this their condition was desperate; a machine‑gun bullet had pierced the smoke apparatus of one of them, and the crew were half stifled with the fumes; another was so riddled that "one could almost see through the side in places." Only one was able to keep the engines moving. The flotilla was then between three and four miles from the land. One boat ‑ No. 41 ‑ reached the shore, where the Dutch authorities took charge of her; and a Dutch torpedo boat came up later and took two others in tow. The remainder were sunk in deep water; not one of the flotilla returned to the supporting force.

 

When the motor boats were finally abandoned, Admiral Tyrwhitt was cruising neax the rendezvous; he was endeavouring to entice a Zeppelin out to seaward and did not guess that the flotilla was in danger. When the airship was seen to be following the squadron, Lieutenant S. D. Culley, R.A.F., took the air in a Camel aeroplane which was being towed on a lighter. He rose rapidly, and a few minutes later he was out of sight in the clouds. The Zeppelin remained

 

Aug. 1918

GRAND FLEET SWEEPS

 

in the sunshine until about 9.30. when she, too, passed out of view. Ten minutes later the officers and men in the ships heard the rattle of machine gunfire in the clouds above them. It lasted only a few seconds; they then saw a sheet of flame sweep across the white cloud bank, and a shower of splintered metal fall from it. Lieutenant Culley had destroyed his enemy in those upper regions of the air from which neither sea nor land is visible.

 

The Zeppelin (L.53) was destroyed at a quarter to ten, and there was still no sign of the coastal motor boats: Admiral Tyrwhitt ordered the Concord and two destroyers to sweep north from Terschelling, and the Coventry and two more to sweep towards the Haaks. At about eleven o'clock he asked for another flight of aeroplanes from Yarmouth; they reached him well on in the afternoon, and reported at half‑past five that they had swept to the eastward over the minefield and had seen nothing. Two of the coastal motor boats had by then been in Dutch hands for many hours; the remainder were sunk in the sands of the Ameland flats.

 

It fell to the Grand Fleet to patrol the northern and north‑western ends of the minefield, and here the procedure was different. The object of the Grand Fleet reconnaissances was not to attack the enemy's sweepers, for regular sweeping operations seem to have ceased at the northern end of the Bight. The enemy's airships were, however, continually patrolling the Bight, and it was against them that our sweeps were chiefly directed. The air arm was called more and more into service; and after May the Furious sailed at regular intervals for some point on the outer edge of the minefield, and sent up a flight of planes. The operations were uneventful; on one occasion the Furious and the light cruiser forces were bombed by the enemy's aircraft; but no engagements occurred between the British aeroplanes and the enemy's Zeppelins. The most important of these operations was carried out on July 19, when two flights of aeroplanes, carried in the Furious, bombed the Zeppelin shed at Tondern. Nearly three years before, a similar operation had brought the High Seas Fleet out of harbour; but on this occasion the enemy made no move. The heavy covering forces which covered the raid returned to harbour with nothing to report. (Force A. Furious and three destroyers; 1st Light Cruiser Squadron and five destroyers. Force B. 1st Division of the 1st Battle Squadron and eight destroyers; 7th Light Cruiser Squadron.)

 

Whilst the patrol forces and minelayers were carrying on the mining campaign with such unrelenting energy, the U‑boats off the American coast were endeavouring to stop that flow of supplies and men which was more and more evidently the nourishing force of our coming advance. There were now three of them off, or near, the coast: U.156 was off Nova Scotia and U.140 off Chesapeake Bay; U.117 was approaching. In order to protect ships going round the coast to their ports of assembly, orders were given early in the month of August that vessels going from New York to Sydney to join the HS convoys should sail in groups; in addition to which the HC convoys were henceforward sailed in two groups which met at a prearranged rendezvous. (Later, these groups of coastal ships were accompanied by a cruiser.) These measures, joined to those taken in the previous months, secured the convoys against loss or disturbance. Indeed, if the actual achievements of these submarines are placed side by side with figures and statistics exhibiting the results which it was hoped they would effect, the failure of their operations is apparent.

 

From the time of their first arrival to the middle of August, when their activity was in its meridian, the U‑boat commanders on the American coast had sunk thirty‑six sailing vessels ‑ some of which were mere coastal craft of between 20 and 50 tons ‑ and twenty‑nine steamships of all sizes. The total destruction was, therefore, numerically considerable. But during this same period convoys had passed through the new U‑boat zone without loss. These convoys were the real quarry, and they had escaped entirely. On the American coast, as indeed in every other theatre, U‑boat operations had ceased to be operations for a large strategic purpose and had become no more than sporadic attacks upon trade.

 

By the middle of August the minefields of the Northern barrage ran between the 59th and 60th parallels from the meridian of Greenwich to Norwegian territorial waters. It was the eastern section which gave rise to the most serious doubts and difficulties. When completed it would cover a rough quadrilateral between the third meridian and Norwegian territorial waters; and its eastern end would skirt the Norwegian coast from the neighbourhood of Udsire to the approaches to Selbjorns Fiord. Forces based upon the Orkneys could not keep this zone of water properly patrolled ‑ it was too far away ‑ and a deep minefield, into which submarines were not compelled to dive was obviously of doubtful value. It was for this reason that the Commander‑in‑Chief had always held that the barrage would only be a real danger if a base could be obtained on the Norwegian side of the North Sea. He

 

Aug. 1918

NORWEGIAN NEUTRALITY

 

had, however, expressed this opinion as a criticism of the barrage project, not as a suggestion in high policy.

 

The British Government could not contemplate a violation of Norwegian neutrality; but they realised that this unpatrolled section of the minefield, with a gap at its eastern end, did actually prejudice the success of the whole undertaking. By August it was evident that something would have to be done: reports of German submarine movements raised a strong presumption that U‑boat commanders were evading the barrage by using Norwegian territorial waters. Also, the lack of any kind of patrol on the eastern section would soon be more felt than ever; for Admiral Tupper's forces were under orders to withdraw to Buncrana. After long consideration, therefore, the Government decided to invite the Norwegian Government to mine the strip of territorial waters which lay to the eastward of the eastern section of the barrage. When the British Minister approached the Norwegian Government, he reminded them that they had forbidden all submarines to use their territorial waters by two successive Royal decrees; the British Government were therefore only asking the Norwegian authorities to make these decrees effective.

 

The Norwegian authorities replied that they could not do what we asked, as they alone must decide what measures ought to be taken to make the Royal decrees effective. We did not feel inclined to press them hard. If they absolutely refused to do as we asked, we could, of course, mine their waters ourselves, but there were objections to this; and naval opinion was strongly against it. At a conference held on board the Queen Elizabeth at the end of August, the Commander‑in‑Chief said that it would be most repugnant to the officers and men in the Grand Fleet to steam in overwhelming strength into the waters of a small but high‑spirited people and coerce them. If the Norwegians resisted, as they very probably would, blood would be shed; this, said the Commander‑in‑Chief, "would constitute a crime as bad as any the Germans had committed elsewhere." There was another, equally formidable, objection. Even though the Norwegians did not resist, they would be bitterly indignant, and would certainly sweep up our minefield as soon as our forces had returned. We could only prevent this by stationing a permanent watching force upon the minefield that we had laid. This was not feasible; for the problem to which we were seeking a solution had its sources in our own inability to keep even the eastern section of the barrage watched and patrolled.

 

In any case the moment had now arrived when the British authorities could examine these questions with a sense of freedom that they had not enjoyed for a long time. The Germans were at last weakening on the Western Front; and whilst the Commander‑in‑Chief was advising that the Norwegians should be argued with but not coerced, the daily bulletins from France were transmitting a current of hope and enthusiasm across the Channel. The British advance in Flanders had begun, and Merville, Albert and Roye were again in Allied hands. The good news was affecting combatants and civilians alike and negotiations with proud but obstinate neutrals were no longer being conducted under the jarring influence of sheer military necessity.

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

CHAPTER XI

 

THE END OF HOSTILITIES IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

 

The armistice with Bulgaria was compounded and signed at General Franchet D'Esperey's headquarters in the Macedonian mountains on September 30. General Milne was not present at the negotiations; but on that day he sent out a circular telegram to say that hostilities with Bulgaria would cease at midday. It was not, however, until October 2 that he heard from London that, by virtue of the armistice, the Bulgarians had undertaken to demobilise their army, to open their ports to Allied troops, and to make their railways available for their transportation. This meant that the armies of the Entente Powers were now free to move northwards to the Danube and eastwards to Constantinople. It was the military position of Turkey that was most adversely affected by the Bulgarian surrender. Austria‑Hungary was, it is true, menaced by a northerly advance of the Allied forces under General Franchet D'Esperey; but the Austro-Hungarian railways were still connected to the German system, and the geographical contact of the two Powers was not in danger of being severed. But Turkey was practically isolated from her Allies at her moment of greatest difficulty; the Ottoman armies were still retiring in disorder before General Allenby, while the capital was now threatened.

 

The British Ministers realised that the Bulgarian surrender radically altered the position in Eastern Europe; and as soon as they received news of it, they decided that the Supreme War Council should assemble in Paris as soon as possible. Also, they instructed the Admiralty and the War Office to prepare a general armistice with Turkey without delay. The First Sea Lord at once remarked that if a naval armistice were granted to Turkey, the first condition should be that the Allied fleet should enter the Black Sea; he added that, in his opinion, it should be placed under the command of a British admiral, as this would be a proper recognition of Great Britain's share in the Dardanelles campaign and the final Turkish downfall. The British Government agreed, but there were difficulties, for the French Commander‑in‑Chief still commanded the Allied forces in the Mediterranean, and Vice‑Admiral Amet, the Senior Officer in the Aegean, had been sent there at the request of the British Government.

 

Before the matter could be settled, however, news came in that two Turkish envoys had arrived at Mitylene, and had requested that they should be taken to Athens and put into communication with the British Minister. (They were carried to the Piraeus in the Liverpool.) As soon as this was known, the War Office and Admiralty drew up terms of an armistice with Turkey, and sent copies to General Milne, General Allenby and Admiral Calthorpe. Mr. Lloyd George, who was then in Paris, laid these conditions before the Allied Premiers; they approved of them substantially, but claimed that the Allies as a whole (not only the British) should be given the right to occupy strategic points and control the railway and telegraph systems of the Ottoman. Empire.

 

On the same day (October 7) we learned, however, that the Turkish envoys were merely representatives of Rahmey Bey, the Governor‑General of the Smyrna vilayet, who was anxious to secure Allied support for a revolution that he hoped to lead against the existing Turkish Government. As the British Government had no intention whatever of negotiating with a vilayet commander at the very moment when our military successes seemed enough to bring the regular Turkish authorities to terms, Lord Robert Cecil instructed Lord Granville, the British minister at Athens, to reply that negotiations for a peace or an armistice would only be carried on with accredited representatives of the Turkish Government. Preparations for the campaign in Thrace were, indeed, well advanced. On the same day a conference of the Allied Governments decided that the British Salonica Army should be assembled under General Milne, and should march eastward to the Maritza River. It was to be reinforced by whatever troops could be spared from the Egyptian garrison.

 

The destroyer escorts for the new transport line from Egypt to southern Thrace could only be taken from the forces on the Otranto barrage, so that the British destroyer forces in the Mediterranean had to be redistributed in order to give effect to this last decision: the Blenheim and three divisions of destroyers were at once ordered to move to Malta. At the same time Admiral Calthorpe was directed to go to Mudros. General Milne was particularly anxious that his chief naval colleague should be a British officer.

 

As Admiral Calthorpe's arrival in Mudros would alter the

 

Oct. 1918

ATTEMPTS TO NEGOTIATE

 

existing relations of rank and precedence, the Admiralty asked Admiral de Bon ‑ the French Chief of Staff ‑ to agree that Admiral Calthorpe should command the Allied squadron in the Aegean and that Admiral Gauchet should give him the necessary instructions with regard to major operations. Admiral de Bon could not agree on his own responsibility, and the British proposal was discussed at Versailles on the day following. The French opposed it, and the whole question was referred to Mr. Lloyd George and Monsieur Clemenceau; nothing, however, had been settled when Admiral Calthorpe arrived at Mudros (October 11) and interviewed Admiral Amet.

 

Admiral Calthorpe was now the senior flag‑officer at Mudros; but the French 2nd Battle Squadron was more powerful than the British forces stationed there, so that the position was far from simple. The Admiralty, it is true, were trying to redress the inequality of Allied forces; the Temeraire and Superb were on their way to the eastern Mediterranean, and the Lord Nelson, which was refitting at Malta, was under orders to go to Mudros as soon as possible. When these reinforcements arrived, Admiral Calthorpe would be able to assume the command to which his seniority entitled him, and to take charge of any major operations that might be necessary if the Russian Black Sea Fleet made a sortie. Without them he was in a difficult position; for General Milne's march into Thrace, which had already begun, might at any moment bring out the enemy.

 

In fact, however, although we could not know it, the Black Sea Fleet was quite incapable of moving; but the Turkish authorities were still free to act and decide as they themselves thought best. On the day following Admiral Calthorpe's first interview with Admiral Amet, Talaat Pasha, the Premier, resigned and was succeeded by Izzet. A week later (October 20) General Townshend arrived at Mitylene in company with a British officer and an aide‑de‑camp of the new Minister of Marine. (After the surrender of Kut on April 29, 1916 (see Vol. IV., p. 91) General Townshend was taken prisoner by the Turks. The operations of the naval gunboats subsequent to this are fully described in the Official History Of the Mesopotamia Campaign, Vols. III and IV, and have therefore not been included in this volume.) The new Turkish Cabinet had set him at liberty and ordered him to inform the British authorities that Izzet and his Ministers were ready to conclude a separate peace. As soon as the British Government received the news they ordered Admiral Calthorpe to let the Turkish Government know that he had powers to conclude an armistice. On being informed of this by Admiral Calthorpe, Tewfik Bey, the Turkish aide‑de‑camp, said that he would get into telegraphic communication with Constantinople through Smyrna, and he was at once carried to Chios in a British destroyer.

 

Meanwhile, Admiral de Bon, who in his dealings with the British naval authorities had always shown a most conciliatory temper, agreed that if an Allied fleet were sent up the Dardanelles it should be under British command. He was anxious that Admiral Gauchet should go to Salonica to discuss certain questions of maritime transport with General Franchet D'Esperey; but he promised that he would not allow him to go to Mudros: if the British particularly objected to the presence of the French Commander‑in‑Chief in the eastern Mediterranean, he would even refuse Admiral Gauchet permission to go to Salonica.

 

The armistice conditions as finally agreed upon, with the final instructions of the Admiralty, were now sent to Admiral Calthorpe. (See Appendix D III. (b).) He was told that the first four clauses, namely, those stipulating for the Allied occupation of the Dardanelles and Bosporus, the facility to sweep up all minefields and obstructions, and the return of all prisoners, must be insisted upon. "The first four conditions," ran the instructions, "are of such paramount importance, and if completely carried out will so inevitably make us master of the situation, that we do not wish you to jeopardise obtaining them, and obtaining them quickly, by insisting unduly upon all or any of the rest, or indeed by raising any particular one of the remaining twenty if you think it might endanger your success in getting the vital four at once." In addition to this, Admiral Calthorpe was instructed to take sole charge of the negotiations, and not to share his responsibility with any other person: he was, however, given permission to inform Admiral Amet of what was going on, if he wished to do so. This procedure was justified in the preliminary paragraph in his instructions from the Admiralty, which ran as follows: "Some weeks ago, when it seemed likely that the Turks would approach us with proposals for peace and an armistice, we agreed with France and Italy, that while terms of peace would need long consideration, an armistice might be concluded with any one of the three Powers to which the Turkish Government might make advances."

 

Late in the afternoon of October 26 the Liverpool, which had been waiting at Kalloni on the western side of Mitylene, arrived in Mudros with the accredited Turkish envoys - Raouf Bey (the Minister of Marine), Reshad Hikinet Bey, from the Turkish Foreign Office, and Colonel Saadullah Bey.

 

Oct. 1918

ARMISTICE CONDITIONS

 

The passage had been rough and trying and the Turks were too tired to open discussions that day.

 

The first clause was practically the only subject discussed at the first day's meeting. The Turkish delegates suggested several alternatives, as, for instance, that the forts should be dismantled or controlled by a mixed commission. Admiral Calthorpe refused to consider any substantial modification of the main condition but, at the end of the day, he telegraphed to the Admiralty that the negotiations would be eased if he were empowered to promise that only French and British troops should occupy the forts. The Admiralty at once replied that the assurances asked for could be given, and their telegram reached Mudros before the second meeting was opened.

 

Admiral Calthorpe's difficulties were, however, still very great. The French authorities had never imagined that their recent concessions would be used to exclude their Admiral from attendance at the negotiations, and during the day Admiral Amet had sent Admiral Calthorpe a letter, in which he informed him that he had just received orders from the French Admiralty to participate in the negotiations and to agree to nothing until the French Ministry had approved of it. To this Admiral Calthorpe replied that the Turkish envoys were accredited to Great Britain, and not to the Allies as a whole; secondly, he was able to show how very much negotiations would be delayed if everything agreed to had to be referred back to the French Government. The Turkish envoys, on being shown Admiral Amet's letter, answered that they had no wish to treat with any Government except the British. They promised, however, to inform the authorities in Constantinople.

 

The second meeting assembled at three o'clock in the afternoon. Before the discussions began, Admiral Calthorpe announced that the British Government would undertake that only French and British troops would occupy the forts in the Dardanelles. This, and two important concessions which the Admiral made later, very much eased the negotiations.

 

The Turkish envoys agreed, without much discussion, to Clauses 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8, but Raouf urged, with some insistence, that the wording of Clauses 7 and 9 should be modified in order to make them more acceptable to the populace in the capital, which was dangerously excited. Admiral Calthorpe, therefore, agreed that the 7th Clause should be altered to read, "The Allies to have the right to occupy any strategic points in the event of a situation arising which threatens the security of the Allies." As for the 9th Clause, he redrafted it so that the Turks should grant "ship repair facilities at all Turkish ports and arsenals"; Constantinople was not mentioned eo nomine. These concessions were most satisfactory to the Turkish envoys; but they insisted that they could not agree even to these modified clauses without consulting their Government. As telegraphic communication with the capital was slow and hazardous, this meant delay: there was in consequence, no meeting on October 29.

 

A telegram from Constantinople came in during the night, and when the delegates reassembled at nine o'clock on October 30, Raouf announced that the Turkish Government would surrender the forts to French and British troops; he begged, however, that a very small party of Turkish soldiers should be left behind as a special act of grace. Admiral Calthorpe promised to recommend that this should be done; but he was seriously alarmed when Raouf and Hikmet announced that several of the clauses, as amended on October 28, would still have to be referred to Constantinople for approval. This meant very long delay, and delay was extremely undesirable. Admiral Calthorpe, therefore determined to set a time limit to the negotiations, and informed Raouf and Hikmet that he had no objection to their communicating with Constantinople; but that, if they did not sign the armistice by nine o'clock that evening, he would conclude that they had refused to consider it further.

 

The Turkish delegates agreed to most of the remaining conditions, but Raouf urged that Clauses 16 and 24 might well be modified. Admiral Calthorpe, who had rather reluctantly insisted that the negotiations should be finished that night, and was anxious that the armistice should be signed without rancour, modified these two contested clauses very considerably during the last hours of the negotiations. Clause 16, as altered, stipulated that all Turkish troops would be withdrawn from Cilicia except those required for maintaining order; the four Cilician townships were not mentioned at all in Clause 24. When these points had been settled, the meeting was declared closed. It was still early in the day, and the envoys were not obliged to sign until nine o'clock in the evening. They waited all day for fresh instructions from their Government; but none came. Just before nine o'clock, therefore, Raouf told Admiral Calthorpe that he and his colleagues were ready to sign. The British Commander‑in‑Chief, Rear‑Admiral Culme‑Seymour, Commodore R. M. Burmester, Commander G. C. Dickens and Fleet Paymaster C. E. Lynes were the British

 

Oct. 1918

ARMISTICE WITH TURKEY

 

officers present at the last meeting. The armistice, as amended, was read out clause by clause and signed at twenty minutes to ten. The signatures attached were Arthur Calthorpe, Hussein Raouf, Rechad Hikmet and Saadullah.

 

When the Turkish armistice was signed, Austria‑Hungary was only nominally a belligerent Power. The battle of the Vittorio Veneto had been raging for a week and the Italian armies were everywhere victorious. The constituent populations of the Dual Empire were disintegrating as rapidly as their armies; for the Czecho‑Slovaks had already declared themselves independent, the Yugoslavs had formed a National Council, and a disruptive movement, of which we were receiving daily indications, was shaking the Istrian and Dalmatian cities. The Austro‑Hungarian Commander‑in-Chief had already petitioned General Diaz for an armistice, and it was only because the armistice conditions for Austria-Hungary and Germany were being considered together at Versailles that negotiations had been delayed.

 

But the delay was now almost over; on the very day that Raouf Bey and his colleagues signed the armistice with Turkey, the Council of Allied Premiers approved the final draft of the armistice with Austria‑Hungary. The Italians were given freedom to negotiate and enforce both the military and the naval conditions; and the signing of the armistice was, throughout, left to the Italians who at this moment found that if they were to conclude an armistice with the Austro‑Hungarian Empire at all, they had indeed little time to waste as all constituted authority was fast disappearing.

 

On the last day of October, two Italian officers had attacked Pola harbour with a new and extraordinary weapon. It was a torpedo, propelled in the ordinary way, by compressed air; but directed and controlled by the two Italian officers, who were dressed in inflated rubber suits. The torpedo was, however, not so much a weapon as a means of transport; it carried bombs which the two officers were to attach at their leisure to any ship that they could reach.

 

The night of the attack (October 31) was dark and rainy; the two Italians penetrated the harbour, and as far as they could judge, practically no watch was being kept. They reached the dreadnought battleship Viribus Unitis towards midnight, and attached one of the bombs to her. It was quite impossible to do this in complete silence, and the noise gave the Austrians the alarm; the Italian officers were captured, and their craft, now unguided, struck a steamer near by, exploded, and sank her.

 

Meanwhile the Italians were taken below and cross-questioned. They assured their captors that they had been dropped from an aeroplane, which may or may not have been believed. What their captors had to tell them was even more surprising. The Austro‑Hungarian navy no longer existed; it now belonged to the Yugoslav National Council, which had declared itself independent two days before; and the Emperor Karl had approved of the transfer. When they were informed of this the Italian officers very wisely decided to give their captors the true explanation of their presence in Pola harbour. They told them that a bomb which would explode at daybreak had been attached to the ship and that it was they who had placed it there. The Viribus Unitis was at once abandoned; and as day came up the bomb attached to her did actually explode and the ship sank.

 

During the morning of November 1, the Italian naval authorities at Venice intercepted a number of messages from Pola which depicted the situation clearly enough. The first was sent direct to Malta, addressed to all the Entente Powers, and ran thus: "The day before yesterday the entire fleet of the old Austro‑Hungarian monarchy was placed in our hands, who are the emissaries of the Yugoslav National Government for the Slovene, Croat and Serbian States. Notwithstanding this, yesterday morning, two officers of the Royal Italian Navy entered the port ... and torpedoed the frantopan [sic]. We implore the Entente, our deliverer, to look upon us as a friend, and to bring these deplorable hostilities to an end." A second message, sent soon after, stated that the Yugoslav National Council wished to send a boat to parley with the Allied fleet. The Italian naval command at Venice replied that they would meet the Yugoslav deputies at a point about half‑way between Pola and Venice at nine o'clock on the following day.

 

The Yugoslav National Council evidently hoped that the Entente Powers would recognise their possession of the Austro‑Hungarian fleet if they gave a promise to use it in the Allied service.

 

But the Italian authorities were now in possession of a draft of armistice conditions in which the naval forces of the Austro‑Hungarian Empire were regarded and treated as a hostile fleet. They were bound to regard the political upheaval which was taking place at their doors with great apprehension, and the document upon which the Council at Paris had empowered them to negotiate gave them the right to disregard the Yugoslav National Council and to treat the authorities at Pola as the representatives of an

 

Nov. 1918

ARMISTICE WITH AUSTRIA

 

enemy State. This they contrived to do very successfully. The armistice negotiations were conducted solely by the Italian authorities, at General Diaz's headquarters; and the conditions approved by the Council of Premiers in Paris were signed on November 3, with practically no alterations. The naval war against the Mediterranean Powers ceased on November 4 at three o'clock in the afternoon.

 

The naval campaign against Germany continued for another week. A large number of German submarines were known to be returning to the North Sea from the Mediterranean bases, which they could no longer use, and the British patrol forces made a last effort to make the passage as dangerous and difficult as possible. The German submarine commanders now had to traverse two separate zones of danger: the fixed barrage at the Otranto Straits, and the mobile barrage across the Straits of Gibraltar. This second obstacle had recently been completed and was under the control of Admiral Heathcoat Grant: it consisted of five lines of watching vessels, supported at their eastern end by three kite balloon ships and two submarines, which kept periscope watch. These forces were strengthened on November 6 and 7 by five trawlers and drifters, recently sent out from home, and eleven American submarine chasers. Nevertheless, none of the escaping submarines were sighted until November 7, when a decoy brig on a cruise between Gibraltar and Bizerta saw two, at a considerable distance. On the following day the destroyer Lyra, on the barrage line, attacked another without result; and just after midnight two motor launches and the sloop Privet destroyed U.34 as she was passing the Straits. But the advantage rested, in the end, with the escaping submarines; for it was during these closing days of the campaign that they struck one of the most dramatic of all the blows delivered by the German submarine service.

 

At a quarter‑past seven on the morning of November 9, the old battleship Britannia was approaching Gibraltar from the westward under the escort of two destroyers. It was broad daylight at the time, and the ship was within three or four miles of the westernmost line of the barrage. The officers on the bridge suddenly reported a torpedo, and during the next two minutes the ship was missed twice, each time by a very narrow margin. But the third torpedo struck her amidships and exploded a large quantity of cordite. For three hours the ship was kept afloat; but in the end she went down. The Britannia was the last British warship sunk by the enemy. She was destroyed by a German submarine within one of those zones which had been specially defended, and which, of all places in the high seas, should have been more dangerous to German U‑boats than to Allied warships. Her destruction within two days of the final armistice was a stern reminder that the German submarine commanders were still undefeated and defiant, though their campaign against the commercial highways of the sea had been ruined and brought to nothing.

 

 

 

---

 

 

CHAPTER XII

 

THE EVACUATION OF FLANDERS AND THE ARMISTICE

 

Speculation about a campaign that was planned but not fought may afford a shadowy consolation to the defeated; but for the student of history it must be classed with the wit that is thought of only when the speaker is leaving the platform, or the winning number that is selected after the lottery has been closed. Yet, the German submarine campaign for 1919 has already been discussed by more than one writer. The Germans maintain that during the coming year they would have doubled the output of U‑boats, that as our counter‑attack and defensive measures had both reached their greatest efficiency, the check to the submarine campaign would have been temporary only, and that within a few months we should have been suffering increasing losses.

 

They assert, moreover, that the Northern barrage, upon which so much labour and material had been expended, would have been no real impediment to incoming and out going submarines, as their U‑boat captains already found that it was not a really dangerous obstacle. The German contention takes no account of some very formidable considerations on the other side. In the autumn of 1918, the Allied naval authorities were confident that the counter‑attack upon the German submarines would be very much strengthened and intensified during the coming year. The American yards had just begun to build a special class of vessels called submarine chasers, of which they proposed to deliver a very large number during the year. These ships would have so reinforced our hunting flotillas that the problem of hunting for submarines on the inshore routes would at least have been made very much easier. The rate of submarine destruction might not have been greatly increased; but every German submarine in the Channel and the Irish Sea would certainly have been compelled to spend an increasing number of hours, during each active cruise, in flight or inactivity.

 

Moreover, our purely defensive measures were capable of further development. After long deliberation, the naval authorities had decided to control coastwise traffic by a system devised by Lieutenant‑Commander H. Rundle. When effect had been given to this new system, coastal traffic would have been sailing in controlled groups which would only have been allowed to move from a protected anchorage when the route was clear, and then only under local escort. As the control of sailings had been conspicuous among the methods by which losses had been steadily reduced during the year, there can be little doubt that its application to traffic moving along the coast would have reduced losses still further.

 

As to the Northern barrage opinions have differed. It certainly had at first great weaknesses; but those weaknesses were discovered early. The authorities knew, almost as soon as the minefields were laid, that the American mines were unreliable, and that, in consequence, large sections of the field would sooner or later have to be relaid or reinforced. The Americans, who regarded the laying of the barrage as an undertaking in which their material credit was involved would certainly have spared no trouble in remedying these defects; and when they had done so the northern minefields might have caused German submarine forces very serious losses; for even in their faulty state they were dangerous. In September alone, five submarines were destroyed in the mines, as well as three more by other means in the North Sea, and the naval authorities were considering what further mining should be undertaken, when the unbroken successes of the armies in Flanders gave a new direction to the course of operations at sea.

 

On September 18, the British armies stormed the outer defences of the Hindenburg Line; the German generals realised that their armies had been severely defeated, and that the whole German front was shaken. Eight days later the Bulgarian front was broken. The consequence of these successive disasters was that General Ludendorff advised the Emperor to ask for an armistice, and that a new Cabinet formed on the parliamentary model was summoned to power. The evacuation of Flanders was at once begun.

 

The British Admiralty, to whom the military position was as well known as it was to Admiral Scheer, were watching intently for some signs of movement from the Flanders bases, and took their precautions early. Just before 4.0 a.m. on the 30th Admiral Tyrwhitt ordered a force of two light cruisers and five destroyers to go to a rendezvous at the northern end of the Flanders Bight; from here they were to sweep towards the south Dogger Bank light‑vessel along the line of light buoys known as the free channel. Rather more than two hours later Admiral Tyrwhitt himself sailed with

 

Oct. 1918

ARMISTICE REQUESTED

 

the remainder of the Harwich Force. A great gale was blowing at the time, and all that day the destroyers and light cruisers pounded through heavy seas. They returned to harbour at half‑past eight, having seen nothing.

 

On the following day (October 1), the Admiralty's suspicions of a German retirement from Flanders were confirmed by numerous reports. A minefield was therefore laid off the flanks in the early morning and the Harwich Force was again sent to sea. The first detachment

 

(Montrose, Radiant, Thruster, Swallow, Tempest and Teazer.)

 

... sailed at a quarterpast two in the afternoon and patrolled off the Schouwen Bank; the second detachment

 

(Canterbury, Dragon and five destroyers.)

 

... sailed at 9.0 p.m. and made for the Texel. The Admiralty learned, afterwards, that considerable German forces withdrew from Zeebrugge during the night of the 1st: how they slipped through our dispositions was unknown at the time. (Twenty‑eight destroyers escaped between September 29 and the next few days, the majority making their way along the coast of Holland within territorial waters. Five were blown up as they could not sail in time or were under repair. The submarines had left earlier by detachments.)

 

The military victories of the Entente Powers were still continuing without interruption. On October 1 the French armies retook St. Quentin; two days later the Germans began to withdraw from all their fortified positions between Lens and Armentieres. It was in this grave state of affairs that Prince Max of Baden was invited to accept the post of Imperial Chancellor.

 

On October 5 the new Chancellor stated, in the Reichstag, that he had asked the President of the United States to bring about "the immediate conclusion of an armistice on land, water and in the air." His statement, which had been carefully prepared, gave not the slightest hint of his own deep misgivings on the step which he was compelled to take.

 

The Allied Premiers took note of Prince Max's petition before it was officially communicated to them, and assembled at the Quai d'Orsay for a conference on October 6 to discuss the German Chancellor's speech, which had been reported in the morning papers of that day. The discussion was continued on October 7, and the British Prime Minister openly admitted that the German manoeuvre made him very anxious. He feared the temper of the armies; if, by reason of these tentative negotiations for an armistice, the soldiers stopped fighting, he was certain that no subsequent appeal to them to take up arms again would be of the slightest avail. It was, in these circumstances, most important that the Allies should settle the guiding principles of an armistice amongst themselves, and confront the President with united opposition if he attempted to modify them. The Premiers agreed to this, and ordered the military and naval representatives at Versailles to prepare armistice conditions for Germany and Austria‑Hungary upon the basis of eight directing rules.

 

1. The total evacuation by the enemy of France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Italy.

2. The Germans to retire behind the Rhine into Germany.

3. Alsace‑Lorraine to be evacuated by German troops without occupation by the Allies.

4. The same conditions to apply to the Trentino and Istria.

5. Serbia and Montenegro to be evacuated by the enemy.

6. Evacuation of the Caucasus.

7. Immediate steps to be taken for the evacuation of all territory belonging to Russia and Rumania before the war.

8. Immediate cessation of submarine warfare and continuation of Allied blockade.

 

These governing rules outlined the military conditions very clearly, but, except upon one point, they did not indicate what terms should be imposed by the naval armistice. Two drafts were prepared and presented on the following day: one by Marshall Foch and his staff, the other by the naval and military representatives at Versailles. The naval armistice conditions were outlined only in this second document. The Versailles Council recommended that the enemy should be ordered to withdraw their entire surface fleet to naval bases approved by the Allies, where they were to remain for so long as the armistice lasted. The same thing was to be done with regard to the enemy's naval air forces. Submarine warfare against merchant shipping was to cease at once, and sixty German submarines were to be brought into Allied ports. The blockade of Germany was to be continued. The Allied Premiers neither approved these proposals nor sent them back for revision.

 

President Wilson's reply to Prince Max of Baden was published on October 8. In it the President informed the German Chancellor that, before he could take any steps, he must know whether the German Government had so far accepted the terms laid down in his addresses to Congress, that nothing remained to be done but to discuss the practical details of their application. The President added that it would be impossible for him to open negotiations for an armistice so long as the German armies were on Allied soil.

 

Oct. 1918

BRITISH APPREHENSIONS

 

The sincerity of the German Government's professions must, in large measure, be judged by their willingness to withdraw from the invaded territories. In conclusion the President asked whether the Imperial Chancellor was speaking "for the constituted authorities of the German Empire who have hitherto conducted the war."

 

This note was discussed by the Allied Ministers at the Quai d'Orsay during the afternoon of October 9. The British Prime Minister stated that to him it seemed that the Germans were manoeuvring the Allies into a most awkward position. They were asking for an armistice because their armies were being defeated; they were attempting to escape the consequences of defeat in the field by giving a simulated assent to President Wilson's war aims, and so obliging the Allies to inform the American Government that they could not agree to them. For on one point the British Prime Minister was firm and emphatic: Great Britain could not agree, beforehand, that a vague statement of political equity like President Wilson's fourteen points should be the basis of all subsequent negotiations for a general peace.

 

The French and Italian Premiers were not so apprehensive as the British Prime Minister; but the difference between President Wilson's demand for a withdrawal from invaded territory and Marshall Foch's insistence upon a retirement to the Rhine was great and all were agreed that the President should be given a hint of the views and wishes of the Allies as soon as possible. He was therefore informed that an evacuation of invaded territory did not, in itself, seem to be a sufficient guarantee for the conclusion of a satisfactory armistice or a satisfactory peace. The President was also invited to send a representative to Europe as soon as possible.

 

Whilst the Allied Premiers were discussing President Wilson's note, the new German Government had also assembled to examine it, and on October 12, after three days of arduous discussion, they answered it. The Austro‑Hungarian Government joined in the reply. The Governments of the Central Empires stated that they were ready to comply with the demand for evacuation, and suggested that mixed commissions should be convened to make the necessary arrangements. With regard to President Wilson's question about the constitution of the new German Government, they answered that it had been formed by conferences with the Reichstag, and that the Chancellor spoke "in the name of the German Government and of the German people."

 

Meanwhile the British Prime Minister had returned to London and had reported the discussions at the Quai d'Orsay to the Imperial War Cabinet. He repeated all his apprehensions, and spoke at length upon the vague and dubious character of the fourteen points. Almost any meaning could be given to the clauses relating to Alsace‑Lorraine, to Austria, and to the freedom of the seas. The German Government had everything to gain by making the President's ambiguous oratory a basis for negotiations: by giving a similar unconditional agreement the Allies might sacrifice their most important and essential war aims. The view which prevailed at the Conference was that the difficulty could best be overcome by making the conditions of an armistice approximate, as closely as possible, to the final conditions of peace. The First Sea Lord, who was attending the meeting, warned the Government that this decision raised a very important question of naval policy. An ordinary naval armistice would be one which ensured a cessation of hostilities at sea; but a naval armistice approximating to a final peace would have to deal with the German fleet as an instrument of high policy; not merely as a combative force.

 

The German reply to President Wilson's note was published in London on Sunday, October 13, and the Prime Minister at once summoned the naval and military representatives to his house to consider it. The conference decided that two telegrams of urgent warning should be sent to the President, to tell him that, unless the armistice conditions made it impossible for the Germans to fight again, either on land or on sea, the interests of the Allies would be badly compromised. On the following day the War Cabinet assembled to discuss the German reply and decided that nothing need be done; the President had made no communication whatever to the Allied Governments; and although he had said that no armistice could be considered until all invaded territory had been evacuated, he had not even suggested that this would be the only condition imposed. He had stated merely that, if the Germans agreed to this, he would consult the Allied Governments.

 

The President's second rejoinder to the German Government was published in London on the following day. The warnings that President Wilson had received from Paris and London had taken effect in the opening paragraph of the letter, which was stern and uncompromising. The evacuation and the conditions of an armistice were matters upon which the military advisers to the Allied and Associated Governments must decide; but in any case, the only arrangement that could be accepted would be one which gave satisfactory

 

Oct. 1918

GERMAN ANXIETIES

 

guarantees for the maintenance of the existing military supremacy of the Allied armies. It would, in any case, be difficult to compound an armistice on any conditions whatever so long as German submarines were sinking passenger ships and the very boats in which the passengers endeavoured to escape; or so long as the German armies were engaged in pillage and devastation which excited universal disgust and horror. The President concluded his note by reiteration of his dislike of arbitrary power; and by saying that the course of peace negotiations would be very much influenced by the guarantees, which the German nation could give, that they had really reformed their constitution.

 

This note relieved the British Government's anxieties; its effect in Germany was very different. The German War Cabinet assembled to consider it on October 16, but it was not until October 19 that the reply was ready. During these three intervening days the Ministers of State were in continuous conference with the naval and military leaders, who now counselled further resistance. The answer to President Wilson was only drafted after Prince Max had decided to rely upon his own judgment, and to disregard the desperate counsels to which the generals and admirals were inclined to commit themselves. In this note the German Government stated that they wished to continue the negotiations, and promised that passenger ships should no longer be attacked by U‑boats. This was exactly the kind of compromise that Admiral Scheer had most strongly opposed during the three days' discussions. As soon as he heard that the Government's decision could not be reversed, and that the note to America would not be altered, he recalled all U‑boats at sea (October 21) and ordered Admiral von Hipper to take the High Seas Fleet to sea and operate against the Thames. On the following day the note was despatched.

 

Comparatively little is known about the operation which Admiral von Hipper was thus ordered to execute. Its chances of success were, however, proportionate to the German staff's ability to conceal the initial movements of the operation; and it so happened that the Admiralty received information, fairly soon, which roused their suspicions and put them on their guard. During the 22nd and 23rd, reports came in from the North Sea of an unusual U‑boat concentration opposite the Firth of Forth. At the same time submarine attacks against shipping ceased. During the afternoon of the 23rd, therefore, the Admiralty warned the Commander‑in‑Chief that the situation in the North Sea was abnormal; and that they were ordering destroyers from Plymouth, Dover and Buncrana to reinforce the Grand Fleet flotillas.

 

President Wilson replied at once to the German note, and on October 24 the British Government examined it. The President stated that, in view of the assurances now given by the German Government, he could no longer decline to discuss armistice negotiations with the Entente Powers. At the same time he felt obliged to repeat what he had said before, that the only armistice conditions that he could agree to would be conditions that would make it impossible for the German Government to renew hostilities, and "would ensure to the Associated Governments the unrestricted power to safeguard and enforce the details of the peace to which the German Government has agreed...." In conclusion the President practically invited the German people to dethrone the Emperor, whose power to control the policy of the Empire seemed to be quite unimpaired by the recent constitutional changes. If the Government of the United States were compelled to deal with the military and monarchical masters of Germany, the President would feel obliged to demand not peace negotiations but surrender.

 

The British Ministers did not consider that the President's concern about the German constitution was either just or wise, nor were they prepared to admit that conditions of peace should be made contingent upon German domestic affairs; but as the President had not associated the Entente Powers with his reply, they felt that they were not called upon to express their disapproval. The President had met our wishes on all questions that most immediately concerned us, and was prepared to allow the armistice conditions to be prepared by the military and naval advisers to the Entente Powers. We could not ask for more, and so far as the authorities could judge from the known facts of the general position, it seemed fairly safe to assume that the Germans would be compelled to accept any terms that we presented; the alliance of the Central Powers was crumbling fast, Bulgarian resistance was over, the Turks had already petitioned us for an armistice, and Austria‑Hungary was known to be so prostrate that Marshall Foch was considering plans for invading Germany through Austria. In the west the German retreat continued without pause or respite: the Flanders coast was clear of the enemy, Bruges, Courtrai and Tournai were in our hands.

 

The President's latest note, in which the Emperor's abdication was practically demanded as an armistice condition, was received in Germany at a particularly difficult

 

Oct. 1918

THE GERMAN PLAN

 

moment of a difficult time. The Chancellor was stricken with influenza and was too ill to attend the conferences and meetings at which the note was discussed; the civilian Ministers were almost in open controversy with General Ludendorff, and the news from the front was still as bad as it could be. (General Ludendorff resigned on October 27 and was replaced by General Groener.) But in spite of all their difficulties, the Cabinet drafted a note which was simple and dignified. "The President is aware of the great changes which have just been made, and are at present being completed in the German constitution. Peace negotiations are being conducted by a popular Government by which all executive decisions are made. The military authorities are subordinate to the Government. The German Government again requests an armistice which will be preparatory to that just peace which the President has outlined in his communications (October 27).

 

By this time the Admiralty were convinced that the German High Seas Fleet was preparing for a sortie, for the situation in the North Sea was almost a reproduction of the situation which had preceded Jutland. Our directional wireless stations reported that at least six German submarines were now concentrated east of the Firth of Forth, and that there was another group on the coastal route to the south. At midnight on the 28th, the Admiralty sent a long appreciation to the Commander‑in‑Chief. They could no longer doubt that the Germans were attempting to draw out the Grand Fleet, and that they expected it to move south. The Admiralty did not, however, consider that the German fleet would move before the following day, and they had no notion of its objective. Thus far the appreciation was wonderfully correct; Admiral von Hipper did intend, if he could, to draw the Grand Fleet southward, and his movement was to begin late on the following day. On one very important point, however, the Admiralty were mistaken. They concluded that the enemy would be unlikely to risk a fleet action until the armistice negotiations were over. Actually, Admirals von Hipper and Scheer were striving with the greatest energy to provoke a fleet action whilst the negotiations were proceeding; they were planning a stroke similar in its objects to the Dutch attack upon the Medway, which so much affected the negotiations at Breda, at the end of the second Dutch war.

 

But the German fleet never started and the desperate experiment failed. The German seamen were thoroughly restless and unsettled, and although they obediently performed their duties during the preparations for a sortie, many hundreds of them had divined what was intended and had determined to prevent it. Late in the evening of October 29, the orders to raise steam were issued to the fleet. To the amazement of the officers those orders were disobeyed. In many ships the stokers drew fires. As soon as Admiral von Hipper grasped the position he dispersed the fleet: the 1st Battle Squadron was ordered to the Elbe, the 3rd to the Baltic and the 4th to the Jade. The crews appear to have been willing to bring the ships into harbour; they were disobedient, but only in partial revolt. Also, the officers were still sufficiently supported to enforce measures for restoring discipline. Hundreds of men were arrested and sent ashore under escort as the ships arrived in harbour.

 

Several days went by before the Admiralty could be certain that the impending sortie would not take place, and in the meantime the Allied naval authorities were working, without intermission, at the conditions of a naval armistice.

 

On October 28 the Allied Naval Council assembled in Paris under the Presidency of M. Georges Leygues, the French Minister of Marine. They had before them a draft of naval armistice conditions prepared by the Admiralty, and the French observations upon them. The most important of the Admiralty's conditions were those which related to the German battle fleet and the submarines. The Admiralty demanded that the fleet flagship Baden, ten dreadnought battleships from the 3rd and 4th Squadrons, six battle cruisers, eight light cruisers, fifty destroyers, and every German submarine afloat should be surrendered in Allied ports or bases. The French agreed substantially with regard to the submarines, but considered that all enemy surface warships should go to naval bases selected by the Allies and remain there during the armistice, and that a certain number ‑ which would be specified later ‑ should be surrendered. The British delegates were not prepared to agree; but the Council was unanimous that all submarines should be surrendered, that the blockade should be maintained, and that the Allied fleets should be given access to the Baltic.

 

An amended draft of conditions was ready next day; but before the Naval Council could consider it, they had to settle a somewhat awkward question. Marshall Foch had already drawn up a draft of a naval armistice and had presented it to the Allied Premiers. It differed in details and essentials from the conditions decided upon by the naval authorities; were the Allied Premiers to receive these alternative drafts, and choose between them, or was the Allied Naval Council

 

Oct. 1918

THE NAVAL ARMISTICE

 

to be the supreme advisory authority? Monsieur Leygues and Admiral de Bon heard of this intervention for the first time, and were much surprised; the French Minister of Marine undertook to make strong representations to the French Prime Minister and to see to it that the Allied Naval Council's terms were the only ones considered by the Council of Premiers.

 

The naval armistice agreed to by the Allied Naval Council was in thirteen clauses, (See Appendix D.) which embodied the principles laid down at the previous meeting. In order to soften the clauses with regard to the German battleships, the delegates agreed that the fleet flagship should not be included in the list of ships which were to be surrendered to the Allies. The Naval Council added to their conditions an explanatory letter, and addressed it to the Council of Premiers. The Naval Council had drawn up the terms believing that the enemy were so shaken that they would submit to conditions such as would only be accepted by a State which had been completely defeated. If the enemy possessed a greater power of resistance than the Naval Council had supposed, then the conditions would have to be reconsidered and redrafted.

 

The Conference of Premiers was now assisted by Colonel House, whom President Wilson had sent to Europe when he received the Entente Premiers' request that an American representative should be present at their deliberations. As the Allies were agreed that they could never accept unconditionally the fourteen points, it was of the last importance to discover how the American Government would receive the Allies' refusal to treat with Germany upon the President's terms. The task of informing the American representative fell to Mr. Lloyd George, who did not think that anything would be gained by diplomatic circumlocution. The British Premier stated the British objections to the fourteen points with rare bluntness. The western Allies had never been consulted about those conditions, which had been pronounced ex‑cathedra, and they could not be committed to them. The clause relating to maritime policy was one to which no British Government would ever agree: even if a British Premier countersigned the clause, could it be imagined that the British nation would ever consent to surrender the very weapon that had brought Germany to terms? Colonel House's first reply was alarming; he answered stiffly that the Austrian and German Governments had petitioned the United States for an armistice, and that if the conditions which the other Powers desired to impose were inacceptable to the President, then the American Government would have no choice but to grant a separate armistice and, if needs be, a separate peace. He added, almost at once, however, that there was no need to consider these remote possibilities, and that it would be enough for the moment if the Allied Premiers made a draft of their exceptions to President Wilson's peace terms and communicated them.

 

It was decided later that the reservations of the Allies to the fourteen points need not impede the preparation for an armistice. The conditions, when agreed to, could be transmitted to President Wilson under cover of a letter or message, in which the Entente Powers stated their exceptions. The immediate task before the conference was to settle an armistice with Austria, for an Austrian officer had already visited General Diaz under a flag of truce. The Supreme War Council agreed to the conditions to be imposed on October 31, and the discussion of the German terms was then begun.

 

The Allied Premiers did not specifically answer the covering note of the Allied Naval Council, in which the admirals had stated that they had drawn up the armistice terms on the assumption that Germany's power of resistance was gone; but they refused to agree to the draft conditions. Sir Eric Geddes presented them to the Allied Premiers at a meeting held in Colonel House's residence in the rue de l'UniversitŽ, at eleven o'clock on November 1. Marshall Foch, whose draft of a naval armistice had recently been rejected, was present at the meeting, and he at once expressed the strongest objections to the Naval Council's terms. The German submarines were the only section of the German fleet that need be surrendered, as they alone had done us real damage; it would obviously be sufficient to send the German battle fleet to the Baltic and to occupy Heligoland and Cuxhaven. The Germans would, in all human probability, refuse to sign the naval terms; and it was obviously unjust that the army should have to fight again in order to obtain them. Sir Eric Geddes at once replied that Marshall Foch had not been bothered by the High Seas Fleet because the Grand Fleet had held it in the North Sea for four years, and that to send it through the Kiel Canal would be to close the Baltic to the Allied navies. In fact, if the Marshall's proposal were adopted, the British and German fleets would be in the same state of tension as two armies that face one another fully armed and ready for battle, in lines of trenches.

 

The Allied Premiers were not willing to support Marshall Foch's opinions against the advice of their naval advisers;

 

Nov. 1918

AMERICAN CONDITIONS

 

but they were unanimous that the conditions as they stood were too severe: the surrender of the battle fleet could not be insisted upon; its internment was the most that could be demanded. The Allied Naval Council discussed this criticism of their draft at a long meeting held at the Ministry of Marine in the afternoon of November 1. All the Allied admirals felt that it would be most dangerous to reduce the terms. They had been given to understand that the armistice conditions were to approximate to the conditions of peace as closely as possible. As it was surely axiomatic that the German fleet would be practically abolished by the peace treaty, why should the armistice conditions be modified? An interned fleet could be used for bargaining at a peace conference; and the Germans would certainly try to recover it by political concessions.

 

Admiral Benson, the American representative, thought differently. He had never understood that the armistice was to forestall the conditions of peace; its sole purpose in his view was to make it impossible for the Germans to break the truce during the peace negotiations. Nor was he prepared to agree that the German battle fleet would be returned to Germany if it were interned; for it should clearly be laid down that the Peace Conference should dispose of all German vessels specified in the armistice terms, whether they had been interned or surrendered. Admiral Benson refused to yield, and, in the end, the Naval Council returned the armistice conditions to the Council of Allied Premiers unaltered, with two letters, one from the Allied naval delegates, urging that the Premiers should not object further to the surrender of the German battle fleet; another from Admiral Benson, stating that its internment would be sufficient.

 

The Allied Premiers had to postpone discussion of the details of the armistice, for they were now presented with a document of urgent and pressing importance. It was a telegram from President Wilson, which Colonel House laid before the Allied representatives on November 3. The President had received and considered the Allied message with regard to the second clause in the fourteen points and had sent back a reply. He was willing to recognise British necessities and their "strong position with regard to the seas, both at home and throughout the Empire "; also he was prepared to admit that the law governing blockade would have to be altered. But he insisted that points 1, 2, 3 and 14 were essentially American, and that he would not recede from them. Point No. 2 was worded thus: "Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed, in whole or in part, by international action for the enforcement of international covenants."

 

Colonel House therefore asked the Allied Premiers whether they agreed to the principle of the freedom of the seas, and the British Premier answered with great promptitude that he did not. It would be useless for him to do so; if he agreed, he would be replaced within a week. The Allied Premiers then added a number of observations upon the President's peace terms. The Belgian Minister, M. Hymans, and Baron Sonnino both took exception to certain clauses. Colonel House realised that it would be most unfortunate if the President received a number of formal objections at such a moment, and the matter was settled by an exchange of notes between himself and the British Prime Minister, who agreed on behalf of Great Britain to discuss the freedom of the seas in the light of the new conditions that had arisen in the course of the present war.

 

The Allied Premiers were now free to examine the armistice conditions drawn up by the Naval Council; but it was not until the 4th that they had time to consider them in detail. They decided to reject the advice given them by the Naval Council. Mr. Lloyd George urged that it was so important there should be no breakdown in the armistice negotiations that he did not think it advisable to demand the surrender of the German fleet: internment would be sufficient. Marshall Foch made a last attempt to get the Naval Council's conditions completely overruled and to have his own substituted; but the British Premier said that the advice given by the admirals could not be disregarded. The other Premiers supported him. The Naval Council were therefore ordered to draft conditions which demanded the internment, but not the surrender, of the principal units of the German surface fleet. (See Appendix D.)

 

This decision relieved our enemies of a humiliation that would have caused some of them great distress; whether they could have refused to accept it is another matter. They could only have resisted with their fleet; for by General Ludendorff's own admission the German armies could do nothing but retreat so long as our attacks continued: and by now the fleet was as little able to strike a last blow for the Fatherland as the army. The outbreak on October 29 had not been quelled, indeed it had spread and was still spreading. There were now serious disorders at Kiel and in the Elbe, and the crews were casting away the last vestiges of discipline.

 

Nov. 1918

REVISED CONDITIONS

 

At Kiel, indeed, the mutiny was fast becoming a revolutionary movement.

 

The Allied Naval Council lost no time in redrafting their armistice conditions, which were presented to the Supreme War Council in the afternoon (November 4). In this final draft the internment of the German surface fleet in neutral ports had been substituted for its surrender. At the last moment the Supreme War Council made an alteration in the draft conditions, which, though it was expressed very briefly, none the less had very important consequences later on. When the naval representatives handed in the armistice conditions, they made it quite clear that they did not all agree with the ruling given to them by the Allied Premiers. Although not prepared to ask his colleagues to reverse their decision, Monsieur Clemenceau saw that it would be extremely difficult to intern the German battle fleet in a neutral harbour: by what rule or custom of international comity were the Allies justified in keeping an enemy's fleet in a neutral port under their own supervision? What would the Allies do if every neutral Government in Europe refused to receive the German fleet? Admiral de Bon at once answered that he did not know how internment in a neutral port could possibly be enforced, and urged the Council to demand the surrender of the German fleet. This the Allied Premiers felt unable to do. They finally decided that the German fleet should be interned in neutral or, failing them, Allied ports. (See Appendix D.)

 

The armistice conditions were now completed in every particular, and it only remained to decide how they should be presented. (The armistice conditions included the unconditional surrender of all German forces operating in East Africa. For the last three years of the war the principal operations in this theatre had been entirely military.) As the German Government had throughout dealt with the Allies through President Wilson, he was undoubtedly the proper person to announce to Berlin that the Allies would receive their representatives. But, in order that the Government at Washington should be under no doubt whatever that the Allies stood firmly upon their exceptions to certain passages in the President's fourteen points, they forwarded the armistice conditions to Washington under cover of an explanatory message. In it the Allies declared themselves willing to make peace with the Government of Germany on the terms of peace laid down in the President's Address to Congress on January 8, 1918; none the less, the second clause of those conditions, which related to a doctrine usually known as the freedom of the seas, could be interpreted in several different ways ‑ and some interpretations were unacceptable to the Allies. They therefore held themselves free to enter the peace conference without previously engaging themselves in any sense at all upon this important question. Also the President had declared that the invaded territory must be restored and freed; this clause the Allies understood to mean that Germany would pay compensation for all the damage caused to the civilian population of her enemies by her acts of aggression on land, on the sea and from the air. Finally, the Supreme War Council decided that Marshall Foch and a British admiral should present the armistice terms, and should have powers to treat on minor technical points.

 

By now the German authorities realised that all thought of resistance was hopeless: they must accept whatever terms were presented. Indeed when President Wilson's final note was received in Berlin, Herr Erzberger had already been appointed to act as the head of the armistice delegation. He was to be assisted by General von Winterfeldt, who had once been the Military AttachŽ in Paris; by a naval officer, Captain Vanselow, and by Count Oberndorff. Erzberger was given full powers and was bound by no instructions whatever.

 

Early in the morning of the 7th the Eiffel Tower sent out a wireless message, prepared at French Headquarters: if German plenipotentiaries wished to meet Marshall Foch, they should approach the French outposts by the road which runs between Chimay, Fourmies le Chapelle and Guise.

 

Erzberger and his colleagues reached the French lines between half‑past nine and ten that night. The rest of the journey was made partly in French cars and partly in a special saloon carriage. At seven o'clock on the morning of November 8 the special train which carried the German delegation reached the siding in the forest of Compi�gne, where Marshall Foch had decided to meet the representatives of his enemies. The Germans saw that another saloon similar to their own was drawn up a few yards away. (The British delegation consisted of Admirals Wemyss and George Hope and Captain John Marriott, R.N. Marshall Foch, General Weygand, and two staff officers composed the French delegation.)

 

After making a few brief preparations the German envoys walked across to Marshall Foch's car and asked to be admitted. The formalities of introduction and examining credentials were of the briefest. As soon as they were over, Marshall Foch informed the Germans that he had no proposals to make, and requested General Weygand to read out the conditions. They were then read out clause by clause and translated

 

Nov. 1918

ARMISTICE SIGNED

 

viva voce. Erzberger was obviously unable to agree to such crushing conditions without first communicating them to his Government, and an officer was at once sent back to Germany with a copy.

 

Whilst the German delegates were waiting for final instructions from their Government, the revolutionary movement in their country rapidly gained momentum. On November 9 the leaders of the Socialist Party expelled Prince Max by a manoeuvre which differed little from a coup d'Žtat. On this same day, fateful in the history of Germany, the Emperor abdicated and fled, and terrible disorders broke out in Berlin. Erzberger heard of this towards midnight from a French officer, but it was not until late in the afternoon of the 10th that he received instructions to sign from Ebert, the new Chancellor.

 

The final sitting opened at a quarter‑past two in the morning of the 11th; and lasted for three hours. Erzberger protested passionately against the clauses relating to the continuation of the blockade, but was somewhat comforted to hear that the Entente Powers would probably allow the German Government to obtain supplies for the civil population. It was still quite dark when the delegates signed. The news could not be transmitted quickly enough to be printed in the morning papers of the Allied capitals; but it spread rapidly; before the guns had ceased on the Western Front, the populations of London and Paris were celebrating the end of the war.

 

 

The Enforcement of the Naval Armistice

 

As soon as the armistice was signed, Marshall Foch and Admiral Wemyss drove away for Paris. They reached the French capital at ten o'clock. An emergency meeting of the Allied Naval Council was assembled with some difficulty in the Ministry of Marine, and the Allied admirals listened to Admiral Wemyss's report. The British admiral announced that the armistice had been signed with very slight alteration; and recommended that the German capital ships, cruisers and destroyers should be interned in Scapa Flow. This, he said, was the best place of custody for German ships until the Peace Conference disposed of them. To intern them in a neutral harbour would involve great difficulties. The Allies would have to insist on the neutral Government keeping the German squadron in safe custody and would, in fact, be supervising a supervision. Such demands would probably be ill received; certainly they would be ill executed. The Allied Naval Council endorsed Admiral Wemyss's proposals and agreed that Admiral Beatty should enforce the execution of those clauses in the armistice which related to the surrender and internment of the German ships, and that an inter‑Allied Commission was to supervise the fulfilment of the remaining conditions.

 

The immediate task before the Allied Admirals was to discover whether there was any directing authority in the German fleet, and if so, what was its character and constitution. On this point the information in the Admiralty's possession was completely baffling. There was a Government in Berlin, and Ebert was at the head of it; but there were other bodies, formed we knew not how, which were performing the duties of Government in various parts of the country.

 

The Admiralty, therefore, took what was, possibly, the wisest course, that of getting into communication with the officers who had once been members of the German High Command, and of holding themselves ready to act upon the resulting information. If the officers who received our messages proved to be powerless, they might nevertheless be able to put us in touch with the de facto commanders of the German fleet; while if any authority remained to them at all, we should in all probability strengthen it by treating them as the accredited representatives of the German navy. The Commander‑in‑Chief was therefore instructed to request Admiral von Hipper to send a flag officer to Rosyth to make arrangements for executing the naval armistice. The result was highly satisfactory. At noon on November 13, Admiral Beatty received a message that Admiral Meurer would act as the plenipotentiary of the German navy and would come to Rosyth in the light cruiser Koenigsberg.

 

Admiral Meurer and his staff were received on board the Queen Elizabeth between seven and eight o'clock in the evening of November 15, and the first conference began at twenty minutes to eight.

 

(There were present:

Admiral Sir David Beatty,

Admiral Sir Charles Madden,

Vice‑Admiral Sir Osmond de B. Brock,

assisted by Paymaster‑Commander F. T. Spickernell and Commander Roger Bellairs.

 

The German Mission consisted of:

Rear‑Admiral Huge Meurer,

Commander Hintzmann,

Lieut.‑Commander Saalwachter,

Lieut.-Commander von Fraudenreich,

Sub‑Lieutenant Brauneck.

 

Vice‑Admiral Sir Montague Browning and Rear‑Admiral Sir Reginald Tyrwhitt were also present at certain stages.

 

Commander W. T. Bagot acted as interpreter.)

 

After Meurer's credentials had been examined

 

Nov. 1918

ADMIRAL MEURER'S STATEMENT

 

he was handed a paper printed in two parallel columns; on the left were brief summaries of the armistice conditions, on the right the information which Admiral Meurer was requested to give, or the orders with which he was to comply. The armistice provided for the surrender of all German submarines and the internment of a specified number of surface ships.

 

Preliminary arrangements had been made under each head, but it was still necessary that the Commander‑in‑Chief should know how many submarines were ready for immediate delivery, how the German fleet was at present distributed, and how long it would take to assemble the vessels specified in Article 23. Admiral Meurer replied that he could not immediately answer all the questions put to him, but that he would communicate at once with the home authorities. Before the conference was adjourned for the day, the German Admiral made a brief reference to the disorder in his own country. The old institutions, he said, had everywhere been overthrown and replaced by democratic committees, or by Soldiers' and Workmen's Councils; he begged earnestly that the confusion in Germany might be kept in mind throughout the next critical weeks during which the terms of the naval armistice were to be carried out. Admiral Beatty answered that if he were satisfied that a ship which was mentioned by name in Article 23 could not be made ready for delivery owing to the disorganisation of the German dockyards, he would agree that another should be substituted; and that, as the Wiesbaden had not yet been commissioned, another light cruiser could take her place in the squadron to be interned. The German Admiral returned to his own ship at half ast eight in the evening.

 

Three meetings were held on the following day, and by the evening the Commander‑in‑Chief handed the German admiral a written summary of the agreed arrangements. Throughout the day the discussions were confined strictly to technical questions; the ships and submarines that were to be assembled, the points at which they were to be met by the British forces, the supplies of coal and water they were to carry, the crews that were to be allowed to them for the voyage, how transport was to be supplied for carrying away the surplus seamen, when the ships were interned and left in charge of care and maintenance parties. Admiral Meurer's answers to all questions put to him were simple and straightforward; he left the Queen Elizabeth at ten o'clock on the night of November 16. The Koenigsberg sailed soon after.

 

There was now very little more to be done beyond preparing the orders for the forces detailed to escort the German surface ships to the Firth of Forth and the German submarines to Harwich. In order to make the proceedings as impressive as possible, it was arranged that all the available ships and squadrons of the Grand Fleet should perform the first duty, and the entire Harwich Force the second. Admiral Tyrwhitt issued his orders on November 17 and Admiral Beatty on November 20. During the days immediately following the meetings at Rosyth, the German Government appointed Admiral von Reuter to the command of the German surface ships.

 

Early in the afternoon of November 18, Admiral Tyrwhitt was informed that the first group of German submarines was leaving Wilhelmshaven. Their progress across the North Sea and into the Flanders Bight was reported frequently, and at 3.0 p.m. on the following day the Harwich Force put to sea to meet the incoming U‑boats. There were twenty of them in all, and they reached the rendezvous at the scheduled time; here the Harwich Force formed round them and led them to an anchorage near the South Cutter Buoy. As soon as the U‑boats dropped their anchors, a British officer went on board each of them with a British crew. The German commanding officer handed a signed statement to the British captain, to the effect that the submarine was fit to be navigated and disarmed. The British ensign was then hoisted, and when all the submarines were ready, they were taken up harbour and made fast to a submarine trot off Parkestone; the German crews were at once transferred to a transport. In order that there should be no demonstration savouring in the least degree of triumphing over a beaten enemy, Admiral Tyrwhitt ordered the ships of the Harwich Force to maintain a strict silence when passing or being passed by German submarines, and added that there was to be no manifestation whatever. These instructions were scrupulously carried out; by ten o'clock the submarines were made fast to the mooring trot and the German transport was on her way back to Germany.

 

Nov. 1918

GERMAN SHIPS INTERNED

 

Meanwhile Admiral von Reuter had sailed with his squadron; by midnight on the 20th his flagship was rather more than 100 miles from May Island. One of the German destroyers had struck a mine and sunk during the passage through the Heligoland Bight; and this had been duly reported to Admiral Beatty. The Grand Fleet sailed at a quarter‑past two on the morning of the 21st, and after passing into the open water outside the net obstructions it was formed into two gigantic columns, composed of no less than thirteen squadrons, and giving an almost illimitable vista of ordered power. The German ships were sighted soon after eight. By half‑past nine the Cardiff had led them to their position between the columns of the Grand Fleet squadrons, and Admiral Beatty turned his fleet 16 points to the westward to escort the enemy into harbour. It was a fine day but rather misty, and the fleet approached the anchorage at slow speed. The arrangements worked without a hitch, and by noon the Germans were at their anchorage. The German battleships, battle cruisers and light cruisers were moored in six lines, in the middle of the Firth, half‑way between Kirkcaldy and Aberlady Bays; the destroyers were moored closer in to the Haddington shore, towards Cockenzie. When the last German ship was anchored, Admiral Beatty made a signal that the German flag was to be hauled down at sunset and that it must not again be rehoisted.

 

(The ships actually surrendered were:

 

battleships Friedrich der Grosse (flag of Rear‑Admiral von Reuter), Koenig Albert, Kaiser, Kronprinz Wilhelm, Kaiserin, Bayern, Markgraf, Prinzregent Luitpold, Grosser Kurfurst,

 

battle cruisers Seydlitz (Broad Pendant), Derfflinger, Von der Tann, Hindenburg, Moltke,

 

light cruisers Karlsruhe (Broad Pendant), Frankfurt, Emden, Nurnberg, Brummer, Coeln, Bremse,

 

49 destroyers.)

 

When the Queen Elizabeth steamed past the Grand Fleet to her anchorage, Admiral Beatty was loudly cheered by the crews.

 

During the course of the afternoon Commodore M. H. Hodges went on board the Friedrich der Grosse, with Commander G. C. Royle, Lieutenant N. B. Deare, and Lieutenant-Commander F. C. Tiarks, R.N.V.R., who acted as interpreter. The Commodore informed Admiral von Reuter that the Commander‑in‑Chief did not wish to receive him, and told him that the ships were to be interned at Scapa, whither they would go in batches as soon as they had been inspected. Admiral von Reuter protested against the order about hauling down the German flag, but the Commodore answered that he had no authority to modify it. The inspection of the German ships was carried out on the following day; they were found

 

Nov. 1918

THE SURRENDER

 

to have been completely disarmed, and arrangements were at once made for sending them on to Scapa.

 

These proceedings were reported in the newspapers in language which was as impressive as the correspondents could make it. The Commander‑in‑Chief and the Rear‑Admiral Commanding the Harwich Force regarded the whole matter as an act of administration which was hardly worth describing. But the surrender has few parallels in history, and will live long in the memory of the nations.