Dreadnoughts
3
Semidreadnoughts (Radetzky-class)
3
Predreadnoughts
6
Coast-defense ships
3
Armored cruisers
2
Protected cruisers
3
Light cruisers
2
Destroyers
18
Torpedo boats
21–30
Torpedo boats (coastal)
40
Submarines
5
The Austrian navy by itself was obviously little threat to the French, but as the Austrians and Italians built against each other, the sum of their fleets opened new prospects. The initiative for a Triple Alliance naval understanding came from the Italians. The Italo-Turkish War (1911–12) had, at least temporarily, brought Italy closer to the Triple Alliance, especially when the Italian navy was involved in various maritime incidents with the French. Without getting into the diplomatic details of Italy’s ambiguous position, suffice it to say that the Italian navy realized how terribly vulnerable an unsupported Italy would be to Anglo-French sea power. The Italian naval authorities were ignorant of the exact nature of Italy’s diplomatic obligations toward its Triple Alliance allies—they never saw the text of the treaty—and did not realize how strictly defensive it was in scope. They therefore had to plan for their own worst case, and as Austrian naval strength grew, the logic behind the move toward an agreement with Austria-Hungary seemed overwhelming. The Italians began their overtures in 1913, with the Germans acting as enthusiastic mid wives. In late 1912 the Germans had established a permanent naval presence in the Mediterranean as a result of the Balkan Wars (1912–13). The Mittelmeerdivision, consisting of the new battle cruiser Goeben and the fast light cruiser Breslau, would have been a powerful addition to any Triple Alliance naval force. There was nothing in the French navy that was powerful enough to both catch and fight the Goeben.
These considerations prompted the Triple Alliance Naval Convention of October 1913. To obtain Austrian participation, the Italians even agreed to an Austrian commander in chief, Admiral Anton Haus, for the Austro-Italian force, which planned to assemble with German forces then in the Mediterranean at Augusta, on the east coast of Sicily, after the outbreak of war. The Italians collected coal stocks here, and the three allies prepared the Triple Codex, a code book for use by their combined fleets. At one point Haus and Thaon di Revel even met secretly and incognito in Zurich to discuss their plans.31
In July 1914 the potential Austro-Italian force was six dreadnoughts and three semidreadnoughts against only two dreadnoughts and six semidreadnoughts for the French. It is easy to see why the British were so anxious to maintain a few battle cruisers in the Mediterranean to provide the margin of superiority for an Anglo-French force. Naturally there were many variables involved, and it is doubtful how effectively the Austrian and Italian naval forces would have worked together. The Triple Alliance Naval Convention never lost its air of unreality, but it did exist and had to be guarded against. The Italian decision to remain neutral when the war began ended any prospect of a major surface action in the Mediterranean and insured that the British and French would have an overwhelming superiority in surface warships.
If the prewar naval balance in the Mediterranean was delicate, the situation in the Aegean was even more volatile. The Greeks and Turks, traditional enemies, had just engaged in the Balkan Wars, in which the Turks had lost most of their remaining territories in Europe. The Turkish navy had, however, a powerful dreadnought under construction in Great Britain. In late 1913 they acquired another extremely powerful ship when the Brazilians for financial reasons put the Rio de Janeiro, also under construction in England, up for sale. The South American navies were a source of instability for the European powers. The Brazilians had two dreadnoughts in service, the Chileans and the Argentines each had two on order. The prospect that nearly completed capital ships such as these could change hands on short notice was alarming. Churchill complained of the Latin American naval activities, “It is sport for them, it is death for us.” The implication that only the great powers should have dreadnoughts is debatable, but in the summer of 1914, the fact that the Turks might have two extremely powerful dreadnoughts was disturbing.
Relations between Greece and Turkey were very tense in the early part of 1914, and it is generally forgotten that many observers expected the war to break out there rather than where it actually did. There was talk of a preemptive strike by the Greeks, who searched frantically for major warships to match the Turks. The Greeks were forced to order a dreadnought in France as a condition of a loan from the French, but the ship would not be ready for some time. The same was true of a battle cruiser ordered in Germany. The Greeks finally obtained two predreadnoughts that the U.S. Navy found ill-suited to its requirements. President Wilson was persuaded to sell them to the Greeks to preserve the balance of power. The older ships were no match for the Turkish dreadnoughts, but, presumably, the psychological implications of the sale played a role. The Turkish ships were taken over by the Admiralty on the outbreak of war, probably a wise move, because the Turks had offered to send the ships to Germany after the conclusion of a Turkish-German alliance in August 1914.32 Greece and Turkey at this time were fertile fields for the salesmen of other naval armaments, and both sides had received or ordered smaller warships from different European yards. Prior to the fictitious sale of the Goeben and Breslau to the Turks, the naval balance between Greece and Turkey was:
Greece
Turkey
Predreadnoughts
2
2
Coast-defense ships
3
1
Armored cruisers
1
NA
Protected cruisers
1
2
Destroyers
14
8
Torpedo boats
17
9
Submarines
2
NA
Ironically, once the submarine war became serious, it was the fate of the Greek light craft that would most preoccupy the British and French.
The Russians were a land power of great importance in the European balance of power. Their strength at sea was nowhere near their strength on land, but their potential was significant. Unfortunately their problems were serious. The Russian navy was still in the process of recovery from the disastrous Russo-Japanese War. Geography compelled the Russians to divide their navy into at least three parts, with separate forces for the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Far East. They had little hope of seriously contending with the Japanese in the Pacific or matching the German fleet ship for ship in the Baltic, but they could realistically hope to dominate the Black Sea once their dreadnoughts entered service. The big question was how much of the German fleet might they divert to the Baltic from its position facing the British in the North Sea. The question obviously had significant strategic importance, but in dealing with the Russians in the prewar period, the emphasis must always be on the word potential.
The Russians were certainly ambitious. In April 1911 Vice Admiral Ivan K. Grigorovitch, an unusually capable and energetic officer, became minister of marine and obtained funds for laying down four dreadnoughts for the Baltic and three dreadnoughts for the Black Sea. This was the first part of a long-range program that would have created by 1920 a Baltic fleet of 8 dreadnoughts and battle cruisers, 20 cruisers, 36 destroyers, and 12 submarines; and a Black Sea fleet one and one-half times the combined forces of Turkey, Bulgaria, and Romania. This demanding program met bitter resistance in the Duma and elsewhere, with charges that money spent on the larger fleet would have been wasted. The Left preferred that the money be spent on social reform; the Octobrists wanted a fleet of small units, suitable for coastal defense. Nevertheless in June 1912, the Duma approved what was known as the Small Shipbuilding Program, which prov
ided funds for the construction from 1912 to 1917 of 4 battle cruisers, 8 light cruisers, 36 destroyers, and 18 submarines. With the exception of two light cruisers and six submarines for the Black Sea and two light cruisers for the Far East, the ships were destined for the Baltic. In April 1914, with the prospect of the Turks acquiring dreadnoughts, Grigorovitch obtained the authorization of the Duma to build an additional dreadnought, two cruisers, and eight destroyers for the Black Sea.
There was a big difference in Russia between paper projects and actual accomplishments. Despite (or perhaps because of) foreign participation, the program proceeded much more slowly than anticipated; there were charges of bureaucratic corruption and bungling at the yards, and by the war’s beginning, none of the dreadnoughts had been completed. The battle cruisers would never be. The potential was there; among the smaller ships, the large, fast destroyers the Russians were building would have been among the best in the world.
The Russian navy faced more than material problems: there was a big question mark over the personnel of the fleet that had experienced the famous Potemkin mutiny in the Black Sea in 1905. In 1912 there had been unrest in the Baltic fleet, reportedly over poor food and treatment, and a serious plot also was uncovered at Sebastopol, which led to the trials of 142 men and seventeen executions. Foreign observers were frequently critical of the attitude of the Russian naval officer corps, although the corps must have faced special difficulties turning generally illiterate inland conscripts into seamen, particularly with the long northern winters hampering training. As the Russians had a tradition of overcoming immense difficulties and the country was in the process of industrialization, it is interesting to speculate what, given time, the Russian potential at sea might have been.33
At the outbreak of the war, the Russians had the following in service:
Baltic
Black Sea
Predreadnoughts
5
5
Coast-defense ships
NA
1
Armored cruisers
6
NA
Protected cruisers
4
2
Destroyers
21
4
Torpedo boats
48
24
Gunboats
7
5
Submarines
15
7
The Russians also had the Siberian Flotilla in the Far East, which included 2 cruisers, 17 destroyers, 3 torpedo boats, 1 gunboat, and 4 submarines; but these ships were all old.
Of the European maritime powers remaining neutral in the war—Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark—only the Spanish had dreadnought-type warships. They had one small dreadnought in service and another two under construction, but the remainder of their fleet—an ancient battleship, two armored cruisers, and a handful of protected cruisers and destroyers—did not count for much.
The other navies were essentially coast-defense forces, with the exception of the Netherlands, which had its colonies in the East Indies to defend. The Dutch debated building five battleships for the Far East, plus four for home waters, but had reached no decision by the war’s outset. The neutrals were not linked to any of the rival alliance systems and thus were unlikely to enter the war on their own. The most appropriate question, perhaps, was whether they had the strength, or will, to enforce their neutrality. On the whole their neutrality would be of more value for the belligerents than their participation in a war. The naval forces of Portugal, which did join the war on the side of the Entente, were negligible.34
From a naval point of view, the United States and Japan were the two most important non-European powers. Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, the South American states with the most significant navies, competed against each other, but of the three, only Brazil would finally enter the war in 1917 and send two scout cruisers and four destroyers to European waters. They arrived only at the very end of the war. The Japanese, in contrast, could not be ignored. They had proven their ability in the Russo-Japanese War, had been allies of the British since 1902, and in naval matters were predominant in the Far East. They did, in fact, enter the war very quickly, but the majority of their naval forces were employed against German possessions in the Far East. They eventually sent twelve badly needed destroyers to the Mediterranean at the height of the submarine crisis in 1917, and the performance of this force won a good deal of praise. The Japanese fleet also contained a number of prizes taken from the Russians, by the war’s outbreak generally obsolete. In August 1914 Japanese naval forces included:
Dreadnoughts
2
Battle cruisers
1
Predreadnoughts
10
Coast-defense ships
4
Armored cruisers
12
Protected cruisers
15
Light cruisers
6
Destroyers
50
Submarines
12
A second large battle cruiser was completed in early August, and an additional two dreadnoughts and two battle cruisers were under construction. The Japanese called four of their armored cruisers “battle cruisers,” but, although armed with 12-inch guns, by North Sea standards they were not considered true battle cruisers. Moreover, very few of the Japanese destroyers at this time could be considered modern, and the Japanese commenced a sizable destroyer-building program after the outbreak of war.35
The United States was not linked to any of the belligerents at the outbreak of the world war, but given its wealth, both real and potential, it was obviously the great prize among neutrals. The modern U.S. Navy was a relatively recent creation, after years of neglect following the American Civil War. The brief war against Spain in 1898 did not really provide much experience, particularly against a powerful or technologically advanced enemy. The famous cruise of sixteen American battleships around the world in 1907–1909—the “Great White Fleet”—was supposed to symbolize the renaissance of the navy but may also have demonstrated its relative backwardness. The Americans would learn; they certainly had the resources and determination. Nevertheless the fitting word for the United States Navy in the summer of 1914 was potential. A large building program was not approved until 1916. In this respect there were similarities between the American and Russian navies, but the potential of the Americans was far greater, and they enjoyed immense political and social advantages that the Russians lacked.36
The United States Navy in the summer of 1914 included:
Dreadnoughts
10
Predreadnoughts
23
Armored cruisers
12
Protected cruisers
22
Destroyers
50
Torpedo boats (old)
23
Submarines
18
The Americans had another four powerful dreadnoughts under construction and eighteen large destroyers authorized or under construction. However, sixteen of the destroyers in service were very old and fragile, and only three of the cruisers could be considered modern. There were an additional nine very old submarines, suitable only for local defense, in the Philippines.37
This chapter can only paint the world naval balance in 1914 in fairly broad brushstrokes, concentrating on battleships and dreadnoughts, which, because most expected a decisive naval encounter similar to Trafalgar, were the accepted standard of the time. Any discussion of other types of vessels, such as minelayers or seaplane carriers, must also be foregone. The interested reader should refer to the various naval annuals, either originals or reprints, or modern works such as Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships, 1906–1921 for further information. The British and Germans were the major contenders, and most expected the North Sea to be the decisive area. The other navies had important roles to play, however, and considerable naval activity
took place beyond the North Sea. As the war progressed, other types of warships became as important, if not more important, than capital ships. This was especially true of submarines and their antidotes—destroyers and sloops. The relative proportions of different types of ships in the fleets of 1918 were very different from what they had been in 1914.
2
NORTHERN WATERS: THE FIRST SIX MONTHS
When the war broke out, the generation that had experienced the Anglo-German naval race, read widely popular spy stories such as Erskine Childer’s The Riddle of the Sands, and remembered the sudden Japanese attack on the Russian base at Port Arthur a decade earlier fully expected a major battle within a short period of time, coupled, perhaps, with a German raid or even an invasion. A young British officer in the light cruiser Southampton reported that 60 percent of the officers in his wardroom were certain they would be in battle within forty-eight hours.1 This did not occur; there was not a major battle in the North Sea for nearly two years, and encounters that took place in this major theater of the naval war were often more in the nature of glancing blows. The reasons for this may be found in the prewar strategy of both the British and the Germans.
A Naval History of World War I Page 4