The British tried another sweep into the Helgoland Bight on 11 September but achieved no success. The newly laid German minefields made such moves very dangerous; in fact, that day the Third Destroyer Flotilla narrowly missed a minefield and certain loss. The Germans continued Kleinkrieg, the guerrilla war waged by mines and submarines. The latter were now used much more aggressively in seeking out the British fleet and soon achieved successes that diminished much of the psychological advantage the British enjoyed after 28 August. On 5 September U.21, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Otto Hersing, torpedoed and sank the scout cruiser Pathfinder, leader of the Eighth Destroyer Flotilla (Firth of Forth) off Saint Abb’s Head. This was the first British warship to be lost to a submarine during the war.
The British evened the score on 13 September when E.9, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Max Horton (who would later command Western Approaches in World War II), sank the old cruiser Hela 6 miles off Helgoland. Horton also sank the destroyer S.116 off the Ems on 6 October. But it would be the Germans who would achieve the most spectacular success on 22 September. Kapitänleutnant Otto Weddigen, in the old submarine U.9, torpedoed and sank the cruisers Cressy, Aboukir, and Hogue on the Broad Fourteens, the name given to the area they patrolled off the Dutch coast. Three cruisers, sixty-two officers, and 1,397 men (most middle-aged reservists, but some young cadets mobilized directly from the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth) were lost in a little more than an hour. The submarine had given a striking demonstration of its power. Actually, both Keyes and Tyrwhitt had repeatedly tried to get the old Bacchante-class armored cruisers removed from the Broad Fourteens. They were sardonically known as “the live bait squadron,” because the old ships stood little chance against a powerful surface raider. Sturdee, however, insisted that they, rather than destroyers, remain to guard against German raids or minelaying activities. He did not believe that destroyers could maintain a patrol in heavy weather. The old Bacchantes had to stay until they could be replaced by light cruisers. According to Keyes, Sturdee dismissed his arguments to withdraw the cruisers with the contemptuous remark that Keyes did not know history, particularly that of the Dutch Wars, if he did not understand the necessity for a Broad Fourteen patrol to keep the Scheldt open.28
The submarine had now eclipsed the High Sea Fleet as the greatest threat to the Royal Navy’s control of the seas. Submarine sightings became frequent, there were unsuccessful attacks on British warships, and the navy realized how extremely difficult it was to counter the new menace. On 15 October Weddigen’s U.9 sank the old cruiser Hawke off the Scottish coast. Jellicoe moved the fleet’s anchorage from Loch Ewe farther south to Loch na Keal and to Lough Swilly on the north coast of Ireland.
Lough Swilly was not as safe as Jellicoe hoped. In mid-October the Germans sent out three minelayers, two directed to the Firth of Forth and the third to the River Clyde. The east coast operation proved abortive, but the west coast operation was successful. Captain Hans Pfundheller, commanding the minelayer Berlin (17,300 tons), a converted North German Lloyd liner, decided he would not be able to reach the Clyde. He did what he considered the next best thing and laid two hundred mines on the night of 22–23 October in the shipping lanes off Tory Island to the northwest of Lough Swilly. He apparently had no idea the Grand Fleet was nearby, and after cruising without further success as far as Iceland, eventually brought his ship into the Norwegian port of Trondheim to be interned. The minefield claimed a merchantman on the 26th, and on the morning of the 27th, the dreadnought Audacious. The Audacious, one of the most modern dreadnoughts, had been at sea with the Second Battle Squadron for firing practice. There were desperate efforts to save the ship. The large White Star liner Olympic responded to the distress calls and attempted to take her in tow, but after twelve hours of struggle the dreadnought sank. Jellicoe now believed that his real advantage over the Germans was eroding, and with operations in Belgium at a crucial point, asked that the loss of the Audacious be kept secret. The loss could hardly be kept secret for long, if only because there had been a number of American passengers in the Olympic, and the Germans were certain about its loss in less than a month. Nevertheless, until the end of the war the Admiralty clung to the fiction that the Audacious had only been damaged.29
Mine warfare was another aspect of the naval war that had been neglected by the British despite the considerable losses mines had inflicted on the Japanese during the Russo-Japanese War. For the majority of officers, mine warfare lacked the interest, glamour, and (probably) chances for promotion and distinction that were associated with gunnery in the big ships or flotilla work with destroyers. As one British officer graphically put it, before the war those in the minesweeping service were looked on as “no better than lavatory attendants.” The Royal Navy began the war with what Jellicoe admitted was a totally inadequate force of minesweepers. There were only ten old torpedo gunboats, fitted with sweeps, and thirteen trawlers used primarily for training. The Admiralty may have been lulled into a false sense of security by the 1907 Hague Convention against indiscriminate use of mines in international waters. Unfortunately the Germans by the end of the war had laid more than 43,000 mines, 25,000 of them in the North Sea and around the British Isles. The attitude toward minesweeping changed drastically; minesweepers tied up alongside battleships, their crews allowed to use the canteens. The Admiralty laid down whole classes of minesweepers, and converted hundreds of trawlers, and at the end of the war, 726 craft were involved in the minesweeping service. Minesweeping was a slow process, and it was not practical for battleships and cruisers to follow the sweepers at sea. In the spring of 1915, the device known as the paravane, which cut mine moorings, was developed, but it took until 1917 before the entire fleet could be fitted.
Churchill and two successive chiefs of staff, Admirals Sturdee and Oliver, were reluctant to employ mines, either offensively or defensively. They feared mines would hamper the operations of British warships or submarines more than they would harm the Germans. The objection to offensive mining was that the goal was to make the German fleet come out and fight, not be mined in. The first British minefields in the Helgoland Bight were not laid until 1915. Even then the influence of the Foreign Office served as a conservative brake on mining so as not to offend neutrals. The British also had neglected their own mines and did not have a really efficient or reliable mine until 1917, when they developed the H.II, copied from a captured German mine. The minelaying force, both warship and mercantile conversions, expanded to about one hundred craft.30
There was steadily rising discontent with the Admiralty in October 1914. A frequent question was, What is the navy doing? The question was a particularly painful one as the losses of the army mounted. The British Expeditionary Force was obviously fighting—was the navy? Churchill’s expedition to Antwerp, an attempt to prevent the city’s falling into German hands, was a failure, and the Germans pushed along the Belgian coast to Ostend and Zeebrugge, which they later would develop into bases. This posed a direct threat to the communications with France. The new situation resulted in the Admiralty removing the Dover Strait from the control of the admiral of patrols and making it a separate command under Rear Admiral the Honorable Horace Hood, who held the title “rear admiral commanding the Dover Patrol and senior naval officer, Dover.” Hood controlled four light cruisers, twenty-four destroyers of the Sixth Destroyer Flotilla, thirteen old B- and C-class submarines, plus trawlers and other auxiliary craft. His responsibilities also increased when General Joffre, chief of the French general staff, asked for assistance to the Belgian and French forces defending the Channel ports of Nieuport and Dunkirk. The British provided it, sending three monitors and, eventually, old battleships and a motley collection of old, if not ancient, craft, including torpedo gunboats, gunboats, and sloops. This demonstrated that even vessels that would never have been used in any real naval encounter were valuable assets for duties such as these. Hood also had four French destroyers under his command at Dunkirk, and on 30 October conducted operations f
rom the French destroyer intrépide. A French historian claimed this was the first time a British admiral flew his flag in a French warship in battle. Hood and his ships had a hot time, which cannot be described in detail here, before the German advance along the coast was stopped.
The Germans sought to take advantage of the situation by sending four large (315-ton) torpedo boats of the Ems patrol, S.115, S.117, S.118, and S.119, under the command of Korvettenkapitän August Thiele, to lay mines at the mouth of the Thames. The Germans were intercepted off Texel Island on 17 October by Captain Cecil Fox in the light cruiser Undaunted, with the destroyers Lance, Lennox, Legion, and Loyal of the Harwich Force. The four German ships were sunk, and valuable intelligence was later recovered from the wrecks. Unfortunately, this victory was counterbalanced on the 31st by the loss of the old cruiser Hermes, then serving as a seaplane carrier, to an attack by the submarine U.27 8 miles off Calais. The loss caused the Admiralty to withdraw the old battleship Venerable, which had been supporting the coastal operations. In the future no vessel larger than a destroyer, or in exceptional cases a scout cruiser, was to cross the Channel east of the meridian of Greenwich during daylight hours.31
On 28 October the First Sea Lord Prince Louis of Battenberg submitted his resignation. There had been a nasty public clamor about his German birth, and the unfair insinuations are usually given as the primary reason for his resignation. There is some evidence, however, that he was also criticized for being too passive in the face of Churchill—“Churchill’s dupe” was the unflattering term used—and he was also criticized for his apparent lack of energy from the beginning of the war. One historian even maintains that he was asked to resign and that the initiative for resignation came from the cabinet.32
Battenberg was replaced by Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher, who was recalled from retirement. Fisher was seventy-four, but as Beatty wrote his wife, “He still has fine zeal, energy, and determination, coupled with low cunning, which is eminently desirable just now. He also has courage and will take any responsibility.” No one could accuse Fisher of lack of energy. Keyes recalled that at a meeting with Admiralty officials on the subject of future submarine construction, Fisher turned to the superintendent of contracts and said that “he would make his wife a widow and his house a dunghill, if he brought paper work or red tape into the business; he wanted submarines, not contracts.”33
Fisher believed that the war was going to be a long one and with that ruthless energy embarked on a vast building program that eventually included 5 battle cruisers; 2 light cruisers; 5 flotilla leaders; 56 destroyers; 65 submarines; more than 33 monitors of various sizes; 24 sloops (for antisubmarine work); 50 antisubmarine motor launches; and 200 large and 60 small landing barges, protected by steel shields for landings under fire. He also was instrumental in bringing into service the first squadron of nonrigid airships (generally referred to as blimps), which proved very useful for antisubmarine patrols near the coast. Elements of Fisher’s program were controversial, notably the light-draft battle cruisers Glorious, Courageous, and Furious, with their high speed, small number of very large guns, and meager protection. They were condemned as costly “white elephants,” and the three were converted later into aircraft carriers. Whatever the debate over parts of his program or methods, on balance Fisher’s achievements were real. Unfortunately the Churchill-Fisher combination was highly volatile, and, as we shall see, Fisher would resign over the Dardanelles campaign, shortly before Churchill too would be forced from office.34
In the autumn of 1914, a period of discontent and unease over the performance of the navy, the British were developing a priceless advantage over the Germans, but one that had to be kept a strict secret: through a combination of circumstances the Admiralty was gaining the ability to read much of the German wireless traffic. The British actually had three windfalls. The best known came from the Russians. On 26 August the German light cruiser Magdeburg, on reconnaissance in the Gulf of Finland, ran aground on the island of Odensholm off the Estonian coast. The ship could not be refloated, and the intervention of Russian warships prevented the effective destruction of the ship and, apparently, the proper disposal of confidential books. The Russians were able to recover three copies of the SKM (Signalbuch der Kaiserlichen Marine) with the current key. They offered one copy to their British allies if the British would send a ship to a north Russian port to collect it. The British complied, and on 13 October two Russian naval officers arrived at the Admiralty with the precious book. The second windfall came from Australia, where the HVB (Handelsverkehrsbuch), the code book used for communications between the Admiralstab and German merchantmen as well as in the High Sea Fleet, was found in a German steamer seized at the beginning of the war. This, after perhaps inexcusable delay, reached the Admiralty by the end of October. The third windfall was truly amazing, coming from a lead-lined chest apparently jettisoned by the senior officer of the four German torpedo boats sunk off the Dutch coast on 17 October. The chest was dragged up in the nets of a British trawler fishing off Texel on 30 November and reached the Admiralty on 3 December. There was a copy of the VB (Verkehrsbuch) code in the chest, a code used at sea, mostly by flag officers. It is not clear if the code breakers provided any advance information on the thwarted German minelaying raid of 17 October, but the incident of the VB book was usually referred to by those involved in code breaking as “the miraculous draught of fishes.”35
The cryptographers who worked with these codes were under the direction of Sir Alfred Ewing, the former director of naval education. The code-breaking organization was commonly known by where it was installed in early November—Room 40 on the first floor of the old Admiralty building. Room 40 and its work also would become closely linked with Captain (later Rear Admiral) Reginald Hall. “Blinker” Hall (as he was nicknamed because of his habit of constantly blinking his eyes) became director of the Intelligence Division in November 1914 and would later become one of the legends of the First World War. But in October 1914 all of this was far in the future. It took time before the full potential of Room 40 could be realized. At first the cryptographers were inexperienced and did not always understand naval procedure or terminology. Some staff officers, in turn, looked down on the cryptographers who had come from civilian backgrounds. The usual problem with such an intelligence source was how to use it in a manner that would not alert the enemy it existed. The Admiralty may have carried secrecy to an excessive degree. Admiral Oliver, that indefatigable workhorse and chief of staff from November 1914 to May 1917, was a great centralizer and drafted almost every signal from Room 40 in his own hand. Until 1917 Hall merely had access to, but not control of, material. This concentration of the dissemination of intelligence in a very few hands meant that the commander in chief might not receive all available information in time for it to be of use. As a result Room 40 would not reach its peak of efficiency and become a true intelligence center until much later in the war.36
The loss of the Audacious only served to heighten Jellicoe’s concern that his real margin of superiority over the High Sea Fleet in a fleet action was not large. On 30 October he informed the Admiralty of the conditions under which he would give battle. He expected the Germans to try to make the fullest use of mines, torpedoes, and submarines. The Germans could not count on having their greatest number of submarines, minelayers, or aircraft present unless the battle was fought in waters chosen by them, which would be in the southern portion of the North Sea. Jellicoe’s objective therefore would be to fight a fleet action in the northern portion of the North Sea, which would be nearer the British bases, thereby giving damaged British ships a better chance of reaching home. It would work in the opposite way for the Germans: the British would have a better chance of destroying damaged ships. A battle in the northern portion of the North Sea would also hamper a night destroyer attack by the Germans before or after an action, whereas it would favor a concentration of British cruisers and destroyers with the battle fleet.
On a tactical level,
Jellicoe declared that if the German battle fleet were to turn away from his advancing fleet, “I should assume that the intention was to lead us over mines and submarines, and should decline to be so drawn.” He did not want the Admiralty to think this was a refusal of battle, though it might result in failure to bring the enemy to action as soon as expected. Nevertheless it was in his opinion the proper course to defeat and annihilate the enemy, for if he made a false move it was quite possible half the battle fleet could be disabled by underwater attack before the guns opened fire. In an action Jellicoe planned to guard against submarines by moving the battle fleet at very high speed to a flank before deploying or opening fire, so that the encounter would take place off the ground on which the enemy wanted to fight. The Germans might refuse to follow him, but if the fleets remained in sight of each other, the high speed would force submarines to surface if they wished to follow, and Jellicoe felt that after an interval at high speed he could safely close.37
Beyond “underhanded” weapons such as the submarine and mine, and in terms of surface ships in the sort of classic encounter that the Grand Fleet ardently desired, Jellicoe was less confident than many might have supposed. His concern over the shortage of destroyers compared to what he might expect to face was an old story. But capital ships? What had happened to the initial 20:13 advantage? It had been whittled down. The Audacious had been lost, the Ajax and Iron Duke (Jellicoe’s flagship) had developed condenser trouble, the Orion had suspected defects in her turbine supports, the Conqueror was refitting, and the battle cruiser New Zealand was in dock. Although the Erin and Agincourt, former Turkish dreadnoughts taken over by the Admiralty at the beginning of the war, had joined the fleet, Jellicoe did not regard these newly commissioned ships as efficient. Jellicoe estimated that two dreadnoughts and a battle cruiser had joined the German fleet since the beginning of the war. The ratio in terms of efficient dreadnoughts was now 17:15; in battle cruisers 5:4.
A Naval History of World War I Page 7