A Naval History of World War I

by Paul G. Halpern

  The objection to convoy was not confined to naval circles. The merchant marine held similar views. A special meeting of ten masters of merchant ships was convened at the Admiralty on 23 February. These presumably highly experienced mariners were firmly of the opinion that they would prefer to sail alone rather than in company or under convoy. They also expressed doubts about the ability of merchant ships to keep station, for they considered the officers left in the merchant marine as not sufficiently reliable, and the poor quality of coal some complained of receiving caused additional difficulties in keeping a regular speed.62 The ten masters also doubted that more than two ships could usefully sail in company and support each other, a conclusion the postwar staff study rightfully pointed out ignored the large imperial convoys at the beginning of the war.63 Nevertheless, naval and mercantile officers seemed united, or as Admiral Duff wrote: “The more experienced the Officer the more damning was the opinion expressed against mercantile convoy.”64

  The belief that there would be insufficient escorts available was a very real obstacle to the introduction of a general convoy system. In the early part of 1917, Jellicoe claimed they “had nothing approaching a sufficient number of cruisers, or vessels of any other type” to bring convoys from Canadian waters to the edge of the submarine zone, and they could not provide the necessary escort of fast vessels to bring the convoy through the submarine zone. Moreover, before the United States entered the war, they could not use American ports as points of assembly for convoys, although it is not clear why Canadian or West Indian ports, or even Bermuda, could not have been substituted. Jellicoe summed up his own attitude: “We could not possibly produce the necessary escort vessels; and, that until this difficulty was overcome we should have to postpone the introduction of a convoy system.”65

  This attitude was due to what turned out to be a gross overestimation of the number of escorts required. It was partially based on the false assumption that escorts would have to equal the number of ships escorted, and an exaggerated idea of the number of ships that would have to be protected. The latter was caused by returns supplied by the customs authorities on the number of arrivals and departures from British ports each week. The figures were published in conjunction with the weekly shipping losses, and the higher the number of movements the more encouraging to morale, because it could then be demonstrated that submarine losses were only a small percentage of total movements. Unfortunately the statistics included the same ship as a separate arrival and departure, even when it was engaged in coastal traffic or cross-Channel voyages. The results were misleading, for the statistics tended to give equal weight to small coasters on short hauls and large freighters engaged in ocean voyages. The number of oceanic voyages that had to be protected was much smaller and therefore a much more manageable problem than the Admiralty had anticipated.

  The situation was supposedly discovered by Commander R. G. H. Henderson, who organized the French coal trade controlled sailings in the Anti-Submarine Division at the Admiralty, and who contacted the Ministry of Shipping for figures the Admiralty had been unable to provide. The misleading statistics seemed to indicate more than 2,400 arrivals per week and more than 300 ships requiring convoy per day. The actual number of oceangoing ships arriving from the North and South Atlantic per week was only about 120 to 140 and approximately 20 per day. This meant that the organization of convoys for this traffic was a much more practical proposition than the Admiralty had believed. The Admiralty actually had more realistic figures on hand. In December of 1916, Jellicoe had considered convoys for the North Atlantic when the German raider Mözve was at large. The Trade Division of the Admiralty had then prepared a study of the daily number of British ships en route in the North Atlantic.66

  This left the question of escorts as the major obstacle to introducing a general system of convoys. There were really two types of escorts needed. Ocean escorts were needed to accompany the convoy on the high seas; smaller escorts were necessary to bring the convoys through the submarine danger zone around the British Isles. The ocean escorts were probably easier to find than the destroyers or sloops. Old cruisers, battleships, and even armed merchant cruisers were well suited for the work. Destroyers were the critical issue. The numbers cited by different authorities naturally vary. According to the naval staff study, on 31 March the British in ports around the United Kingdom had 311 destroyers of all classes completing or in service, of which 62 (20 percent) were refitting or under repair. About one-third of these destroyers—107—belonged to the Grand Fleet. However, 13 were under refit or repair and 15 had been detached to other ports, notably Devonport (4), Queenstown (4), Harwich (6), and Portsmouth (1). Beatty therefore had only 79 destroyers actually available for work with the fleet. The dreadnoughts could not sail without their indispensable destroyer screen, and if any more destroyers were taken from the Grand Fleet, it might have to sail without some of its forces in the event the High Sea Fleet sought battle. The Germans were apparently placing all their hopes on the submarine campaign, but there was, of course, no guarantee the Germans would not come out. The weight of the High Sea Fleet as a fleet-in-being was evident in this passive contribution to the submarine campaign.

  Of the remaining destroyers, 36 were used for local defense only and were considered too old for convoy work. The 36 destroyers assigned to Harwich and the 40 assigned to Dover could not safely be reduced because of their many and varied duties, the threat of German destroyer raids, and the necessity of securing the lines of communication with the armies in France. There were 12 to 20 destroyers at Portsmouth already engaged, for the most part, in escorting cross-Channel traffic. After 24 April the 27 destroyers at the Humber and Forth were assigned to the Scandinavian convoy. This brought the number of available destroyers down to about 42, of which 4 were completing and 8 assigned to the submarine flotillas.

  Numbers are always tricky to interpret, and some destroyers, such as the 29 in the two flotillas at Devonport, were already engaged in quasi-convoy work. It might be better to turn the problem around and ask how many destroyers the Admiralty considered necessary for a convoy system. In a memorandum of 26 April advocating the establishment of a convoy system for traffic coming from the North and South Atlantic, Admiral Duff determined a total of 45 destroyers were needed. He quickly revised this figure to 72, and this seems to have been the total generally considered as necessary. The destroyers were to be divided between Lough Swilly, Queenstown, and Brest or Devonport. There were 11 destroyers (including 7 lent by the Grand Fleet) of the 72 required presently at these ports, leaving 61 to be provided. However, the 29 destroyers of the Second and Fourth Flotillas at Devonport were already engaged on quasi-convoy work and could easily be switched to the new system. This reduced the number of additional destroyers to be found to a seemingly intractable 32.67

  The most likely potential source was the U.S. Navy. Would the Americans cooperate? The United States had declared war on Germany on 6 April. The Germans, in Machiavellian fashion, tried to maintain the fiction that they were not at war with the United States, and U-boat commanders were ordered not to attack American warships for the time being. The somewhat questionable rationale was to avoid inflaming American opinion and to give pro-German or isolationist forces, presumably strong in the Midwest, time to assert themselves. There was no immediate German intention to carry the war to the American coast. The kaiser himself rejected suggestions along this line, and it was only on 22 May that the Admiralstab authorized attacks on American shipping in the blockade zone around the British Isles.68

  The Americans, of course, could not know this. At the time diplomatic relations with Germany were broken off, the U.S. Navy had no real plan for war against Germany when the United States was on the side of the Entente. The Americans had only the old “Plan Black,” drawn up at the Naval War College for the contingency the United States was at war with Germany alone (with Britain neutral) and the Germans attacked the Panama Canal and sought to grab territory in Latin America.69 Plan
Black had little relation to the reality of 1917. The question of coast defense was also very much on the minds of the Americans, and it was only natural that they should be concerned with the defense of the Americas. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that the battle squadrons of the United States fleet would be as hampered as the Grand Fleet by the lack of an adequate destroyer screen. Would the Americans really weaken the potential ability of their battle fleet by sending the precious destroyers across the Atlantic to the waters around Great Britain?

  As the United States moved inexorably toward the declaration of war on Germany, President Wilson authorized the navy to establish contact with the Admiralty in order to discuss potential cooperation. The navy chose Rear Admiral William Sowden Sims, then president of the Naval War College. The choice was an excellent one, for the Canadian-born Sims had the reputation of being an Anglophile,70 knew Jellicoe from prewar days, had been naval attaché in Paris and St. Petersburg at the end of the nineteenth century, was well suited by temperament to cooperate with officers of different nationalities, and lacked that certain prickliness toward the British that could then be found in the American navy. The potential for friction was always there, given the history of the U.S. Navy, which began its life fighting the British and which was still regarded as somewhat junior to the larger and more experienced Royal Navy with a consequent need to assert itself. There was a tendency for American civilians and naval officers, including President Wilson and Admiral William Shepherd Benson, chief of naval operations, to believe the British had wasted their large naval superiority against Germany, had not employed their forces correctly, and were too “defensive” and not imaginative enough in their tactics. Wilson on more than one occasion spoke of wiping out the “hornets’ nests” rather than chasing individual hornets, implying that the German submarine bases themselves should be attacked.71 His British ally Prime Minister Lloyd George shared at least some of these sentiments, but the American leaders were far from the scene and had less opportunity for their optimistic illusions to be shattered by the realities of modern war.

  Sims proved to be the right man in the right place at the right time, but he always had to guard against the impression that he was too much under the thumb of the British. There was perhaps a natural tension between Benson and Sims, which has been compared to the differing outlook of the field commander and the chief of staff (who must take the bigger picture into account). Benson certainly had no inherent love of the British and reportedly told Sims before he sailed, “Don’t let the British pull the wool over your eyes. It is none of our business pulling their chestnuts out of the fire. We would as soon fight the British as the Germans.”72 Benson was concerned with what he considered the big picture, and was apparently worried over a situation in which the British and French would be compelled to make peace, leaving the United States to fight a triumphant Germany, perhaps joined by Japan, alone. These considerations influenced his policy on questions involving keeping the U.S. Fleet intact and maintaining the building program of large ships rather than shifting construction priorities to antisubmarine craft. The United States would always need to have a balanced fleet to face all future eventualities, not just the immediate threat of German submarines.73 Anglo-American cooperation was not something that would happen automatically, British and American interests could easily diverge, but in the long run it was as successful as the most optimistic might have imagined in those dark days of April 1917.

  On the evening of 31 March, Sims, accompanied only by his aide, Commander J. V. Babcock, sailed under a false name (wearing civilian clothes) in the American line’s New York (10,508 tons). The New York reached Liverpool on 9 April, and as she neared the harbor she ran onto a mine laid by UC.65. The liner was not seriously damaged, but the passengers were transferred to lifeboats as a precautionary measure and then brought into Liverpool by the packet arriving from the Isle of Man. It was a vivid introduction for Sims to the dangers of submarine warfare. The Admiralty had arranged for a special train to carry Sims to London, where he conferred with Jellicoe on the 10th.74 In the meantime the Allied governments also had arranged for Vice Admiral Sir Montague Browning, commander in chief North America and West Indies, and his French counterpart, Contre-Amiral Grasset, to visit Hampton Roads and Washington on 10 and 11 April to confer with the Americans.75

  When Sims reached the Admiralty he quickly discovered the difference between the published version of the war and the real situation. Like most American naval officers he had followed the war from the press and what official information was available in the United States, and confidently assumed the Admiralty had matters well in hand. He now discovered:

  Yet a few days spent in London clearly showed that all this confidence in the defeat of the Germans rested upon a misapprehension. The Germans, it now appeared, were not losing the war—they were winning it. The British Admiralty now placed before the American representative facts and figures which it had not given to the British press. These documents disclosed the astounding fact that, unless the appalling destruction of merchant tonnage which was then taking place could be materially checked, the unconditional surrender of the British Empire would inevitably take place within a few months.76

  Jellicoe had been candid with Sims about the gravity of the situation, and Sims did not mince words in his first cable to Washington on the 14th. He recommended that the maximum number of American destroyers be sent, accompanied by small antisubmarine craft, repair ships, and staff for a base. The destroyers were to be based at Queenstown and patrol to the west of Ireland. He urged the maximum increase of merchant tonnage and a continuous augmentation of the advanced force of antisubmarine craft. Sims pointed out that under present circumstances the American battleships could serve little purpose and minimized the dangers of German submarine activity in the Western Hemisphere as anything more than raids to cause diversion of antisubmarine forces and influence public opinion. Sims followed his first cable with a series of similar messages and was fully supported by the American ambassador Walter Hines Page, who on 27 April asked for the immediate dispatch of thirty or more destroyers and concluded his cable to the State Department with the statement there was no time to be lost.77

  On 13 April Commander Joseph K. Taussig, commander of the Eighth Division, Destroyer Force, Atlantic Fleet, was ordered to prepare his six destroyers for “special service.” Taussig’s flagship, the Wadsworth, and the other destroyers of the division sailed from Boston on the 24th with the mission “to assist naval operations of Entente Powers in every way possible.” The 1,100-ton destroyers were among the newest in the navy. The first tangible American naval assistance to the Allies arrived at Queenstown on 4 May and received a warm reception. The historic moment was immortalized in the painting by Bernard Gribble, evocatively titled The Return of the “Mayflower.” The American destroyers were placed under the command of Vice Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly, commander in chief, coast of Ireland. “Luigi” Bayly had the reputation of being somewhat crusty, and in 1914 had been relieved of his command under a cloud after the loss of the battleship Formidable (see chapter 2). He had a chance to redeem himself, and, perhaps somewhat to the surprise of many, worked well with the Americans. It was another case of the right man in the right place at the right time.78 Commander Taussig undoubtedly helped matters with his first impression. Destroyers were then a notoriously cantankerous type, requiring a great deal of tinkering. The six American destroyers had taken a pounding crossing the Atlantic and had a long list of defects. Nevertheless, when Bayly asked when they would be ready for sea, Taussig made the reply in which destroyermen have taken pride ever since: “We are ready now, sir, that is as soon as we finish refueling. Of course you know how destroyers are—always wanting something done to them. But this is war, and we are ready to make the best of things and go to sea immediately.” Bayly gave them four days.79

  The arrival of the destroyers might have been a happy moment, but they were only 6 and a small portion of the estimated 51 avail
able to the United States. Sims was alarmed when he failed to hear more were on the way, and on 28 April cabled that “we can not send too soon or too many.” He was relieved to learn on 3 May that the United States intended to eventually send 36 destroyers. The first six American destroyers sailed on their first patrol on the afternoon of 8 May. In the course of May, another two divisions of destroyers arrived, followed ten days later by a division of six 750-ton destroyers. The tenders Dixie and Melville also arrived to support the destroyers, and by the end of June there were 28 American destroyers at Queenstown—35 at the end of August. At first they were employed on patrols rather than on convoy duty, perhaps escorting a single merchant ship through their assigned sector and hoping that at the least they were succeeding in keeping submarines down and preventing them from getting into an advantageous position to launch their torpedoes.80

  By the time the first contingent of American destroyers arrived at Queenstown, Jellicoe and the Admiralty had been driven by the pressure of events to make the important decision to adopt a general system of convoys. The idea had been steadily gaining strength and converts. On 11 February Sir Maurice Hankey, the influential secretary of the War Cabinet, prepared a memorandum, “Some Suggestions for Anti-Submarine Warfare,” for Lloyd George on the advantages of the convoy system. It is quite likely that Hankey acted on information supplied by Commander Henderson, possibly in conjunction with Norman Leslie of the Ministry of Shipping, who acted as liaison with the Admiralty. The two had discovered the fallacy of the Admiralty statistics that had been used to argue against convoys. Henderson may well have acted outside of regular channels and behind the backs of his superiors at the Admiralty in order to get something done.81