World War I was a land war, with its biggest and mostimportant battles fought on the battlefields of Europe.

There were relatively few naval battles in the war, and theimportant ones were won by the British navy, which succeededin keeping the German navy pinned down in its ports on theNorth Sea. This does not mean, however, that affairs of the seawere not crucial to the waging of war. One of the key elementsof the Allies’ strategy was a naval blockade of Germany; theAllies hoped to starve Germany of the food and raw materialsit needed to wage war. Equally key to the Central Powers’ waraims was the campaign of submarine warfare that struck atAllied shipping. Although no naval battle decisively influencedthe course of the war, the war for control of the seas was vitalto the winning of the war.

If one thing seemed certain at the beginning of WorldWar I, it was that Great Britain would rule the seas. With theworld’s biggest and most powerful navy, Britain seemed likelyto continue its long dominance of naval warfare. The Germannavy was also large and powerful, but German leaders, espe-cially Kaiser Wilhelm, did not want to risk a direct confronta-

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tion with the powerful British navy. Therefore, the British wereable to trap the bulk of the German navy in its North Sea ports,which lay between the neutral countries of Holland and Den-mark. The Germans found their greatest naval successes underthe sea, with a fleet of submarines, or U-boats, that did greatdamage to Allied warships and merchant ships. Had the Alliesnot figured out how to avoid the German U-boats, as they didby late 1917, the war might have turned out quite differently.

Cruiser BattlesThe first naval encounters of the war were small affairs,

and they were humiliating if not disastrous for the Allies.These encounters—battles would be too dramatic a word—involved German cruisers (small battleships) scattered aroundthe world. The most troublesome of the German cruisersescaped from the German-held Chinese port city of Tsingtaobefore that city fell to the Allies early in the war. German admi-

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British warship HMSDreadnought. Reproduced by permission of ArchivePhotos, Inc.

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ral Maximilian Graf von Spee (1861–1914) headed east acrossthe Pacific with his cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau; he senta lighter cruiser named Emden west into the Indian Ocean.These cruisers did their best to terrorize Allied shipping beforethey were stopped.

The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were the most powerfulGerman ships outside the North Sea. With eight 8-inch gunsand six 6-inch guns (gun size was measured by the diameter ofthe shell that could be fired), they were capable of taking onanything smaller than the newest British dreadnoughts, thelargest and most heavily armed ships on the sea. Von Spee’ssquadron shelled French holdings in the South Pacific beforemoving on toward the southern coast of South America. It wasthere, on November 1, 1914, that they met up with a smallBritish squadron consisting of older, slower ships manned bycrews who had never fired their guns before. With the lightfading from the sky and the British ships silhouetted againstthe setting sun, the two squadrons squared off against eachother. Within an hour the more powerful German ships hadsunk the British ships Good Hope and Monmouth, sendingnearly fifteen hundred British sailors to their death. This fight,called the Battle of Coronel, was the first British naval defeatin over a hundred years.

Smarting from their defeat, the British sent a squadronof newer, faster ships—including two of their battle cruisers,Invincible and Inflexible—to the Falkland Islands, which wereoff the eastern coast of Argentina, in the South Atlantic. Find-ing and destroying von Spee’s German squadron should havebeen difficult, for the waters in which von Spee could havehidden were huge. But the German admiral helped the Britishcause by appearing near the Falklands just after the British hadarrived. With faster boats and bigger guns, the British madeshort work of the small German fleet, destroying the Scharn-horst and Gneisenau and several smaller ships in the Battle ofthe Falklands on December 8, 1915. In all, eighteen hundredGerman sailors were killed, and the British navy regained itsreputation—at least for the moment.

Emden. Few lone ships did as much damage in World War I asthe German light cruiser Emden. For two months Emdenroamed around the Indian Ocean, wreaking havoc on Alliedshipping. Emden sank some of the ships she encountered; she

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captured others and used them for supply or prisoner ships.On September 22, 1914, Emden shelled the Indian city ofMadras, hoping to stir up an Indian revolt against British rule.In late October she cruised into the Allied port of Penang anddestroyed a Russian cruiser and a French destroyer. Finally, inthe second week of November 1914, the Australian cruiser Syd-ney met and overpowered Emden, ending her brief career as theterror of the Indian Ocean. In all, Emden had sunk over 70,000

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German battle cruiserEmden. Reproduced bypermission of CorbisCorporation (Bellevue).

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tons of Allied shipping (the tonnage of a ship is a measure ofthe number of tons of water that a ship displaces).

Controlling the North SeaThree factors kept naval warfare between Germany and

Britain from becoming an important element in the war: geog-raphy, the size of the opposing navies, and a German reluctanceto fight. The German navy was based out of ports on the NorthSea, principally the port at Jade Bay. But their routes of access tothe open Atlantic, and therefore to the oceans, were thoroughlyblocked by the British. To the south, the British navy controlledthe English Channel; to the north, the British fleet based at theport of Scapa Flow controlled all access into and out of the northend of the North Sea. Britain’s Admiral Fisher described this

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When World War I began, four ofthe warring nations had ships in theMediterranean Sea, the body of waterbetween Europe and Africa. Britain andFrance hoped to control this naval theater,but first they had to rid the sea of Austrianand German ships. With fewer than adozen ships based at the port of Pola onthe Adriatic Sea (a narrow body of waterbetween Italy and Austria-Hungary thatopens into the Mediterranean to thesouth), the Austrians were easily trapped intheir port. But the Germans proved moredifficult.

A squadron of German ships,including the battle cruiser Goeben and thelight cruiser Breslau, dashed out of portearly in August of 1914 and set about

disrupting Allied shipping in theMediterranean. They shelled severalAlgerian ports and nearly got into a battlewith a British squadron. The Allies believedTurkey was neutral and hoped they couldtrap the German fleet against the Turkishshore and destroy it. But Germany had atrick up its sleeve: Germany and Turkey hadsigned a treaty joining their forces, and theAllies were unaware of this. The Germanssimply sailed through the strait at theDardanelles (a narrow body of waterlinking the Mediterranean with the BlackSea) and “sold” their ships to the Turks.The Allies were embarrassed that they hadlet the Germans get away, and the Turksgained two powerful warships that theyused to shell Russian bases in the Black Sea.

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advantage to King George V in a passage quoted in John Kee-gan’s First World War: “With the great harbour of Scapa Flow inthe north and the narrow straits of Dover in the south, there isno doubt, sir, that we are God’s chosen people.”

There were other circumstances that kept the Germannavy from becoming an important factor in the war. Mostimportantly, the Germans were outnumbered: According toNiall Ferguson, author of The Pity of War, in 1914 the British

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Major North Sea navalbattles during World War I,1914-1918. Reproduced bypermission of The Gale Group.

N O R T H

S E A

Cromarty

Rosyth

Hartlepool

Whitby

Christiania(Oslo)

Scarborough

LondonDover

Calais

German-occupiedBelgium

ScapaFlow

Moray Firth

Firth of Forth

Dogger Bank

BroadFourteens

Heligoland Bight

Jutland

G E R M A N Y

N O R W A Y

U N I T E D

K I N G D O M

F R A N C E

English Channel

NETHERLANDS

DENMARK

N

0 50 100 mi

0 50 100 km

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had twenty-nine large naval vessels to the Germans’ seven-teen. In tonnage (the measure of the total size of a navy’sships), the British fleet was twice as large as the German fleet.Finally, German naval leaders, from the kaiser down to the var-ious admirals who served under him, did not want to risk los-ing their newly built navy in open fights with the British. Forall these reasons, the Germans never truly challenged theBritish for control of the seas. They did, however, meet theBritish in several exciting North Sea battles.

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Control of the North Sea was partof the larger Allied strategy of starvingGermany of imports, especially importedfood. In addition to naval blockadessealing off the North Sea, the Alliesestablished major blockade lines where theMediterranean meets the Atlantic and in aline stretching north from Scotland toIceland and on to Greenland. Allied shipsstopped all the shipping they could acrossthese blockade lines and seized food andraw materials bound for Germany. TheAllies often prevented neutral countriessuch as Norway, Sweden, Holland,Denmark, and Spain from receiving goodsthat might be resold to the Germans.

The blockade of Germany was animmediate and enduring success. In 1915the Allies seized some 3,000 ships headedfor German ports; in 1916 they seized3,388; 2,000 ships were seized in 1917;and in 3,500 ships in 1918. Only 80 shipsare known to have evaded interception inthis time. Imports to Germany dropped

accordingly. Meat imports went from120,000 tons in 1916 to 45,000 tons in1917 to 8,000 tons in 1918. Shipments ofbutter, fish, and live cattle dropped insimilarly dramatic ways. These dramaticdrops in the quantity of food coming intoGermany caused real hardship for theGerman people. Beginning in 1916, foodriots erupted throughout Germany aspeople clamored for access to limitedsupplies; many workers were given extrafood to get them to perform their jobs.The number of deaths attributed to theblockade rose with each passing year, from88,235 deaths in 1915, to 121,114 in1916, to 259,627 in 1917—and finally to293,760 in 1918. When the Germangovernment collapsed and thensurrendered to the Allies at the end of1918, the civilian distress caused by theblockade may have been as important afactor as the military defeats on theWestern Front. (All figures are from MartinGilbert, First World War Atlas.)

Blockading the Germans

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Battle of Heligoland Bight. The first meeting of German andBritish ships confirmed the kaiser’s fears about risking hisnavy. On August 28, 1914, the British used a decoy force to tryto lure the Germans out of Heligoland Bight (a portion of theNorth Sea between the island of Heligoland and the Germancoast). The Germans took the bait but tried to spring a surpriseof their own by sending out a much heavier force than theBritish expected. In a disorganized battle fought on misty seaswith little visibility, the British succeeded in sinking onedestroyer and three cruisers while only taking minor damage.This minor British victory confirmed the Germans’ fears andconvinced them to lay more mines (floating bombs meant todestroy enemy ships) and post more patrols in the area.

Dogger Bank. The Germans wanted revenge for their defeat atHeligoland Bight, but they labored under a new disadvantageas they prepared for battle in early January of 1915: The Britishhad captured German codebooks and were able to deciphercoded messages sent over the radio. Therefore, when the Ger-mans tried to lure a small squadron of the British navy into atrap near Dogger Bank (a submerged sandbank in the centralNorth Sea), the British responded with a large and powerfulsquadron intent on pounding the Germans. Showing up tospring their trap on January 24, 1915, German ships led byAdmiral Franz von Hipper discovered a line of five battle cruis-ers bearing down on them. The British opened fire while theGermans turned and ran, but what should have been a decisiveBritish victory fell apart when British communications failedand some of their ships sailed off in the wrong direction. In theend the British sank one German armored cruiser, the Blücher,while the rest of the German squadron escaped. For the rest of1915 and into 1916, the Germans stuck to the safety of theirports. But as the stalemate continued on the Western Front,leaders from both Germany and Britain looked to their naviesfor some way to break the deadlock.

The Battle of JutlandIn May of 1916 British and German naval commanders

made the same decision: They would send a powerful force outinto the North Sea to scare off any enemy ships in the area.These two decisions, made independently, led to the biggest

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battle in naval history. Both sides committed to battle theirbiggest and best ships—called dreadnoughts—as well as a fullrange of supporting ships. The British sent forward 28 dread-noughts, 9 battle cruisers, 11 armored cruisers, 26 light cruis-ers, 78 destroyers, a seaplane carrier, and a minesweeper. TheGermans brought into battle 16 dreadnoughts, 6 pre-dread-noughts, 5 battle cruisers, 11 light cruisers, and 61 destroyers.The two fleets met in the open sea in an area to the west ofDenmark in an area known as Jutland on May 31, 1916.

The Battle of Jutland began when Britain’s First Scout-ing Group (a squadron of battle cruisers), stumbled uponAdmiral Reinhard Scheer’s main group of German ships. Thetwo navies engaged in a running battle as they moved to thesouth, directly toward the main force of German dread-noughts. The British lost two battle cruisers along the way.When the British encountered the main German force, theyturned and ran in the opposite direction. The German fleet fol-lowed, and the opposing lines of ships continued to shell each

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British battleships on the ocean in the Battle of Jutland. Reproduced by permission of ArchivePhotos, Inc.

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other, this time to Britain’s advantage.Still, neither side had brought itsdreadnoughts into battle.

The main fleet of the Germannavy followed the battle north, andthus it ran directly into the main forceof British dreadnoughts commandedby Admiral Sir John Jellicoe. The twonavies met in a naval situation knownas “crossing the T.” The British shipswere lined up as the top of the T withtheir guns facing toward the Germanfleet; the ships in the German fleet werelined up with their bows forward, form-ing the leg of the T. The most powerfulof the British ships opened fire; onlythe most forward of the German shipscould answer. In ten minutes the Ger-mans took twenty-seven hits, while theBritish took only two. The Germanswere forced to turn and run. AdmiralScheer left support ships to cover theGerman retreat, and they took heavylosses. Fighting continued through thenight, but most of the German fleetslipped away under cover of darknessback to their home base. The Germanshad escaped a major defeat.

The Battle of Jutland was themost dramatic naval battle of the war,with the biggest ships on earth lobbingshells at each other over great expansesof water. It is also the subject of con-tinuing controversy over who won thebattle. The British lost more ships andmore men, though more of the surviv-ing German ships were damaged than

the British. Most historians now agree that the British won thebattle, if only because they kept control of the North Sea. Inany case, the two navies never fought again, for the Germannavy stayed in port and left the fighting at sea to the deadly U-boats.

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The Dreadnought

Dreadnought was the namegiven to the biggest and most powerfulships in the world. These ships werepowerful fighting machines, with massiveguns and thick armor. They could directtheir shelling at targets miles away andcould withstand direct fire. They werealso equipped with the most moderncommunication and targetingequipment. By World War I the strengthof a modern navy was measured by thenumber of dreadnoughts it had.

James L. Stokesbury, author of AShort History of World War I, describeddreadnoughts thusly: “The dreadnought-type battleship was a perfectembodiment of the expertise, the virtues,and the failings of western society. Huge,ponderous yet graceful, those floatingcities were massive machines made up ofa combination of brute power and thefinest instruments the mind of man hadyet devised. They could spot a targettwenty miles away, and they could hurlat it with pinpoint accuracy a shell thatweighed more than a ton. Manned byhighly trained and determinedtechnicians, they seemed indestructible.They were dedicated to destruction.”

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The Power of the SubmarineWith imports virtually halted by the powerful Allied

blockade and with the German navy trapped in North Seaports by the British, Germany seemed to be losing the battlefor control of the seas. German naval efforts would have beena complete failure if not for one thing: the success of subma-rine warfare. Naval officers from every nation had no greatexpectation for submarine warfare at the beginning of the war,but German successes as early as 1914 convinced the Germansto use submarines—they called them U-boats, for underwaterboats—as a major element in their naval strategy.

The Germans scored their first U-boat success in theNorth Sea, where they had eighteen active subs. On September5, 1914, submarine U-21 sank the British cruiser Pathfinder; justa few weeks later, U-9 torpedoed the British cruiser Aboukir,then sank the cruisers Hogue and Cressy when they stopped torescue the first ship’s men. With these strikes the Germansrealized the sub’s power: It could move undetected and tor-pedo ships that had no idea the subs were there. Allied shipsnow traveled with the troubling knowledge that an invisibleenemy might sink them at any time.

By 1915 the Germans decided to unleash their newweapon on merchant shipping (ships carrying goods, ratherthan warships), in direct violation of maritime law. Maritimelaw (laws governing the behavior of ships at sea) requiredattacking ships to stop a merchant vessel and allow the crew toescape on lifeboats before the vessel was destroyed. Becausesubmarines worked best when they remained hidden fromview, German submarine captains ignored these rules and sankmerchant ships at will. When a German sub sank the Britishliner Lusitania in 1915, killing 128 Americans, the United Statesprotested and threatened the break off relations with Germany.

Germany did not want the United States to enter thewar. Beginning in May 1916, German naval commanders lim-ited U-boat attacks on unarmed ships, avoiding especially U.S.vessels. But as the war on land grew increasingly desperate, theGermans could no longer afford to hold back one of their mostpotent weapons. On February 1, 1917, the Germans returnedto unrestricted submarine warfare, attacking merchant ships.Their goal was the same as the goal of Britain’s naval blockade:They wanted to starve the enemy into giving up the fight.

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Unrestricted Submarine WarfareThe “sink on sight” campaign that the Germans

unleashed in 1917 had an immediate impact. By this time theGermans had 148 U-boats in active service, and they begansinking massive numbers of Allied and neutral ships. In 1917alone, the U-boats sank over a thousand British ships. Thedamage was greatest early in the year. In February U-boatattacks sent 520,412 tons of cargo to the bottom of the sea; this

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Captured Germansubmarine UC5 moored at Sheerness. Reproduced by permission of ArchivePhotos, Inc.

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was followed by 564,497 tons in March and 860,334 tons inApril, according to John Keegan in The First World War. Ger-man military planners estimated that if they could sink600,000 tons a month, they could starve Britain out of the war.By May the British government estimated that they had onlya six-week supply of food left in the entire country. The U-boatstrategy was working; if the Allies couldn’t figure out how tostop the subs, Britain would soon be out of the war.

Stopping the Underwater MenaceThe German sub attacks helped draw the United States

into the war in April 1917, just as the Germans had feared, butthe Americans initially had little to offer to combat the submenace. Depth charges (bombs that were dropped into the seaand that exploded when they reached a certain depth) andmines were not the solution, because not enough of themcould be laid across shipping channels to stop the submarinemenace. Then, thanks to the suggestion of an American admi-ral, an old idea that British leaders had discarded—the con-voy—was tried again. A convoy was a group of ships that sailedtogether, protected on all sides by armed vessels and some-times aided by observation balloons that floated above theconvoy and allowed spotters to see subs from high in the air.The first convoy was tried on April 28, 1917—and it made itfrom America to Great Britain without a loss.

Soon, more and more of the merchant ships bringingfood and war supplies to Britain traveled in convoys. Lossesfrom U-boat attacks dropped to 511,730 tons by August and399,110 tons by December. American troops traveled to Francein convoys as well and were unmolested by German sub-marines. The Allies also used other means to combat the subs:They dedicated more airplanes to spotting subs in busy ship-ping areas and laid hundreds of thousands of mines in ship-ping channels. But it was the convoy that made the difference,effectively ending Germany’s attempt to drive Britain from thewar. With Britain still fighting and American troops joiningAllied soldiers on the battlefields of Europe, the Allies finallyclaimed victory in November of 1918.

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For More InformationBosco, Peter. World War I. New York: Facts on File, 1991.

Clare, John D., ed. First World War. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1995.

“The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century.” [Online] http://www.pbs.org/greatwar (accessed October 2000).

Halpern, Paul G. A Naval History of World War I. Naval Institute Press,1994.

Stewart, Gail. World War One. San Diego, CA: Lucent, 1991.

SourcesFerguson, Niall. The Pity of War: Explaining World War I. New York: Basic

Books, 1999.

Gilbert, Martin. First World War Atlas. New York: Macmillan, 1970.

Heyman, Neil M. World War I. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997.

Keegan, John. The First World War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.

Milford, Darren. “World War 1 Naval Combat.” [Online] http://www.worldwar1.co.uk/ (accessed November 2000).

Sommerville, Donald. World War I: History of Warfare. Austin, TX: RaintreeSteck-Vaughn, 1999.

Stokesbury, James L. A Short History of World War I. New York: WilliamMorrow, 1981.

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