Aug 7, 2011 World War One
HMS Barham sister ship to HMS Queen Elizabeth.
By the time the war-cloud over Europe was becoming black, it was still confidently hoped peace might be preserved. During the fateful weekend Mr. Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, was at Cromer, owing to the illness of his wife, and Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg, the First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, remained at Whitehall. Should the Fleet be permitted to demobilise in accordance with the programme decided upon weeks before? The First Sea Lord, on his own responsibility, countermanded the order, with the result that, thirty-three hours before Britain actually became involved in war, the British Fleet was on a war footing, and had taken up its stations in readiness for hostilities. Britain, the greatest maritime Power, was found prepared when the emergency came. The successful mobilisation of all the ships in Home waters condemned the German Fleet to inactivity.
Aug 7, 2011 World War One
Crew of HMS Queen Elizabeth on the fore turret guns.
While the interchange of courtesies was still in progress, news was received that, far away in the Balkans, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his consort had been murdered. Immediately the British squadron, as an act of courtesy to the two Kaisers, left Kiel, and, together with the forces under Admirals Beatty and Pakenham, returned to British waters to prepare for the mobilisation of all the ships in Home waters, which had been arranged early in the spring — without, let it be added with emphasis, any idea that war was probable. No one on board the men-of-war as they made their furrows across the North Sea, imagined that within a few weeks Europe would be plunged into the greatest war known in history, and that the North Sea, then so peaceful, would become the scene of terrible conflict. Read More..
Jul 24, 2011 World War One
Testing a big gun and showing proportion of HMS Queen Elizabeth guns.
At the moment when the Germans and Austrians were preparing, at the first opportunity, to annihilate Servia —weak and, as it was thought, friendless — the international situation seemed so peaceful that the Admiralty had no hesitation in arranging a series of visits by some of the finest men-of-war under the British ensign to the great maritime Powers in southern and northern waters. Admiral Sir Berkeley Milne, with three battle-cruisers — the Inflexible, Invincible and Indomitable — together with four of our finest armoured cruisers, exchanged courtesies with the Turks, Greeks, Italians and Austrians. The Sultan presented him with a watch studded with diamonds! Almost simultaneously divisions of the Fleet in British waters, under Admirals Sir George Warrender, Sir David Beatty, and William C. Pakenham, were received in the great northern ports — Copenhagen, Stockholm, Reval, Cronstadt and Kiel. In the course of a few days the Emperors of Russia and Germany and the Kings of Denmark and Greece were entertained on board British men-of-war, and exchanged complimentary speeches in which testimony was borne to the peaceful outlook which the world then presented. Read More..
Jul 6, 2011 World War One
Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, the Commander-in- Chief of the Grand Fleet and his Bulldog.
On the eve of the present war the country was maintaining in Home waters, with full or nucleus crews, about five hundred ships-of-war, a typical destroyer representing an expenditure about twice as great as the outlay on Nelson’s Victory.
Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, the Commander-in- Chief of the Grand Fleet, flies his flag in the battleship Iron Duke, the construction of which cost upwards of £2,000,000; and when the war-cloud burst he had under his orders— apart from additions which may have been made later, that is — thirty-one other ships each costing almost as much or more — Dreadnoughts and super – Dreadnoughts. Every one of these ships, together with scores of cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, has been built since the keel plates of the original Dreadnought were placed in position at Portsmouth Dockyard on October 2, 1905, less than nine years before the opening of the war.
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Jun 24, 2011 World War One
Taking in cordite on board HMS Queen Elizabeth.
Nelson had under his orders at the Battle of Trafalgar twenty-seven ships of the line, carrying 2,148 guns, together with four frigates, a schooner and a cutter; the combined French and Spanish Squadrons comprised thirty-three ships of the line with 2,626 guns. The whole British assembly of ships displaced less water than any two Dreadnoughts to-day. The finest vessel under the British—or indeed under any other flag—when the two armadas came to action on October 21, 1805, was Nelson’s flagship the Victory. She is serving to-day at Portsmouth, bearing aloft the emblem of the Commander-in-Chief of that port. Read More..
Jun 22, 2011 World War One
Jack's Inspection by Captain Hope.
Only those who are familiar with the sea in all its moods can appreciate, to the full, the arduous labour, continual watchfulness and unremitting performance of duty which have ensured to the British people and their Allies the command of the sea during these many months of war and brought economic pressure on Germany. Summer has shaded into winter; winter has given place to spring, to be succeeded again by warm days and sunbathed waves; winter has recurred with all its storms, its cold, its snow and its rain.
The seasons have run through every gamut, but the hold of the British Navy on the communications so essential to ourselves and the Allies has never been relaxed. Read More..
Jun 19, 2011 Weapons, World War One
Inserting a torpedo.
If at the critical moment the Admiralty had hesitated, it is quite possible that doubts as to the wisdom of concentrating the Fleet might have arisen, and in that event we should have sacrificed all the advantages which have since flowed from decisive action at the critical juncture. From the Shetland Islands down to Dover, there was nowhere on the new British maritime frontier a harbour either with facilities for repair or refreshment or with any defence against submarine attack. The situation in this respect which confronted the country—happily it knew nothing about it—was a perilous one. The naval authorities were in a dilemma. To take the Grand Fleet round from the safety of Spithead, far removed from danger, or from Portland, with its splendid breakwater and booms, into the North Sea involved exposing it to submarine attack. Read More..
Jun 16, 2011 World War One
Britain Prepaid - Seaplane of the period.
The British Fleet represents a great tradition. As one stands before the majestic figure of Alfred the Great nearby the Cathedral at Winchester, with the immemorial downs as a background, one realises that, though the ships have changed, the spirit of the Navy remains the same. The great three-decker has been replaced by the Dreadnought; the role of the frigate is filled by the graceful cruiser; the fireship is represented by the destroyer and the submarine. It may be contended that the Navy, with its anchors securely fixed in a glorious past, fought every change due to the application of physical science to warfare at sea with stubborn conservatism. That altitude is no matter for wonder. The great seamen who guided the development of the Fleet may well have thought that any change must be a change for the worse. When the claims of the steam engine were first advanced by Brunel, the Board of Admiralty, with their back to the wall, announced that “They felt it their bounden duty upon national and professional grounds to discourage to the utmost of their ability the employment of steam vessels, as they considered that the introduction of steam was calculated to strike a fatal blow to the naval supremacy of the Empire.” The sail era had brought glory; why risk innovations, then untried? Read More..
Jun 11, 2011 World War One
Submarine submerging. Officer at periscope.
Since the time of Alfred the Great there had been only one radical change in British naval power down to the end of the nineteenth century, and that occurred when the steam-driven iron ship made her appearance, to be followed by the introduction of the rifled gun and the development of the automobile torpedo. Then, when the shadow of the present conflict was already discerned by some far-seeing men in this country, change upon change occurred. There is not a ship to-day in the first line of the Navy which has not been built since the opening of the present century. In the early years of this century the revolution began. It was a matter of policy—foreign, naval and military.
In 1884 Bismarck wrote to Count Munster, German Ambassador in London, that, unless England was prepared to assist Germany in securing her place in the sun, “Germany would seek from France the assistance which she had failed to obtain from England.” Those challenging words were not forgotten. Years passed. The war in South Africa revealed something of the heart of Germany. It was followed by the death of Queen Victoria, the accession of King Edward VII, and the development by the British Government, with the Marquis of Lansdowne at the Foreign Office, of a new policy towards other European states, which has proved the sheet-anchor of civilisation. What Bismarck had threatened to do, the British Government achieved, and the foundations were laid of an entente with France, the wide sweeping influence of which on our naval and military plans only became apparent to the man in the street with the passage of years. Read More..
