The Achievement of the British Navy in the World-WarLeyland, John
History
The Achievement of the British Navy in the World-War
Leyland, John
Great Britain. Royal Navy; World War, 1914-1918 -- Naval operations, British
German professors have sometimes said that the land would sooner or
later beat the sea—that “Moltke” would become the victor over “Mahan.”
That is the convinced opinion of the Pan-Germans, who say that the
railway will yet prove the more rapid and the more secure means of
transport than the steamship. The lines from Antwerp by Cologne to
Vienna, and from Hamburg to Berlin, and thence through the very heart
of Europe to Vienna, and on by Belgrade and Sofia to Constantinople,
and from the opposite shore of the Bosphorus to Baghdad and down to the
Gulf, and by a branch through Persia to the confines of India, were to
give commercial and, perchance, military command of two continents.
Enterprise by the branch railway through Aleppo and Damascus against
Egypt, with a view to further developments in Africa, was related to
this conception of land-power. The measures adopted by the Allies for
the reconstitution of Serbia, the expeditions to the Dardanelles and
Salonika, the strong action taken in Greece, the naval movements on the
coast of Syria, the operations in the Sinai peninsula and Palestine,
and the expedition from the Persian Gulf to Baghdad were the answer to
these gigantesque projects of the enemy.
Behind them all lay the working of the fleets. Every class of ship and
almost every kind of vessel employed in naval warfare has been used in
one or other of these operations—the battleship, cruiser, destroyer,
torpedo-boat, submarine, mother ship, aeroplane, aircraft-carrier,
mining vessel, river gunboat, motor launch, mine-trawler, armed
auxiliary, special service vessel, transport, store ship, collier,
oiler, tank, distilling ship, ordnance vessel, hospital ship, tug,
lighter, and a crowd of other craft. All these are required for the
work of the Navy in the Mediterranean, as elsewhere, and they have been
employed with a quality of seamanlike skill, enterprise, resource,
courage, and success such as the history of the sea has no previous
record of. The appearance at the Golden Horn of a British submarine,
which had traversed a Turkish mine-field, was the sign of new powers
in naval warfare. We are lost in admiration of the self-sacrifice
of officers and men, both of the regular naval service and of the
mercantile marine and the fisheries, the latter being the heroes of
the perilous work of mine-sweeping. The British and French navies,
and the vessel representing the Russian Navy, acted in the closest
co-operation, and all the naval forces worked in intimate association
with the armies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
The Achievement of the British Navy in the World-War — John Shaqi
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account