THE HEROIC RECORD of the BRITISH NAVY A Short History of the Naval War 1914-1918 BY ARCHIBALD HURD AND H. H. BASHFORD GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1919 COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN To the generous help and criticisms of many participants in the events hereafter recorded, and particularly to Admirals Viscount Jellicoe of Scapa Flow and W. S. Sims of the United States Navy; to Vice-Admirals Sir F. Doveton Sturdee and Sir Reginald H. Bacon; and to Lieutenaut-Commander A. D. Turnbull of the United States Navy, the authors desire to express their most grateful acknowledgment. CONTENTS Foreword CHAPTER I. August 4, 1914 II. The Battle of the Bight III. Coronel IV. The Battle of the Falkland Islands V. Back to the North Sea VI. The Seamen at Gallipoli VII. Sub-mariners of England VIII. The Battle of Jutland IX. The Dover Patrol X. The Sealing of Zeebrugge and Ostend XI. The Coming of the Americans XII. The Harvest of Sea Power Index {ix} FOREWORD In the years immediately preceding the Great War, already so hard to reconstruct, it was not uncommonly suggested that the British seafaring instinct had begun to decline. In our professional navy most thinkers had confidence, as in a splendid machine ably manned; but, as regarded the population as a whole, it was feared that modern industrialism was sapping the old sea-love. That this has been disproved we hope to make clear in the following pages--a first attempt, as we believe, to give, in narrative form, a reasonably complete and consecutive history of the naval war. We have indeed gone further, for we have tried to show not only that the spirit of admiralty has survived undiminished, but that we have witnessed such a re-awakening of it, both in Great Britain and America, as has had no parallel since the days of Elizabeth. We have also tried to make clear that, in a thousand embodiments, in men and boys fallen or still living, it has shone with a spiritual even more than any material significance; and that it has again declared itself to be the peculiar expression in world-affairs of the English-speaking races.