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We counted eight battle cruisers, twelve dreadnoughts, ten pre-dreadnoughts, and about sixty destroyers, in addition to transports, food-ships, hospital-ships, repair-ships, colliers, and smaller fighting and scouting vessels, all with their full complement of men and equipment, moving along there below us in the pleasant sunshine.
Von Spee and his men fought as bravely and as skilfully as Cradock and his; and the war for command of the sea went against the Germans because while the Germans were building pre-Dreadnoughts and casting 8-inch guns, we were building Dreadnoughts and casting 10 or 12-inch guns; and while they were constructing their Dreadnoughts, we were building super-Dreadnoughts with 13.5 and 15-inch guns.
Naval strategy was reduced to the dull but arduous task of blocking the exits from the North Sea and guarding against the furtive German raids. The battle-fleet was stationed in Scapa Flow, the cruisers off Rosyth, while little more than a patrol backed by a squadron of pre-Dreadnoughts in the Channel was left to watch the Straits of Dover and supplement the mine-fields.
Her capital ships were in two main divisions the 1st or Grand Fleet in the Orkneys, and the 2d fleet, consisting at first of 16 pre-dreadnoughts, in the Channel. | | Pre- | | | | | |Dread- |Dread- | Battle | Light |Destroyers| Air-|Cruisers |noughts|noughts|cruisers|cruisers| |ships| | | | | | | | British| 20 | 8 | 4 | 12 | 42 | .. | 9 German | 13 | 16 | 3 | 15 | 88 | 1 | 2
To the seaman, here was a battle-cruiser with her sister battle-cruisers astern, and there around her were Dreadnoughts of different types and pre-Dreadnoughts and cruisers and all manner of other craft which could fight each in its way, each representing so much speed and so much metal which could be thrown a certain distance. "Homogeneity!"
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