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Updated: June 22, 2025


It may, of course, be urged that a strategical plan designed for the double purpose of surveying the movements of a hostile battle-fleet and of guarding the trade-routes, must of necessity cover the coasts of Ireland, on the principle that the greater includes the less. The argument, however, omits the essential qualification that a part of the Irish population cannot be trusted.

This being so, Norris was not going to allow the presence of an enemy's battle-fleet to entice him away from his grip on the invading army, and so resolutely did he hold to the principle, that he meant if the transports put to sea to direct his offensive against them, while he merely contained the enemy's battle-fleet by defensive observation.

In our system of commerce protection the covering squadron had no place. The battle-fleet, as we have seen, was employed in holding definite terminal areas, and had no organic connection with the convoys. The convoys had no further protection than their own escort and the reinforcements that met them as they approached the terminal areas.

So long as our battle-fleet is in a position whence it can cover our flotilla blockade or strike the enemy's convoy in transit, it forces his battle-fleet in the last resort to close up on the convoy, and that, as Kempenfelt pointed out, is practically fatal to the success of invasion.

The doctrine of destroying the enemy's armed forces as the paramount object here reasserts itself, and reasserts itself so strongly as to permit for most practical purposes the rough generalisation that the command depends upon the battle-fleet. Of what practical use then, it may be asked, is all this hairsplitting?

After our battle-fleet had crossed the Pacific to Australia and Eastern Asia, it returned to the Atlantic, while a squadron of twelve battleships and four armored cruisers was sent under Admiral Perry to the west coast and stationed there, with headquarters at San Francisco. To these ships must be added the regular Pacific squadron and Philippine squadron.

In 1905 she possessed thirty-five battleships mounting 12-in. guns; while the eighteen German battleships carried only 11-in. and 9.4-in. guns. Further, in 1905-7 we began and finished the first Dreadnought; and the adoption of that type for the battle-fleet of the near future lessened the value of the Kiel-North Sea Canal, which was too small to receive Dreadnoughts.

The fresh Northern breeze sent the waves steeplechasing across the surface of the harbour, and lapping over the hull of a British Submarine as she moved slowly past the anchored lines of the Battle-fleet towards the entrance.

The sea was thick with floating corpses and shattered wreckage, and darkened with patches of oil that marked the grave of a rammed Submarine or sunken Destroyer. Maimed and bleeding men dragged themselves on to rafts and cheered their comrades as they left them to their death. Through that witches' cauldron of fog and shell-smoke the British Battle-Fleet groped for its elusive foe.

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.

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