Jellicoe’s War: The U-Boat Threat in World War One and the Question of Convoy
480 pages
Rear Admiral Guy Liardet
I have an anecdote. Some years ago when I was working in the Operational Evaluation Group at the Joint Anti-Submarine School at Londonderry, my Irish father-in-law arranged through friendship that we should have a holiday in the rambling Wingfield mansion ‘Salterbridge’ at Cappoquin, County Waterford.
When Lady Norah Wingfield turned up to see how we were getting on, I brightly remarked on the number of books in the library on Jutland and WW1 at sea. “Oh yes”, she said, “Daddy was at Jutland”. “Gosh, how interesting! Which ship was he in?” “The Iron Duke. He was the Commander-in-Chief”.
Daddy was at Jutland. Nobody told me.
Grandson Nicholas is an established historian. His book Jutland – The Unfinished Battle gets high praise from inter alia those we know and love: “a lively and engaging narrative… combines new material with a sympathetic but not uncritical perspective of the CinC” (RADM James Goldrick) and “the best narrative account of the battle currently available” (Prof Eric Grove). That’s remarkable when one considers a century’s worth of ploughing of the partisan Jutland Controversy (Bacon, Churchill, Corelli Barnett, Winton, Massie, Gordon, Roberts et very much al).
This is an important, scholarly, heavyweight piece of work. It leads with a comprehensive Forward by submariner Admiral James Foggo USN of the Navy League. What are the issues that you and I are really a bit weak on? How about ‘blockade’ and its legalities? As regards ‘neutrals’ and ‘definitions of contraband’, ‘false flag issues’? How about anti-submarine warfare? No ASDIC, just passive hydrophones, so how well did the navy do in ASW? Did we defeat the U-boat? German U-boat tactics and strategies, legalities? And the overweening question inherent in the title above: why didn’t they institute convoy earlier?
A legal close blockade has to be effective and continuous, impossible in the submarine era. Nicholas describes the twists and turns of ‘distant blockade’ that under the 1909 London Declaration became a legal nightmare that evolved into straight economic warfare with a persistent whack-a-mole campaign against neutrals trading with the enemy. How come a legitimate peacetime trade in a ‘conditional contraband’ such as fats or nitrates by a neutral suddenly quadrupled and why did the Netherlands, an exporter, become an importer of American meat? Later it was called a ‘starvation blockade’ in Germany and may well have won the war. Relations with neutrals, especially America, had to be ‘managed’ as well as the damage to our own export trade.
The other side of this coin is the U-Boat campaign against merchant shipping. Trammelled initially by the provisos of the 1909 London Declaration establishing the Prize Court rules which required submarine captains to surface and make opportunity for the crew to take to the boats before sinking their ship, it gave way to unrestricted submarine warfare with purposive and atrocious attacks on passenger liners and hospital ships. I believe Nicholas’s treatment here is unique; illustrating his in-depth account of the German and British politics are numerous accounts of the voyages of U-Boat captains with boxes for their photographs and CVs, notably ones with heavy political consequences such as the sinking of the Lusitania and Arabic and propaganda visits to the German sympathisers in the USA. A number of captains stuck to Prize Court rules for a time despite the Kaiser’s directives. Famous is Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière who sank 142 ships by gunfire totalling 265,649 tons, only using four torpedoes and only once attacking (a warship) without warning. His record is unsurpassed in two world wars. Otherwise, this account richly covers with many quotes the German reluctance about unrestricted warfare, the erratic Kaiser, decreasing domestic support, von Scheer’s plans to entrap the Grand Fleet by mining or torpedo. This was very much a minefield war.
Prize Court rules were knocked on the head by the huge programme of arming merchant ships with guns, the ‘false flag’ ruse de guerre, (which threatened neutrals) and Q ships, causing U-boats to up-gun and make submerged attacks.
Militarily, the U-Boat was not as effective as against commerce, but sank 10 battleships, 18 cruisers, 21 destroyers and 9 submarines, including by submarine-laid minefields.
In 1914 there was not such a thing as anti-submarine warfare (ASW). So it took some time to take shape. A total of 343 U-Boats took part in the war and Nicholas records (Appendix B) the rise in annual sinkings: five; 20; 23; 65; 90, totalling 203. Methods included mines (61); gunfire (23); depth charge (26); ramming (21). Nicholas’s narrative covers an immense field of weapons, tactics, barrages, nascent air power and so forth, an increasing efficiency which enables Marder to write, “in 1918 the worst was definitely over by June and the U-Boat campaign as good as defeated”. Captain Werner Fürbringer wrote: “In the last twelve months the British have made unbelievable strides…the convoy system had proved itself…their depth charges were packed with more explosive…they had perfected a mine based on a German design…in May 1918 the Entente launched for the first time more tonnage than the U-Boats destroyed”.
I doubt there has ever been a better exposé of the introduction of the convoy system. I don’t need to rehearse the advantages of convoy to this audience. Nicholas writes, “Jellicoe never opposed the use of convoys…The simple fact is that Jellicoe wasn’t confident enough that, even if properly resourced, convoys alone could be the answer”.
Elsewhere he writes, “It is difficult to understand why the infamous harbour statistics were not sooner understood or that the statistical support for cloaking convoys with oceanic invisibility was not explored”. Would you and I have instituted a tactical floor and gamed the situation? Would we? (Submarine COs in cubicles allowed to see smoke on the horizon, if any).
Nicholas starts by reminding us about the use of convoys in our maritime history. Roger Knight’s recent Convoys (2022) covering the Napoleonic wars shows Britain utterly imbued with convoy worldwide with some astounding statistics and a universal theme – inadequate escort. The question was under constant consideration when Jellicoe arrived at the Admiralty. Decisions were hampered by a glaring lack of reliable statistics (sorted by Commander Henderson and Paymaster Commander Manisty), a belief that convoy was ‘defensive’ and unworthy, obsessively needing to take the battle to the enemy by sub-hunting patrols (“ineffectively charging to nowhere”) and that there were not enough escorts to make convoy work. Jellicoe awaited the arrival of American destroyers to ease the shortage while there were 100 destroyers with the Grand Fleet. This was battleship culture; secure inside Scapa surely forty or fifty could have been spared?
Notice was taken of the ‘escorted’ cross-Channel coal trade to France and several early Scandinavian convoys which had remarkably few sinkings. Provoked by the threatened resumption of unrestricted submarine operations and the Zimmermann telegram, America declared war on 6 April 1917. Nicholas entirely misses out the brilliant contribution of Room 40 and ‘Blinker’ Hall to the Zimmermann affair (‘Alone I Did It’).
Tonnage sunk in April 1917 exceeded 800,000 tons, giving rise to the pessimism (“It is impossible to go on with the war…”) that was the basic cause of Jellicoe’s undoing as First Sea Lord.
Nicholas’s graph shows the steep decline thereafter to ‘normal’ levels of loss. The Admiralty agreed to the wholesale introduction on 31 May. Two convoy tests were successful; a further five transatlantic convoys totalled 73 ships with only one straggler sunk. In the Mediterranean, Karl Doenitz said, “At once the ocean became bare and empty”.
This section of the book is a complete collection, narrative and analysis of all the evolving opinions about convoy. I doubt it can be bettered. It includes post-war writings with sometimes post hoc remembrancing and self-justification, altogether an enormous range of sources with descriptions of the inputs of significant figures; Admiral Sims USN, Lloyd George, Rear-Admiral Duff of the Anti-Submarine Division, Kenneth Dewar of the Operations Division and many others.
After the final events of the war, there’s a chapter entitled ‘Was Jellicoe the Right Man for the Job?’ which contains a full character analysis and critique of his operational methods, ability to delegate and contribution to ASW and trade protection. Clearly a less applied or more charismatic leader could have been a disaster.
The photographs are absolutely magnificent, particularly the portraits and of the German submarine service. There are Appendices with numbers and tabulations.
How to sum up? Marvellous.
