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007 - British Navy The grasp of the Mediterranean Sea and land power · Military Strategies Mountain and Naval Warfare

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  Speaker 1: Part seven of two essays on military history, strategy and
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  Speaker 1: tactics Mountain Warfare nineteen o nine and Naval Strategy nineteen
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  Speaker 1: seventeen by Varius. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: Part seven British Navy, Chapter four. The grasp of the
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  Speaker 1: Mediterranean Sea and land Power. Others may use the Ocean
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  Speaker 1: as their road. Only the English make it their abode.
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  Speaker 1: Our oaks secure as if they there took root. We
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  Speaker 1: tread on the billows with a steady foot Edmund Waller,
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  Speaker 1: sixteen fifty six. It is important next to consider the
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  Speaker 1: situation in the Mediterranean and where sea power is of
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  Speaker 1: momentous importance to the allies. In those historic waters, the
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  Speaker 1: fate of many nations has been decided. They are a
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  Speaker 1: vital length and the highway of the British Empire between
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  Speaker 1: Gibraltar and Port said, two thousand miles of britains welfare
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  Speaker 1: lie outrolled to France with her great possessions in Algeria,
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  Speaker 1: Morocco and Tunis. The importance of this sea highway is supreme.
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  Speaker 1: She must in this war and at all times, traverse
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  Speaker 1: its waters, or she will be undone. Italy has won
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  Speaker 1: a great position in the Adriatic and the Mediterranean, and
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  Speaker 1: she would wither away and perish if either fell under
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  Speaker 1: enemy control. Trieste is her object, and she has proclaimed
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  Speaker 1: a protectorate over Albania, the better to establish her power
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  Speaker 1: in the Adriatic. And she has her new possessions in
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  Speaker 1: the Libya, Italiana of northern Africa. From the operations in
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  Speaker 1: the Mediterranean, we shall learn something more of the relation
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  Speaker 1: of sea power to land operations, and of the limitations
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  Speaker 1: of that power. And we shall see the Allied navies
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  Speaker 1: of England, France, Russia, Italy and Japan in cooperation. We
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  Speaker 1: shall know why the enemy made a great submarine stroke
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  Speaker 1: in the Mediterranean when everything else at sea had failed.
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  Speaker 1: The French battleship squadrons were concentrated in the Mediterranean before
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  Speaker 1: the war. The cruiser squadron in the Channel, like David
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  Speaker 1: against Goliath, was willing to encounter even the whole German
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  Speaker 1: high sea fleet. But the French had been assured of
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  Speaker 1: British co operation and all danger was forestalled. In the Mediterranean.
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  Speaker 1: The Gurbon and Breslau had come west and had bombarded
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  Speaker 1: Bona and Philippeville, but the French admiral going south from
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  Speaker 1: Toulon was on their heels and they fled to the east, again,
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  Speaker 1: running the gauntlet of the British Squadron. On their way
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  Speaker 1: to join the Turks. They had intended to raid the
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  Speaker 1: French transports at sea. At this time, the French were
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  Speaker 1: bringing their troops from Algeria and Tunis, amounting in all
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  Speaker 1: to nearly one hundred thousand men with guns, horses, mules, stores, ammunition, hospitals,
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  Speaker 1: tent equipment and all the requirements for field service to
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  Speaker 1: join the main army in France. It was a great
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  Speaker 1: responsibility for the French Navy, increased many fold when troops
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  Speaker 1: began to come from their eastern possessions through the Suez Canal.
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  Speaker 1: Failure would have meant disaster, but the whole of the
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  Speaker 1: transport work was managed without the loss of a man
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  Speaker 1: or a horse, and was a wonderful success. It could
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  Speaker 1: hardly have taken place with so much security if the
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  Speaker 1: British Squadron had not been in the Mediterranean, and not
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  Speaker 1: at all if the Grand Fleet had not held the
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  Speaker 1: German high Sea Fleet fast in its ports by the
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  Speaker 1: blockade in the North Sea. From that time forward, for
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  Speaker 1: many months, until the Italians came into the war on
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  Speaker 1: May twenty third, nineteen fifteen. The French squadron was employed
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  Speaker 1: in neutralizing the Austro Hungarian fleet in the Adriatic, which
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  Speaker 1: did not dare to move. The blockading squadron was extended
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  Speaker 1: across the Strait of Otranto, with occasional sweeps to the
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  Speaker 1: northward to control hostile operations if possible, at Cathara and
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  Speaker 1: along the Dalmatian coast up to the approaches to Pola,
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  Speaker 1: where the submarine Guri was entangled and lost to the Austrians.
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  Speaker 1: The French base for these operations was at Malta, but
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  Speaker 1: an advanced base was established in the island of Lisa.
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  Speaker 1: The blockade was completely successful in checking every effort of
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  Speaker 1: the Austrians to strike at the stream of transport in
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  Speaker 1: the Mediterranean, though it could not avail to save Montenegro
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  Speaker 1: or hold back the Austrians in their advance into Albania.
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  Speaker 1: No fleet can operate beyond the range of its guns
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  Speaker 1: unless its flying officers carry their bombs into inland countries.
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  Speaker 1: The blockade maintained through the winter at the Strait of
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  Speaker 1: Otranto was exceedingly arduous and filled with peril. Enemy destroyers
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  Speaker 1: and submarines were at work issuing from the wonderful island
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  Speaker 1: fringe of the Damatian coast, and the French knew their peril.
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  Speaker 1: The armored cruiser Leo Mungumbetta was sunk by submarine attack,
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  Speaker 1: with the loss of Rear Admiral Sennaise, who was in
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  Speaker 1: command and every officer on board, as well as nearly
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  Speaker 1: six hundred men. The armored cruiser vald' Grousseau suffered damage
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  Speaker 1: by torpedo, and the new dreadnought Jean Boughs with Admiral
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  Speaker 1: Boulets de l'aprier, the French Admiralissimo of the combined fleets
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  Speaker 1: on board, was touched, though only slightly injured. There were
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  Speaker 1: other submarine attacks and losses of small craft, and some
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  Speaker 1: losses were inflicted upon the enemy. British cruisers were attached
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  Speaker 1: to the French flag during these operations and they continued
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  Speaker 1: to cooperate with the French and Italians in Adriatic War
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  Speaker 1: and in the Aegean, where the French and Allied naval
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  Speaker 1: forces were the guard of all the operations at Salonica
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  Speaker 1: and in the Pious Fleets and armies have cooperated in
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  Speaker 1: the Mediterranean. From the very beginning of the war. In
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  Speaker 1: May nineteen seventeen, the British monitors, which with the converted
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  Speaker 1: cruisers have been operating with the military expedition against the
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  Speaker 1: Turks and Bulgarians, appeared in the Adriatic and rendered valuable
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  Speaker 1: aid to the Italians in their advance towards Trieste. The
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  Speaker 1: naval coalition has been a marvel of effective organization. German
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  Speaker 1: professors have sometimes said that the land would sooner or
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  Speaker 1: later beat the sea, that Moltke would become the victor
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  Speaker 1: over Mayhan. That is the convinced opinion of the Pan Germans,
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  Speaker 1: who say that the railway will yet prove the more
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  Speaker 1: rapid and more secure means of transport than the steamship.
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  Speaker 1: The lines from Antwerp by Cologne to Vienna, and from
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  Speaker 1: Hamburg to Berlin, and thence through the very heart of
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  Speaker 1: Europe to Vienna, and on by Belgrade and Sofia to Constantinople,
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  Speaker 1: and from the opposite shore of the Bosphorus to Baghdad
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  Speaker 1: and down to the Gulf, and by a branch through
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  Speaker 1: Persia to the confines of India, were to give commercial
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  Speaker 1: and perchance military command of two continents. Enterprise by the
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  Speaker 1: Branch Railway through Aleppo and Damascus against Egypt with a
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  Speaker 1: view to further developments in Africa was related to this
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  Speaker 1: conception of land power. The measures adopted by the Allies
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  Speaker 1: for the reconstitution of Serbia, the expeditions to the Dardanelles
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  Speaker 1: and Salonica, the strong action taken in Greece, the naval
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  Speaker 1: movements on the coast of Syria, the operations in the
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  Speaker 1: Sinai Peninsula and Palestine, and the expedition from the Persian
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  Speaker 1: Gulf to Baghdad were the answer to these gigante esque
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  Speaker 1: projects of the enemy. Behind them all lay the working
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  Speaker 1: of the fleets. Every class of ship and almost every
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  Speaker 1: kind of vessel employed in naval warfare has been used
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  Speaker 1: in one or other of these operations. The battleship, cruiser, destroyer,
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  Speaker 1: torpedo boat, submarine, mothership, aeroplane, aircraft, carrier, mining vessel, river gunboat,
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  Speaker 1: motor launch, mine trawler, armed auxiliary, special service vessel, transport, storeship, collier, oiler, tank,
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  Speaker 1: distilling ship, ordnance vessel, hospital ship, tug, lighter, and a
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  Speaker 1: crowd of other craft. All these are required for the
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  Speaker 1: work of the Navy in the Mediterranean, as elsewhere, and
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  Speaker 1: they have been employed with a quality of seaman like skill, enterprise, resource,
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  Speaker 1: courage and success such as the history of the sea
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  Speaker 1: has no previous record of The appearance at the Golden
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  Speaker 1: Horn of a British submarine which had traversed a Turkish minefield,
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  Speaker 1: was the sign of new powers in naval warfare. We
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  Speaker 1: are lost in admiration of the self sacrifice of officers
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  Speaker 1: and men, both of the regular naval service and of
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  Speaker 1: the mercantile marine and the fisheries, the latter being the
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  Speaker 1: heroes of the perilous work of mine sweeping. The British
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  Speaker 1: and French navies and the vessel representing the Russian Navy
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  Speaker 1: acted in the closest cooperation, and all the naval forces
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  Speaker 1: worked in intimate association with the armies. Where there was failure,
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  Speaker 1: the failure was due to the inevitable limitations of seapower,
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  Speaker 1: which has already been suggested with reference to the North
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  Speaker 1: German coast Zeybruga and the Montenegrin and Albanian coasts. The
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  Speaker 1: history of the Dardanelle expedition will not be written here.
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  Speaker 1: Beginning with the bombardment of the Entrance forts on November third,
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  Speaker 1: night Teith fourteen, which had little other effect than to
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  Speaker 1: stimulate the defense. Continued after an interval of months by
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  Speaker 1: the Great naval attacks in March nineteen fifteen, in which
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  Speaker 1: enormous damage was done to the forts at the entrance
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  Speaker 1: and to some extent at the narrows, but with the
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  Speaker 1: loss of British and French battleships by the action of
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  Speaker 1: gunfire and drifting mines. The enterprise concluded with the landing
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  Speaker 1: of the Allied armies in the Gallipoli Peninsula. The troops
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  Speaker 1: were compelled by outnumbering forces and concentrated gunfire to withdraw.
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  Speaker 1: The combined attack should have been made at the beginning.
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  Speaker 1: The unaided naval attack had merely stimulated the defense. Here
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  Speaker 1: was the greatest demonstration of which there is a record
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  Speaker 1: of the limitation of sea power in the attack of
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  Speaker 1: such a military position. Naval forces are essential, but military
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  Speaker 1: operations are required if the desired success is to be attained.
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  Speaker 1: This is true of all the operations in the Mediterranean
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  Speaker 1: and elsewhere. Sea power gave the means by which the
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  Speaker 1: army drove back the Turks from Egypt, and it was
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  Speaker 1: the support of the advance in Sinai and Palestine. It
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  Speaker 1: gave protection to the transports which carried troops and army
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  Speaker 1: requirements to Salmonica and the Pyriads, patrolling the routes or
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  Speaker 1: providing the convoy for the ships. The enemy realized his
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  Speaker 1: opportunity and his submarines began to develop great activity in
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  Speaker 1: the Mediterranean. Certain transports were sunk and an attempt was
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  Speaker 1: made to cut the communications of the expeditionary forces with
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  Speaker 1: their base. Some considerable losses were suffered thereby, but gradually
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  Speaker 1: systems were developed which gave a reasonable sense of security.
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  Speaker 1: The British, French and Italian flotillas were employed, and that
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  Speaker 1: of Japan came to their aid. Never had such naval
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  Speaker 1: cooperation been witnessed before. We cannot separate the advance in
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  Speaker 1: Mesopotamia from the Mediterranean operations, because the same object inspired both, viz.
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  Speaker 1: That of arresting the threatened development of German commercial and
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  Speaker 1: military power through Asiatic Turkey to the Persian Gulf and
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  Speaker 1: through Persia to the borders of India. The first advance
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  Speaker 1: to Kattel Amara and Setisfn proved disastrous because undertaken with
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  Speaker 1: inadequate means, but the Navy rendered brilliant service and in
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  Speaker 1: the second advance, a sufficient river flotilla of gunboats and
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  Speaker 1: transports made possible the advance to Baghdad and beyond. The
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  Speaker 1: naval flotilla cooperated with most excellent effect in this advance,
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  Speaker 1: played havoc with enemies aircraft, and captured HMS Firefly, which
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  Speaker 1: had been lost in the retreat from Setisfan. Thus we
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  Speaker 1: see the Navy operating in the great central theatre of
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  Speaker 1: v war and on its outlook to the east, exerting influence,
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  Speaker 1: transporting troops, forming the base of armies, and everywhere proving
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  Speaker 1: an essential factor in all that was done. It was confronted,
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  Speaker 1: in the Mediterranean as elsewhere, with the new weapon of
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  Speaker 1: the submarine in very active form. That menace and the
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  Speaker 1: campaign against it, shall be the subject of the next chapter.
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  Speaker 1: End of Chapter four