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THE MARITIME BLOCKADE OF GERMANY IN THE GREAT WAR: THE NORTHERN PATROL, 1914–1918 THE NAVY RECORDS SOCIETY was established in 1893 for the purpose of printing unpublished manuscripts and rare works of naval interest. The Society is open to all who are interested in naval history, and any person wishing to become a member should apply to the Hon. Secretary, Department of War Studies, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS. The annual subscription is £30, which entitles the member to receive one free copy of each work issued by the Society in that year, and to buy earlier issues at much reduced prices.
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Grainger, John D. The maritime blockade of Germany in the Great War : the northern patrol, 1914–1918. – (Navy Records Society publications) 1. Great Britain. Royal Navy. Cruiser Squadron, 10th – History 2. World War, 1914–1918 – Blockades – North Atlantic Ocean 3. World War, 1914–1918 – Naval operations, British I. Title II. Navy Records Society 940.4'52
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Grainger, John D., 1939– The maritime blockade of Germany in the Great War : the Northern Patrol, 1914–1918 / John D. Grainger. p. cm. – (Navy Records Society publications) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Great Britain. Royal Navy. Cruiser Squadron, 10th – History. 2. World War, 1914–1918 – Blockades – Germany. 3. World War, 1914–1918 – Naval operations, British. I. Title. II. Publications of the Navy Records Society
D581.G68 2003 940.4'52–dc21 2002036803 )3". HBK
Typeset in Times by Bournemouth Colour Press, Parkstone THE COUNCIL OF THE NAVY RECORDS SOCIETY 2003
PATRON H.R.H. THE PRINCE PHILIP, DUKE OF EDINBURGH, K.G., O.M., F.R.S.
PRESIDENT Admiral of the Fleet SIR BENJAMIN BATHURST, G.C.B., D.L.
VICE-PRESIDENTS H.U.A. LAMBERT, M.A. P. K. CRIMMIN, M.Phil., F.R.Hist.S., F.S.A. M.A. SIMPSON M.A., F.R.Hist.S. Professor R.J.B. KNIGHT COUNCILLORS Professor D.A. BAUGH Captain S.C. JERMY, B.Sc., M. Phil., R.N. Captain C.H.H. OWEN, R.N. Captain C.L.W. PAGE, C.ENG., R.N. Professor R. HARDING Dr C.S. KNIGHTON, M.A., Ph.D., D.Phil. R.W.A. SUDDABY, M.A. Professor D. CANNADINE, M.A., Ph.D. Captain C.J. PARRY, M.A., R.N. Dr C. WILKINSON Professor J.B. HATTENDORF R. GWILLIAM A.N. RYAN, M.A., F.R.Hist.S. Rear Admiral J.R. HILL Professor C. DANDEKER Dr C.I. HAMILTON, M.A., Ph.D. Dr E.J. GROVE, M.A., Ph.D. Dr M. DUFFY, M.A., D.Phil., F.R.Hist.S. B. LAVERY, M.A. C. WHITE D.G. LAW, M.A., Dip.Lib., A.L.A. Lt-Commander F.L. PHILLIPS, R.D., T.D., Lt-Commander A. GORDON, Ph.D. R.N.R. Professor N.A.M. RODGER, M.A., D.Phil., Dr. S.P. ROSE, M.A., Ph.D F.S.A., F.R.Hist.S. HON. SECRETARY Professor A.D. LAMBERT, M.A., Ph.D., F.R.Hist.S.
HON. TREASURER J.V. TYLER, F.C.C.A.
GENERAL EDITOR R.A. MORRISS, B.A., Ph.D.
MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY Mrs A. GOULD
This book is dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, John Downie Chapman, 1864–1915, Chief Engineer, Clan Line, Engineer Commander RNR, who died in the Clan MacNaughton, February 1915, and of my mother Sarah Elizabeth Grainger, 1904–1999, who mourned her father all her life and whose questions provoked this book.
CONTENTS
PAGE Acknowledgements ...... xi Abbreviations ...... xiii Maps ...... xv–xviii Introduction ...... 1 1 The First Patrol: the Edgars, August–November 1914 . .25 2 The Armed Merchant Cruisers, December 1914– March 1915 ...... 64 3 The Patrol Established, March–June 1915 ...... 119 4 A New Base; Submarines, June–August 1915 ...... 178 5 Life on Patrol, August–November 1915 ...... 257 6 De Chair’s Last Months, November 1915–February 1916 ...... 313 7 Tupper Takes Command, March–May 1916 ...... 390 8 Tightening the Blockade, June–August 1916 ...... 447 9 The Effective Blockade, September–December 1916 .503 10 The Submarine Menace Renewed, December 1916– March 1917 ...... 565 11 The Successful Blockade, March–June 1917 ...... 639 12 The End of the Northern Patrol, June 1917–January 1918 ...... 723 Sources of Documents ...... 789 Bibliography ...... 812 Index ...... 815
ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book has benefited from the assistance of archivists at the Public Record Office, the Imperial War Museum, the National Maritime Museum in London, the Royal Naval Museum at Portsmouth, the Scottish Record Office in Edinburgh, and the County Record Offices of Shetland and Orkney. Much needed financial assistance was provided by an award from The Scouloudi Foundation in association with the Institute of Historical Research and a Research Grant from the British Academy, for which I am most grateful.
xi
ABBREVIATIONS
The following abbreviations and editorial conventions are employed in the documents; I exclude compass directions.
AMC Armed Merchant Cruiser AT Armed Trawler CMO Confidential Monthly Order D-of-T Director of Transports DR Directional Radio DTD Director of Trade Division GMT Greenwich Mean Time GPO General Post Office HMT His Majesty’s Trawler mag. magnetic OW Officer of the Watch PMO Principal Medical Officer PV paravane RMLI Royal Marines Light Infantry RN Royal Navy RNR Royal Naval Reserve RNVR Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve SCW Superintendent of Contact Work SNO Senior Naval Officer SO Senior Officer TBD Torpedo Boat Destroyer Ty Temporary W/T Wireless Telegraph *** signifies a paragraph is omitted ... signifies the omission of one or more words (except in lists) [ ] numbers in square brackets refer to other documents in this collection
xiii xiv ABBREVIATIONS
Spellings Spelling of, particularly, proper names of non-English ships and places can be haphazard. I have not altered any of these in the documents, but I have noted the ‘correct’ form as occasions offer, for example in the footnotes. The officers who wrote these documents had better things to do with their time than consult foreign gazetteers; the Admiralty documents, on the other hand, compiled in a more leisurely manner, are taken as ‘correct’. 20° 10° 0° 10° Lofoten Is. 20°
rd i t NORWEGIAN jo a t F t r E es S SEA V k r a Langanes G m n e D ICELAND A 65° Kya Is. Faxa Fjord Reykjavik a Portland F Y A N b W E FAROE Is. R O D C Sydero N E Swarbacks W c Minn S SHETLAND Is Kristiania (Oslo) 60° d N. Rona Stockholm Pen tland ORKNEY Is S Fi Rockall E rth D The Naze k A I Moray Firth a C St Kilda r a E R er t Goteborg g t
a e S
B Sk g E a SCOTLAND C H t I T DENMARK L Copenhagen A Glasgow Esbjerg B NORTH Malmo 55° SEA Rugen Is. Cuxhaven Hamburg IRELAND Liverpool Stettin ENGLAND GERMANY
INTRODUCTION
The blockade of Germany and its allies in the Great War was part of the strategy which brought about their defeat, and the responsibility for enforcing that blockade rested firmly with the Royal Navy. Operating within a gradually changing network of rules and practices, the Tenth Cruiser Squadron, a force of ships which grew from eight to over forty vessels, asserted an increasingly firm control over all the maritime traffic sailing the waters north of the British Isles. For three and a half years the Northern Patrol was the most continuously active naval force of any participant in the Great War. The assumption when war began in August 1914 was that the naval war would consist of great battles between the main fleets of the two naval powers, Britain and Germany. However, the failure of the great battles to materialise forced a general rethinking. The Tenth Cruiser Squadron, originally set to patrol part of the North Sea, became instead a force designed to prevent enemy vessels escaping from that sea, and then one intended to prevent raw materials and other supplies from reaching Germany. The first patrol of old cruisers was replaced in the winter of 1914/15 by a fleet of requisitioned Armed Merchant Cruisers. They were lightly armed but capable of keeping at sea for a long time and better adapted to survive in the vicious northern waters. They were also more suited to the new role of the patrol: intercepting all ships to check that they were not carrying goods deemed ‘contraband’ by the British government.
The Blockade Policy During the first three months of the patrol it was gradually realised that the war would last a long time. The prospect of a short war had meant that only the most obvious precautions needed to be taken to prevent materials of war reaching Germany, and that only goods of direct military use needed to be intercepted. The original list of prohibited goods, published in an Order-in-Council on 4 August 1914, consisted of two types: those whose import into the enemy countries was absolutely
1 2 THE MARITIME BLOCKADE OF GERMANY prohibited, and those whose import was permitted on condition that they were not destined for the enemy armed forces. The absolute list comprised arms, warships, aircraft, animals suitable for use in war, and ‘implements and apparatus designed exclusively for the manufacture of munitions’. The conditional list included foodstuffs, forage, fuel, gold, silver, vehicles, and so on. The term used for these items was ‘contraband’, a term whose connotations of smuggling and illegality was designed, perhaps unconsciously at first, to place the enforcement of the import ban on a quasi-legal basis. The two lists, of absolute and conditional contraband, were generally in harmony with the Declaration of London of 1909, even though the United Kingdom had not ratified that agreement. Any good not on the two lists could be traded freely. If intercepted a ship destined for an enemy or enemy-occupied port could be detained; if her cargo was absolute contraband, the goods could be seized; if conditional, only if they were consigned to the enemy government. There was plenty of room for doubt and interpretation, and the original policy was modified very quickly; on 20 August 1914, a second Order-in-Council made it more difficult to trade conditional contraband into a neutral country, where it might be consigned to an agent of the enemy for re-export. On 26 August it was reported that the German government had taken control of all foodstuffs, and the British government used this as an excuse to vary its original lists. More items were added to the conditional list on 21 September, mainly metals, but also glycerine, hides, and rubber; and on 29 October still more adjustments were made, with many conditional items being moved to the absolute list.1 This process of expansion went on through another dozen Orders-in-Council. In each case more items were added to both lists, and conditional items were moved on to the absolute list.
The System of Control Soon after the Order-in-Council of 29 October, which was issued partly in response to neutral complaints about the earlier British measures, the Admiralty made an attempt to establish control over the North Sea. On 2 November the North Sea was declared a military area, and all neutral vessels entering it were to be subject to Admiralty direction. It had been supposed that neutral ships were laying German mines, and the new
1The full texts of the Orders-in-Council of 4 August, 21 September and 29 October are in Appendix II of A.C. Bell, A History of the Blockade of Germany and the Central Powers (London, 1937) – henceforth ‘Bell’. INTRODUCTION 3 regulations were intended to allow some sort of naval inspection to be made of suspected neutrals. In particular all Scandinavian ships were ordered to pass through the Straits of Dover rather than go north of Scotland. This did not suit these ships and the various Scandinavian shipping lines involved asked for, and usually received, permission to go northabout so long as they called at Kirkwall in the Orkneys to be examined.1 It was about this time that a combination of submarine attacks and winter storms destroyed the original cruiser force and it was not until early January that the Northern Patrol was properly reconstituted as a force of Armed Merchant Cruisers, which then had the task of intercepting the merchant vessels which were travelling northabout. This interception had to be done before the ships entered the ‘military zone’ of the North Sea, and hence between Scotland and Iceland. The new patrol lines were thus in the North Atlantic rather than the North Sea or Norwegian Sea; in effect the squadron had been driven out of the North Sea by the German submarine fleet. The German response was to extend that ‘military area’ of the North Sea to cover the waters all round Britain and Ireland, specifically pointing out that this excluded the waters north of the Shetlands and a thirty-mile-wide area along the Norwegian coast.2 This was exactly the area where the Tenth Cruiser Squadron had now to be most vigilant. The patrol lines of the squadron were arranged so that a reasonable attempt could be made to intercept all approaching ships. The preliminary line was west of the Hebrides, based on St Kilda and extending northwestwards towards Iceland. This was backed up by other patrol lines, one extending north of the Shetlands, one based on the Faeroe Islands and a third in the waters north of the Faeroes. (The straits between Shetland and Orkney, between Orkney and Caithness, and the waters round the Hebrides were supervised by Auxiliary Patrols.) This still left the waters around Iceland unpatrolled, and once a ship had passed the Faeroes there was only a small chance of its being intercepted.3 For the winter this was not very important, since the waters north and west of Iceland were blocked by ice, but the issue would have to be addressed in the spring. Before that came, the issue of ‘contraband’ was reconsidered yet again and a new Order-in-Council appeared, that of 11 March. This was
1The Tenth Cruiser Squadron I, Monograph 19 of Admiralty Naval Staff (1921), para. 21. 2Ibid., para. 30, quoting the German announcement in translation. 3The Rio Negro, carrying survivors from the sunk German cruiser Karlsruhe, passed through the patrol area late in November. 4 THE MARITIME BLOCKADE OF GERMANY to be the basis of British policy with regard to trade conditions for the rest of the war. It established a complete blockade of Germany. In legal terms a blockade had to be established by a public proclamation and by naval patrols directly outside the ports. With the development of the long-range land-based artillery this ceased to be feasible, and the invention of the submarine made it quite impossible. There then was made a distinction between a ‘close blockade’ and a ‘distant blockade’, the latter of which had no international legal force.1 In the Great War, therefore, for a time, the term blockade was avoided in official language among the Allies, though in everyday speech it was common. By 1916 it had become official as well, and Lord David Cecil became Minister for Blockade. By the system finally set up by the Order-in-Council of 11 March 1915, though it had effectively been in operation for several months, no vessel would be allowed to go to a German port; any vessel leaving Germany with a cargo would be compelled to hand over that cargo to the Allies; goods in any ship which were ultimately destined for Germany were liable to the same treatment; any ship which tried to conceal a cargo destined for Germany was liable to be condemned if intercepted later. Ships which were intercepted were now to be examined much more rigorously, and most were sent in to Kirkwall, or later to Lerwick or Stornoway, for the Customs Service to investigate; details of cargo, destination, ownership (of goods and ships), consignees, origins and anything else were telegraphed to London where a network of committees considered the evidence, made further enquiries and finally rendered a decision. This system was fairly economical with manpower, though the Customs had to expand their presence in the ports of examination. The London committees were kept small, so that a decision might be quick, if that was desired. The work of the Enemy Exports Committee, for goods exported from Germany, very quickly dried up; that of the Contraband Committee, on the other hand, for goods heading for Europe, where destinations were more varied, was onerous and continuous. The membership of the Contraband Committee brought together men from the Foreign Office, which was officially in charge of contraband matters, the Admiralty Trade Division, the Board of Trade and the Treasury Solicitor’s Office, enabling an input of information from many areas, including the Intelligence Department and British
1M.S. Partridge, ‘The Royal Navy and the End of the Close Blockade, 1885–1905’, Mariners’ Mirror 75, 1989, 119–136. INTRODUCTION 5 embassies and consulates overseas. The decision on each case would be to release ship and cargo, or to send both to the Prize Court for being enemy property or of enemy origin; frequently only part of the cargo was of prohibited goods, in which case the ship would be sent to a better-equipped port to discharge the goods condemned. There was clearly plenty of scope for discussion, argument and dispute in all this, and plenty of scope for diplomatic pressure, artful delay and negotiation. In fact, one of the purposes of the bureaucratic procedure was to be able to impose delay and so make it uneconomic for suspect cargoes to be carried. This structure had been developed by the time the Order-in-Council of 11 March 1915 was issued, and it remained the main means of controlling trade until the United States came into the war two years later. Yet it was only able to operate because the vessels at sea were intercepted efficiently and regularly by the Tenth Cruiser Squadron, and by other forces in the Channel, or because ships went voluntarily into various ports for examination. The Channel was controlled fairly easily, especially at the Dover choke-point, so it was through the northern waters that a ship would sail if it wished to avoid inspection – or ‘evade’ the blockade, as the sailors put it.
The Neutral States The North Sea and North Atlantic coasts from the northern border of Belgium to the western border of Russia were controlled by neutral states, except for the short German stretch on the North Sea. These neutrals, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, all had substantial maritime trades and mercantile marines. Denmark and The Netherlands were neighbours of Germany and could be easily dominated by her; Sweden was in many respects sympathetic to Germany. The merchants of all four of these states could be expected to do their best to profit from the economic demands of both sides in the conflict, while at the same time remaining neutral. But all four might easily be pushed into belligerency by inconsiderate or hostile actions on the part of one side or the other.1 The Dutch ships, at least for the first two years of the war, used the sea route through the Straits of Dover, and so the Northern Patrol had to deal in the main with ships of the Scandinavian countries. Each of these had its own reaction to the war and to the blockade, arising out of its
1For an overall view of Scandinavia at the time, cf. J.T. Shotwell, ed., Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland in the World War (New Haven, 1930). 6 THE MARITIME BLOCKADE OF GERMANY particular geographical situation and its own internal political dynamics. Norway was both the furthest from Germany and the most dependent on trade with Britain and on its own extensive mercantile marine. Yet distance from Germany was not much protection where that could be cancelled by a short steamship voyage. The Admiralty imagined that the intricate Norwegian coastline harboured German warships, particularly submarines, or submarine bases. Norway was a new country, only having gained full independence from Sweden nine years before the war; its population was small, its navy minimal, its diplomats inexperienced. Above all it was wholly dependent on Britain for coal for domestic, industrial and steamship use. It showed its friendliness by such gestures as swiftly returning the British officers and men of armed guards who found themselves driven to take refuge in Norwegian ports, where they could have been detained – as several hundred Germans and as the crew of the India were. But Norway never showed any wish to exchange its neutrality for belligerency.1 Sweden was the Scandinavian state which was least susceptible to British pressure: it was the most distant, the least sea-oriented, the largest and the most industrially developed. But it was also the most divided internally over the question of participation in the fighting. Much of the ruling elite was pro-German, and the participation of unpopular Tsarist Russia on the Allied side was an added incentive to support the Central Powers. This pro-German sentiment was not confined to a few important individuals, but had considerable political support in the country. At the same time the more democratic groups in Sweden tended to be pro-Allied, and between these extremes, the majority just wished to remain neutral. The participation of Russia on the Allied side was thus a complicating factor which helped paralyse Swedish decision-making for long enough for it to be clear that neutrality was the best option.2 Denmark’s dilemma was the most awkward of them all. Geographically bordering on Germany, unlike the others, and with a longstanding quarrel with that state over the loss of southern Jutland (Schleswig) in the war of 1864, it was closely tied to both Germany and Britain by its exports of agricultural goods, and by its necessary imports of manufactured goods and fuel. Both great powers supplied coal, and Denmark had a substantial merchant marine, which could be and was
1T.K. Derry, A History of Modern Norway 1814–1972 (Oxford, 1973), chapter 9; P.G. Vigress, The Neutrality of Norway in the World War (Stanford, 1932); the crew of the India was held because they were actively belligerent when the ship was sunk. 2F.D. Scott, Sweden, the Nation’s History (Minneapolis, 1977), chapter 17. INTRODUCTION 7 hostage to the country’s policy. As a small country Denmark was susceptible to pressure from both sides, and the political situation in Denmark was delicate and volatile. British pressure in late 1914 produced a strong, if momentary, anti-British feeling, but that pressure also brought the Danish shipping companies to submit to British demands. Yet the proximity of Germany gradually brought the Danes into that country’s orbit, and during the war German exports of coal in exchange for the import of Danish agricultural products largely replaced British trade in these goods.1 Denmark had a colonial empire: the Faeroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland and three islands in the West Indies. The Faeroes and Iceland were of particular concern to Britain, given their geographical situation athwart the northabout sea-route and the rich fisheries in the nearby seas; both of these colonies slid into dependence on Britain during the war. Iceland used the situation to expand its autonomy during these years, so that by 1918 it was linked to Denmark only by the person of the king both countries acknowledged. Both Britain and Germany made serious plans to occupy the Faeroes; these may have been secret, but the Faeroese feared such occupation, and it would not have taken much to make the islands a battleground. Greenland was the source of some useful products, cryolite in particular, which featured repeatedly in interceptions by the Northern Patrol. The Virgin Islands were sold to the United States in 1917, in a deal which also included US recognition of Danish sovereignty over all Greenland.2 The pressure of the blockade on the three Scandinavian states – or perhaps, with Iceland, four – thus produced differing reactions. Denmark was trapped in a painful dilemma which brought it into near- dependence on Germany while its colonial empire was diminished and weakened, even though Denmark was neutral; Sweden was very resistant to domination by anyone; Norway was reinforced in its neutrality, but with pro-Allied feelings;3 Iceland was rendered heavily dependent on Britain. For Norway, Sweden and Iceland, moreover, the economic results of the warfare at first produced unaccustomed prosperity for two years, which helped mask the wider problems;4 but this came at a cost of fuelling inflation, and as pressure from both sides grew, 1917 and 1918 were years of hardship in all Scandinavia, an
1T. Kaarstad, Great Britain and Denmark 1914–1920 (Odense, 1979), 99–122. 2Ibid., 123–131. 3This is the burden of O. Riste, The Neutral Ally (Oslo and London, 1965), but the case is somewhat overstated. 4Derry, op. cit., 271; Scott, op. cit., 471; T. Thorsteinsson in Shotwell, ed., op. cit., chapter IV. 8 THE MARITIME BLOCKADE OF GERMANY unpleasant experience all the more galling for being so outside their control.1 The Northern Patrol ships were heavily involved in these international complications by being the instrument of British policy. Not all the sailors on the Patrol understood the wider diplomatic dimensions to their work, though the Admirals and Commodores certainly did. (Indeed, in one extraordinary memorandum, Admiral Oliver at the Admiralty appeared to believe that even the Commander- in-Chief had failed to understand the wider situation and that he should ‘be informed of the political difficulties involved’.)2 The delicacy with which ships of these neutral states had to be dealt with was all the more necessary when American vessels were intercepted, for, if the northern neutrals could be awkward and difficult to deal with, the United States had real power. Merchants in the USA had seized on the chance to make money from the war as quickly and avidly as any other neutral, or any British or French war-profiteer. Companies extended themselves to establish new branches in Scandinavian countries with the intention of passing goods through to Germany; the Hamburg–America Line reinvented itself as the American Exporters Line, and established itself in Denmark; the German branch of Standard Oil sold its oil tankers to Standard Oil companies in the USA by means of a back-dated contract. The British moved very gingerly to cope with this, and carefully avoided any serious disagreement with the American government – the Standard Oil ship transfer was agreed to by the British government, for example. This was encouraged by the attitude of the USA to the northern neutrals. Repeated attempts were made by all four states to get the USA to join with them in asserting ‘neutral rights’, but every time the USA ignored them. It was clear that the USA was not going to be involved in an aggressive neutrality, which could only mean a willingness, despite President Wilson’s apparent policy, to become involved as a belligerent.
1As an example which would approximately apply to all four northern states (and perhaps all Europe), Thorsteinsson in Shotwell, ed., op. cit., quotes the following cost of living indices (I add annual figures for Britain and Germany for comparison): Iceland Britain Germany October 1914 108 100 100 Autumn 1915 123 125 125 Autumn 1916 155 161 165 Autumn 1917 248 204 246 Autumn 1918 333 210 304 The similarity of these trends, and even of the figures, is worth remarking. 2ADM 137/1101, 210, minute by Admiral H.T. Oliver, 16 August 1915. INTRODUCTION 9
It behoved all British institutions, therefore, to avoid angering the USA, an aspect of policy which Germany did not fully appreciate.1 The activities of the Tenth Cruiser Squadron were, therefore, of much wider significance than merely stopping and boarding merchant ships and sending them in for further examination. Most immediately, of course, they were men and ships at war interfering with men and ships who were neutral and at peace; mutual suspicion was inevitable, and care and courtesy on the part of the boarding parties was absolutely essential to avoid incidents which could have wider repercussions, since the most obvious point of friction between Britain and the northern neutrals was in the activities of this squadron. On the whole, despite what many sailors saw as provocations, the courtesy was maintained. The most persistent irritant was the Norwegian–America Line, whose ships defied the blockade for as long as possible, being branded as ‘evaders’ and ‘blockade-runners’. Yet both ‘sides’ in the argument clearly saw the matter as a sort of game, even to the extent taken by the British of keeping a score. The intermittent German submarine campaigns of the first two and a half years of the war were much less obnoxious to these neutral ships than British interference: neutral ships were certainly sunk, perhaps more often by mines than by torpedoes, but this happened far less frequently than the continual and repeated chasing, stopping, diversion, searching of ships and confiscation of cargoes by the Northern Patrol. And yet, it was clear early on that between British and German methods those of the British were infinitely preferable – the Northern Patrol only sank ships by accident; German submarines could scarcely do anything else. This difference in methods was vastly more important when the neutral state involved was the United States of America. It is clear that the British government applied a different standard to American ships, which were often permitted to go through with only a cursory examination or none at all, where a Danish or Norwegian ship would be treated far more rigorously. The diplomatic weight of the United States and its capacity for effective outrage was shown by the reaction to the sinkings of the Lusitania and Arabic; the British procedures were less oppressive precisely because that weight and capacity were fully appreciated. The result of the British procedures and sense of the diplomatic delicacies was that the scope for independent action by British captains
1A.S. Link, Wilson (5 vols, New York, 1947–1962), particularly volumes 2 and 3. P. Devlin, Too Proud to Fight: Woodrow Wilson’s Neutrality (Oxford, 1974). 10 THE MARITIME BLOCKADE OF GERMANY
– and admirals – was very much less than it was for German U-boat skippers. In stopping a ship the captain on the Northern Patrol knew that all he had to do was to decide whether the ship he had intercepted was in any way ‘suspicious’; if it was, he would put an armed guard on board and send the ship to a port where someone else would examine it, and from where a decision on its treatment could be passed on to yet another group, the Contraband Committee in London – which met in the Foreign Office, not even at the Admiralty. This committee had members from the Foreign Office, the Admiralty and the legal departments, and received information from British diplomats overseas, from the Customs department and anyone else with anything to contribute, including the Secret Service and the Admiralty’s code-breaking office, Room 40. It met virtually every day, and would render a decision almost instantly if necessary. The fact that the committee met in the Foreign Office makes it clear that the whole blockade system was an instrument of British foreign policy, in which the Admiralty had a say, but which was not under final Admiralty control. The whole process in the case of every individual ship could be conducted with courtesy and apparent legality, spread over a sufficient length of time for any bad tempers to cool. By contrast, a U-boat captain had to decide for himself whether a ship should be sunk or not, or, occasionally, be sent towards Germany as a prize. The British procedures had a more leisurely aspect, were much less dangerous to the neutral – they were not going to be shot at – and there was plenty of room for discussion and argument. What is more, all the men involved knew all that. On the other side, the decision of a U-boat captain could not be predicted, because it was that of an individual interpreting orders and policy which only he of the participants knew.
The Admirals The spread of responsibility through the various authorities on the British side lessened the burden on the squadron commanders, who could thus concentrate on their command duties, leaving the larger issues elsewhere. The first commander, Rear-Admiral Dudley de Chair,1
1De Chair, Dudley Rawson Stratford, KCB, KCMG, MVO (1864–1958), joined the navy in 1878, was prisoner of war for six weeks in the Egyptian War of 1882, Lieutenant 1884, Commander 1896, specialised as torpedo officer 1890–1900, Captain 1902, Naval Attache at Washington 1902–1905, Captain of cruisers Bacchante and Cochrane 1905–1909, Naval Secretary to the First Lord 1913–1914, Rear-Admiral 1914, Commander of Tenth Cruiser Squadron 1914–1916, Naval Adviser at the Foreign Office 1916–1917, Vice-Admiral 1917, commanded Third Battle Squadron 1917–1918, Admiral INTRODUCTION 11 held the post until February 1916, when he was succeeded by Vice- Admiral Reginald Tupper.1 The two admirals had contrasting command styles, no doubt a result of their differing characters and experiences, but they were equally effective. De Chair had achieved a measure of fame as far back as the Egyptian war of 1882; Tupper was five years older than de Chair, without his renown. Both were experienced ship commanders but had also made their marks as administrators, de Chair as Naval Attache in Washington, Tupper as Deputy Commissioner of the Western Pacific territories; both had spent their time in the Admiralty, de Chair at a rather higher level than Tupper, and both had commanded the big ships. For several crucial years before the Great War, however, their experiences had differed: de Chair was in the Admiralty from 1910, first as the Assistant to the Controller of the Navy (Jellicoe was then the Controller) then as Naval Secretary to the First Lord (Winston Churchill); Tupper had been Rear-Admiral in the Home Fleet and at the outbreak of the war was in post as Rear-Admiral for the West Coast of Scotland and the Hebrides, which in peacetime had the air of a post preliminary to retirement. De Chair was thus available for a sea-going command, whereas Tupper, his senior in the list, was already employed. When de Chair’s ships moved to the waters west of the Northern and Western Isles, therefore, they became neighbours. Both men became fully familiar with the difficult waters north and west of Scotland during the first year of the war. De Chair had to set up the new squadron, organise its processes and replenishments. Tupper, based at Stornoway, had command of a set of small patrol craft, trawlers and yachts, in the narrow waters of the Scottish west coast. When Tupper took over command of the Tenth Cruiser Squadron, the organising work had been done, and in a sense he only had to operate the system. De Chair certainly had a difficult start. The first squadron, the old cruisers of the Edgar class, was destroyed in the first winter storms of in Command of Coastguards and Reserves 1918–1920, Admiral 1920, retired 1923, Governor of New South Wales 1923–1930, Home Guard 1940–1942; he published his autobiography The Sea is Strong (London, 1954), in which chapters 20 and 21 recount his Northern Patrol experiences. 1Tupper, Reginald Godfrey Otway, GBE, KCB, CVO (1859–1945), joined navy in 1873, Lieutenant 1882, Commander 1894, Naval Intelligence Department Admiralty 1898, Deputy Commissioner Western Pacific 1898–1901, Captain 1901, Assistant Director of Naval Ordnance 1901–1903, Captain of Excellent 1907–1910, Rear-Admiral 1910, Rear-Admiral Home Fleet 1912–1913, and of West Coast of Scotland and Hebrides 1913–1916, Vice-Admiral 1916, commander Tenth Cruiser Squadron 1916–1918 and Second Cruiser Squadron 1918–1919, Commander-in-Chief Western Approaches at Queenstown 1919–1921, retired 1921; he published his Reminiscences (London, 1929), in which Chapter 8 discusses his Northern Patrol work. 12 THE MARITIME BLOCKADE OF GERMANY late 1914, and he had to organise a new one, consisting of the Armed Merchant Cruisers. This took some time, and was not made easier by continuing losses of ships – three of the new vessels were sunk within the first three months. These losses also marked out several other Armed Merchant Cruisers as potential casualties, and four more were paid off – and two more sunk – in the next year. Tupper did not have all this work to do, and acquired a full establishment of ships, plus a group of Armed Trawlers as well.
The Operation of Blockade Policy The protracted procedures on the British side were not wholly to the taste of the men on the Northern Patrol. Fairly frequently the complaint was made that a ship had been intercepted and sent in for what the captains and men thought were good reasons, only for the ship to be released with cargo intact. The sailors therefore felt that they had undergone hardship, and perhaps danger, for no reason. The basis for the annoyance which this occasioned was not simply pusillanimity among Foreign Office officials – a constant target – but also the widespread feeling that the neutrals, by not actually fighting on the British side, were really sympathetic towards the enemy. To some extent this was true for some, but the dominant feeling among all neutrals, at least early in the war, was a determination to remain neutral, and an intention to make a profit at the expense of both sides. So the elimination of German overseas trade was perceived in all the northern neutrals as a fine opportunity for profiting by supplying those goods from overseas which German ships and merchants could not supply. In this they were aided, at least at first, by British merchants and shippers, who enthusiastically provided substantial quantities of goods to the enemy. For example, British exports to Denmark rose from £1.5m in the first quarter of 1913 to £1.7m in the corresponding period of 1915; and re-exports rose from £119,000 to £1.5m in the same period. Exports and re-exports from Britain to all four northern neutrals (The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway) rose from £11.5m to £16.5m. This was partly a response to the war emergency, in that all countries were stocking up, but it was also partly in response to demand from Germany for imports from those states. The official British account was unable to distinguish particular commodities in these figures, but some items showed such extraordinary increases that ‘the inference proper to be drawn was not doubtful’.1 Exports of cocoa multiplied more than
1Bell, 267–272. INTRODUCTION 13 three times, those of meat doubled, grain and flour quadrupled, lubricating oil doubled, and so on. These were exports sold by British firms, but they were also exported by permission of the British authorities. A sharp protest from France soon brought the British to heel. Thus this profit-taking by British firms was brought under some control, but it was much more difficult to control the neutrals. Statistical evidence was compiled comparing the trade of the last year or years of peace with that of the first year of war for each neutral state. This could not become clear until sufficient evidence was collected, but by the time of the Order-in-Council of 11 March it was fairly obvious what was happening.1 The answer was to restrain neutral supplies to the quantities needed for each country only – a system which became called ‘rationing’ – which would then prevent re-exports to the enemies. Neutrals were reluctant, of course, seeing it as a coercion, which it was. Britain, however, had the whip hand, in that most of the northern neutrals relied on British coal supplies. In particular, this applied to the supplies for steamships. The only alternative sources were Germany and the United States. German supplies were not usable, since a ship fuelled by German coal would fall foul of the British blockade rules; United States supplies were certainly available, but most steamships expected to carry only sufficient coal to make a single transatlantic crossing, and carrying enough for a return voyage would seriously reduce the cargo space and was scarcely practical. Further, the British government could hold out the carrot of a rapid inspection and release of ships from any neutral country whose government accepted the rationing regime. Already in November 1914 an agreement had been reached with Captain Cold2 of the Danish United Shipping Company by which agents of the company would liaise with consular officials in America over goods shipped through them, and in Denmark the company would investigate consignees of those goods. In return the company’s ships were given accelerated treatment by the British system. Cold even agreed to hold suspected goods in Danish warehouses, or return them for condemnation in the British Prize Courts.3
1Note that it was not just the northern neutrals which were involved; Bell’s statistics on British exports also looked at Greece, and Italy and Switzerland were other important neutral traders, at least until Italy entered the war in May 1915. The French, of course, attended to the disciplining of Switzerland. 2Cold, Captain Christian Magdalus Thestrup (1863–1934), member of a prominent Danish political family, Captain in Danish Navy 1901, Administrative Director of Det Forenede Dampskibs-Selskap 1908–1921, Foreign Minister 1922–1924. 3Bell, 255. 14 THE MARITIME BLOCKADE OF GERMANY
The Netherlands adopted the solution of putting all its import business into the hands of the Netherlands Overseas Trust, which negotiated with the Allied governments over the issue of trade.1 This relieved The Netherlands government of the responsibility and gave it a viable excuse to present to Germany. From the British point of view this was the perfect solution, for the Trust operated the British contraband rules on its behalf; in the matter of trade, therefore, The Netherlands had become a British satellite, and the Trust was exceptionally careful to give no grounds for suspicion.2 Little could be done, on the other hand, to control the export of Dutch home products to Germany, a well-established traditional trade which expanded during the war. The only answer was for the British to buy the produce, mainly food, themselves. Denmark was in much the same situation. Eventually the Danish Merchants’ Guild made an agreement over trade, but this agreement never worked as well as that with the Dutch. In various guises, such agreements became the pattern for other neutrals. Denmark only made its agreement after some resistance, and some of the trades made agreements themselves rather than nationally. The British presented their statistics and stated what quantities of goods they proposed the Danes should import. The Danish government disputed the figures, suggested higher ones, and the British tended to agree.3 The generosity was sensible; in this case, of course, the enforcement was a British responsibility. Over the years 1915 and 1916 these agreements were extended to many products and to all four northern neutrals. It had to be a continuous process, if only because of the repeated expansion of the lists of contraband goods.4 Sometimes the agreement was with a group of companies in a particular trade, sometimes with a single company – as with each individual Norwegian shipping company – and sometimes with a government. In Iceland by 1916 the Acting Consul Eric Cable5
1Bell, 262–272; the agreement was reached on 26 December 1914. 2Bell, 266, makes this point, showing that Dutch exports were in fact lower than ‘normal’. 3There was an agreement with Denmark in February 1915: Bell, 290. 4The 11 March 1915, Order-in-Council meant early agreements had to be reworked; the addition of cotton to the contraband list on 20 August 1915 (delayed because of the sensitivity of United States cotton exports, but decided on eventually because of its use in munitions), was rapidly followed by cotton agreements with Denmark (21 August), Norway (31 August), and The Netherlands (1 September). 5Cable, Eric Grant, CMG (1887–1970), Acting Consul at Helsingfors 1909, 1911, Vice-Consul at Hamburg 1913, Rotterdam 1914, Acting Consul and Consul in Iceland 1914–1919 (and in charge of French Vice-consulate 1916–1917), Consul Riga 1920, Oslo 1922–1926, Danzig 1926–1929, Portland Oregon 1929–1931, Seattle 1932–1933, Copenhagen 1933–1939, Consul General Cologne 1939, Rotterdam 1939–1940, Ministry of Home Security 1940–1941, Northern Department Foreign Office 1941–1942, Consul- General Zurich 1942–1947, retired 1947. INTRODUCTION 15 was virtually directing economic policy on behalf of the local government.1 In Sweden the pro-German government could not be persuaded to an agreement, and refused to consider The Netherlands solution; some individual agreements were made with firms or trades and the export of British coal was restricted; at the same time the Swedes had a strong negotiating weapon in that there was an important trans-Sweden trade between the western Allies and Russia which Britain was anxious not to see interrupted, at least until after the Bolshevik seizure of power in November 1917. In the end a government agreement was made in May 1918, by which time, with the collapse of Russia and the entry of the USA into the war, it had become more or less irrelevant.2 By then the problem of controlling the import trade to the northern neutrals had been solved in a different way. Early in the war some merchant captains had tried to gain exemption from search and sending- in by acquiring a certificate from British consular representatives at their port of loading. These, from the point of view of the Contraband Committee and the Northern Patrol captains, were all but useless since they were not specific, either to the goods carried or to their origin, and there were suspicions that they were simply purchased. But the idea was perhaps the basis for the Navicert, or ‘Letter of Assurance’ as it was officially called. This was a document which was given as a result of a careful investigation at the point of loading, showing that the goods were as stated, that they were consigned to acceptable recipients, and were within the ration for the particular destination country. It was a vastly elaborate scheme – each item in a cargo required its own Navicert – but it was wholly effective because the goods were inspected before loading, and shippers knew that any items without a Navicert would be viewed with very great suspicion, and so they could legitimately reject such cargoes. By telegraphing copies of manifests, with Navicert numbers, to the Contraband Committee, a ship would be assured of rapid consideration, and perhaps even of an undisturbed passage, since the Committee could indicate that the ship should not be sent in. The British and Allied governments also could be assured that their rules were being enforced – by the neutrals. The beauty of the system lay in the fact that all these measures – the Netherlands Trust, agreements with individual firms, control of coal, rationing, Navicerts, and so on – were actually by and large operated by the neutrals themselves. The neutrals retained a sense of participation
1T. Thorsteinsson, ‘Iceland and the War’, in Shotwell, ed., op. cit. 2Bell, 651–669. 16 THE MARITIME BLOCKADE OF GERMANY and power which was wholly absent when a neutral ship was stopped and sunk by a German U-boat. The British, in effect, enlisted the neutrals as their satellites in the war, which may well be one reason for the anger felt by the Germans when they contemplated the blockade: it was not something they could strike against with any ease, and it looked very much like a continually elaborating cobweb of measures, which bound the neutrals ever more tightly to the Allies and their interests. The only measure the Germans had which could counter this system was the blunt weapon of unrestricted submarine warfare, a cure for the problem which was worse than the disease. The final refinement of the system was the Navicert, which marked the beginning of the end for the Northern Patrol. If every ship had a Navicert for every item of its cargo there was no point in intercepting them. In the last year of the Patrol’s life the number of ships sent in for examination gradually reduced. The only problem then were the ‘blockade-runners’, which were few by this stage in the war. The Navicert system was taken over in its entirety by the USA once that country declared war. Since North America was the source of most of the merchandise which sailed eastwards across the Atlantic this meant that the Northern Patrol could be dispensed with. Most of the ships went to convoy duty.
The Effectiveness of the Blockade The efficacy and war-winning utility of the blockade became an article of faith in British accounts of the war. Certainty was not complete during the war, but afterwards, especially when it was seen that the German civilian population was on the verge of starvation in 1918, the blockade of the wartime years was credited with decisive effect.1 This interpretation was accepted by many Germans, for whom the continuation of the blockade after the Armistice prolonged the agony.2 It was bolstered by statistical evidence, first by the account of Admiral Consett in 1923, based on his experiences as naval attaché in Sweden during the war, whose book bore the unambiguous title The Triumph of Unarmed Forces, and by an internal British government account by A.C. Bell, which was completed in 1937 and under the title The
1E.g., E. Lipson, Europe 1914–1939 (London, 1st edn, 1940, 8th edn, 1960), 306: ‘Through the blockade the British navy exercised a silent but fatal pressure …’, is fairly typical. 2E.g., H. Bohme, An Introduction to the Social and Economic History of Germany, trans. W.R. Lee (Oxford, 1978, originally published in German in 1972), 100: by 1918 ‘Germany was on the brink of collapse. The country’s economic and military resources had been exhausted’, which is a sideways compliment to the blockade. INTRODUCTION 17
Blockade of the Central Powers. In 1939, when war began again, the British government’s strategy under Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was predicated on the theory of blockade being an effective weapon, and was implemented with many assurances that Nazi Germany’s economy was on the verge of collapse, and that the institution of a blockade would soon tip it over the edge.1 Such a policy was soon overtaken by events, of course, but the assumption that the blockade had been decisive in the Allied victory in the Great War continued unchallenged, and is repeated in textbooks to this day. Some doubts do surface, however. The area under blockade was a very large proportion of a continent, not simply one country, for Austria- Hungary, Bulgaria and Ottoman Turkey were included with Germany, and during the war these countries conquered Belgium, northern France, Serbia, Romania, Poland and western Russia. By 1917 the area under blockade was half Europe, and included the rich industrial resources of Germany, Belgium, northern France and Bohemia, and the productive agricultural lands of Hungary, Romania and Poland. The mineral resources of Sweden and the agricultural resources of Denmark and The Netherlands were also largely available to the Central Powers. One of the reasons for the idea of blockade falling out of favour as an explanation for Allied victory in Hitler’s war is the manifest nonsense of attempting to blockade a whole continent – yet that is essentially what the Great War blockade did. There is no doubt that German foreign trade was disrupted by the blockade, at least extra-European trade, and, since that trade was very largely by sea, there is equally no doubt that it was the work of the Tenth Cruiser Squadron which was the effective instrument in its disruption.2
1Lord Chatfield, Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence in Chamberlain’s Cabinet, is reported as saying ‘It might be that eventually Germany would have to capitulate owing to her condition, without any great land fighting. Our great weapon, as he had remarked at previous meetings, was our sea power and blockade, and we were ever tightening the screw’ (PRO, CAB 65/56, 7 March 1940, minutes of a meeting, quoted in D. French, Raising Churchill’s Army (Oxford, 2000), 158). Or as Chamberlain himself put it more pithily: ‘Hitler missed the bus’. Chatfield, of course, was a sailor, an Admiral of the Fleet, but that is no excuse for such a statement as he had made. It can only be a result of the navy’s interpretation of the events of 1914–1918, combined with a wilful misunderstanding of what had happened on the Western Front. It was, however, an accurate statement of the policy of the Chamberlain government in 1939–1940. 2German imports fell to 40% of their value (in gold marks) by 1918 (from 1913); exports fell even more, to less than 30%. Yet this is an ambiguous change, since the freed manufacturing capacity (and workers) was converted to war production: ‘… the tremendous economic decline of the Central Powers between 1914 and 1918 was caused less by the blockade than by the excessive demands made on their economies by the war’, G. Hardach, The First World War, trans. P. and B. Ross (London, 1977), table 6 and pp. 32–34. But the ‘excessive demands’ were partly the result of the blockade! And it was not just an economic matter. 18 THE MARITIME BLOCKADE OF GERMANY
Germany had been becoming increasingly dependent on imports of food and some raw materials before 1914 and so the elimination of its seaborne trade was a serious blow.1 But its effects were inevitably slow in appearing, and it was not for a year and half that any real shortages showed themselves – and then those shortages were not so much in the industrial materials which the blockade had been originally directed against, but in the supply of food to the civilian population. It has been pointed out, however, by Offer in particular, that the food shortage was in large part the result of the inefficient organisation of food production and distribution within Germany.2 Thus it is possible to argue away the blockade’s effectiveness – industrial production continued and the army was scarcely incommoded, food was short because of government inefficiency.3 To discern the fallacy of this view it is only necessary to imagine the difference to the German war effort which the absence of an Allied blockade would have made. Continued German overseas trade would have permitted the continued import of food and scarce raw materials, the continued earning of foreign exchange, an openness to overseas influences and a more confident German foreign policy; above all, it would not have been necessary to resort to unrestricted submarine warfare. The absence of the U-boat campaign of 1917–18 would have meant that the United States would not have needed to come into the war on the Allied side – and it would also have meant the continuation of American trade with Germany and the continued ability of the German state to raise loans on the American money market, rather than the restriction of both of these to the Allies. It does not need any further imagining to see the result: German victory. To that extent the blockade was certainly a war-winning weapon. It was not, however, the decisive weapon, as its vaunters imply. That was the Allied armies on the Western Front, if any ‘weapon’ must be singled out. The effects of the blockade took time to reach deep into the German economy and society, in part because of the reserves which existed, and in part because the blockade was only partly effective for a long time. Further, the most effective part was clearly the denial of adequate food supplies to the German civilian population, which had not even been the prime target of the Allied planners. Indeed it seems probable that the great majority would have been horrified at the
1German imports of food and raw materials from overseas and outside Europe fell to 45% of the total in 1914. 2A. Offer, The First World War: an Agrarian Interpretation (Oxford, 1989). 3N. Ferguson, The Pity of War (London, 1998), 252–255, deliberately iconoclastic in all things, almost argues the blockade into complete ineffectiveness. INTRODUCTION 19 thought that the blockade would hit women and children first and worst. But neither did the submarine’s inventors and developers imagine or plan that it would be used to make attacks on civilian vessels. A further reason for the blockade’s slowness to have an effect was the necessity for the Allies to avoid seriously annoying the United States. Until the various U-boat campaigns, it was the Allied blockade which particularly annoyed the American government, and the declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare in February 1917 came just in time to prevent a serious rupture in Allied–US relations, in which the blockade figured as a major element. Not for the first time a German move rescued the Allies from an approaching predicament, for they had faced an American embargo on financial resources which would have had serious effects.1 At a different level, the effectiveness of the blockade is measurable by the number of ships intercepted by the Tenth Cruiser Squadron, and, even more, by the numbers which they failed to intercept. The former is known and is reported by the admirals in their regular reports, with totals annually, with understandable pride. The number of failed interceptions is necessarily less precise. Estimates were made in the Admiralty, but, despite apparent precision, they must be regarded as the lowest likely numbers: ships undoubtedly got through which the British never knew about. Those which were known to have got through were recorded, presumably by British diplomats and spies in the neutral countries, who could discover them perhaps by looking them up in the newspaper lists of arrivals, perhaps by relying on local informants, perhaps even by going to the docks themselves, but there is plenty of scope in all this for non-recording, since it was in the interests of captains, merchants, consignees, and even neutral governments, to keep success secret. Similarly any ship which got through to Germany would remain unknown, unless the Germans announced it, as they sometimes did. It must be assumed, therefore, that a considerable number of vessels got through which the Admiralty were never aware of. Further, there is no guarantee that those vessels which were intercepted and examined did not carry goods which eventally reached Germany, despite the elaborate British system designed to prevent it. The neutrals were treated as gently as the British could devise, consistent with their incurable suspicion, but the neutrals’ priority was to make a profit and they had no loyalty to either side. Concealment of
1In late 1916 and early 1917, there were serious problems between the Allies and the USA over finance and trade, including a run on the Bank of England in February 1917; cf. K. Burk, Britain, America and the Sinews of War 1914–1918 (London, 1985); Ferguson, Pity of War, 326–329, downplays this. 20 THE MARITIME BLOCKADE OF GERMANY contraband would be instinctive – and there was a strong incentive to do so. As the Brazilian captain explained when he was detained with a cargo of rubber, he had heard of the high price rubber was fetching in Europe and wished to take advantage [204 para. 4]. Other goods besides rubber commanded high prices too – cotton, oil, food, metals – and there were plenty of methods for getting goods through. False manifests, colluded captures by German ships in Danish waters, a sequence of consignees, were only some of the methods which were discovered by the British. And any goods not discovered had obviously got through, though the fact would not be announced. It must be concluded that, while the blockade was largely effective in the end, it was by no means as tight as the British assumed, then and later. Yet the German economy clearly suffered. The lengths to which the Germans went to get supplies through is evidence of that. The neutral ships which made regular runs across the Atlantic were obvious methods, in which small high-value goods might be carried as personal luggage. Consigning goods from German firms overseas to front men in neutral states was a method more suited to bulk goods, which could only be countered by extensive investigations by the Allies. No government which was not suffering would go to the expense of constructing special U-boats to carry valuable cargoes – Deutschland and Bremen – if it was not in desperate need of those goods. Nickel, rubber, oil, tobacco, coffee, were all recorded in the documents in this volume as requiring special treatment, and this is clearly a minimal list. There was one tactic which, surprisingly, the German Navy did not adopt. The ships of the Tenth Cruiser Squadron were large, and their approximate location was known. They were originally civilian vessels, but were certainly acting as armed warships. To U-boats they should surely have been obvious targets. In 1917 several were in fact sunk, though they were not apparently targeted as vessels of the Northern Patrol, only as victims of the indiscriminate sinking policy. But a deliberate concentration on these ships earlier in the war would have surely reaped a good harvest. Not only would a warship have been sunk, but the Tenth Cruiser Squadron would then have been reduced in strength, perhaps opening a gap in the blockade, and it would have to be replaced by another cruiser taken from its primary task of transporting goods and people. When the Moewe escaped into the Atlantic in 1916, four ships were detached from the Tenth Cruiser Squadron to join the twenty-strong flotilla which went to hunt for it. They failed to find it, even though the Moewe haunted the shipping lanes. This was a clear bonus for the German tactic, quite apart from the 25 ships captured or sunk, and a large number of ships delayed by remaining in port for fear INTRODUCTION 21 of being caught. And part of that bonus was the weakening of the Northern Patrol for several months. Of course, it was not easy to locate individual ships at sea, as Moewe’s career showed, but the location of Tenth Cruiser Squadron patrol lines was predictable within fairly narrow limits, and these cannot have been much of a secret in Scandinavian merchant naval circles. When India was sent to watch the Norwegian coast near the Vest Fjord in August 1915, it proved to be very easy to sink her. A concentration on the blockaders would surely have damaged the blockade very seriously. It must be concluded, therefore, that the blockade had only a limited effectiveness, though one whose effects increased with time, and which became wholly effective only with the entry of the USA into the war, combined with the universal use of the Navicert. The effects on Germany were perhaps marginal overall, but with a deeper impact on the availability of certain goods, some of which were crucial to the war economy. The effectiveness of the blockade was, however, multiplied by the poor organisation instituted by the German government. Better distribution of food and a more sensible allocation system would have mitigated much of the blockade’s effects.1 And, of course, by blaming the British blockade for the shortages in Germany, the German government both transferred the blame to the enemy and missed the real problem, which was itself. There is, however, a further, less tangible effect which is customarily ignored in the passion for quantifiable evidence. One of Germany’s complaints before the war had been of the ‘encirclement’ which the Triple Entente of Britain, France, and Russia appeared to be enforcing. The addition of Romania, Serbia and Italy to Germany’s enemies in 1914 to 1916 reinforced that effect, and the blockade completed the encirclement geography. Contact with the rest of the world was not wholly eliminated, but psychologically the dreaded encirclement appeared to have come about in fact as well as accusation. The inability of the German Navy to break through the blockade increased the sense of being stifled, as did the complete failure of any other state to join the Central Powers after the accession of Bulgaria in 1915. At the same time the Allied powers received regular accretions to the list of their allies, even if many of them were of little military value.2 The squeeze
1This is the burden of Offer’s work (op. cit.). 2After the end of 1914, only Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in active warfare; by contrast the Allies were joined by Italy in 1915, by Albania, Portugal and Romania in 1916, by the USA, Cuba, Panama, Greece, Thailand, Liberia, China and Brazil in 1917 – and these were spaced out, not all at once. 22 THE MARITIME BLOCKADE OF GERMANY on resources, the spreading hunger, the cessation of foreign trade, the military stalemate, were all made worse by the steady drip of declarations of war from all quarters of the world. The effectiveness of the blockade was thus neither so great as the British navalists claimed nor so minimal as the latest revisionists suggest. Its effect was, above all, cumulative, and it could only be made approximately complete if and when the USA participated in it fully. So until 1917 there were gaps and leaks and holes through which supplies could reach Germany, but from 1915 onwards the quantities were decreasing. The British could certainly have tightened up their blockade in that time if they had wished, but only at the cost of alienating the USA, and while the USA might not have gone so far as to declare war on Britain over the issue, it would certainly have been able to make life very unpleasant for the Allies. It was a triumph for Allied diplomacy, and no less a triumph for the behaviour of the enforcers of the blockade, above all the sailors of the Northern Patrol, that US–Allied relations were no more than disturbed over the issue. The upheavals which afflicted US–German relations were much more spectacular and much of that affliction was the result of the behaviour of individual German officers, diplomats and U-boat captains. It was an indication of just what could have gone wrong for the Allies if the conduct of the Tenth Cruiser Squadron had been less seamanlike, courteous and intelligent.
The Documents The main sequence of documents in this collection is the Reports of Proceedings by Admirals de Chair and Tupper as commanders of the Tenth Cruiser Squadron, forming an almost continuous account of events from the start of the war to the dismantling of the Northern Patrol at the end of 1917. The only gaps in the sequence come when the Admirals returned to a southern base, leaving command to one of their subordinates, whose reports are not always incorporated. Attached to this sequence are a variety of other documents emanating from several sources. The Admiralty, as always, was a profuse source of letters, minutes, memoranda and telegrams, but many of those documents are of very limited interest, so that only those pertaining to the overall work of the squadron are included. The Commander-in-Chief, particularly when that office was held by Jellicoe, produced more material, as did the commanders in Orkney and Shetland. Replies to these by de Chair and Tupper are included where worthwhile and relevant. Below the level of control, policy and command there are three types of document. Several ships’ captains produced worthwhile documents, INTRODUCTION 23 notably Captain Vivian in Patia during 1915, which illustrate at a stage closer to events the work being done. The Reports of Proceedings by Captain Vivian and by Captain Walter in Victorian suggest the sort of material which formed the bases for the Admirals’ own reports, and indicate the very varied reports which could be made. Then there are reports written by boarding officers, officers in charge of armed guards who were put on board the intercepted ships to take them into a British port. To a degree these are somewhat misleading since such reports were only made when something out of the ordinary happened – the ship was sunk, say, or driven to a Norwegian port. Nevertheless almost all of them are remarkable human documents, showing the high qualities of these junior officers, usually RNR or RNVR men, in very unpleasant and difficult circumstances. For the regular routine of the patrol there are extracts from diaries by a variety of officers. For the conditions of the seamen there is much less to go on. Some information may be inferred from comments by officers, but only one document produced by a sailor has been discovered: by Able Seaman Style in Alcantara. It is a diary, not very revealing, but one which indicates an ordinary sailor coping as well as he can with a very boring life, one where intercepting a ship was an event, and the northern lights, or a visit ashore on Shetland, a milestone. The diary is continuous, but here it has been separated into monthly sections. For the men working in the worst conditions, the stokers, it is necessary to rely on comments by Tupper (not de Chair) in his inspections as noted in his Reports, or the savage remarks by Commodore Benson [210], and the hapless ‘mutiny’ by eight men in Teutonic in 1916. For this it seems clear that ultimate responsibility must lie with the lackadaisical response of the Admiralty to the problems of pay and food, both of which assumed abnormally great importance to men in hot, dirty places, doing physically demanding work. In the less stressful spaces of Admiralty offices, they were, no doubt, thought to be of minor importance. Two further sources have been resorted to. The majority of the intercepted ships were sent in for examination at three ports, Kirkwall in Orkney, Lerwick in Shetland, and Stornoway in the Hebrides. There they were examined by Customs officers, who reported on them to the Contraband Committee in London. No worthwhile documents from the Customs records from Stornoway were located, but there are several from Kirkwall and Lerwick which show the sort of work done and the conditions of work.1 The Contraband Committee, as befits such a
1The Stornoway records, such as they are, are kept in the Scottish Record Office in Edinburgh; the Kirkwall and Lerwick Records are in the local Record Offices in those 24 THE MARITIME BLOCKADE OF GERMANY bureaucratic organisation, compiled comprehensive and detailed minutes, which were printed and bound and indexed, and these have also yielded a number of documents.1 These two sources have been used mainly for the purpose of following up the individual ships mentioned in the various reports made by the Admirals (and some captains) on the Tenth Cruiser Patrol. It was one of the regular complaints by these men, and by others, that they were working hard and in dangerous conditions to locate and intercept the ships, only to discover that the Committee or the Customs had released them. An attempt has been made to follow up each and every ship mentioned as being detained – though this is not the whole number sent in – to discover its fate; similarly the deeds of the German submarines are frequently referred to, and they are identified as far as possible (based on the detailed itineraries of the individual U- boats in Spindler’s book).2
cities. I am grateful to the record keepers in all three places for their assistance – particularly at Lerwick where it seemed for a time that the records might be closed for a hundred years; this turned out to have been reduced, much to my relief after the journey there. 1A copy is in the PRO, TS series. 2A. Spindler, Der Handelskrieg mit U-booten (5 vols, Berlin and Frankfurt-on-Main, 1932–1966). BIBLIOGRAPHY
Most reputable histories of the Great War contain at least a reference to the blockade, and perhaps a mention of the Tenth Cruiser Squadron or the Northern Patrol. Only the Official Histories have much to say on either. Specialist studies of the economic aspects of the war say more, but are of little use in matters relating to the sea. I list here some books and articles found particularly useful on both subjects, and a list of works on the neutral powers and the blockade.
1. The Blockade Arnold-Forster, W., The Blockade, 1914–1919 Before the Armistice and After, Oxford Pamphlets on World Affairs 17 (Oxford, 1939). Bell, Archibald C., A History of the Blockade of Germany and of the Countries Associated with her in the Great War, 1914–1918 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1937) (published in 1961). Beveridge, Sir William, Blockade and the Civilian Population, Oxford Pamphlets on World Affairs 24 (Oxford, 1939). Cochin, Denys (ed.), Les Organisations du blocus en France pendant la guerre 1914–1918 (Paris, 1926). Consett, Rear-Admiral Montagu W.W.P., The Triumph of Unarmed Forces, 1914–1918 (London, 1923). Devlin, P., Too Proud to Fight: Woodrow Wilson’s Neutrality (Oxford, 1974). Fayle, C. Ernest, Seaborne Trade (3 vols, London, 1920–1924). Guichard, Louis, Histoire du blocus naval, 1914–18 (Paris, 1922). Jack, D.T. Studies in Economic Warfare (New York, 1944). Lank, Rudolf, Der Wirtschaftskrieg und die Neutralen, 1914–1918 (Berlin, 1940). Martini, Peter Albert, Blockade im Weltkrieg (Berlin and Bonn, 1932). May, Ernest R., The World War and American Isolation, 1914–1917 (Cambridge, Mass., 1959). Medlicott, W.N., The Economic Blockade, Vol. I, History of the Second World War, UK Civil Series (London, 1952). Offer, Alvin, The First World War, an Agrarian Interpretation (Oxford, 1989). Ritchie, H., The Navicert System during the World War (London, 1937). Salter, J.A., Allied Shipping Control, An Experiment in International Administration, Economic and Social History of the War, British series, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Oxford, 1921). Siney, Marion C., ‘British Official Histories of the Blockade of the Central Powers during the First World War’, The American Historical Review 58 (1963), 392–401. Siney, Marion C., ‘The Allied Blockade Committee and the Inter-Allied Trade Committees – The Machinery of Economic Warfare, 1917–1918’, in K. Bourne and D.C. Watt (eds), Studies in International History (Hamden, Conn., 1967), 330–344. Siney, Marion C., The Allied Blockade of Germany 1914–1916 (Ann Arbor, 1957). Vincent, Paul G., The Politics of Hunger: the Allied Blockade of Germany 1915–1919 (Athens, Ohio, 1989).
2. The Northern Patrol Brocklebank, J. (ed.), Tenth Cruiser Squadron, Northern Patrol (Liverpool, 1974). Chatterton, E. Keble, The Big Blockade (London, 1932). Corbett, J.S. and H. Newbolt, Naval Operations, 5 vols, History of the Great War (London, 1920–1931). De Chair, Sir Dudley, The Sea is Strong (London, 1961). Dittmar, F.J. and J.J. Colledge, British Warships 1914–1919 (London, 1972). Grant, R.M., U-boats Destroyed (London, 1964). Grant, R.M., U-Boat Intelligence (London, 1969). Hoseason, John T., My Life at Sea, 1950/1960 (typescript in Shetland Record Office). Hurd, Sir Archibald, The Merchant Navy, 3 vols, Official History of the Great War (London, 1921–1929). Langmaid, K., The Sea Raiders (London, 1963). Liddle, P.H., The Sailor’s War 1914–1918 (Poole, 1985). Lloyds Reports of Prize Cases (London, 1915–1918). Marder, A., From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow (5 vols, London, 1961–1970). Spindler, Arno, Der Handelskrieg mit U-booten (5 vols, Berlin and Frankfurt-am-Main, 1932–1966). The Tenth Cruiser Squadron during the Command of Admiral de Chair 1914–1916 (London, 1921). Tupper, Sir Reginald, Reminiscences (London, 1929).
3. The Northern Neutrals Derry, T.K., A History of Modern Norway, 1814–1972 (Oxford, 1973). Kaarsted T., Great Britain and Denmark, 1914–1920 (Odense, 1979). McKercher, B.J.C. and K.E. Nielson, ‘“The Triumph of Unarmed Forces”: Sweden and the Allied Blockade of Germany 1914–1917’, Journal of Strategic Studies 7 (1984), 178–99. The Netherlands and the World War, Studies in the War History of a Neutral, vol. II, Economic and Social History of the War, Netherlands series, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (New Haven, 1928). Riste, Olav, The Neutral Ally, Norway’s relations with belligerent powers in the first world war (Oslo, 1965). Scott, F.D., Sweden, the Nation’s History (Minneapolis, 1977). Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland in the World War, Economic and Social History of the World War, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (New Haven, 1930). Vigness, Paul G., The Neutrality of Norway in the World War (Stanford, 1932).