Atlantic Warfare Today : 423 



seemed to be adequate for the movement across the Atlantic of men, 

 foods and the materials of war, but that represented the crux of the 

 entire war problem. The French, to hold the western front, de- 

 pended in great measure on British support, not only on British 

 troops to hold an important part of the front but also to supply its 

 corresponding part of foods, arms, ammunition, etc. The ability of 

 the British to maintain their section of the western war depended 

 on shipping and the protection of shipping not only from the British 

 Isles to the continent but from all the dominions and colonies also 

 to the British Isles. On top of this the American contribution in turn 

 depended on securing or building up adequate transatlantic transport 

 with naval protection adequate to give the transport a reasonable 

 prospect of safe arrival at the ports of Great Britain or of France. 



On May 31 and June i, 1916, the English Grand Fleet under Jel- 

 licoe and the German High Seas Fleet under Scheer met in the 

 North Sea in the Battle of Jutland. The big ships in the major fleets 

 might have come to blows but actually did not. Most of the actual 

 fighting took place between the German battle cruisers under Hip- 

 per and the British battle cruisers under Admiral Beatty. In this en- 

 gagement, though the Germans had fewer ships, they proved them- 

 selves superior in battle tactics and in gunnery so that with a loss of 

 six small ships they destroyed six sizable British vessels. Had the 

 large ships composing the major fleets actually met it was anticipated 

 that the British would have inflicted serious losses on the Germans 

 for they were superior in numbers and in firepower, but Scheer was 

 able to effect an escape for his fleet. 



In April 191 7 the prospect of safe arrival of Allied shipping to the 

 continent was not reasonable. In the submarine attack on merchant 

 vessels, armed and unarmed, belligerent and neutral, the Germans 

 had invented a new, ruthless and therefore effective type of warfare. 

 The captains and crews of the vessels that were then crossing the 

 Atlantic from various scattered points to converge on the British 

 Isles were experiencing a new form of war about which they were 

 poorly informed, for which they were ill-equipped and almost 

 unarmed and in the conduct of which they were at this time without 

 'leadership. 



The individual ships were left pretty much to their own devices 

 and they pursued varied individual courses under the belief that in 

 this way they presented less of a target to enemy attack. Special de- 

 vices for detecting and combating submarines had not yet come into 

 effective use. Through coundess watches they scanned the horizon 



