LAND AND 57. ATE R. 
April 3, 1915. 
THE WAR BY WATER. 
By FRED T. JANE. 
NOTE.— Tills Article has been submilied to llie Press Bureau, >vltkli does not object to flie publicalloa as ceosored, aad takes a* 
responsibility for the correctness ol the statements. 
THE MEDITERRANEAN AND DARDANELLES 
UP to the moment of writing (Monday evening) 
tliere is a species of lull in the Dardanelles opera- 
. lions and a tendency to believe that the set-back 
received by the French Fleet was more serious 
than at first imagiuod. The paucity of news 
concerning the French is doubtless mainly responsible for 
this, also the information that naval reinforcements are being 
despatched. This, of course, would, on the face of it, seem 
to suggest that the Allied Fleet has cither been found insuffi- 
cient tor the task in hand or else that it has been damaged 
more badly than we have been led to believe. 
Actually, there appears no reason for despondency of 
any kind. No one at all conversant with the various factors 
involved ever expected that there v/onld be any sort or kind 
of walkover. The forts have possibly proved more formidable 
than was first anticipated, but pei-haps the chief of the " more 
formidable than expected " factors is the mobile artillery 
attack on the mine sweepers. 
Even here, however, it is well not to draw too serious 
conclusions about the officialh/ unexpected having happened. 
Taking all the information available it would appear 
tliat the first big attack which led to the destruction of the 
four forts at the entrance was somewhat of the nature of a 
reconnaissance in force. It w^ould look as though the in- 
tegral idea was to test the defences and weaken them so far 
as might be preparatory to the landing of a strong military 
force on the Gallipoli Peninsula, such as is now taking place, 
and that there was no deliberate intention of attempting to 
force the Narrows. To which may be added (as surmised 
last week) the creation of a diversion to allow time for a Rus- 
sian laud attack from the Bosphorus direction to develop. 
There was, perhaps, the further consideration that with 
large naval activities taking place so near homo Turkish 
military operations against Egypt would bo heavily handi- 
capped. It is, indeed, quite within the zone of possibilities 
that owing to the, perhaps unexpected, rapidity of the recent 
Turkish movement against Egypt, the Allied Fleet com- 
menced operations at an earlier date than had been originally 
intended. This at any rate would be a quite logical use of a 
Fleet in co-operation with military operations, and a clear 
use of the potentialities of Sea Power. History teems with 
instances of warships being employed to exert pressure at one 
point in order to aSect the issue at some other and far 
distant spot. 
Any of the above are far more reasonable suppositions 
than the hasty assumption of "someone has blundered," or 
that the task has been urderestimated by those responsibld 
for its inception. There is every expectation of eventual 
victory, but roseate anticipations of its early accomplishment 
are best left alone. Far more probably there will be slow and 
arduous progress, culminating in a sudden and perhaps un- 
expected collapse of the defence. 
From now onward we may expect the attack to assume 
three distinct phases : 
(1) Purely naval operations. 
(2) Purely military operations on shore. 
(3) Concerted joint operations, resulting from the inde- 
pendent actions of the first two. 
This last, if the teaching of history goes for anything, 
will be the critical stage of affairs. In the past combined 
naval and military operations have always had an element of 
chance about them; and been brilliantly successful or dismal 
failures, according to how far or how little the naval and 
military commanders have understood each others' limita- 
tions, and possibilities. 
AUSTRIAN SUBiMARINES. 
A statement has been circulated to the effect that Austria 
Is building twenty large submarines v/Ith a view to a " sub- 
marine blockade " of the Mediterranean. That she is build- 
ing them is probable enough; but the rest of the story is 
rather absurd. Not only is Austria faced with tlie problem 
of finding trained crews, but she is also confronted with the 
problem of how to get through the French blockade in the 
'Adriatic, to say nothing of bases and the return home again. 
Probably the real idea is some kind of counter-attack on 
the Allies in the Dardanelles, or on trade therethrough later 
on, when Constantinople has fallen. The threat can safely 
be heavily discounted, whatever form it may ultimately take. 
SUBMARINE AND TORPEDO OPERATIONS. 
This being the first war in which submarines have taken 
a real part they were bound to bo a factor of varying import- 
ance with a hypothetical value rising and falling until the 
submarine had adjusted itself into the general scheme of 
things. The past saw a precisely similar process in connec- 
tion with torpedo craft. In the early days of these nearly 
every admiral held views totally different from those of every 
other admiral — these views running the whole gamut from 
omnipotence to impotence. 
This variation of opinion was little if at all due to pre- 
dilection, progresslvism, or conservatism; but almost entirely 
caused by personal experiences, which in the early da/s 
varied very considerably. A brief study of the evolution of 
torpedo craft will theretore go far to elucidate the position 
of submarines in the present war; all the more so, perhaps, 
because Admiral Fisher has been so closely identified v.'ith 
the progress of both arms, and his work in both cases has 
folIo?/ed the same general idea. 
Like the submarine, the torpedo-boat first appeared na 
a very trivial craft armed with a very inefficient weapon. la 
the American Civil War of some fifty years ago it was a 
hybrid sort of vessel — half submarine, half torpedo-boat, 
seemingly just as likely to develop in one direction as in the 
otlier. In the years that followed it developed as an above- 
water craft, in part owing to the difficulties which theti 
existed in connection with suitable submarine motive power, 
in part owing to the fact that in the vrav of 1877 the Russians 
extemporised launches as spar torpedo boats, and made a ivar 
factor of them, in part because of the advent of the White- 
head torpedo, which rendered the boat's actual contact witk 
the enemy no longer necessary. There was no adapting tk« 
Whitehead to the elementary idea of a submarine. 
Some two or three years later, the old It'flfxible (the 
Dread nouf/ht of her day) was equipped with a couple of small 
torpedo-boats, which she carried as an integral portion of her 
armament, and It was Lord Fisher (then captain of the In- 
ffxibh) who, asked what he would do if he met a warship 
equal to his own, replied that he would probably not engaga 
her and risk receiving as much damage as he could inflict, 
but wait till night and then send his torpedo-boats to attack 
the enemy. 
Thereafter Lord Fisher was closely associated with the 
development of the torpedo-boat as a self-contained sea-going 
offensive arm. Since he was the creator- of the Vernon tor- 
pedo school he may be regarded as the father of our torpedo- 
service in very early days. 
This development was later on attended with varying 
fortunes. For example, In the 1890 naval manoeuvres, the 
entire fleet of one side was torpedoed almost immediately 
after " War was declared."" The circumstance was more or 
less hushed up at the time so far as the general public was 
concerned — and the event ' ' was considered not to have taken 
place " on the grounds of some technical point in the reading 
of the rules. 
Still, here was the torpedo-boat in a state of omnipo- 
tence. In the following year, however, certain special torpedo 
manoeuvres wore carried out with entirely different results, 
the torpedo-boats being hunted down and rendered impotent 
to an extraordinary degree. In the next year again somewhat 
sirailar results occurred. I aTO writing as an eye-witness of 
these various operations and of many things which happened, 
but, very properly, did not find their way into print at tha 
time. The swing of the pendulum of oiilnion was extra- 
ordinary. 
These various operations ultimately led to the evolullon 
of "destroyers," on the homeopatlilc principle that "the 
torpedo-boat is the correct reply to the torpedo-boat." 
Generally speaking, there followed a very general conviction 
tliat the torpedo menace was an cmpLy phase; a state of 
opinion which endured till Lord Fisher (then Conimander-iu- 
C^hlef in the Mediterranean) startled the v/orld by giviu^ up 
the time-honoured "steam tactics" and substituting lli.;i-e- 
for the svasion of torpedo craft. 
It is indicative of " opinion " at that ti:v,e that for this 
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