October 19, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
Trafalgar Day 
By Arthur Pollen 
THIS' week, for the third time during the war, we 
commemorate the anni\ersary of Trafalgar. 
In 1914, this day, whose, name proclaims the 
most glorious deed of our history, found us in 
a state of curious uncertainty as to our naval power. 
It is true that within very few days of the opening of war 
all German commerce, had been swept from the sea and 
in very few days more British transports were landing 
our army in France as if no German fleet existed, so that 
two of the most important fruits of predominance at 
sea seemed truly to be ours. It is also true that within 
a few weeks British cruisers and destroyers had swept into 
German waters and Vicc-Admiral Beatty had had his 
battle cruisers almost into the enemy's harbours. But 
since then German sea power had made itself felt in none 
too pleasant a fashion. Emden and Karlsruhe, were both 
in mid-career — and our shipping losses amounted to 
many thousands of pounds a day. Two only of the Ger- 
man commerce raiders had been met and sunk — Kaiser 
Wilhclm der Crosse by Highflyer, and the Cap Trafalgar — 
surely an ill fated name for a German ship — by the armed 
liner Carmania. But on the whole the balance of naval 
losses was heavily against iis. Amphion and Speedy 
had been mined ; Pathfmdcr had been sunk by a des- 
troyer, Dwarf rammed by Nachtigall, Pegasus destroyed 
by Koenigsberg and the three Cressys had been torpedoed 
by U 9. The news that Hawke had also succumbed had 
just been received, and what was worse, the failure of the 
Naval Brigade at Antwerp had just become public 
property. 
Perhaps more discouraging than any of these events 
was the initial failure of the British and French naval 
forces in the Mediterranean to divine the purpose 
of the Germans in sending the Coeben and the Breslau 
to the Straits. By October we all realised how much we 
had lost in not preventing these ships joining up with the 
Turks and so securing an ally for the Central Powers 
whose adhesion was, to a great ejctent, to determine 
the character of the war. In spite then of the fact that 
our sea communications seemed safe, and those of the 
enemy deiinitely cut off, the position on Trafalgar Day, 
i()r4, was in a naval sense, the most discouraging and 
depressing that we have experienced.' 
It was at this crisis that Lord Fisher, with characteristic 
self sacrifice and courage, and with an energy that belied 
his years, accepted Mr. Churchill's invitation to succeed 
Prince Louis of Battenberg as First Sea Lord. His 
accession did much to restore a very gravely shaken 
public confidence. The worst blows were to tall after 
Lord Fisher had taken over. Rumours, that could not 
be suppressed, ran from mouth to mouth that the bases 
of the Grand Meet were unprotected, and men wondered 
whether the fate that had fallen on Cressy, Ahoukir, Hogue, 
Hawke, Speedy, and Niger might not be in store for some 
of the capital ships on whose capacity to win a great sea 
victory were founded all the hopes of the Alhance. 
Then new rumours started that at least one unit had 
succumbed to under-water attack and ,that the Grand 
Fleet was, to put it baldly, fugitive. These things 
set each nerve on edge, "so that it was well that 
by the time the news of Coroncl and the East Coast 
bombardment came something had been done to 
give us greater confidence that the Navy was at 
last in naval hands. The cloud was soon to lift. 
Within a month- Emden was fought and captured by 
Sydney, and von Spec's squadron surprised and destroyed 
by Sturdee at the Falkland Islands. The prestige of the 
Admiralty, almost hopelessly gone on the Day of Trafal- 
gar, was by Christmas as high as it could conceivably be. 
i'hc new year opened with the tragic loss of Formidable- — 
the last of Germany's submarine successes against British 
warships in h(jme waters for a very long time. And 
before the end of the month the memory of these, and of 
all other losses, was wiped out by the Battle of the 
Dogger Bank, when Sir David Beatty chased \on Hipper 
the whole width of the North Sea, and was robbed of a 
complete and final victory by a chance injury to his flag- 
ship. Thus the Admiral, who in the first month of war 
had carried our sea forces to the very entrance of the 
German ports and had there harried and sunk his light 
craft and cruisers, throwing a contemptuous challenge 
to the High Seas Fleet — a challenge which that fleet 
dared not accept — now closed the intervening period of 
naval darkness and doubt by a second enterprise as 
brilliant as the first. Our first Trafalgar anniversary 
then, found us when our naval fortunes were at their 
lowest, when nevertheless they were on the eve of being 
raised higher than ever before. 
How did things stand in the following year ? There 
had still been no battle between the main forces. The 
enemy had made no effort to reopen his sea communica- 
tions ; it looked as if he had definitely abandoned the 
idea of ever disputing the command of the sea with us. 
Attack on the Dardanelles 
When, after the battle of the Falkland Islands, the 
First Lord of the Admiralty— cheerily taking the North 
Sea position as equivalent to victory— found himself 
without, a naval care in all the world, he became obsessed 
with the crazy idea that the guns of our pre-Dreadnought 
battle fleet could batter down the Turkish defences of the 
Dardanelles, force a way into the sea of Marmora and 
compel the capitulation of Constantinople. In 1797 
Napoleon conceived the idea of seizing the British Empire 
in the East by conquering Egypt, and proceeding-then to a 
repetition of what Alexander the Great had done fifteen 
centuries before. The idea that India could be con- 
quered without the use of sea power was not intrinsically 
so mad as that Constantinople coul(J be conquered with- 
out the employment of an army. Strategically it was 
very doubtful if the path of victory over the Central 
Powers could possibly lie along the line of striking their 
only Ally at the extremity. Those who urged that, if 
there was a military force to spare from the western field, 
it should be sent to strengthen the isolated Serbians 
and Montenegrins, while Bulgaria was still doubtful 
and the sympathy of Greece was with their neighbours, 
were probably right, apart altogether from political and 
tactical consideration 
But tactically the forcing of the Dardanelles by ships 
alone was from the first obviously impossible, and 
as a purely naval effort doomed to failure. And the 
necessity of mihtary co-operation being from the 
first clear, to make the attempt with naval forces alone 
was not only to incur certain and costly losses, but to do 
all that was possible, by giving the enemy full warning, to 
make the failure of a rightly constituted expedition in- 
evitable.' Misuse of sea forces then had by Trafalgar 
Day 1915 once more brought our naval reputation down. 
Meantime, the enemy's reply to the loss of the ocean 
pathways for his ships[was an attempt to make the Allied 
use of them impossible, w^hether by their own or neutral 
ships. It must always remain a curiosity of history that 
it was the Germans, the weaker power at sea, and not we, 
so much the stronger, who originated the policy of 
blockade in this Avar. Until March 1915 there was no 
interference with neutral ships using German ports so 
long as their cargoes carried no contraband. The political, 
diplomatic, legal difiiculties in the way of the Alhes 
enforcing a blockade were undoubtedly enormous. It 
took almost a full year before anything approaching a 
strict embargo on the entry of food into the German 
territories was made effective. The Germans, to do them 
justice, went for their object entirely untrammelled by 
the disturbing thought that their conduct would strain 
their, relations with neutral countries. Their method 
was perfectly simple, and remains (|uite simple to this 
day. Any ship bound for an alhed port is to be sunk. 
W\i\\ this object, as the Americans were informed with 
engaging frankness before the campaign began, the waters 
surrounding England would be proclaimed a war zone, 
