8 
LAND & WATER 
January 4, 1917 
The Sea War in 1916 
By Arthur Pollen 
AT the beginning of a new year it may be useful 
/\ to take stock of the naval position. From the 
/ ^ lirst clay of the war we have all taken it as 
_Z A-axiomatic that the superiority of the British 
fleet would give us command of the sea, and that this 
command alone would assure to the Allies an ultimate 
winning position over the enemy. Nor is it to be doubted 
lor an instant that botji expectations have been realized. 
But still less can it be denied that, considering the prompti- 
tude \sith which our conuuand asserted itself by the total 
suspension of the enemy's trade and, not less strikingly, 
b\- Great Britain's immediate freedom to conduct military 
f)perations oversea against the chief enemy, there arc two 
anomalies which seem to distinguish the present exercise 
of sea power from its exhibition in previous wars. The 
war has reached its culminating point without a single 
decisive engagement at sea — and after two years of 
almost absolute command of sea communications, we 
have, during the last five months, seen these connnunica- 
tions attacked with disconcerting success. 1 jjropose. 
therefore to discuss, very cursorily, why these abnor- 
malities exist. 
The advantages of superior sea power in war are familiar 
enough. They include the protection of the coast, sea 
supple, and colonies of the belligerent possessing it, and 
the capacity to inva'de the enemy, to crush his trade, and 
. blockade his ports, and to isolate and, therefore ensure 
the fall of his oversea possessions. Coast. protection and 
the assurance of the safety of our own sea supplies and 
colonies are, so to speak, the negative side of sea power, 
though positive enough in their results. To invade and 
besiege may be considered its direct military employment. 
Superiority at sea always has and always will be con- 
ditioned by the possession and right employment of the 
fleet of the most powerful units, and it may exist in 
either of the two states. It may be quite absolute. 
This is always the case when the sea forces of the enemy 
are cither totally destroyed in battle, or so crippled as to 
be powerless. But it takes two to make a battle, and 
sea war differs from land war in this, that one belligerent, 
if he possesses adequately protected harbours, may 
withdraw his forces from the field of war altogether. 
Hence winning of absolute superiority by battle is not to 
be attained by the will and resolution of one side only. 
Without battle, however, absolute superiority is ^ill 
virtually obtained if the side that is w illing to fight can so 
mask and confine the enemy's sea forces — either by irre- 
movable barriers such as mines, or by the threat of 
immediate destruction by the attack of greater numbers 
of ships of greater force — as to keep them idle and 
completely demobilised. But where the superior power 
can neither force the enemy to decisive battle, nor com- 
pletely neutralise his fleet, so that it is still open to him 
to face the risks involved in seeking the battle he has 
hitherto avoided, then the superiority of the seemingly 
stronger fleet may be called conditional. 
Qualified Command of the Sea 
Commonly speaking, command of the sea — a state of 
things in which the advantages set out above accrue to 
the lielligerent possessing it — follows from superiority, 
whether absolute or conditional. But that command in 
turn may be absolute or qualified, according to the nature 
and numbers of the lesser sea forces possessed by both 
sides, and the relation which their respective bases bear 
to the main lines of sea traffic of their opponents. Thus, 
Trafalgar established Britain's superiority at sea as 
absolute, and, once decisively won, carried with it as 
complete command as the nature of sea force at that 
time permitted. But it was a command that was always 
qualified, because the Atlantic and Mediterranean ports 
possessed by the enemy lay on our chief trade routes, and 
fast armed sailing vessels could not be prevented from 
taking a heavy toll of our ships. In this, the last ten 
years of the NapoJeonic war showed in sharp contrast 
with the first six months of this war. From 1806 to 
1815 our superiority was absolute and our command 
qualified, while, after the first few months of the present 
war — when the ten or dozen commerce raiders had all 
been run down, destroyed or neutralised — our superiority 
at sea was conditional — because it was still open for the 
German fleet to seek decisive action- while our com- 
mand was absolute, because our transports and shipping 
were safe from attack; invasion was impossible, the 
enemy's oversea trade has ceased to exist, and could not 
be revived, all our colonies were safe, and every German 
colony threatened without hope of help from another 
country. 
.Since then there has clearly been a very great change. 
The fleets have met, but without establishing the 
superiority of our battle fleets in an absolute and decisive 
manner. And two and a half years of war have not 
enabled us to make it quite impossible to neutralise the 
power and influence of the enemy's main forces. (In 
this connection, however, it is to be remembered that 
since the enemy's fleet was repaired, it has, so far as the 
})ublic know, only ventured outside its harbours three 
times, and on each occasion has had one or more vessels 
successfully attacked by British submarines. Some 
'progress at any rate, has been made towards the de- 
mobilisation of the enemy's fleet, though its complete 
neutralisation has not been achieved.) It remains then 
that our superiority is still conditional, as it has been 
from the beginning. And, meantime, the submarine 
attack on our sea supplies, as recently developed, has 
qualified our sea conmiand to a very unexpected extent. 
Are these two phenomena dependent one on the 
other ? It is, I take it, agreed that were the German 
Fleet destroyed, the problems involved in the use of mines, 
the close blockade of the submarine exits, etc., would be 
radically changed in our favour. .And if so, it is essential 
to ask : Is the continuance of this position due to the 
strategy which we have pursued, or does it arise simply 
from the determination of the enemy to avoid a decisive 
issue ? 
The Rival Strategics 
It would be natural to think that the Battle 
of Jutland, in which the whole German Fleet met 
the whole of ours, and was wTthin fighting range of 
for two hours, ought to afford us complete data for 
answering these questions. But as a matter of fact 
it does not, for the reason of the change in the weather 
conditions that took place. In the first phase, W'hen the 
battle cruisers only were engaged, the seeing conditions 
were as favourable as are likely to be obtained in normal 
conditions in the North Sea. During the second phase, 
when the British battle cruisers, reinforced by the Fifth 
Battle Squadron drew the united German fleet up to Sir 
John Jellicoe, and were continuously engaged with the lead- 
ing eight or ten ships, those conditions got steadily worse. 
And they continued to deteriorate from a quarter past 
six when the Grand Fleet deployed for action, until 8.20, 
when the last of the enemy was seen. This change in the 
seeing conditions robs Jutland of its value as an index to 
the supposed strategies for the following reasons. We 
simply do not know whether Admiral Scheer knew that 
the Grand Fleet was out. We therefore do not know 
if he sought action with it. It was not weather in which 
Zeppelins could scout effectively before mid-day, and 
after five o'clock, when the advance cruisers of the two 
sides might have got into visual contact had the at- 
mosphere been clear, all long range scouting from the 
sea level had become impossible. To say that Admiral 
Scheer, while he did not know that the Grand Fleet was 
out, showed, by continuing to follow up Sir David Beatty, 
a uillingness to risk an encounter with the Grand Fleet, 
does not answer the question, because it only showed 
that he was willing to risk an encounter when long range 
gunnery would be ineffective, and the risks of close action 
