Ships and Empires
THE appearance of the second volume of A. J. Marder's From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow (O.U.P., 60s.) is an event of the greatest impor- tance for all students of naval history. To the shrewd analysis of the pre-war volume is now added a brillPant blend of tactical narrative with considerations of strategy, politics and public opinion; Professor Marder would be the last to claim that the Official History of Corbett and Newbolt had been made redundant, but his ex- haustive researches into private papers and German records have added a new dimension to our knowledge of the Great War at sea.
Britain's weaknesses in ideas, men and materiel soon became evident under the strain of war. Her mines were 'more dangerous to the Navy than to the enemy,' while an early anti-submarine patrol was armed with a hammer and a canvas bag with which to blind the foe. Too many officers of captain and flag rank gave substance to Fisher's furious comment that 'any fool can obey orders! In war the first principle is to disobey orders.' Too often, Churchill's energy and enthusiasm as First Lord were harnessed to 'harum-scarum projects' which ignored or at- tempted to override professional advice, and the Balfour-Jackson regime which followed achieved tranquillity at the cost of lethargy ('Lor, sir,' ob- served an Admiralty, messenger, 'we're quieter here now than we was in peace! '). In his handling of these and other aspects, the author is fair but firm. His defence of Cradock, Jellicoe and de Roebuck against Churchill's post-war criticisms is all the more effective for its cool- ness, and the reminder that Beatty whole- heartedly agreed with Jellicoe's cautious strategy is much needed. Professor Marder has put us all in his debt.
Two other new books act as something of a complement to the above volume. Jonathan Steinberg's Yesterday's Deterrent (Macdonald, 35s.) provides a most valuable and scholarly study of the work of Tirpitz in obtaining the German Navy Law of 1898, thereby 'changing
the course of European history' and ensuring a rapidly expanding arms race with Britain, against whom the new fleet was specifically aimed. This is a political rather than a naval monograph— the use of the phrase 'knots per hour' suggests that the author may not be entirely at home in the latter sphere—and needs to be read in con- junction with the work of Meinecke and Hans Kohn as much as with that of Marder. The new law is placed firmly in its context as a product of contemporary German intellectual, social, eco- nomic and political history. To those aware of the 'healthy national egoism' which dominated Ger- man liberalism in 1848 and after, the long-term political parentage of the measure will come as less of a surprise than Mr. Steinberg seems to think, but the fact that it became law only through the support of the supposedly supranational Catholic Centre party has a nice irony about it, and is related with skill. One hopes for a sequel to this admirable book.
In the event, of course, Tirpitz's fleet was unable to rid itself of an inferiority complex vis-d-vis the Royal Navy, and the 'cotton-wool' orders of the Kaiser combined with the mine . and torpedo menace awaiting Jellicoe if he ven- tured south to produce stalemate in the North Sea. The submarine almost resolved this situa- tion in Germany's favour, hounding the Grand Fleet from an insecure Scapa Flow and threaten- ing to choke the supply of food and materials which kept Britain in the war. It was, suggests Admiral Sir William Jameson in his The Most Formidable Thing (Rupert Hart-Davis, 42s.), 'the only potentially decisive weapon in the history of war until the atomic bomb,' though few senior naval officers on either side realised its possi- bilities and dangers until the war was well advanced; in Britain, Fisher's prophecies of commerce destruction were supported mainly by one or two civilians, Balfour and Conan Doyle among them. Admiral Jameson, himself a sub- mariner, traces the evolution of those vessels from the sixteenth century, through, for instance, Cornelis Drebbel's demonstrations of an under- water craft in the Thames in 1620, to 1918. The narrative is clear and compelling and the con- clusions are shrewd; again, a sequel is to be hoped for.
Two lesser works involving the Great War at sea may briefly be mentioned. Geoffrey Cousins relates The Story of Scapa Flow (Muller, 25s.) pleasantly enough, but he offers a journa- list's scrapbook rather than a work of weight and importance, and he thinks Palmerston Was re- sponsible for Britain's foreign policy in 1890. The .atmosphere of the Flow does come through, and at least Mr. Cousins is ready to admit that in finding the place entrancing he is in a minority to those like myself who found naval life there gloomy in the extreme.
The conflict reddened the seven seas. . . . Through four flaming years . . . the jugger- nauts as well as their smaller cousins slugged it out from the steaming tropics to the cold and ice of the Baltic and the gales and blizzards of the inhospitable North Atlantic.
If this is how you like your history, then A. A. Hoehling's The Great War at Sea (Arthur Barker, 36s.) is for you, all 300 flaming pages of it. You will get your sailors 'square-jawed' or 'be- whiskered' and will be offered one paragraph on the Dogger Bank to one chapter on the dis- appearance of an American collier; you will learn of Mrs. Oscar Strauss Jr., but not of Commander Nasmith; that. Fisher 'was appointed admiral of the British Fleet after the disaster in the Falklands'; and that the 'Formidable' was sunk not off Start Point but in the North Sea ('bathed in brilliant moonlight,' of course). Mr. Hoehling has actually consulted a great number of participants and read many records; his in- dustry appears to have outrun his ability.
`In case Signals can neither be seen or per- fectly understood, no Captain can do wrong if he places his Ship alongside that of an Enemy.' It would be foolish to imagine that Nelson's exhortations were entirely applicable to the changed conditions of 1914-18, but few of the captains of the Grand Fleet measured up to those like Foley and Hood, who had displayed such initiative at the Nile and elsewhere. Oliver Warner's Nelson's Battles (Batsford, 45s.) reminds us of this, revises his previous works on Trafalgar and the Nile, and adds a study of Copenhagen; neat character sketches and a wealth of con- temporary quotations help make the rerilt most attractive.
Meanwhile, the Namier of the Royal Navy, Professor Michael Lewis, continues his social history of the Service with his Navy in Transition (Hodder and Stoughton, 42s.). During the years covered by this volume, 1814-64, revolutionary changes in ships, weapons and function were matched by those in the organisation of per- sonnel. The problem of officer unemployment —90 per cent in 1818—was at last tackled, and entry and training were newly regulated; by 1864 there were long-service men on the mess-decks and engineers in the wardroom, and though the days of absurdities were hardly yet over (in 1854, the seventy-nine-year-old Cochrane had been rejected as commander of the Baltic Fleet only because he was thought too rash!), Jellicoe's Navy was nearer than Nelson's. Professor Lewis has again provided an invaluable work of reference and analysis in which painstaking research finds expression in the easiest of prose.
The same writer once described the battle of Chesapeake Bay (1781) as 'one of the decisive battles of the world.' After Quiberon Bay, the British Navy had been allowed to relapse, and the War of American Independence found it unable to meet all its many and widespread commitments; the victory of the Saintes came seven months too late to save America, for at Chesapeake the defeat inflicted by de Grasse had led directly to Cornwallis's surrender at York- town. Harold Larrabee's Decision at the Chesa- peake (William Kimber, 50s.) is a first-class account of the event, but it was written too late to take advantage of Piers Mackesy's outstanding book, The War for America, and for those in search of Christmas presents ten further shillings spent on the latter would be a better investment.
CliRISTOPHER THORNE
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