Читать книгу Craven's Part in the Great War - John T. Clayton - Страница 15

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The operations of the British Navy were undoubtedly one of the dominating factors in the war. For more than four years the silent service watched unceasingly and offered an effectual bar to such naval enterprise as the Germans appeared capable of. The first naval engagement was off the coast of Chili in November, 1914, in which the Good Hope and Monmouth were sunk and Admiral Craddock lost his life.

This early disaster was retrieved on December 8th, when Admiral Sturdee annihilated a German squadron under Admiral von Spee off the Falkland Islands. For some time there was a good deal of activity on the part of commerce raiders, principally by the Emden and the Appam. On January 24th, 1915, there was a naval battle off Dogger Bank in which the Blucher was sunk, and six months later the Konigsberg, a German raider, which had taken refuge in the Rufigi River, was destroyed by British monitors.

The most serious naval engagement of the war took place off Jutland on May 31st, 1916. This proved to be the last attempt of the Germans to defy British sea-power. The enemy lost eighteen ships, and the British losses were by no means light, but the flight of the enemy fleet to the shelter of their mine fields left no doubt as to the issue. Probably the country will never know the extent of the navy’s work in maintaining the blockade, safeguarding our food supply from all parts of the world, and securing safe passage, not only for our own troops, but also for thousands of American soldiers.

Perhaps the most daring enterprise of the war from a naval standpoint was the raid on Ostend on April 22nd, 1918, which resulted in the destruction of the enemy’s submarine depots. The last act in the naval drama was the handing over of the German Fleet to Admiral Beatty, as part of the Armistice conditions, and the subsequent scuttling of it by the German crews while it was riding at anchor in Scapa Flow.