The First World War at Sea in Photographs – serie

The arms race that led to the First World War started in 1897 at the Spithead Naval Review, when Kaiser Wilhelm saw the might of Britain's Navy. He wanted to equal or better the fleet of Britain, and set about a huge building programme of warships. By 1914, tensions in Europe were at a breaking point and, in August, erupted into what would become the first truly global conflict. From almost the first day of the war, as merchant ships scuttled to safe havens, the war at sea saw ship against ship and submarine against ship. Hastily converted merchantmen became auxiliary cruisers, fitted with guns and ready for action. August saw the loss of the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, one of Germany's crack ocean liners, off the coast of Africa; October, the loss of Britain's dreadnought battleship HMS Audacious to a mine; and December saw the Battle of the Falklands and a German attack on the coastal towns of Scarborough, Whitby and Hartlepool. Submarines quickly became a menace in the Mediterranean, English Channel and North Sea, slowly beginning to starve Britain into submission. In August, it was thought the war would be over by Christmas; by December everyone knew they were in for a long, hard slog. The naval war would be one of attrition and one that would ultimately lead to the surrender of Germany's navy in 1918.

Submarines and blockades dominated the war at sea in 1915. The major event was the sinking by U-20 of the Lusitania, which edged America closer to war. The Germans had announced a blockade of Britain in February, using submarines to sink and harry shipping. A British blockade of Germany was announced in March in retaliation. Using its surface fleet to stop neutral vessels, the British attempt was more successful. The British submarine force was also successful, commanders leading patrols into the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea.Surface ship engagements would be fought by battlecruisers at the Battle of the Dogger Bank, and by cruisers off the coast of Chile as the German warship Dresden was sunk in the Pacific. On the east coast of Africa, the raider Königsberg was sunk in the war’s first instance of sea-air cooperation.Attempts to bully Turkey into surrendering saw numerous Allied warships sunk off the Dardanelles and an amphibious landing took place there in an attempt to create a supply route into the Black Sea. By the end of the year it was obvious that the invasion of Turkey had failed and the soldiers were evacuated. At the same time, Allied shipping was being used to evacuate the Serbian army from the coast of Albania, the biggest seaborne evacuation that there had ever been until Dunkirk.

For the navies of Britain and Germany, 1916 would be the defining year of the First World War. Against a background of the evacuation of the Dardanelles, blockades in the North Sea and submarine attacks around the coasts of Europe, the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet would meet in the North Sea on 31 May 1916 and slug it out for supremacy. Which would win, Britain or Germany? With both sides claiming victory, Jutland ended as a draw. Nonetheless, neither fleet would venture out in force again for the duration. Future naval engagements would be skirmishes rather than all-out sea battles.Outrages against hospital ships and continued submarine warfare against merchant vessels saw numerous high profile sinkings, not least the hospital ship HMHS Britannic, lost in November in the Kea Channel, sunk by an indiscriminate mine.Phil Carradice takes us through the First World War at sea in photographs, showing us the horror of war and telling the story of the greatest sea battle of the conflict.