It has been a century since a Serbian nationalist assassinated the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand in Bosnia and the continent of Europe descended into an orgy of savagery that today is called the First World War. The reason why such a relatively rich and self-confident community of nations, sharing for the most part a common culture, could turn upon itself in such barbaric fashion is perhaps the great question of the twentieth century. A short list of the war’s tragic offspring includes the Great Depression, World War II, the Holocaust, and the Cold War. Even the political divisions of the Middle East that are at the roots of much twenty-first century unrest are a consequence of the Great War.
The veterans of the First World War are all gone. The picture of the conflict that lingers in the collective memory of their descendants is one of muddy trenches and young men, faces encased in gas masks, crouching in a blasted landscape. The land armies numbered almost seventy million, and the deaths eight million, so this perception is natural. However, it obscures that essential fact that the First World War was also fought at sea, and there, in the failed naval blockade of the United Kingdom and the successful blockade of the Central Powers, the war was eventually won.
The carnage inflicted at sea was tremendous. It included the loss of over 13 million tons of mercantile shipping and 756 major warships, including 27 Allied and 7 Central Power capital ships. More than 100,000 men died. From this turmoil the images that resonate are dreadnought battleships cutting through the waves in massive lines and predator submarines lurking in the oceanic wastes. The war at sea, however, was more, and these images might as well include a German cruiser bottled up an African river, or the kaiser’s East Asian flotilla massacring a British squadron off Chile or being annihilated itself in the South Atlantic; more than 8,500 men died in a single North Sea clash of dreadnoughts; battleships dueled on the Black Sea; there were amphibious assaults against Baltic islands; and bi-wing bombers clustered on the decks of primitive aircraft carriers. The war at sea was global in its dimensions, and once the land war stalemated on the western front, it was on the waves that victory was determined.
The world’s premier navy, Britain’s Royal Navy, led the Triple Entente, or the Allies, with support from the French Marine Nationale and the Imperial Russian Navy. In opposition, the German Kaiserliche Marine teamed with the Austro-Hungarian Kaiserliche und Königliche Kriegsmarine, but a diplomatic twist sent the third member of this Triple Alliance, Italy’s Regia Marina, to the Allied side. Two years later Germany’s own naval efforts provoked the United States into joining the Allied camp as well.
At sea World War I was a time of new and rapidly evolving martial technologies and the collision of nineteenth-century concepts with twentieth-century weapons. Admiral Jacky Fisher, the creative genius behind the all-big-gun battleship, first served on board HMS Victory, which had been Admiral Nelson’s flagship at Trafalgar. Within the span of Fisher’s career, steel superseded wood, sail gave way to steam, and giant guns hurling one-ton shells a distance of ten miles replaced muzzle-loading smooth-bore cannons. Torpedoes appeared, launched now by the sinister submersible and the pesky airplane that transformed sea warfare to a three-dimensional affair. The challenges faced by men like Fisher and his near contemporaries Germany’s Alfred Tirpitz, Italy’s Paolo Thaon di Revel, Japan’s Heihachiro Togo, and America’s William Benson seem likely to be repeated as twentieth-century militaries struggle to incorporate twenty-first-century technologies.
To Crown the Waves is an examination of the war at sea and the seven major navies that fought this war. It pools the expertise of historians from five nations who examine not only ships and weaponry but also doctrines and traditions, industry and bases, training and goals—less tangible factors that gave each fleet a unique personality and influenced how it met the challenges it faced. Laid out to a common structure, the chapters allow for easy reference and comparison following this outline:
I. Backstory
A. Pre-1914 history
B. Mission/function (navy’s prewar missions, intended enemy, construction philosophy)
A. Command structure
1. Administration
2. Command and fleet organization
3. Communications
4. Intelligence
B. Infrastructure, logistics, and commerce
1. Bases
2. Industry
3. Shipping
C. Personnel
1. Demographics
2. Training
3. Culture
III. The Ways of War
A. Surface warfare
1. Doctrine
2. Ships/weapons
B. Submarine warfare
1. Offensive
a. Doctrine
b. Boats/weapons
2. Antisubmarine
C. Mine warfare
1. Doctrine
2. Ships/weapons
D. Amphibious warfare
1. Doctrine/capabilities
2. Coastal defense
E. Aviation
IV. War Experience and Evolution
A. Wartime evolution
1. Surface warfare
2. Submarines
3. Aviation
B. Summary and assessment.
To Crown the Waves follows several conventions. Rather than wrestle the metric-measurement navies into the imperial system used by the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy (or vice versa), this work adheres to neither one system nor the other; the appendix provides a conversion table. All miles are nautical miles. Non-English terms are used sparingly, and ranks are expressed in English. The book is lightly footnoted, and a selected bibliography lists the more important works consulted by the authors as well as additional references in English.
Editors:
Vincent P. O’Hara, of Chula Vista, California, W. David Dickson of Hernando, Mississippi, and Richard Worth of Bolivar, Missouri, also edited On Seas Contested: The Seven Great Navies of the Second World War, published by Naval Institute Press (2010).
Contributing authors:
Chapter 1, the Austro-Hungarian Kaiserliche und Königliche Kriegsmarine, is the work of Zvonimir Freivogel, who is based in Germany. Dr. Freivogel has published books and articles in German, English, Italian, Polish, and Serbo-Croatian in periodicals including Warship, STORIA Militare, and Okręty Wojenne. Dr. Freivogel’s most recent work is Tauchgang um das K.u.K. Schlachtschiff Szent Istvan (Marine Arsenal, 2008).
Chapter 2, on the French Marine Nationale, is authored by Jean Moulin of Blois, France. Mr. Moulin has written forty-seven books and more than a hundred articles on naval subjects, most recently Les contre-torpilleurs de type Aigle (Marine Editions, 2012).
Chapter 3, on the German Kaiserliche Marine, is a collaboration by the authors who also wrote the German chapter in On Seas Contested. It is led by Dr. Peter Schenk and includes Axel Niestlé, and Dieter Thomaier, all from Germany.
Chapter 4, on the British Royal Navy, is by John Roberts of England, whose recent credits include Battleship Dreadnought (Conway Maritime Press, 2003) and British Warships of the Second World War (Chatham, 2003).
Chapter 5, on the Italian Regia Marina, is the work of Enrico Cernuschi of Pavia Italy and Vincent P. O’Hara, the co-authors of the Italian chapter in On Seas Contested. Mr. Cernuschi has written more than twenty books and three hundred articles. Mr. O’Hara’s most recent work is In Passage Perilous: Malta and the Convoy Battles of June 1942 (Indiana University Press, 2012).
Chapter 6, on the Russian Imperial Navy, is authored by Stephen McLaughlin. Mr. McLaughlin’s credits include the Soviet chapter in On Seas Contested, “Russian and Soviet Battleships” (Naval Institute Press, 2010), as well as many articles on the Russian navy in Warship and Warship International.
Trent Hone contributed chapter 7, on the U.S. Navy. Mr. Hone also wrote the U.S. Navy chapter in On Seas Contested. He is coauthor of Battle Line: The United States Navy 1919–1939 (Naval Institute Press, 2006) and has written for the Journal of Military History, Naval War College Review, and Warship.
The introduction, chapter 8, and the conclusion are the work of the editors.