Heligoland by George Drower

Author:George Drower
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Heligoland: The True Story of German Bight and the Island that Britain Forgot
ISBN: 9780752472805
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2011-10-21T16:00:00+00:00

7

Churchill Prepares to Invade

In early August 1914 a large German ship anchored off Heligoland. It had come to abruptly move the 3,427 inhabitants. They were given just six hours to pack, and could take with them no more than they could carry by hand. Strict orders were issued by the island’s Commandant that all keys to houses, rooms and cupboards were to be left in their locks, and the islanders were told that their household effects, bedding and furniture would all remain unattended until the war was won – in a few weeks. Several years earlier the Heligolanders had been warned that when the construction of the island’s fortifications was complete many of them might need to be rehoused on the mainland, in a village on the Elbe, but nothing had happened. Even so, the cold abruptness of the deportation now was more unnerving than the fact of leaving. Some Heligolanders had lived on the island all their lives and had never set foot on mainland soil. Now many were sent to Altona, others to Blankenese, a suburb on the Elbe a few miles from the centre of Hamburg. There they were treated as semi-English. The only two British subjects resident on the island, one of them a sailor with twenty-three years’ service in the Royal Navy, were arrested and flung into prison. And Britain had not yet declared war on Germany!1

Germany was understandably eager to deport the Heligolanders. Berlin had good reason to suspect, but did not know for certain, that Britain was contemplating an invasion of the island. Since October 1911, when he was appointed First Sea Lord, Winston Churchill had been contemplating the islands in the Heligoland Bight with a view to establishing a British base on one of them in the event of a war with Germany. This would enable British blockading flotillas to be easily replenished.

Churchill well knew that the traditional war policy of the Admiralty had developed during the prolonged struggles with France. Immediately upon the outbreak of war, the procedure was to establish a blockade of the enemy’s ports and naval bases by means of flotillas of small (but strong) craft supported by cruisers, with superior battle fleets in reserve. In recent years, although the potential enemy was no longer France but Germany, the fundamental principle of Britain’s naval strategy – that ‘the first line of defence is the enemy’s ports’ – held good. Yet now, instead of operating across the English Channel, with the supporting ships close at hand in safe harbours, the Royal Navy would need to operate in the Heligoland Bight, across some 290 miles of sea and with no bases suitable for their supporting battle fleet nearer than the Thames or the Forth. Evidently the Germans adhered rather to the French concept of the torpedo-boat as a means of attack, whereas Britain’s destroyers were constructed principally for their sea-keeping qualities and firepower. But the great distances over the North Sea immensely reduced the Royal Navy’s effectiveness, and it was

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