Strange Intelligence: Memoirs of Naval Secret Service by Hector C. Bywater & H. C. Ferraby

Author:Hector C. Bywater & H. C. Ferraby [Bywater, Hector C. & Ferraby, H. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Autobiography, Military, World War I, Memoirs, True Crime, Espionage, Engineering & Transportation, Engineering, History, Intelligence & Espionage, Naval, Politics & Social Sciences, Politics & Government, Specific Topics, Historical
ISBN: 9781849549387
Amazon: B00XC9J5UM
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2015-06-08T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

UNRIDDLING THE SANDS

THE IMPERIAL GERMAN Navy possessed twenty-four fortified bases, stations, and depots in its home waters. Nine were situated on the North Sea coast and thirteen in the Baltic, while the remaining two were inland – Neumünster, in Holstein, being the naval wireless headquarters, and Dietrichsdorf, near Kiel, the principal ammunition magazine for the fleet.

By many critics the number of bases was deemed excessive. Not only were they costly to maintain, since most of them had elaborate defences manned by Matrosen-Artillerie, i.e. seamen-gunners, but it was feared that they might exert an enervating influence on the fleet in time of war. For the same reason the Spartans disliked walled cities.

When a commander is conscious of having a safe line of retreat he will be less inclined to fight to a finish. History teems with examples of this, and the Great War contributed not a few. There is little doubt that the German fleet would have accomplished much more than it did had there been fewer defended positions to which it could retire when hard pressed. On the other hand, we must not forget that as the German Navy was originally conceived as a coast-defence force, its first battleships – Siegfried class, laid down in 1888–92 – having been built expressly for the protection of the Kiel Canal, there was a traditional tendency to exaggerate the value of brick-and-mortar defences as a naval asset.

For obvious reasons, the British secret service was chiefly interested in the German North Sea coastline. It stretches some 220 miles from the Ems estuary to the Danish frontier. Shoals and sandbanks make it difficult of approach, and thus form a natural defence. Even under ordinary conditions navigation in these waters is difficult and hazardous. In wartime, with coastwise lights extinguished and channel buoys removed, the most skilful pilot would hesitate to trust himself within this labyrinth of shifting sand. To ships of deep draught it is inaccessible save by certain channels in which the dredgers have to be kept continuously at work. When to these natural barriers were added minefields and powerful batteries, the German western littoral became an impregnable rampart against which the mightiest fleet would have spent its strength in vain.

In the light of a fact so manifest it is strange that the Germans were unable to rid themselves of the nightmare of a British naval assault on their coast. It was partly this obsession that paralysed the High Seas Fleet during the early months of the war and left the British Navy in undisputed command of the sea at a period when the mere hint of a challenge to its supremacy would have caused the Allies grave embarrassment.

There was, however, this much excuse for the caution, which the German Navy carried to extreme lengths: a descent upon one or more of the German offshore islands and their seizure as advanced bases for operations against the mainland did actually form part of the British plan of war strategy, though it was ultimately decided to abandon the project.

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