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Review: A History of the Royal Navy: World War I

It took Sir Julian S. Corbett and Henry Newbolt five volumes and some 2,500 pages to relate the Royal Navy’s official story of its operations during the Great War at sea. Professor Arthur Marder, too, needed five volumes to write his classic study, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow. Mike Farquharson-Roberts is therefore to be admired and congratulated for attempting to synthesize the complexities of more than 1,500 days of sea fighting in a mere 200 pages. As is noted on the dust cover, the book ‘opens up a window’ on the Navy’s wartime role, but it is necessarily a very small window, not a panoramic view. The focus is naturally enough on the work of the British navy, but the almost complete lack of mention of the allied and Empire navies could leave the impression that that the war was fought and won singlehandedly by the British. Another imbalance is the concentration on operations on the sea, not the Navy’s most formidable and difficult opponent, the U-boat. The author cites the convoy controversy, siding with those who claim that the decision to convoy was not forced on an unwilling Admiralty by the civilian leadership, but had, in fact, been under Admiralty consideration all along. The debate among historians persists, but this reviewer’s research in the National Archives found not a single Admiralty minute sheet or memorandum that hinted at consideration of convoying as a serious option. The fact of the matter is that, even after the system had proven successful, the British naval leadership looked upon it as a temporary palliative which, once merchant ship losses had been brought under control, could hopefully be abandoned in favour of a return to the failed hunt-and-kill strategy. References to primary documentary materials are few and far between, and there are occasions one wishes the author had done a bit more work in providing supporting references. A case in point is the – very brief – discussion of the use of aircraft to fight the U-boats. On p. 145, the author reports that it was recognized ‘very early’ that the effectiveness of aircraft was less to be measured by the number of ‘kills’ inflicted than by the fact that their mere appearance forced an enemy boat to dive and hence lose productive time on station. As far as this reviewer is aware, it was thanks to the emergence of operational research in the next global conflict that this ‘measure of effectiveness’ was recognized. There is always room for another good book on the Great War at sea. Despite its limitations, this is a very readable book, particularly for those who are relative strangers to the Royal Navy’s critical contribution to the victory at sea in 1918.