German Submarine Warfare 1914-1918 in the Eyes - British Naval ...

“We are going to have a new British tradition, and a new British doctrine, that the main fleet is to
remain in harbour because the fleet is in danger at sea! ... Nelson would turn in his grave...” 20
But even if the German High Seas Fleet sortied: “Georges Clemencau once remarked that
if the British destroyed the German Navy it ‘would make a nice hole in the water’ but would not
win the war.” 21
The World Merchant Fleet 1914
Table 3: Merchant Tonnage in summer 1914 22
US
6%
KuK
2%
DE
10%
NO
4%
NL
3%
SV
2%
UK
50%
World merchant tonnage in the summer of 1914 was around 42.4 Million
BRT. Germany’s merchant navy with 4.4 Million BRT was second only to Britain’s
20.8 Million BRT. Russia, Italy, Japan and France - the Allies - had merchant fleets
totalling about 6.4M BRT. The Austro-Hungarian Empire’s merchant fleet stood at
about one Million BRT. Important neutrals like the United States, Norway,
Sweden, the Netherlands along with the rest of the world’s merchant fleet
possessed some 9.8 Million BRT. Most of the German merchant vessels were
interned at the outbreak of war in neutral countries. (Two and a half million BRT
of interned German vessels were confiscated during the war and converted to serve
as Allied reinforcements.)
This world merchant fleet consisted of over 22,000 vessels with more than
100 BRT. Only 8,000 ocean-going vessels from 1,600 BRT upward, resulting in
35M BRT, were the core of the oceanic merchant traffic, while the resting 14,000
vessels were used in coastal and continental waters, distributing the overseas
20 Lambert, Fisher’s Revolution, p. 165
21 Still, Crisis, p. 77.
22 Salter, Allied Shipping Control, pp. 7-8.
Rest
8%
FR
5%
JP
4%
IT
4%
RU
2%
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