Mediterranean Fleet

“ It was proposed that there should be a fleet of three hundred ships, of which two hundred were to be galleys and a hundred navi, that is full-rigged sailing-ships. It was the first time that the sailing-ship had been given so important a place in naval projects in the Mediterranean, and this shows the change that was rapidly coming into naval methods. The allies were jointly to raise a force of 50,000 fighting-men, including 500 gunners. ”

“ Dealing first with naval matters, Sir Edward Grey pointed out that, the French Fleet being in the Mediterranean, her northern and western coasts—a tribute to her confidence in ourselves—were left absolutely unprotected; while, in the Mediterranean, should the French Fleet have to be withdrawn for vital purposes elsewhere, we ourselves had not then a fleet strong enough to meet all possible hostile combinations. ”

“ With the passing of the great days of the Greek states the art of [112] sea warfare suffered an eclipse from which it did not recover for many centuries, and we meet with no further indication of the existence of fleets organised in squadrons until the thirteenth century of our era. The proper stimulus for the development of the art of fleet tactics can only be supplied by the collision of two maritime powers of fairly equal intelligence and resources. This condition was first supplied by the rivalry of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice for the sea-borne trade of the Mediterranean. ”

“ While Vice-Admiral Sir John Fisher was Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, he greatly improved its fighting efficiency. As a result of his representations, the stocks of coal at Malta and Gibraltar were increased, the torpedo flotillas were strengthened, and the new breakwaters at Malta were begun. Some of Sir John Fisher’s reforms are confidential ”

“ In 1798 the French, assuming that a temporary superiority in the Mediterranean had given them a free hand on the water, sent a great expedition to Egypt. Though the army which was carried succeeded in landing there, the covering fleet was destroyed by Nelson at the Nile, and the army itself was eventually forced to surrender. The French had not perceived that, except for a short time and for minor operations, you cannot separate the command of the Mediterranean or of any particular area of water from that of the sea in general. ”

“ When war occurred the British sea power was predominant in all the outer seas in contrast with every other Power engaged in hostilities. At every point the British fleet was supreme in contrast with every other Power now engaged in hostilities. Austria and Italy were hardly represented outside the Mediterranean; Germany had only one armoured ship and two small cruisers in the Mediterranean and a few small cruisers in the Atlantic; in the Pacific, though she had the largest squadron of any Continental Power, the Admiralty regarded our forces as being at least twice as strong. ”

“ But the withdrawal—even if only for a few years—of the battleships from the Mediterranean was a noteworthy event. It made us appear to be dependent upon the French Fleet in those waters. The French also at the same time redisposed their forces. Under the growing pressure of German armaments Britain transferred her whole Battle Fleet to the North Sea, and France moved all her heavy ships into the Mediterranean. And the sense of mutual reliance grew swiftly between both navies. ”

“ The general political complexion of affairs in the Mediterranean depended greatly upon the presence and readiness of the British fleet, and its efficiency therefore could not be risked, to any serious extent, except for the object of destroying the enemy's naval forces, to which it was then the counterpoise. ”

“ She possessed a more systematically organised navy than any other country having the ocean for a field of action had then, or till long afterwards. Even Genoa and Venice, whose operations, moreover, were restricted to Mediterranean waters, could not have been served by more finished specimens of the naval officer and the man-of-war's man of the time than a large proportion of the military personnel of the regular Spanish fleet. As Basques, Castilians, Catalans, or Aragonese, or all combined, the crews of Spanish fighting ships could look back upon a glorious past. ”

“ American troops went ashore in Northwest Africa on November 8, 1942. (On the other side of the world, the Japanese were just forming the massive relief fleet that was smashed and dispersed definitively a week later in the great three-day sea battle of Guadalcanal.) The United States Navy rushed to put American torpedo boats into the Mediterranean to join the British in harrying Axis shipping. ”

“ The Atlantic squadron blocked the Straits of Gibraltar, the Narrow Seas of Britain, and the approaches to the Baltic, the Mediterranean division patrolled the Inland Sea from Gibraltar to Cyprus, and the Pacific fleet were blockading the southern approach to the Red Sea, ready to operate against any junction of the Indian and African sea forces of the Sultan. ”

“ John only meted to these rovers the same treatment which they (the Greeks) were used to accord to others. All history shows that the eastern basin of the Mediterranean was for centuries a swarming nest of corsairs of various nationalities, Greeks, Turks, and Algerines. [Pg 264] Any attempt to transfer a legitimate cargo of merchandise from an Asiatic to a European port by way of the Straits of Gibraltar was to run the gauntlet of a fleet of piratical vessels which preyed indiscriminately upon the commerce of all nations. ”

“ Long before Salamis the Greeks had been founding colonies along the Mediterranean, among them some on the Asiatic side of the Aegean Sea, where the French and British fleets had so much to do during the Gallipoli campaign of 1915 against the Turks and Germans. Meanwhile the Persians had been fighting their way north-westwards till they had reached the Aegean and conquered most of the Greeks and Phoenicians there. Then the Greeks at Athens sent a fleet which landed an army that burnt the city of Sardis, an outpost of Persian power. ”

“ German strategy had drawn the Fleet southward, in the first place, by means of an international "incident" in the Mediterranean, which was clearly the bait of what rumour called a death-trap. Once trapped, it was said, German seamanship and surprise tactics had done the rest.
The crews of the Channel Fleet ships (considerably below full strength) had been rushed out of shore barracks, in which discipline had fallen to a terribly low ebb, to their unfamiliar shipboard stations, at the time of the Mediterranean scare. ”

“ The size of the Persian monarch's fleet was in itself a sufficient proof of the extent of the naval power of the Levantine states; but an equally convincing proof of the maritime power of another Mediterranean state, viz., Carthage, at that early period—about 470 b.c. —is forthcoming. This State equipped a large fleet, consisting of 3,000 ships, against the Greek colonies in Sicily; of these 2,000 were fighting galleys, and the remainder transports on which no less than 300,000 men were embarked. This mighty armada was partly destroyed in a great storm. ”

“ Not only Mediterranean seaports, but the lakes of North Italy and central Europe, and the Hanseatic ports, are enumerated as nurseries of crusading mariners and marine skill. Finally, after the conquest of Egypt, Marino designs the establishment of a Christian fleet in the Indian Ocean to dominate and subjugate its coasts and islands. He also gives a sketch of the trade-routes crossing Persia and Egypt, as well as of the course of Indian trade from Coromandel and Gujarat to Ormuz and the Persian Gulf, and to Aden and the Nile. ”

“ The Mediterranean was bad, the North Atlantic was worse, the west coasts of the British Islands worst of all. The American Navy came in and did splendid service off the south coast of Ireland, in the Bay of Biscay, and along the North Atlantic seaways between French and British and American ports. More and more destroyers were put into service, aided by "chasers"—very much smaller vessels with only one gun and a few men, but so cheap and easily built that they could be turned out in swarms to help in worrying the submarines to death. ”

“ The Austrians were blockaded in the Adriatic, the Germans in the North Sea, and the Turks at the east end of the Mediterranean. Now and then a German merchantman would be armed in the German colonies or in some friendly neutral harbour and prey on British trade routes for a time. ”

“ Besides, in the nineteenth century she won a great empire in northern Africa, where her Mediterranean sea-power keeps it safe. The British Empire, on the other hand, being based on world-wide sea-power, is rightly placed as it is. So neither French nor British are tempted to envy each other now; while their Hundred Years Peace, followed by their glorious Alliance in the Great War, should make them friends for ever. ”

“ The President authorizes the Commander-in-Chief to inform the officers and men that after a short stay on the Pacific Coast it is the President's intention to have the fleet return to the Atlantic Coast by way of the Mediterranean.
Every man jumped at that news; every one wished his wife or sweetheart could know it at once. One of the puzzles about the fleet was settled.
There is no room in this first letter of the long cruise to go into detail about the thousand and one things—incidents, ceremonies and drills—that make up the routine and life on the warship. ”

“ The British had been making spectacular use of motor torpedo boats for years—in fact, American PTs had been patterned after British models. The Axis powers also used torpedo boats. German E-boats prowled the English Channel and the Mediterranean. Even the Italian MAS boats made Allied Mediterranean naval commanders nervous, for the torpedo boat had been an Italian specialty since its invention and the officers who manned Italian small craft were the most aggressive and warlike in all the Italian Armed Forces. ”

“ The shouting was repeated, and words were clearly distinguished.
“We are discovered,” exclaimed the Greek captain. “Pull, pull, as hard as we can, the watch on deck is calling on us to come into the harbour. He has evidently just woke up, and is yet uncertain what we are, though he suspects us. He threatens to fire the guns at us if we do not obey him, and that will have the effect, though we escape the shot, of waking up the rascals in all quarters, and we shall have a whole fleet of boats after us: stay, I will hail in return, and pretend we are fishermen.” ”

“ If, for instance, a plan of campaign in Romania is carried out successfully, that is essentially to the credit of the Supreme Army Command, for it correctly estimated the strength and capability of troops and leaders, and set them a task proportionate to their abilities. In the war at sea the Naval Staff apportioned the existing ships and boats to the different fields of operation- the Baltic, the North Sea, or Flanders, the Mediterranean or foreign parts, and had to leave the officers in command there to act independently in accordance with their general instructions. ”

“ Men-of-war built specially for fighting were of course much better in a battle than any mere merchantman could be. But in those days, and for some time after, merchantmen went about well armed and often joined the king's ships of the Royal Navy during war, as many of them did against the Germans in our own day.
English oversea trade was carried on with the whole of Europe, with Asia Minor, and with the North of Africa. Canyng, a merchant prince of Bristol, employed a hundred shipwrights and eight hundred seamen. He sent his ships to Iceland, the Baltic, and all through the Mediterranean. ”

“ There was just one drawback from which, as it seems to me, the nations on the Mediterranean compared with the inhabitants of Northern Europe have always suffered: even till to-day, or at any rate up to the introduction of steam, the tendency of the Mediterraneans has been to [57] build sailing boats rather than sailing ships. The very conditions that prompted naval architecture at all limited their scope. ”

“ The reverse was the case with the Egyptians, who, being more of a peace-loving nature, developed their cargo ships far more, for it was not until fairly late in Egyptian history that the warship was attended to; we may even go so far as to assert that it was not until the time of the Middle Ages that the merchant ship both of the Mediterranean and the North of Europe, made any real progress. As long as civilisation was scanty and pirates were rampant on every sea, commerce was bound to remain at a standstill. ”

“ I doubt, however, whether the Italian, German, and Austrian navies could possibly hope to hold the Mediterranean against those of France and Russia, weak as is the Russian navy, in a general Continental war, so high is the estimate which I form of the power of France at sea. ”

“ Greece’s only “torpedo-vessel” steams no more than fourteen knots, and the Admiralty Return assures Lord Charles Beresford and the world that she has but twenty-seven torpedo-boats, of which seventeen are over and ten under one hundred feet in length, and that she is not building any more. Considering the island interests of Greece and her situation in the Mediterranean, no one can pronounce her naval force as excessive, or regard her government as being tempted to any high heroic policy by her possession of an imposing navy. ”

“ It is almost impossible to believe that such a small harbour ever sheltered so strong a pirate fleet that it could ravage the coasts of Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, the ports of Italy and Spain, and even penetrate as far as England. ”