Castles of Steel (5 page)

To dispatch the British fleet to its war station would send a dramatic diplomatic signal; for this reason, Churchill decided to keep the movement a secret not only from the Germans but also from the British Cabinet. Knowing that many members abhorred the idea of Britain becoming involved in what they considered a continental war, he later explained, “I feared to bring this matter before the Cabinet lest it should mistakenly be considered a provocative action likely to damage the chances of peace.” His further argument was disingenuous: “It would be unusual to bring movements of the British fleet in home waters from one British port to another before the Cabinet. I only therefore informed the prime minister who at once gave his approval.” In another account of the same meeting, Churchill wrote: “He [Asquith] looked at me with a hard stare and gave a sort of grunt. I did not require anything else.”

By Thursday morning the deed was done and Churchill, pleased with himself, was able to share his pleasure. “We looked at each other with much satisfaction when on Thursday morning the 30th the flagship reported herself and the whole fleet well out in the center of the North Sea.” Later that day, Churchill learned that Jacky Fisher had come into the Admiralty; he immediately invited the old admiral into his office. “I told him what we had done and his delight was wonderful to see,” Churchill reported. The German ambassador, learning that the fleet had slipped away, lost no time in complaining to the Foreign Office. Coolly, Grey told him that “the movements of the fleet are free of all offensive character and the fleet will not approach German waters.”

Even now, no one, including the British Cabinet and public, believed that Britain would become involved. The factor that did most to mislead the Continent was England’s imperturbable calm. Bernhard von Bülow had noticed this serene detachment some years before, when he accompanied the kaiser on a visit to England:

Many [British politicians] do not know much more of continental conditions than we do of the condition in Peru or Siam. They are also rather naive in their artless egoism. They find difficulty believing in really evil intentions in others; they are very calm, very phlegmatic, very optimistic. The country exudes wealth, comfort, content and confidence in its own power and future. The people simply cannot believe that things could ever go really wrong, either at home or abroad. With the exception of a few leading men, they work little and leave themselves time for everything.

Now England was enjoying the most beautiful August weather in many years. The holiday season had begun and the coming weekend would be prolonged by a bank holiday on Monday. Even as Russia, Austria, France, and Germany were mobilizing, English vacationers were flocking to the railway stations and the beaches. It was not surprising that foreign observers—the Germans hopefully and the French anxiously—concluded that Great Britain had determined to stand aside from the war about to engulf Europe.

Winston Churchill was confident that by sending the Grand Fleet into “the enormous waste of water to the north of our islands” he had guarded it against surprise attack; he worried, nonetheless, about its strength relative to that of the High Seas Fleet. On paper, the ratio of dreadnoughts—twenty-four to seventeen—looked reassuring. But for the First Lord, it was not enough. “There was not much margin here,” he wrote later, “for mischance nor for the percentage of mechanical defects which in so large a fleet had to be expected.” Providentially, the margin could be enlarged at a single decisive stroke. For years, British shipyards had been building warships for foreign navies. Sometimes, depending on the specifications required by the various admiralties, these ships were more powerful than vessels the same shipyard was building for Britain. In 1913, for example, Vickers completed
Kongo,
then the finest battle cruiser in the world, for Japan. Mounting ten 14-inch guns, lavishly armored, and capable of 27 knots, she was superior in almost every respect to the latest British battle cruiser,
Tiger,
still, in July 1914, undelivered to the Royal Navy. When
Kongo
sailed for home, she left behind, under construction in British shipyards, four other foreign superdreadnoughts, all equal to Britain’s best. Two were being built for Turkey and two for Chile. Now, in the summer of 1914, as the European crisis worsened, the Turkish ships—
Reshadieh,
modeled on the
Iron Duke
class, and
Sultan Osman I,
carrying fourteen 12-inch guns, were nearing completion and preparing to sail for the Bosporus. At this point, the First Lord insisted that the Turks must not be permitted to take physical possession of their ships.

The first of the Turkish vessels, the 23,000-ton dreadnought
Reshadieh,
was similar to
King George V,
carrying ten 13.5-inch guns. The second, larger, battleship eventually would earn a unique place in the history of naval construction for, within a single year, it was owned by three different governments. For a decade, the three principal South American powers, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, had been conducting their own dreadnought-building race, draining each country of a quarter of its annual national income. Brazil began by ordering from British yards a pair of 21,000-ton dreadnoughts each carrying twelve 12-inch guns. Argentina responded by ordering two 28,000-ton battleships with twelve 12-inch guns—one ship from the New York Ship Building Company, the other from the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts. Brazil, alarmed by the larger size of the new Argentine vessels, returned to Britain in 1911 to order a third new battleship. This vessel was to be a phenomenon: the longest dreadnought in the world, with the unequaled armament of fourteen 12-inch guns set in seven turrets. Laid down in September 1911 at Armstrong’s Elswick yard in Newcastle upon Tyne, she was launched in January 1913 as
Rio de Janeiro.
By October, however, cheap rubber from Malaya had undermined the market value of Brazil’s rubber exports; the Brazilian government, unable to pay for the new ship, put the unfinished dreadnought up for sale. Turkey stepped forward, and on December 28, 1913,
Rio de Janeiro
became
Sultan Osman I.
Meanwhile, Chile had ordered two new 28,000-ton British-built dreadnoughts, each designed to carry ten 14-inch guns, but in July 1914 both were a year from completion.

It was on the two Turkish battleships, therefore, that the Admiralty focused its attention. Although a clause in the building contracts permitted the British government to buy back the ships in a national emergency, the Turks were unlikely to sell them willingly. The two vessels had cost the impoverished nation almost £6 million. Some of the money had been borrowed from bankers in Paris and some came from taxes—on sheep and wool, on tobacco, and on bread. In January 1914, all December salaries of civil servants, none yet paid, were diverted to pay for the ships. But still more money was needed. Every Turkish town and village contributed; women sold their hair to raise money; collection boxes were placed on the bridges across the Golden Horn and on ferryboats plying the Bosporus. Purchase of the two dreadnoughts became a unifying national cause.

Meanwhile, at the Elswick yard, British workers were altering the ship to meet the needs of her new owners. Nameplates in Portuguese carrying instructions and locations were unscrewed and replaced. The admiral’s stateroom and dining room were fitted with seasoned mahogany paneling, Otto-man carpets, silk lampshades, and a pink-tiled bath. Belowdecks, the crew was given more space by eliminating numerous watertight bulkheads. Lavatory arrangements appropriate to European or Brazilian usage were altered as toilet bowls were ripped out and replaced by rows of conical holes in the deck, suitable for the Turkish practice of squatting.

The Ottoman navy waited anxiously. With Russia constructing a new fleet on the Black Sea and Greece building a dreadnought in Germany and negotiating to buy two predreadnoughts from the United States, Turkey urgently needed a modern navy. Her ships were hopelessly out-of-date; one old battleship mounted wooden guns, which her officers hoped would seem real to a viewer on shore. By July 1914, the Turks were impatient to bring the new ships home and parade them to the nation off the Golden Horn.
Rashadieh
was ready in early July, but the British Admiralty advised that she remain in England until the two ships could sail for Turkey together. Meanwhile, hints from Whitehall to Armstrong and Vickers suggested that there was no need to hurry delivery of the two vessels. Pressure on the Admiralty increased when, on July 27, a shabby Turkish passenger ship, carrying 500 Turkish sailors to man the
Sultan Osman I,
arrived in the Tyne and berthed across the narrow river from the new battleship. The official delivery date was set for August 2. On the morning of August 1, the thirteenth 12-inch gun was hoisted on board and placed in its turret. The final and fourteenth gun was expected later that day. But still no ammunition had been delivered.

On Friday, July 31, with European war impending, Churchill made his decision. “In view of present circumstances,” the First Lord informed the builders, “the Government cannot permit the ship to be handed over to a Foreign Power.” The following morning, Armstrong, fearing that the Turkish captain and his sailors waiting across the river might try to board the new battleship and hoist the Turkish flag, placed armed guards at the dockyard gates. On August 2, a company of British army Sherwood Foresters with fixed bayonets marched on board. Stunned, the Turks could do nothing.

Churchill never apologized. “The Turkish battleships were vital to us,” he said later. “With a margin of only seven dreadnoughts we could not afford to do without these two fine ships.” He attempted to patch up the damage by offering that at the end of the war Turkey should receive either the two “requisitioned” dreadnoughts, fully repaired, or else their full value; he added that, in any case, Britain would pay Turkey a thousand pounds a day for every day she kept them. The offer would stand so long as Turkey remained neutral.

Sultan Osman I,
renamed
Agincourt,
steamed into Scapa Flow on Au-gust 26. Some British officers feared that the firing of her first full broadside would break her back, but when it happened the simultaneous blast of fourteen 12-inch guns broke only her crockery.
Reshadieh,
renamed
Erin,
reached the British fleet soon after. The North Sea dreadnought ratio now rose to twenty-six British against seventeen German. This still did not sufficiently calm the First Lord; in September 1914,
Almirante Latorre,
the first of the unfinished 28,000-ton Chilean dreadnoughts, was “requisitioned” by the Admiralty. A year later, she joined the Grand Fleet as HMS
Canada.
The other Chilean battleship was also “requisitioned,” and was completed in 1918 as the aircraft carrier
Eagle.

On Wednesday, July 29, even as the British fleet was steaming toward Scapa Flow, the Austrian bombardment of Belgrade began. Russia immediately began mobilizing her southern forces. Germany announced that unless Russia ended her mobilization against Austria, Germany would mobilize and declare war. The Russians continued. On Friday, July 31, Germany sent an ultimatum to St. Petersburg demanding Russian demobilization within twelve hours. At noon the next day, Saturday, August 1, the ultimatum expired and Germany declared war on Russia.

For the next three days, Great Britain remained neutral. The factor that ultimately unified British thinking was Belgium, across whose territory the German General Staff meant to send 700,000 men to strike the French army on its weak left wing. A British treaty with Belgium guaranteed that country’s neutrality. On Saturday, August 1, Britain asked both France and Germany for assurances that, in the event of war, Belgian territory would not be violated. France immediately gave full assurances; Germany refused to reply. Thereupon the German ambassador in London was given formal notice that if Belgium was invaded, Britain might take action. Early that afternoon, the British ambassador in Berlin reported that British ships were being detained in German ports. Learning this, the Admiralty decided to mobilize the Royal Navy. All patrol and local defense flotillas were ordered to remain out at night, and the same naval reserves who had been discharged after the test mobilization were ordered back to their ships. On Sunday, August 2, Germany delivered an ultimatum to Belgium demanding that the German army be allowed uncontested passage across Belgian territory. On Monday, August 3, Germany declared war on France. The Royal Navy commissioned nine ocean liners as armed merchant cruisers, including
Lusitania, Aquitania, Caronia,
and
Mauretania.
Soon,
Lusitania, Aquitania,
and
Mauretania
were released, the cost of their fuel being judged out of proportion to their usefulness. At 6:00 a.m. on Tuesday, August 4, news came that the German army intended to cross the Belgian frontier at four o’clock that afternoon. At 9:30 a.m., the Foreign Office protested to Berlin. At noon came a German reply which assured that no Belgian territory would be annexed, but also stated that Germany could not leave Belgian territory unoccupied to be used by the French as an avenue for attacking Germany. No doubts remained; at 5:50 p.m., the Admiralty informed the navy that Berlin had been sent a formal British ultimatum, which would expire at midnight Berlin time. Unless an acceptable reply was received by then, war would begin. “In view of our ultimatum,” the message said, “they may decide to open fire at any moment. You must be ready for this,”

At eleven o’clock in London—midnight, Berlin time—on Tuesday, August 4, the British ultimatum expired, unanswered. From the Admiralty, the war telegram flashed to all ships and stations under the White Ensign around the world. “Commence hostilities against Germany.” The old battleship
Prince of Wales
was coaling in Portland harbor when a bugle sounded. “The collier’s winches suddenly stopped,” recalled one of the ship’s officers, “and the bosun’s mate passed the word: ‘Hostilities will commence against Germany at midnight.’ The loud cheers which followed were soon silenced by the renewed clatter of the winches and the thud of the coal bags as they came in with increased speed.”