When the two fleets met for the first and only time in the Battle of Jutland
off the Danish coast in late May 1916, the results were inconclusive.
Battleship fought battleship only for a few hours at the close of the day. A
cautious Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, acutely aware of the need to preserve
Britain's existing naval superiority, rejected risky aggressive tactics. He was
willing to forgo the possibility of destroying much of the German fleet in
order to avoid the danger of heavy losses to the Royal Navy. Britain's
command of the seas, as he interpreted it, meant reluctantly accepting an
inconclusive action on the high seas.
In the aftermath of Jutland, the German navy turned its hopes away from
its surface fleet. Within six months, the advocates of an unlimited submarine
offensive won the day. It began promisingly in the first months of 1917 as
German U-boats attacked all merchant commerce going to and from the
British Isles. The crisis in the entire naval conflict now emerged: it was the
war between the submarine and the weapons that could be employed against
it. If the submarines won, the Allies faced the loss of their command over
the sea lanes. For Britain, this meant starvation, a situation that pointed
toward Germany's ultimate victory in World War I.
Although the U-boats found numerous targets down to the closing weeks
of the war. Allied countermeasures, notably the use of the convoy, tipped
the balance in the undersea war before the last months of 1917. Thus, both
acts in the naval drama had the same result. In the first act, the surface war
from 19f4 through 1916, command of the sea remained unassailably in
Allied hands. The second act, the undersea war of 1917 and 1918, raised
the possibility of Germany's naval superiority. In the end, although after
many worrisome months, the Allies prevailed here as well.
World History
