“the War at Sea Was More Important Than the Western Front”

“The war at sea was more important than the Western Front” When many people think about World War 1, they imagine trench warfare with machine guns and tanks. They just think about the Western Front and men conquering bits of land bit by bit to win the war. This was certainly the more publicised part of the war. But what many people missed was the war at sea. What did the ships do to help win the war? Could we have won the war without our navy? And was it even more important than the war on the Western Front? Now even thought we know that the War at Sea was very important very little fighting took place between the two sides. It was more of a tactical war and the key objective was to control the seas to stop supplies getting to the enemy. Both sides realised this so Germany '' knowing the size of the British Navy '' started building up its own navy. It was so important to control the seas because if one side could cut off the enemy’s food supply they could not last much longer. This is why it was such a cautious war. It was actually said by a British Commander called Admiral Jellicoe that “he could lose the war in an afternoon.” This had lots of truth in it as if he allowed a rash move to put his fleet out of action and Germany controlled the seas they would have lost the war. There were many different ways of winning the war by sea. There were many factors that either helped or went against the British. One of these was the U-boat threat to Britain. Although German ships were never as good as the British ones; in certain areas they used them to great effect. This is shown with the use of their U-boats. A U-boat was the German form of a submarine. In eight months the German U-boats sank five hundred British merchant ships. This greatly threatened Britain and made it hard to carry on with the war. Over time Britain lost about 2400000 tons of shipping. So because this was so effective Britain had to do something to counter it. Q-boats were developed. These were