The Great War at Sea Quotes

“Under Scheer’s leadership, the Germans had maintained the initiative in the North Sea throughout the year of Jutland, but his six sorties had resulted in just one battle, a tactical victory that had not altered the strategic situation.”
― Lawrence Sondhaus, The Great War at Sea: A Naval History of the First World War

“By war’s end the British navy would employ more than 180 “mystery ships of all sorts,”58 raising the question of whether their eleven confirmed U-boat victims (far less than one-tenth of the total submarines Germany lost) justified their cost.”
― Lawrence Sondhaus, The Great War at Sea: A Naval History of the First World War

“munitions exports, which stood at just $40 million in 1914, boomed to nearly $1.3 billion in 1916, while the total value for exported manufactured goods rose from $2.4 billion (or 6 percent of the gross national product) in 1914 to $5.5 billion (or 12 percent of GNP) in 1916, almost exclusively because of increased trade with the Allies. While J. P. Morgan, which brokered most of the transactions, led a long list of American firms that reaped enormous profits from this trade, millions of ordinary Americans, from workers to farmers, benefited as well.”
― Lawrence Sondhaus, The Great War at Sea: A Naval History of the First World War

“the dead still numbered a staggering 1,198 (among them 128 American citizens), with 764 survivors. Never before had a single act of war caused so many noncombatant deaths.23”
― Lawrence Sondhaus, The Great War at Sea: A Naval History of the First World War

“Built to naval specifications, with gun mountings on a reinforced deck and turbine engines capable of 25 knots, the Lusitania was requisitioned as an armed merchant cruiser at the outbreak of war, painted grey, then promptly returned to the Cunard Line after the Admiralty realized that the ship, at or near top speed, consumed nearly 1,000 tons of coal per day. The high cost of fuel and of the crew of 800 required to man her could be taken in its stride by a private firm”
― Lawrence Sondhaus, The Great War at Sea: A Naval History of the First World War

“The British test mobilization of July 15–25 coincided almost exactly with the German High Sea Fleet maneuvers of July 14–25 conducted off the coast of Norway,”
― Lawrence Sondhaus, The Great War at Sea: A Naval History of the First World War

“Yap in the western Carolines served as Germany’s western Pacific communication hub; the island had a powerful wireless station along with direct undersea cable links to China, to Java in the Dutch East Indies, and to Guam on the United States’ Manila to San Francisco line.”
― Lawrence Sondhaus, The Great War at Sea: A Naval History of the First World War

“Operations so far north required bases in Scotland, not England; anticipating this need, the navy five years earlier had begun to improve Rosyth, in the Firth of Forth, as the primary base for a North Sea campaign against Germany, with Scapa Flow, in the Orkneys, identified “as another potential main base.”37”
― Lawrence Sondhaus, The Great War at Sea: A Naval History of the First World War

“Italy laid down its first dreadnought, the 19,550-ton Dante Alighieri,”
― Lawrence Sondhaus, The Great War at Sea: A Naval History of the First World War

“astonishing ten capital ships laid down for the British navy within a span of twelve months, demonstrating a resolve to make whatever financial sacrifices were necessary to stay ahead.”
― Lawrence Sondhaus, The Great War at Sea: A Naval History of the First World War

“Under these circumstances, battleships of the Dreadnought design, better suited for warfare in the confined space of the North Sea, appeared more useful than battle cruisers, whose potential global range was no longer as relevant.”
― Lawrence Sondhaus, The Great War at Sea: A Naval History of the First World War