Castles of Steel by Robert K. Massie Read Free Book Online Page A

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.”

CHAPTER 2 “
Goeben
Is Your Objective”
    While Britain decided whether to go to war, France, which had no choice, prepared for the German blow. General Joseph Joffre, commanding the armies of France, urgently required the presence at the front of the XIX Army Corps, totaling 80,000 men. On the eve of war, these men were in North Africa and it became the imperative task of the French Mediterranean fleet to convoy them across the sea to Marseilles. To escort the troopships, one French dreadnought, six predreadnoughts, six armored cruisers, and twenty-four destroyers were available. Two other new French dreadnoughts, which might better have served France in the Mediterranean that month, were far away to the north on a mission of national
gloire,
escorting the president of the Republic on a state visit to St. Petersburg. Their absence created a potential danger: if the prewar Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy held firm, the combined fleets of these three powers would be superior to the French Mediterranean fleet and the safe passage of the XIX Corps would be in jeopardy.
    The war plan of the Triple Alliance called for the three fleets to assemble on the outbreak of hostilities at the port of Messina in Sicily. From there, they were to steam out and wrest control of the Mediterranean from France. By August 1914, the Austrian navy, based at Pola, at the head of the Adriatic, possessed two dreadnoughts, along with three older battleships and a handful of cruisers and destroyers. The Italian fleet also had three new dreadnoughts, but only one was ready for war. Germany, with no naval base of its own in the Mediterranean, maintained just two warships in the inland sea. One of these, however, was the battle cruiser
Goeben,
a ruggedly constructed vessel of 23,000 tons whose ten 11-inch guns and design speed of 28 knots made her the most powerful fast warship in the Mediterranean. The other German vessel was
Breslau,
a new light cruiser of 4,500 tons, with a speed of 27 knots and twelve 4.1-inch guns.
Goeben
worried Britain’s First Lord, who had no doubt that war was coming and that Britain would become involved.
Goeben,
Churchill grimly predicted, “would easily be able to avoid the French . . . [battleships] and brushing aside or outstripping their cruisers, break in upon the transports and sink one after another of these vessels crammed with soldiers.”
    To bar the passage of the French troopships was one of the purposes for which
Goeben
had been sent to the Mediterranean in 1912. A second mission, especially congenial to the kaiser, was to remind the people of the Mediterranean of the glory and long arm of the German emperor. When the big gray ship arrived in the Mediterranean, her ten 11-inch guns jutting from five turrets, her twelve 6-inch guns bristling from casements, her plain wardroom, with neither sofas, nor armchairs, nor pictures on the walls—all suggested a ship ready for war. But in reality, by the summer of 1914,
Goeben
was below peak efficiency. Two years of constant steaming without dry-docking had taken a toll. The ship’s bottom was fouled and her engines were plagued by worn-out, leaking boiler tubes, which reduced steam pressure and, therefore, speed. Even so, the two German ships constituted a formidable force. Their commander, Rear Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, was a short,