Rule Britannia

One of my many goals for retirement reading is to work my way through the many books that I have accumulated over the years, but never read.  The first book finished in 2010 (although begun in 2009) is in this category - Robert Massie's Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea.  Massie is perhaps best known for Nicholas and Alexandra which was the basis of a movie by that same name.  Castles of Steel is the sequel to an earlier book - Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War. 

Massie worked some 22 years on these two books - they have clearly been exhaustively researched and they are also brilliantly written.  Massie has a gift for writing history - something I was going to elaborate on this post, but think now it is the subject of a future post on some issues with my own writing.  Suffice it to say that while his books are very long (almost 800 pages in this case) they are so well written they don't feel anywhere near that long.

At the same time I need to say that I don't believe Castles of Steel as good as Dreadnought.  Part of this is not Massie's fault or responsibility - the focus of both books is the huge battleships which were the major weapons in both German and British navies.  Since, however, Kaiser Wilhem II did not want to risk his large ships in a head-to-head confrontation with the Royal Navy, the German fleet spent most of the war in port - the major exception being the Battle of Jutland in May of 1916.  As a result, in my view, there is not enough material to justify a book of this length.  Massie has written that he originally intended to cover WWI in Dreadnought, but since that book topped 900 pages, that was clearly not practical.  A book of about two-thirds of the length of Castles of Steel would probably have been more than adequate for the subject matter.

Part of the result is that some, but certainly not all, of the first part of the book seem to drag a little bit.  Another problem is the difficulty of understanding written descriptions of battles at sea - this is probably due to the difficulty of writing about the same - I have some sense of this from my own more much limited experience in writing about Civil War land battles.  Once, however, Massie gets to Jutland the pace picks up dramatically and continues through the German's unleasing of unlimited subermarine warfare which brings the United States into the war and causes the ultimate defeat and destruction of the German empire. 

One of the interesting questions about naval warfare in World War I is what part it played in determining the ultimate outcome.  Part of this debate centers on Jutland which was a British victory because it ended with Britain still in control of the North Sea, but was limited by the fact that the German fleet survived to possibly fight another day.  Massie answers those who think a larger victory might have ended or shortened the war by pointing to the fact that after a more conclusive British victory at Trafalgar in 1805 it took Britain and its allies another ten years to finally defeat Napolean.  On the other hand had the British and American fleets not defeated the German U-boat offensive it is not impossible that at the very least Britain could have been driven to the negotiating table under unfavorable circumstances.

Perhaps what this really means is that in both the 20th and 19th centuries, the Royal Navy's key role was to defend the island from invasion or starvation thereby keeping British armies in the field fighting for ultimate victory.  Interestingly in reading the later Angela Thirkell novels, the navy seems to be held in much higher regard than the army - regarded almost with a religious like faith.  At any rate even though Castles of Steel is not Dreadnought (perhaps an impossible standard) it is a very enjoyable book - full not only of the story of ships at sea, but also the stories of the prominent figures both military and civilian.