The British Fleet in the Great War (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The British Fleet in the Great War

In March, 1914, it was announced in the House of Commons that in place of the annual manuvres, making a spectacular appeal to the popular imagination, it had been determined to carry out a test mobilization of the Reserves in order to place a large proportion of the older ships of the Navy - the Third Fleet - on a war footing. The decision proved fortunate. On Wednesday, July 15th and succeeding days, the First, Second and Third Fleets, as they were styled, assembled at Spithead, and on the following Monday the various squadrons and the flotillas of destroyers and submarines put to sea for exercises in the Channel, led as far as the Nab Lightship by the King in the Royal yacht Victoria and Albert. Four days later the First Fleet, consisting of fully commissioned ships, which was afterwards to be known as the Grand Fleet, steamed to its base at Portland, and the Second and Third Fleets went to their home ports, the latter to land reservists so that they might return to their homes. In the meantime dark clouds had been gathering on the European horizon. Mr. Winston Churchill was then First Lord of the Admiralty, and Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg (now the Marquis of Milford Haven) First Sea Lord.

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