ABSTRACT
The Germans would be confined to the North Sea by the British fleet poised at some northern anchorage, ready to spring into action the moment word arrived that the High Seas Fleet had sailed. As the terrestrial conflict settled into a ghastly stalemate, the war at sea pitted the presumably incomparable British Grand Fleet against the brash challenger from across the North Sea, the German High Seas Fleet. Britain could match Germany's seventeen dreadnoughts and five battle cruisers with twenty-one all-big-gun battleships and nine battle cruisers of its own. As befit the venerable juggernaut of the naval world, the Royal Navy's ponderous attempts to crush the fleeing German battle cruiser were in strict accordance with the rules. The most southerly naval engagement in history, the battle had transpired on the rim of the Antarctic, thousands of miles from the real action of the war at sea and the submarines that were its dominant feature.
