ABSTRACT
In the aftermath of the First World War the Admiralty compiled a report on T h e British Naval Effort'.1 The Admiralty made clear that its efforts were central to the British participation in the war. 'The war has been fought, and the final decision reached, on land', Their Lordships noted, 'but the land campaign was rendered possible only by reinforcements and supplies from oversea.' This fact has not been given enough attention by historians. Most have concentrated on the military struggle on the Continent, where Britain's contribution, although important, was not decisive in itself. Such work has taken on a greater sophistication, both in terms of analysis and research, in the past 20 years, and now stands as an exemplar for writing military history.2 Those advances have not occurred in the writing of naval history. The focus of British naval writing has been on efforts to deal with unrestricted submarine warfare and technical minutiae like fire-control, signalling and their effect on the battle of Jutland, rather than on the wider impact of British maritime, as opposed to strictly naval, power.3 This has obscured the real significance of Britain's contribution in the First World War. It was Britain's maritime power, not its military strength, that was the essential element that it provided for the Entente.
