Naval warfare in World War I was mainly characterized by blockade. The Allied Powers, with their larger fleets and surrounding position, largely succeeded in their blockade of Germany and the other Central Powers, whilst the efforts of the Central Powers to break that blockade, or to establish an effective counter blockade with submarines and commerce raiders, were eventually unsuccessful. Major fleet actions were extremely rare and proved less decisive.
Prelude
The naval arms race between Britain and Germany to build dreadnought battleships in the early 20th century is the subject of a number of books. Germany's attempt to build a battleship fleet to match that of the United Kingdom, the dominant naval power of the 20th-century and an island country that depended on seaborne trade for survival, is often listed as a major reason for the enmity between those two countries that led the UK to enter World War I. German leaders desired a navy in proportion to their military and economic strength that could free their overseas trade and colonial empire from dependence on Britain's good will, but such a fleet would inevitably threaten Britain's own trade and empire.
Ever since the First Moroccan Crisis (over the colonial status of Morocco, between March 1905 and May 1906), there had been an arms race, involving their respective navies. However, events led up to this. Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan was an American naval officer, extremely interested in British naval history. In 1887, he published The Influence of Sea Power upon History. The theme of this book was naval supremacy as the key to the modern world. His argument was that every nation that had ruled the waves, from Rome to Great Britain, had prospered and thrived, while those that lacked naval supremacy, such as Hannibal's Carthage or Napoleon's France, had not. Mahan hypothesized that what Britain had done in building a navy to control the world's sea lanes, others could also do - indeed, must do - if they were to keep up with the race for wealth and empire in the future.
Naval arms race
Mahan's thesis was highly influential and led to an explosion of new naval construction worldwide. The US Congress immediately ordered the building of three battleships (with a fourth, , to be built two years later). Japan, whose British-trained navy wiped out the Russian fleet at the Battle of Tsushima, helped to reinforce the concept of naval power as the dominant factor in conflict. However, the book made the most impact in Germany. The German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, had been much impressed by the Royal Navy, when he visited his grandmother, Queen Victoria. His mother said that "Wilhelm's one idea is to have a Navy which shall be larger and stronger than the British navy". In 1898 came the first German Fleet Act, two years later a second doubled the number of ships to be built, to 19 battleships and 23 cruisers in the next 20 years. In another decade, Germany would go from a naval ranking lower than Austria to having the second largest battle fleet in the world. For the first time since Trafalgar, Britain had an aggressive and truly dangerous rival to worry about.
Mahan wrote in his book that not only world peace or the empire, but Britain's very survival depended on the Royal Navy ruling the waves. The Cambridge 1895 Latin essay prize was called "Britannici maris", or "British Sea Power". So when the great naval review of June 1897 for the Queen's diamond jubilee took place, it was in an atmosphere of unease and uncertainty. The question everyone wanted to know the answer to was how Britain was going to stay ahead. But Mahan could not give any answers. The man who thought he could was Jackie Fisher, commander in chief of the Mediterranean Fleet. He believed there were "Five strategic keys to the empire and world economic system: Gibraltar, Alexandria and Suez, Singapore, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Straits of Dover." His job was to keep hold of all of them.