carrying two S-lb. r 6s-lb. bombs. One machine went wrong soon after starting and was picked up. The others reached their objective and set fire to a double Zeppelin shed which was burnt out. Two got safely back; one fell into the sea and the pilot was drowned; three came down in Denmark where the pilots were interned. The attack is interesting as representing the stage of development reached by naval aircraft during the war. On Aug. n a coastal motor-boat and aircraft operation was carried out in the Bight on the Frisian coast supported by a strong force. A Zeppelin was brought down by the aircraft, but enemy aircraft overpowered the coastal motor-boats, three of which were sunk and three more lost.
In the Mediterranean the summer of 1918 saw one of the most brilliant exploits of the war by Comm. Luigi Rizzo, which seriously depleted Austria's already scanty tale of battleships.
Mediterranean. The course of the war in that sea may be briefly summarized. In its main features the situation was analogous to that in the North Sea. The Straits of Otranto (40 m. wide) corresponded to the Straits of Dover, and had been closed by the arrival of the French fleet on Aug. 16 1914.
The Austrians then had three dreadnoughts (" Viribus Unitis," " Tegetthof," " Prinz Eugen ") to oppose to France's two (" Courbet " and " Jean Bart "). The torpedoing of the "Jean Bart" by the Austrian Ui2 on Dec. 21 1914 led to the withdrawal of the battleships; and the sinking of the a.c. "Leon Gambetta " on April 26 by Austrian Us with the loss of 614 men had much the same effect as the loss of the " Hogue," " Aboukir " and " Cressy " in the North Sea. France with- drew her forces from the Adriatic and posted them outside the Straits.
The intervention of Italy on May 24 1915 gave the Allies eight dreadnoughts (" Jean Bart," " Courbet," " Paris," " France," " Cavour," " Giulio Cesare," " Leonardo da Vinci," " Dante Alighieri ") against the Austrian three. The situation was, however, complicated by the contiguity of three Allied forces in the same area. The French c.-in-c., Adml. Boue de Lapeyrere, exercised the supreme command, but the Due d'Ab- bruzzi, c.-in-c. of the Italian fleet, directed operations in the Adriatic, where he was reinforced by four British light cruisers, twelve French destroyers and seven French submarines. When Italy declared war on Austria in May 1915 she withdrew her dreadnoughts from the Adriatic and stationed them at Taranto. The advent of the Dardanelles campaign led to the appoint- ment of the British Adml. de Robeck as Vice-Admiral Eastern Mediterranean, and in this area and that of Egypt the French c.-in-c. 's virtual authority was actually exercised by the British admiral. In Syrian waters the responsibility was not so clearly defined. There one of the principal objectives early in the war had been the lo-m. stretch of coast road running through Alex- andretta on the main road from Adana to Aleppo. It was shelled by the British cruiser " Doris " (Capt. Frank Larken) in Dec. 1914, but after the commencement of the Dardanelles operations the observation of the Syrian coast was taken over by the French. The dominant feature of Mediterranean strategy lay in the closure of the Straits of Otranto by the overwhelming force of the Allies. The Austrian fleet never dared to try and pass it, while in the Adriatic the control was enforced by the submarine, and in its narrow waters both sides were deprived by its menace of the use of their principal instru- ment of war.
When Serbia collapsed in 1915 under Mackensen's hammer- like blows, the remnants of the army fell back on Albania, and its transport to Corfu formed the principal naval operation of that year. An army of no,ooo men was carried 90 m. by sea without the loss of a single transport. The attempt to close the Straits of Otranto led to a repetition there of the Dover raids (June i, July i, Dec. 22-3 1916, May 15 1917, April 12-3 1918). On Dec. 9 1917 a bold attack was made by two little Italian torpedo craft (Comm. Rizzo) on Trieste, and the old battleship " Wien " (5,600 tons, 4 9-6-in.) was sunk. This was followed on May 14 1918 by a similar exploit, when Comm. Mario Pellegrini penetrated the roads at Pola with a little vessel,
the " Grille," designed to climb the net defence like a tank, and apparently torpedoed an Austrian warship. Under Vice- Adml. Count Thaon de Revel, the Italian c.-in-c., the Otranto barrage was greatly strengthened, and its pressure was being severely felt by the German submarines in 1918. The condi- tions there were very different from those at Dover. At Dover tides were strong and depths comparatively small, varying from 1 6 to 30 fathoms; in the Straits of Otranto the tide was inappreci- able but the depths were great, varying from 200 to 500 fathoms and making mining, except in the form of a net barrage, im- practicable. The Austrian battle-fleet, spurred on by Germany, sallied out on June 10 1918 to make a raid on it in force, but were met by Comm. Luigi Rizzo with two small motor-craft off Premuda I., some 50 m. from Pola. Evading a strong escort of destroyers he sent two torpedoes into the dreadnought " Szent Istvan " (" St. Stephen "), reducing the scanty number of Austrian dreadnoughts from four to three, and sending them disconsolately home. In spite of the preponderance of the French and Italian fleets there was a tendency in the Mediter- ranean, as in the North Sea, to think too exclusively in terms of battle squadrons. The French fleet, now mustering seven dread- noughts, lay at Corfu, and carried out manoeuvres and target practice which would have been immensely useful if there had been an enemy to fight. Meanwhile the direction of the war against the submarine drifted largely towards Malta, where it was exercised by the British c.-in-c. (Vice-Adml. Hon. Sir Somer- set Gough-Calthorpe). Early in the war the Mediterranean had been mapped out in geographical sectors for anti-subma- rine work, in much the same way as the coastal areas allotted to auxiliary patrol flotillas at home. Useful for purposes of ad- ministration and supply, the system was a vicious one strategi- cally, for it impeded unity of command and made it difficult to establish uniformity in work affecting the whole area, such as convoy. To ensure better coordination it had been decided at Paris on Nov. 29 1917 to create an Allied Naval Council. This consisted of the naval representatives of the Allies Sir Eric Geddes, Adml. Wemyss (British), Vice-Adml. de Bon (France), Vice-Adml. di Revel (Italy), Rear- Adml. Funakoshi (Japan), Vice-Adml. W. S. Sims (United States)' and its influ- ence was particularly beneficial in the Mediterranean. When a possibility arose of the Russian dreadnoughts in the Black Sea being used by Germans, the situation was met by the dispatch of the " Superb " and " Temeraire " from England and of four French pre-dreadnoughts to Lemnos (Aegean).
An attack was made on Durazzo, the Austrian naval base, 50 m. from the Straits, on Oct. 2 by a considerable Allied naval force, including a number of American submarine chasers, and an enemy destroyer was sunk in the harbour. On the night of Oct. 3i-Nov. i 1918, when the Austrian navy was already in the hands of the Yugoslavs, an Italian boat entered Pola and sank the dreadnought " Viribus Unitis."
On the Syrian coast, a naval force of French and British ships had cooperated in the bombardment of Gaza on Oct. 30 1917, and had maintained the army's communications by sea from Egypt to Haifa, Beirut and Tripoli, with the loss by submarine attack of the monitor Mi 5 and the destroyer " Staunch " on Nov. ii 1917.
Mesopotamia, Archangel, Cameroon, British East Africa. In three great river expeditions, too, the navy played an impor- tant part; one up the Dvina in the icy waters of the White Sea, another up the Tigris in the torrid marshes of Mesopotamia, and the third in the swampy creeks of the Duala in Cameroon. In the first Mesopotamia campaign, which ended with the invest- ment of 'Gen. Townshend in Kut on Dec. 2 1915, the naval force consisted at first of the sloops " Espiegle " (Comm. Wilfred Nunn, 6 4-in., 2 3-pdr.) and "Odin" (4 4-in., 2 3-pdr.), the In- dian Marine paddle-ship "Lawrence" (4 4-in., 4 6-pdr.), and three small armed vessels, the " Miner," " Lewis Pelly " (a small yacht, 2 3-pdr.), and "Shaitan" (i i2-pdr. 8 cwt.) under Capt. C. Hayes Sadler of the " Ocean."
The principal base was at Basra (or Bussorah), the old empo- rium of the Indian overland route, 70 m. up the Shatt el 'Arab
