Heligoland (19 page)

That fateful decision having been taken, Heligoland became the subject of a huge new phase of military building intended to develop it into a formidable offshore base for torpedo-craft, gunboats and light cruisers. To the south-west, jutting out from the corner of the island where the high red cliffs of the Oberland joined the Unterland, a concrete mole was constructed, a protective arm projecting some 1,950ft out to sea. Another mole, 1,300ft long, was built to the east, and the area between the moles was ambitiously reclaimed from the sea by means of infilling with millions of tons of sand brought from the Elbe estuary. To this vast new diamond-shaped apron, known as the Südhafen (South Harbour), was attached an electric railway and jetties forming various specialist harbours. All the while the main island itself was coming to resemble a huge unsinkable battleship. Mounted high on the cliff-tops at the north and south ends of the island, the main armament consisted of groups of long-range guns with 12in-diameter barrels. The very contours of the Oberland, most of which had traditionally been used by the islanders as potato fields, were harshly altered when the north group of guns were installed on a miniature mountain, fashioned out of the material blasted out of the ground during the construction of the maze of subterranean stores and shelters. Indeed, many of the works were underground.

The guns were housed in four massive, heavily armoured steel turrets, which could be swivelled for all-round fire. These turrets, which the German Navy lightheartedly named ‘Anna’, ‘Bertha’, ‘Caesar’ and ‘Dora’, were so streamlined that they were almost flush with the ground and thus would have been especially difficult targets for British warships at sea. All maritime facilities on the island were upgraded to the very highest standard. By 1913 even the lighthouse had been specially modernised with the latest searchlight mirrors and arc lamps. Boasting 38 million candle-power, it became, or so it was claimed at the time, one of the most powerful lighthouses in the world. The present lighthouse keeper there now doubts the truth of that claim.

Less and less information about the islanders was reaching Britain each year. Spy-fever and the construction of the heavy-duty fortifications meant that the German authorities were in no mood for it to be otherwise. No doubt wishing to keep the island from the prying eyes of visiting British yachtsmen, in 1908 the Kaiser himself decreed that henceforth the Dover–Heligoland race was to be held every three years. Rather more worryingly, the German authorities banned British vessels from entering the island’s waters
at any time
. This was in flagrant contravention of the 1890 Treaty of Cession’s Article 7 – which had prominently guaranteed access for British fishing boats to Heligoland’s anchorages in all weathers. The Foreign Office scarcely bothered to complain. Indeed, the only discernible voice in support of the British link with the island was that of William George Black, who twenty years earlier had been denigrated by the Foreign Office in its internal departmental memos.

Entirely at his own expense and on his own initiative, Black visited the island in June 1911. In the absence of any British consular representation there, he was the best (if not the only) person to report on the islanders’ living conditions. Mindful of the spy-fever that had not so long before claimed Shephard, Trench and Brandon, and sensing he was being watched, he was most careful to avoid taking photographs or notes. He found that some five hundred Italian and East Prussian labourers had been toiling for three years in the construction of subterranean passages, chambers and galleries designed to allow the artillery secure and easy access to every part of the island. Apart from the barracks Germany had created for her own soldiers no provision had been made to house the greatly increased population. The foreign workmen were obliged to find lodgings with the Heligolanders, where they became more or less members of the family. Hitherto there had been little crime among the island’s population of two thousand, and no door needed to be locked at night. The lodgers paid good rates for their accommodation, but their presence disturbed the islanders’ close-knit way of life and the morale of their ancient nation was further eroded. Had the Heligolanders been able to continue with their proper occupation as fishermen they could have compelled the government to provide accommodation for the labourers, but the fishing industry, according to Black, had been wrecked, the nets torn apart by submarines and other vessels.

On returning to England in 1911 Black’s observations were published in an article entitled ‘From Heligoland to Helgoland’ in the
National Review
. By chance the journal was edited by Leopold Maxse, the son-in-law of Lord Salisbury and the nephew of the island’s most distinguished former governor, Ernest Maxse. Black’s article described the military changes he had noticed. There was construction activity across the roads on Dune (formerly Sandy Island), although the outline of that dependency had been greatly diminished by recent storms. What used to be the healthy open Oberland was almost entirely occupied by buildings and fortifications. Peering through the barbed-wire fence overlooking the new dockland complex he had seen one of the specialist harbours being prepared for submarines. German warships were almost constantly employed in gun practice in the neighbourhood of Heligoland, sometimes by day, often by night, and the Heligolanders told him they could hit the mark at a distance of 7 miles.
¹¹

At about that stage in the maritime arms race Admiral von Tirpitz and Germany’s naval planners anticipated that the threat of a pre-emptive attack by the Royal Navy would be removed by 1914 when the Heligoland fortifications were completed and the Kiel Canal widened. In contrast, on the other side of the North Sea, Lord Fisher, who was always looking ahead, believed that the threat of war would increase at that time. In a conversation with the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Maurice Hankey, he predicted that when the German programme of ship-building was completed, and their fleet able to match the Royal Navy, Germany would declare war. He expected that this would happen in September or October 1914, basing his forecast on a consideration of the date by which the alterations to the Kiel Canal would be finished and the German harvest safely gathered in.

In early August 1914 a large German ship anchored off Heligoland. It had come to abruptly move the 3,427 inhabitants. They were given just six hours to pack, and could take with them no more than they could carry by hand. Strict orders were issued by the island’s Commandant that all keys to houses, rooms and cupboards were to be left in their locks, and the islanders were told that their household effects, bedding and furniture would all remain unattended until the war was won – in a few weeks. Several years earlier the Heligolanders had been warned that when the construction of the island’s fortifications was complete many of them might need to be rehoused on the mainland, in a village on the Elbe, but nothing had happened. Even so, the cold abruptness of the deportation now was more unnerving than the fact of leaving. Some Heligolanders had lived on the island all their lives and had never set foot on mainland soil. Now many were sent to Altona, others to Blankenese, a suburb on the Elbe a few miles from the centre of Hamburg. There they were treated as semi-English. The only two British subjects resident on the island, one of them a sailor with twenty-three years’ service in the Royal Navy, were arrested and flung into prison. And Britain had not yet declared war on Germany!
¹

Germany was understandably eager to deport the Heligolanders. Berlin had good reason to suspect, but did not know for certain, that Britain was contemplating an invasion of the island. Since October 1911, when he was appointed First Sea Lord, Winston Churchill had been contemplating the islands in the Heligoland Bight with a view to establishing a British base on one of them in the event of a war with Germany. This would enable British blockading flotillas to be easily replenished.

Churchill well knew that the traditional war policy of the Admiralty had developed during the prolonged struggles with France. Immediately upon the outbreak of war, the procedure was to establish a blockade of the enemy’s ports and naval bases by means of flotillas of small (but strong) craft supported by cruisers, with superior battle fleets in reserve. In recent years, although the potential enemy was no longer France but Germany, the fundamental principle of Britain’s naval strategy – that ‘the first line of defence is the enemy’s ports’ – held good. Yet now, instead of operating across the English Channel, with the supporting ships close at hand in safe harbours, the Royal Navy would need to operate in the Heligoland Bight, across some 290 miles of sea and with no bases suitable for their supporting battle fleet nearer than the Thames or the Forth. Evidently the Germans adhered rather to the French concept of the torpedo-boat as a means of attack, whereas Britain’s destroyers were constructed principally for their sea-keeping qualities and firepower. But the great distances over the North Sea immensely reduced the Royal Navy’s effectiveness, and it was reckoned that, in order to carry out its old strategic policy from British home bases, it would require flotillas at least three or four times as numerous as those of Germany.

Many years later Churchill revealed in his book
The World Crisis 1911–1918
that to begin to overcome this situation, with the concurrence of the principal British commanders afloat, he had set out a policy of distant blockade in the Admiralty War Orders of 1912. In 1913 Churchill instructed Admiral Lewis Bayly to examine the potential of such offensive actions, which he did with Sir Arthur Wilson and Lord ‘Jacky’ Fisher. He even went so far as to have plaster models made of the Heligoland Bight, with which an invasion could be planned.

At a meeting of the War Group in June 1914 Wilson advised that landings should be made on the Frisian Islands and on the German North Sea coast. He also proposed that one of the six army divisions available for such operations should cooperate with the Navy in the capture of Heligoland. A. Nicolson, an assistant secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence, angrily rejected the suggestion as ‘madness’, because the island was heavily fortified.
²
However, Churchill was keen and so too, for a while, was Lord Fisher. Other senior figures at the Admiralty were more sceptical. In July 1913 Ballard, who had become Director of Operations, condemned as unacceptable gambles the schemes submitted by Bayly for the capture of Borkum, Sylt or Heligoland as an advance base. On the eve of war Churchill resurrected these plans and on 31 July he sent them to the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith.

War broke out on 4 August 1914. On that day Churchill’s private secretary, Sir Edward Marsh, who was a sailing associate of Erskine Childers, mentioned Childers to Churchill, suggesting that such unique local knowledge ought to be pressed into service. Already a member of the RNVR, Childers was summoned from Dublin by Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond, Assistant Director of Operations, who requested him to revise the remarks he had made on the German North Sea coast in his 1906 paper to the Hydrographic Office. Almost immediately Childers redrafted that earlier paper, this time presenting it as a plan for capturing a base for operations against Heligoland. It was entitled
The Seizure of Borkum and Juist
.

This plan doubtless came to the attention of Major Sir Hereward Wake, who was then preparing for Downing Street – albeit from the army’s point of view – a consideration of the amphibious possibilities indicated by Churchill’s plan. On 11 August 1914 Wake completed his assessment, which he called
A Report on Proposals to Occupy Certain Places as Temporary Naval Bases for offensive Action against Germany
. He envisaged that British forces would suffer very high casualties, particularly in the event of an invasion of Heligoland, and his report was seized by Downing Street personages, who were sceptical of Churchill’s audacious intentions, as the evidence they needed to damn the seemingly risky plans. Because of this criticism, and the distractions of the first four months of the war, Churchill did not revert in earnest to the theme of an advanced base until November 1914. On the 5th of that month a War Group consisting of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Henry Oliver, Lord Fisher and Sir Arthur Wilson met to discuss future operations. Churchill was now less enthusiastic about storming Heligoland, and instead wanted to land troops at Borkum to capture both that island and Emden. The others thought both islands would be impossible to hold if captured because Britain did not have the necessary land forces. Fisher wanted to send the Grand Fleet into the Baltic as part of a plan to convey a Russian army from Petrograd to land in northern Germany and take Berlin. Wilson suggested bombarding Heligoland with old pre-Dreadnought battleships, before troops were put ashore to capture it.

Human nature being what it is, as the War Group discussed these extraordinary schemes, two members were inevitably vigorously opposed to the third’s plan. Although this meant the question of a landing on one of the German islands went unresolved, the War Group remained prepared to do so. To facilitate an armed landing on whichever island was eventually chosen, in December 1914 the monitors then under construction were hastily completed.
³
The shallow draft of these remarkable vessels enabled them to approach close to the shore and attack definite points on the coast. Typical examples were HMS
Mersey
and HMS
Severn
; each 267ft long, they carried 6in and 4.7in guns, but had a draft of only 4ft 9in. Later monitors were equipped with huge 11in and even 15in guns. Stationed off the coast of Belgium, they were pressed into service to harass the advancing German army and prevent the fall of Dunkirk and Calais. All the while Churchill was considering other possibilities for waging this kind of amphibious warfare. One consequence of his frustration at his inability to get approval for a landing on the Frisian Islands was that in 1915, when planning the Dardanelles campaign, he side-stepped consultations with his colleagues – with disastrous consequences. Perhaps the heavy losses the Allied forces suffered at Gallipoli, in terms of men and matériel, were an indication of the likely cost of such a landing on Heligoland.