The Slowest Weapon

CHAPTER 6 · 1914–1918 · THE WAR AT SEA · The Great War, 1914–1918

Switch to the world map, because this war’s longest front is salt water. From day one Britain does the quiet, decisive thing: it locks the exits. The Northern Patrol closes the top of the North Sea, the Channel is closed at Dover, and the German merchant flag vanishes from every ocean by Christmas 1914. No drama, few battles — just an empire of 20 million tons of shipping slowly starving an enemy of fertilizer nitrogen, fats, and food. By the “turnip winter” of 1916–17 German civilian rations are collapsing; by 1918, civilian excess deaths attributed to the blockade run in the hundreds of thou

The turn: Convoy adopted, May 1917.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.