The might and power of the dark waves of the North Sea was another battlefield of the Great War,

another old front line.

And here we discover the story of one ship and its crew that had a very different kind of war.

When we study what the old front line means,

it's not just about the war on the Western Front Front,

not just about the war on land. Often we look at the battle beneath that

land, the war underground, or above it with the war in the air. And while the Western Front stretched

over 450 miles from Switzerland to the coast on the Channel and the North Sea.

I guess that's the point we're making here,

that there was this naval flank, even on the Western Front,

and operations like Gallipoli and Salonica can't be understood

without reference to a naval component.

And the naval side of the war often overlooked, perhaps forgotten,

kind of hasten to use that phrase,

nevertheless saw nearly 45,000 men killed,

serving with some aspect of the Royal Naval Forces.

And of those two-thirds of them, the sea is their grave and they're commemorated on the great memorials at Plymouth and Portsmouth and Chatham.

More than 500 vessels were lost at sea while serving with the Navy.

And once we take into account the navies of other nations,

Germany, France, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia,

then we can understand that the war at sea is vital to our

understanding of the Great War. So in this episode we look at an obscure aspect of the war at sea,

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