Naval warfare of World War I

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Naval warfare of World War I
Part of World War I
Clockwise from top left: the Cornwallis fires in Suvla Bay, Dardanelles 1915; U-boats moored in Kiel, around 1914; a lifeboat departs from an Allied ship hit by a German torpedo, around 1917; two Italian MAS in practice in the final stages of the war; manoeuvres of the Austro-Hungarian fleet with the Tegetthoff in the foreground
Date July 28, 1914 – November 11, 1918 Location Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, North Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea, Baltic Sea and Persian Gulf Result Allied victory
Belligerents
Central Powers:  Germany  Austria-Hungary  Ottoman Empire	Allied Powers:  United Kingdom  France  Italy (1915–18)  United States (1917–18)  Russia (1914–17)  Japan  Australia  Greece (1917–18)
Commanders and leaders
Hugo von Pohl Gustav Bachmann Von Holtzendorff Reinhard Scheer Maximilian von Spee † Anton Haus Maximilian Njegovan Miklós Horthy Wilhelm Souchon Hubert von Rebeur	John Fisher Henry Jackson John Jellicoe Rosslyn Wemyss Louis Pivet Charles Aubert Marie de Jonquieres Ferdinand De Bon Luigi of Savoy-Aosta William S. Benson Nikolai Essen Vasily Kanin Adrian Nepenin Andrei Eberhardt Alexander Kolchak Ijuin Gorō George Edwin Patey William Pakenham Arthur Leveson Lionel Halsey Pavlos Kountouriotis

Naval warfare in World War I was mainly characterised 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.