A unified command in the Mediterranean would undoubtedly have been the most satisfactory and efficient system to adopt, but the time was not ripe for proposing that solution in 1917, and the alternative was adopted of British control of the traffic routes throughout the whole Mediterranean Sea subject to the general charge of the French Commander-in-Chief which was necessary in such an eventuality arising as an attempted “break out” of the Austrian Fleet.

Accordingly, with the consent of the French and Italian Admiralties, Vice-Admiral the Hon. Sir Somerset Gough-Calthorpe, K.C.B., was dispatched to the Mediterranean as British Commander-in-Chief; he was in control generally of all British Naval forces in the Mediterranean, and especially in charge of all the arrangements for the protection of trade and for anti-submarine operations, the patrol vessels of all the nationalities concerned being placed under his immediate orders for the purpose, whilst the whole of the Mediterranean remained under the general control of Vice-Admiral Gauchet, the French Commander-in-Chief.  Admiral Calthorpe was assisted by French and Italian officers, and the Japanese Government, which had previously dispatched twelve destroyers to the Mediterranean to assist in the protection of trade, also gave to Admiral Calthorpe the control of these vessels.

In the requests which we addressed to the Japanese Admiralty I always received great assistance from Admiral Funakoshi, the Naval Attache in London.  His co-operation was of a close and most cordial nature.

The services of the Japanese destroyers in the Mediterranean were of considerable value to the Allied cause.  A striking instance of the seamanlike and gallant conduct of their officers and men was furnished on the occasion of the torpedoing of a British transport by an enemy submarine off the coast of Italy, when by the work of the Japanese escorting destroyers the great majority of those on board were saved.

Admiral Calthorpe on leaving England was charged with the duty of organizing convoys in the Mediterranean on the lines of those already in force in other waters as soon as the necessary vessels were available, and a conference of Allied officers sat at Malta soon after his arrival, when a definite scheme of convoy was prepared.  There had always, however, been a great scarcity of fast patrol vessels in the Mediterranean for this work.  Divided control of the forces in that area was partly responsible for this.  The Austrian destroyers were considered by the Italian Admiralty to be so serious a menace in the Adriatic as to render it necessary to keep in that sea the great majority of the Italian destroyers as well as several French vessels of this class.  The situation at the eastern end of the Mediterranean necessitated a force of some eight British destroyers being kept in the Aegean Sea to deal with any Turkish vessels that might attempt to force the blockade of the Dardanelles, whilst operations on the Syrian coast engaged the services of some French and British destroyers.  Continual troop movements in the Mediterranean also absorbed the sendees of a considerable number of vessels of this type.