A better centenary

Exactly 100 years ago: at 11 a.m. Paris time on 11 November 1918, the Armistice of Compiègne came into force, and the Great War came to an end. Though there had been no major naval battles since Jutland, the Royal Navy played a vital role in hastening the end of the war by defeating the German submarine campaign and maintaining an economic blockade. A key moment leading to the armistice was the Kiel mutiny – when sailors of the German High Seas fleet refused to sortie for another battle with the Royal Navy.

We get to read our own particular view of the armistice, and the surrender and internment of the German Navy that followed, in the words of our own logbooks. The logbook editing team has been working extra hard over the last few months to make sure that there is an edited version of every one of the oldWeather logbooks from the WW1 period available on naval-history.net. You can read the characteristically terse accounts of the end of the war from a whole list of ships from HMS Almazora (‘1.5am: Signal re “Armistice” received.’) to HMS Virago (‘11.30am: Party left for thanksgiving service on board HMS Tamar’).

This November 11th we not only remember those who died in the war, we remember Gordon Smith, who did so much to lead and inspire the historical work done with our logbooks. It was Gordon’s fond wish to have the WW1 logs edited by the centenary of the armistice, so we also have something to celebrate: Congratulations to all those who have worked on transcribing and editing the logs to complete this.