Themes

Conflict and Change

• Introduction

• In Focus: 1900

• In Focus: World War One

• In Focus: Interwar

  • Surface Fleet

  • Submarines

  • Royal Marines

  • Fleet Air Arm

• In Focus: World War Two

• In Focus: Post War Conflict

• In Focus: Cold War Climate

• In Focus: Falklands and Beyond

• Special Exhibition: Falklands 25

Learning

• How To: Understand Propaganda

• Propaganda Image Galleries

• Education Project: Sea With Your Own Eyes

Interwar: Surface Fleet

Article Highlights

• Introduction

• Decommissioning and limitation

• Washington Treaty

• The Interwar ships

• Threat of war

• Rearmanent

Washington Treaty

Not all the Royal Navy's problems were domestic in origin. Immediately after World War One countries such as America and Japan had dedicated themselves to reach parity with Britain in warship strength. The early Twenties saw a global drive toward naval disarmament, fuelled by the belief that a naval arms race had contributed to the likelihood of war in 1914 and could do so again. The Treaty of Washington, introduced in 1921-22, brought in a system of fixed ratios of naval strength for the major world powers and complex equations governing the number of different vessel types each nation could build and maintain.

The Treaty formalised the loss of Britain's naval supremacy, but the Admiralty saw some benefit to the arrangements – not least in that the rulings would force a reduction of strength in Britain's potential enemies, but also in an unrequited hope that they should limit or even ban the use of submarines, a technology that was considered deplorably barbaric. However, it also strengthened Treasury arguments against naval spending and contributed further to the general technological stagnation of the Royal Navy during the period.