On May 31, 1916, the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet clashed at the Battle of Jutland, located off Denmark’s North Sea coast. Both sides failed to achieve a decisive victory.
During World War I, Britain imposed a naval blockade of the German coast. The German Navy, being much smaller than the British Royal Navy, could not engage the latter in full-scale combat. Instead, at Jutland, the German plan was to lure, trap, and destroy a portion of the British fleet.
The Battle of Jutland involved some 250 ships and 100,000 men, and was the only major naval surface encounter during World War I. Both sides claimed victory. The British lost more ships and men, and the British press criticized its navy for failing to achieve a decisive outcome. However, the battle was a strategic British victory, since the Royal Navy had forced the German surface fleet to retire to Germany, where it would remain as a “fleet in being”, unwilling to leave port to do battle but persisting as a latent threat. Britain continued to control the North Sea and Germany was denied access to the Atlantic and British shipping lanes. In 1917, the German Navy turned to its U-boats to launch unrestricted submarine warfare aimed at destroying Allied and neutral shipping.