British home army in the First World War bridge between Tilbury and Gravesend. There were fears that a German fleet protected by mines and submarines could land a 100,000-strong force before the British Grand Fleet could steam the south from its base at Scapa Flow. To counter this threat, the Admiralty redeployed pre-dreadnought battleships and submarines closer to vulnerable ports, expanded the coastwatch and increased patrolling of the North Sea. In October, Churchill responded to Kitchener's call for the Royal Navy to take more specific precautions against invasion by insisting that the role of the Grand Fleet was to eliminate an invader's covering fleet rather than defeat the
Eyalet of the Archipelago Islands. Eyalet of the Archipelago The Eyalet of the Archipelago (, "Eyālet-i Cezāyir-i Baḥr-i Sefīd", "Eyalet of the Islands of the White Sea") was a first-level province (eyalet) of the Ottoman Empire. From its inception until the Tanzimat reforms of the mid-19th century, it was under the personal control of the Kapudan Pasha, the commander-in-chief of the Ottoman Navy. During the early period of the Ottoman Empire, the commander of the Ottoman fleet (the "Derya Begi", "Bey of the Sea") also held the governorship of the "sanjak" of Gallipoli, which was the principal Ottoman naval base until the construction of