Grand Fleet Grand Fleet The Grand Fleet was the main fleet of the Royal Navy during the First World War. Formed in August 1914 from the First Fleet and elements of the Second Fleet of the Home Fleets, the Grand Fleet included 25–35 state-of-the-art capital ships. It was initially commanded by Admiral Sir John Jellicoe. He was succeeded by Admiral Sir David Beatty in December 1916. The Grand Fleet was based first at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands and later at Rosyth on the Firth of Forth. It took part in the biggest fleet action of the war – the Battle
Naval warfare in the Mediterranean during World War I to bombard the cities of Bizerte and Bône in the French protectorate of Tunisia. Pursued by larger French and British forces, the "Goeben" and "Breslau" ran for Turkey, where they were nominally transferred to the Ottoman Navy when the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the Central Powers side, and fought several battles against the Russian Black Sea Fleet until Russia's surrender in 1917. After the Kingdom of Italy entered the war on the Allied side in 1915, the strategy of the Allies was to blockade the Adriatic at the Otranto Straits and monitor the movements of the Austrian fleet.