THE Royal Naval Review, a muster of the entire Home Fleet, was held at Southend in 1919. It was one of only two occasions in modern history when the review was held anywhere other than the Solent.

The review also doubled as a Victory at Sea celebration, saluting the role of the Royal Navy in the defeat of Germany and her allies. The Southend location meant that Londoners could turn out in force for the occasion, but it also acknowledged that much of the war at sea had been conducted close to the east coast, not least from Southend itself.

Southend Pier was commandeered as the operations base for east coast convoys, protecting the vital flow of coal-ships from the north-east to London (it repeated that role in World War 2). The very first German prisoners-of-war to arrive in Britain had been confined on prison-ships moored to Southend pier.

The Essex coast was inevitably destined to play a major role. The longest of any English county, it eyeballs the coast of Germany itself across the North Sea.

Naval strategy recognised this. At the outset of the war, the Home Defence fleet was divided into two sectors, the Dover Patrol, responsible for the Channel, and the Harwich Force. The latter, under the command of Rear Admiral Sir Reginald Tyrwhitt, ranged far from its home port, covering operations from the mouth of the Thames to the Scottish border. It was also charged with aggressive raids on the German coast itself. The Force was indeed with us.

The force (at full capacity) comprised eight light cruisers and 40 destroyers. Harwich was also home to the largest submarine base in the UK, outside the Solent. The emphasis throughout was on speed. Fast reconnaissance work and instant response to any enemy action were the key principles.

Initially, the Harwich force proved highly vulnerable to attacks by German U-boats. On September 22 1914, three cruisers were sunk in a single action by German submarine U-9, under the command of Otto Weddigen The disaster was a result, not for the first or last time, of the British military underestimating the power of modern weapons of war. The commander of the British cruisers hadn't even bothered to mount an anti-submarine watch.

Chastened by this disaster, the Harwich force quickly evolved tactics to evade the U-boats. The surface ships had the advantage of speed and manoeuvrability Conditions in the narrow, shallow North Sea were quite different to those in the Atlantic. Once spotted, the U-boats had nowhere to hide. The Royal Navy was avenged the following year when U-9 was rammed by a British battleship, with the loss of all her crew.

For all the dangers, the Harwich force was regarded – at least in retrospect – as a lucky posting. In contrast to the role of the Grand Fleet, which spent most of the war bottling the German fleet in port, life aboard the ships of the Harwich Force was fast moving and exciting. “We had he best of it,” a veteran recalled after the war.

That was the glamorous end of the business. Perhaps the most important work, however, was done by a separate force, the Harwich minesweepers. The loss of HMS Amphion, sunk by a mine off the Essex coast on the second day of the war (see separate story) underlined the vital importance of this work. Chunky, ugly and uncomfortable, minesweepers were described by one naval reservist who sailed in them as “the ultimate test of any sea-dog's sea-legs”. He also described them as “ugly tubs”. But they weren't there for their looks. Mines held no terrors for an HMS Ugly Tub, and these little ships kept the sea lanes clear, so that there were few repeats of the Amphion disaster.

As well as discharging mines, they also harvested a few, so that boffins could examine the latest German mine technology. Many of these mines found a new life after the Armistice. In an imaginative demonstration of how to beat swords into plough-shares, they were turned into cash collecting tins. Placed on the promenades of seaside towns, the once menacing weapons helped to collect thousands of pounds for naval veterans' charities.

Although not forming part of the Southend Victory at Sea Review, the Harwich ferries also emerged from the war with flying colours. The Great Eastern ships continued to ply between Essex and the Hook of Holland as if the war didn't exist. Ferry captains became adept at avoiding U-boats In the course of the war, they carried more than a million passengers, without a single casualty from enemy action.

The Harwich ferry service also provided the country with one of its few cast-iron heroes of the war, Captain Fryatt, whose story is told on another page.

Essex had played a symbolic role at the start of the war, when the German ambassador officially departed from Parkeston Quay. It was granted another iconic role at the Armistice, when the remaining German submarine fleet assembled, and formally surrendered to Admiral Tyrwhitt. The location was Harwich Harbour.