Britain set about creating a blockade, using the numerical superiority of the Grand Fleet and choke points such as Gibraltar, the North Sea, and the English channel to intercept merchant ships, inspect them for contraband, and intern them if need be. Pretty much all of the surface naval action during the war occured with this aim- Britain trying to contain the German surface fleet and maintain the blockade, and the German fleet trying to chip away at the strength of the Royal Navy by fighting engagements on its own terms until it could face them head-on.

The very first days of the war were important in the Mediterranean. A German battlecruiser called the Goeben and a few other German ships played a cat and mouse game with British vessels, trying to reach the Black Sea as a political show of strength to force the Ottoman Empire into the war on the German side. British vessels had the Goeben in sight several times on the day before the war began, but were not allowed to open fire because of uncertainties of if the nations were at war or not. The British admiral in charge was court-martialed later, I believe, and the Goeben made it into Constantinople, and was eventually sold to the Turks. Someone with more knowledge of the political situation can tell you if the ship actually had some political impact, all I know is that it got there.

Also at the beginning of the war was the German Pacific squadron, under Graf Spee, originally stationed in China at the beginning of the war. This force of armored cruisers played a very long cat-and-mouse game in 1914 with the Royal Navy in the Pacific and then off the coast of South America, raiding merchants and attacking/raiding British refueling stations while slowly making their way back to Germany. In November 1914, the force met a force of British armored cruisers at the Battle of Coronel, off Chile, and sank two of them. In December though, while trying to raid the Falkland Islands, the German force was ambushed by a force of British battlecruisers and sunk in the Battle of the Falkland Islands.

The North Sea, however, was the main naval arena. Like I said before, the British were concerned with maintaining numerical superiority and keeping the German High Seas Fleet bottled up in their harbors and unable to challenge the blockade. The Germans, in turn, wanted to engage the larger Royal Navy by surprising smaller forces, chipping away at their strength, without loosing too many valuable vessels in the process.

To do this, the Germans wanted to avoid a large fleet action. Instead, the faster scouting force of Battlecruisers would try to lure out British vessels to engage them, with the main High Seas fleet behind ready to surprise the British forces, and then head back to Germany before the whole Grand Fleet became involved. To lure forces out, and to cause political turmoil in Britain, the German battlecruiser force began to launch raids on and shell coastal towns like Yarmouth and Hartlepool. However, the British had access to German communications (Room 40), and often had advanced notice of where the German forces would be.

In one of these shelling operations, in January 1915, the British battlecruiser force intercepted the German battlecruiser force, which was also accompanied by a slow armored cruiser. at the Battle of Dogger Bank. The German force turned and ran for safety, with the British pursuing and the forces firing at eachother from long range. The slow German armored cruiser, the Blucher, was sunk, and the German battlecruiser Seydlitz was damaged. The British battlecruiser Lion was severely damaged.

The other large action was the famous Battle of Jutland in mid-1916. The two Battlecruiser forces again engaged eachother with some help from a British battleship squadron, with three British vessels (the Indefatigable, Queen Mary, and Princess Royal) exploding and sinking with almost all hands lost after magazine detonations. The two principal fleets then met eachother for the only time during the war, with the British force surprising and "crossing the T" of the Germans, who then reversed course and disengaged. The High Seas fleet then used darkness to fight its way through British scouting vessels and slip away from the bulk of the British fleet, making it back to Germany with the loss of the pre-dreadnought battleship Pommern and the battlecruiser Seydlitz seriously damaged. From a tactical standpoint, the German fleet won at Jutland, but never again came out to really challenge the Royal Navy, and the blockade continued until the end of the war as the Grand Fleet grew in strength with the introduction of American battleships and new British ones.

I cannot recommend "Castles of Steel" by Robert Massie enough, about this topic. It covers the battles and developments during the war, while his other book "Dreadnought" goes over the build-up, arms race, and political situation before the war.