There were several reasons, the simplest of which was that the Royal Navy held naval superiority in the English Channel. To win this back would require the commitment of the High Seas Fleet (HSF, the German battlefleet). Such a commitment would provoke the British to send the Grand Fleet south, putting it between the HSF and its bases, and risking the total destruction of the HSF. The Grand Fleet outnumbered the HSF, and had superior firepower, as well as being generally more experienced and confident at naval warfare. As the HSF represented Germany's only way to defeat the British blockade, and its only way to ensure Russia remained blockaded, Germany was loath to risk it.

The British force in the Channel was the Dover Patrol, supported by the cruisers and destroyers of the Harwich Force. The Dover Patrol had multiple monitors, armed with 12in and 15in guns, an obsolete battleship, 2-3 light cruisers, two flotillas of destroyers and a submarine flotilla, as well as numerous gunboats, minesweepers, armed boarding steamers and patrol boats. It was well designed for its main role, bombarding the ports and coast of Flanders to prevent the Germans using them as submarine bases, or to support Allied troops ashore. This was a further point against launching an amphibious assault from these bases - as they could be brought under British bombardment at any point, embarking troops and supplies would be very difficult, and transports could be destroyed. The Dover Patrol was, generally speaking, not capable of fighting a surface action against a serious force, but could fight off the destroyers the Germans had based in Flanders. To defeat it would require a more serious force to be deployed - and to deploy only a part of the HSF would invite a defeat in detail by the Grand Fleet. As such, the entire HSF would have to be deployed, and as covered above, this was politically unacceptable.

However, there were three more fundamental reasons why this did not happen. Firstly, the German Navy had not, in the pre-war period, carried out staff work on amphibious operations. An amphibious operation is a difficult, complex task, that requires a significant amount of staff work to show that it is feasible. The RN had, in 1913, directed a Rear Admiral Bayly to produce a report on the possibility of seizing a German-held island for use as a forward base. Later Allied amphibious operations were carried out or planned based on the findings of this study. The Germans had done no such preparation. This was because of the second reason; inter-service rivalry between the German Navy and Army. Amphibious operations require close cooperation between the two services. This did not exist in Germany - the Army in particular resented the fact that the Navy disposed of ~50% of the military budget. The final reason was that the Germans did not have the shipping available for such a landing. While the German merchant fleet was, before the war, the second largest in the world with ~5,000,000 tons of shipping, much of this was not available to Germany. Roughly 12% were in Allied ports at the beginning of the war. A further 50% or so had been in or close to neutral ports at the start of the war, and were forced to remain there to avoid capture. This left only 2,000,000 tons in German waters. Many of these ships were engaged in carrying vital cargoes, such as carrying iron ore from Sweden to Germany. Removing these ships from these duties for an amphibious operation would have a significant negative impact on the German economy.