Castles of Steel

by Robert K. Massie

  Churchill described the situation: “The Grand Fleet was uneasy. She could not find a resting place except at sea. Conceive it, the ne plus ultra, the one ultimate sanction of our existence, the supreme engine which no one had dared to brave, whose authority encircled the globe—no longer sure of itself.” This was more than a predicament; it was a scandal. The Royal Navy had led the world in warship innovations that had revolutionized surface naval warfare. The British fleet was the largest in the world; it dominated the oceans; it was supreme in the North Sea. Yet when war with Germany began, this armada had no secure North Sea base. Scapa Flow, the fleet’s principal war anchorage, which guarded the North Sea and the northern passage around the British Isles, had been left undefended. And one of those responsible was the man who had been First Lord during the two years before the war: Winston Churchill.

  Before the rise of the German navy, the threat to British naval supremacy had come from Spain, the Netherlands, and France. The Royal Navy’s principal bases—Chatham, at the mouth of the Thames; Portsmouth, shielded by the Isle of Wight; and Devonport, at Plymouth—all were placed to confront those traditional enemies. But in 1904, when concern over the growth of the German fleet led to the beginning of a massive warship construction program and a projected redeployment of the fleet into the North Sea, those well-defended and comprehensively equipped bases were too far away. For a war with Germany, a new naval base on the North Sea was needed. This requirement had been recognized by the British government more than a decade before Jellicoe took command of the Grand Fleet. On March 5, 1904, Prime Minister Arthur Balfour told the House of Commons that the Cabinet had approved an Admiralty request to establish a new base for battleships at Rosyth, on the northern side of the Firth of Forth. The Forth was only 375 miles across the North Sea from Heligoland and Wilhelmshaven; there was ample accommodation for a large number of ships; the anchorage was connected by rail with all of Britain; its single entrance made it defensible against attack from the sea. A drawback was the giant railway bridge spanning the Firth; if collapsed by shellfire or sabotage, the wrecked bridge might trap the fleet in the anchorage upstream. Parliament weighed these factors and approved a major base on the Firth of Forth.

  And then the years went by and nothing happened. Political doubts arose as to the need for the new base: perhaps there would never be a war; why provoke Germany? There were technical arguments: some now said that the long approaches to the estuary were vulnerable to enemy minelaying; others declared that the area of deep water upstream above the bridge was insufficient to berth the growing fleet. Interservice turf wars became a factor. Traditionally, the defense of naval harbors was a War Office responsibility—the army built the forts and supplied the guns and the artillerymen. Nevertheless, not unnaturally, the navy wanted a voice in these matters. Further, the establishment of a major base at Rosyth on the Firth of Forth required the building of a small town to accommodate dockyard workers. Who was to pay for this? The new First Sea Lord, Jacky Fisher, disapproved of Rosyth. Soon after his arrival at the Admiralty in October 1904, Fisher advised the First Lord, Lord Selbourne, “Don’t spend another penny on Rosyth!” Fisher believed that the proposed base was too far inland from the open sea and was unsafe because of the presence of the Firth of Forth bridge. He preferred Cromarty Firth, near Inverness, or the Humber River, on the east coast of England. In 1910, Fisher boasted, “I got Rosyth delayed four years as not being the right thing or right place.” Two years later, he wrote to a friend, “As you know I have always been ‘dead on’ for Cromarty and hated Rosyth, which is an unsafe anchorage—the whole fleet in jeopardy . . . and there’s that beastly bridge which, if blown up, makes the egress very risky. . . . Also, Cromarty’s strategically better than Rosyth. . . . I still hate Rosyth.” The result was that during Fisher’s six years as First Sea Lord, no serious work was done at Rosyth. Some in the navy protested; Jellicoe, as Controller at the Admiralty, wrote to Fisher in 1909 that the development of the base was “of the utmost gravity.” Nevertheless, on March 18, 1912, eight years after Balfour’s announcement, the new First Lord, Winston Churchill, informed the House that the two large dry docks at Rosyth would not be ready until 1916.

  There was another reason for the delay at Rosyth. When, in 1912, the new strategy of distant blockade dictated shifting the dreadnought fleet to the north to control the gap between Scotland and Norway, work on Rosyth gained in importance, but other northern harbors also came into consideration: Cromarty Firth and Scapa Flow. Cromarty was advocated as an advanced base for dreadnought battle squadrons and Scapa Flow as a war anchorage for light forces. But because war seemed unlikely, work on defense of these harbors proceeded slowly. On the eve of war, Rosyth and Cromarty had been equipped with enough shore artillery to fend off attack by light surface ships, but both remained open to submarines. Scapa Flow remained undefended.

  Money, of course, was the primary reason. The Treasury, especially under the Liberal chancellor David Lloyd George, begrudged all money spent on armaments. In allocating the sums it could wring annually from Parliament, the navy thought first of ships, not bases. In 1912, the Admiralty asked for permanent defenses for Scapa Flow. But upon learning that the cost of a modest defense would be £379,000—one-fifth the cost of a new dreadnought—the Admiralty decided that the advantage gained was not worth the cost, and the request was withdrawn. The Naval Estimates for 1913–14 called for an unprecedented £46,409,300, but of this sum only £5,000 was designated for unspecified works at Scapa Flow. The future base of the Grand Fleet was to be left undefended.

  Six miles off the northern coast of Scotland, lying in the gray sea that leads to Norway, are the nearest of seventy islands called the Orkneys. There, behind red limestone cliffs and white sand beaches, swept by a wind that makes it difficult for trees to gain a footing, exists a landscape of emerald green. Inhabited since the Stone Age, colonized by the Picts, conquered by the Vikings, and ruled for 600 years by kings of Norway, the Orkneys became a part of Scotland in 1472 and of Great Britain in 1707. For mariners, two features mark the Orkneys. The first is the Pentland Firth, the six-mile-wide gap north of Scotland through which the Atlantic Ocean races into the North Sea at 8 to 10 knots and back again twice a day. The other, just to the north of the Pentland Firth, is a vast, nearly land-locked sheet of sheltered water, ten miles long and eight miles wide, which makes up one of the great natural anchorages in the world: Scapa Flow. Enclosed by a ring of low, gently rounded islands, this great expanse of water covers over 140 square miles. The bottom is sandy and relatively shallow, nowhere deeper than a hundred feet, most of it perhaps fifty feet. It is a harbor large enough to hold all the navies in the world.

  In these northern waters, the islands are shrouded, sometimes for days, in mists. But on a summer day, an Orkneyman has written, Scapa Flow becomes a “great seawater lake with its enclosing necklace of islands . . . seeming to float in their own bubble of clear air below the wide arch of a pale blue summer sky.” Crossing the Flow by boat in summer, the visitor travels in brilliant sunshine surrounded by sparkling water, with all the rich green meadows and reddish moors of the Flow acutely visible, only to plunge suddenly into a thick white mist that makes seeing across the deck almost impossible. Then moving back into sunlight, with the mist still blowing off the tops of the hills, the Flow seems even grander, more immense.

  The anchorage has three entrances normally used by ships. To the south is Hoxa Sound, four to five miles long and one and a half miles wide at its narrowest, running northward from the Pentland Firth. In the Great War, this became the main entrance for dreadnoughts. The Switha entrance, known as the “tradesman’s entrance,” also opens from the Pentland Firth; it leads to nearby Switha Sound and from there into Longhope Sound, which at first was the base for trawlers, drifters, boom ships, and other small craft. The third entrance, coming in from the west, is the Hoy Sound. In addition, there were other narrower, shallower, and more difficult entrances from the east, used by fishermen. All
the entrances are subject to strong tides and tidal currents and water continually flows in and out of the harbor in a powerful, smooth torrent.

  As a base for the Grand Fleet, Scapa offered many advantages. Its vast natural harbor was far larger than the anchorages at Rosyth or Cromarty Firth. It was sited on Pentland Firth, the shortest and safest route by which ships on the west coast of Britain could move into the North Sea. It was closer to the gap to be patrolled between Scotland and Norway. Its strong tides and frequent bad weather were expected make its entrances almost invulnerable to hostile warships. There were, on the other hand, drawbacks to Scapa Flow. The island harbor was set apart from the railway system of Great Britain; therefore, everything needed by the fleet—coal, oil, ammunition, food and stores—had to be brought by ship. The tides inside the anchorage would make it difficult to operate large floating dry docks for major ships. And basing the fleet in the Orkneys would place it hundreds of miles away from many vulnerable points the British navy was expected to protect: the Channel and the long, exposed east coast of England. Nevertheless, it was to this remote harbor in a world of mists that, as war approached, the First Lord of the Admiralty and the First Sea Lord dispatched the British fleet. From there, secluded in a place of mystery, it could use its immense power to influence—or, if necessary, to strike—the enemies of Britain.

  Although no preparations had been made before the war to develop Scapa Flow as a permanent base, the harbor had served for many years as a summer exercise ground for the Home Fleet. Every year, from April until October, naval vessels appeared in and around the Orkneys. In 1909, when Fisher was First Sea Lord, use of Scapa Flow became extensive. In April of that year, eighty-two warships, led by the new Dreadnought and including thirty-seven other battleships and cruisers and forty-four destroyers, sailed into the Flow through Hoxa Sound. A few weeks later, in June, eight battleships, seven cruisers, and twenty-seven destroyers returned to the harbor. The national press began to speculate that Scapa Flow was to become a permanent first-class naval base and the Liberal government was pressed to embark on this project, but the new First Sea Lord, Sir Arthur Wilson, was unenthusiastic. Nevertheless, the fleet continued to appear. In 1910, ninety warships, commanded by Prince Louis of Battenberg and including battleships and battle cruisers, cruisers, and destroyers, used the base from August through September. In 1911, destroyer flotillas exercised in and around the Flow, and in October battleships came to train in night firing.

  Up to this point, the enormous harbor had been equipped with only token protection against surface attack: four small, mobile guns were manned by local Territorial Army artillerymen whose civilian occupations often made them unavailable. “The great majority of the men are unable to attend camp owing to the fact that the training season coincides with the season of herring fishing upon which their livelihood depends,” explained a report to the War Office. In 1912, the Admiralty considered stationing a permanent garrison of 250 marines at Scapa Flow to prevent a coup de main, but nothing was done. Instead, during maneuvers that year, a force of 350 Royal Marines and Royal Artillerymen was landed. The troops spent a week on one of the islands and then were reembarked. In 1913, proposals were made to install twenty-two permanent guns and a number of searchlights in concrete emplacements. Nothing was done. In November 1913, Churchill announced that Cromarty had been chosen as a major base over Scapa Flow. “Having to choose between the two,” Churchill informed Battenberg, “we deliberately chose Cromarty as the vital place to be fortified.” And now that this decision was made, Churchill told the First Sea Lord, he wanted no further debate over the relative merits of the two bases: “The Admiralty have been so frequently charged with changeableness in its views that the greatest care must be taken to avoid any [further] accusation. . . . Unjust disparagement of Cromarty would have the worst effects. . . . It ought to be possible to make the case for some light armament for Scapa Flow without reflecting on Admiralty policy regarding Cromarty.” Nine months later when the war began, therefore, Jellicoe and the Grand Fleet confronted this situation: the work at Rosyth, officially described as the fleet’s principal North Sea base, was still unfinished; at Cromarty, the only entrance to the base was comparatively narrow and well defended by gun emplacements, but there were no obstructions against submarines; and Scapa Flow remained naked.

  On July 29, 1914, as the British fleet sailed north from Portland, the Orkney Territorials were called out and small groups of men drawn from the Ork-ney Royal Garrison Artillery made their way to their war stations. Normally, these guard parties consisted of ten men, but the detachment at Rackwick in Hoy numbered twenty, for this was where the all-important telegraphic cable from the Admiralty in London emerged from the Pentland Firth and came ashore. Colliers and tankers had been arriving for several days; the first warships to arrive in the Flow were destroyers of the 4th Flotilla, which had been patrolling the Irish Sea during the Home Rule crisis. The arrival of the dreadnought fleet on July 31 was largely hidden by a summer fog, but for hours battleships, cruisers, and destroyers slipped quietly through Hoxa Sound; that night, over a hundred warships lay in the Flow.

  From the first day of August, the great fleet lay at anchor, stretched out in lines off Scapa Pier on the north side of the Flow. The Grand Fleet itself then numbered ninety-six ships, including three battle squadrons comprising in all twenty-one dreadnoughts, eight predreadnoughts, and four battle cruisers. Attached were eight armored cruisers, four light cruisers, nine other cruisers, and forty-two destroyers. On arrival, the ships finished clearing for war. Wooden fittings and anything else likely to burn were wrenched away and taken ashore or dumped over the side. Soon, the shores of the Flow were strewn with mahogany and teak fittings while boats piled high with chests of drawers, chairs, and an occasional wardroom piano made their way to the pier. Surplus ships’ boats were sent ashore and hauled up on the beaches while elegant steam pinnaces, gleaming with brass brightly polished for the naval review only the previous week, were permanently moored in sheltered bays.

  The first official indication that the Flow had achieved the status of a war harbor came on August 2 with the posting of notices that harbor navigation lights might soon be extinguished. The remainder of the Orkney Territorials were called out on August 2 to join marines from the ships preparing emergency gun positions. Shadows of an enemy presence flickered with the news that the German liner Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm with 500 passengers had been anchored in Kirkwell Bay only eight days before war began. The German cruise ship Kronprinzessin Cecilie, a regular visitor to the Orkneys in prewar days, was reported to have passed through Stronsay Firth only twenty-four hours before the expiration of the British ultimatum. And then on August 5, the first day of war, the first German prisoners were landed at Scapa pier. They were thirteen unlucky members of a fishing-boat crew caught at sea by the coming of the war.

  Inside the anchorage, a small fleet headquarters was established at Scapa Bay on the northeastern shore of the Flow. This consisted of a few auxiliary vessels, mostly drifters (small fishing boats), and two seagoing repair ships, Cyclops and Assistance, anchored off Scapa pier. Cyclops was connected to a shore telegraph cable that ran to Kirkwell Post Office, thence across the Pentland Firth to Scotland, London, and the Admiralty. Because the harbor was essentially undefended, Jellicoe’s predecessor, Sir George Callaghan, did what he could to improvise. Field artillery pieces and Royal Marines were landed from the fleet and small guns were mounted at entrances to the anchorages. There were, however, no searchlights, so the artillery was of little value at night and the guns’ caliber was too small to be effective even against unarmored ships. In addition, Callaghan stationed destroyers and light cruisers at the main harbor entrances and set patrols at sea to the east of Pentland Firth.

  These emergency measures were designed to guard against the threat that, in the first days, most worried Callaghan and, subsequently, Jellicoe: a surprise attack on the anchored British fleet by German destroyers. “I often wondered,�
� Jellicoe said later, “why the Germans did not make greater efforts to reduce our strength in capital ships by destroyer . . . attacks on our bases in those early days. . . . In August 1914, Germany had ninety-six destroyers . . . with a speed of at least thirty knots. . . . They could not have put them to better use than in an attack on Scapa Flow.” But German destroyers did not come, perhaps because of the risk of interception by a superior force during the 900-mile round-trip passage across the North Sea. Another reason, however, was that the German Naval Staff, with its professional approach to war, never imagined that their powerful maritime enemy could have left the defense of its primary wartime base to nothing more than rocks, tides, and weather. This was Jellicoe’s view. “I can only imagine that the Germans credited us with possessing harbor defenses and obstructions which were non-existent,” he said. “It may have seemed impossible to the German mind that we should place our fleet, on which the empire depended for its very existence, in . . . [this] position.”

  Nor, in turn, did the British ever attack German harbors. Jellicoe later explained that when the war began Britain was critically short of the fast, modern destroyers and submarines needed to carry out such an operation. In the autumn of 1914, Britain had in home waters only seventy-six destroyers; of these, forty were allotted to the Grand Fleet, where they were desperately overworked; the remaining thirty-six were based at Harwich. Britain’s older destroyers, although numerous, had limited fuel capacity and were used only for patrolling outside east coast harbors or in the Straits of Dover. Jellicoe and the Admiralty, aware of the powerful modern artillery and extensive minefields that defended the German naval bases, decided that to throw Britain’s limited modern destroyer force against these defenses would have been grossly irresponsible. Jellicoe also argued against a submarine effort to penetrate the German bases. Owing to the shallowness of German rivers, British submarines could not enter in a submerged condition. “It appeared to me,” Jellicoe concluded, “that an attack on their ships in harbor would meet with no success and that we could not afford to expend any of our exceedingly limited number of destroyers or submarines in making an attack . . . [probably] foredoomed to failure.”