Castles of Steel

by Robert K. Massie

  Moments later on König’s bridge, Rear Admiral Behncke, at the head of the German battleship line, suffered a shock greater than Hipper’s. At 5:50 p.m., König and her sisters, still believing that they were in pursuit of the fleeing Beatty, raced into a large patch of thick mist. At 5:59 p.m., they emerged from it to behold a terrible sight: the Grand Fleet spread before them across the northern horizon. Twenty-four British dreadnoughts and a host of cruisers and destroyers were 16,000 yards away, racing toward them at 20 knots.

  CHAPTER 32 Jutland: Jellicoe vs. Scheer

  For Jellicoe, as for Scheer, the appearance of the enemy battle fleet in this part of the North Sea was a surprise. That morning, the Admiralty had advised the British Commander-in-Chief that Admiral Scheer’s flagship remained anchored in the Jade. Therefore, when Galatea’s first contact report came in at 2:20 p.m., announcing that German ships had been sighted sixty-five miles to the south, Jellicoe supposed that there might be a skirmish brewing between opposing light cruisers and destroyers. Of course, if Beatty could come up and catch them, he would make quick work of these unlucky Germans. And if Hipper was out, Beatty, with a two-to-one advantage—six battle cruisers and four Queen Elizabeths to Hipper’s five battle cruisers—should manage nicely. For the Grand Fleet, however, the day probably would drag on as part of another routine, uneventful sweep. At two o’clock, most captains in the battle fleet, sharing their admiral’s gloomy assessment, began sending their men to tea.

  Then, contrary indications began to appear. At 2:28 p.m., St. Vincent reported to Iron Duke that she was picking up strong, nearby wireless signals from ships on the wavelength used by the High Seas Fleet. At 2:35 p.m., as Beatty was turning his battle cruisers toward Hipper and leaving Evan-Thomas behind, Jellicoe signaled the battle fleet to raise steam for full speed. Zigzagging ceased. At 2:39, Galatea was back, reporting a “large amount of smoke as though from a fleet.” And at 2:51, another Galatea message arrived: “Smoke seems to be seven vessels besides destroyers and cruisers.” Then St. Vincent signaled that she had picked up more wireless intercepts; Jellicoe increased battle fleet speed to 18 knots. At 3:00 p.m., the Commander-in-Chief ordered the Grand Fleet to prepare for action, and officers and men put down their tea cups and mugs. On Collingwood, Prince Albert, the future King George VI, ill following an excessively convivial visit with friends on the battle cruiser Invincible two nights before, rose from his sickbed and went to his post in A turret. A midshipman in Neptune’s foretop noticed that “several ships were flying, instead of their customary one White Ensign, three or four ensigns from various parts of the rigging. . . . In about ten minutes the air seemed to be thick with white ensigns, large and small, silk and bunting, hoisted wherever halyards could be found.” In an independent mode, the light cruiser Blanche flew four Union Jacks, one from each funnel.

  At 3:40 p.m., Beatty reported to Jellicoe that he had sighted five German battle cruisers and many destroyers. Five minutes later, he declared that the enemy was running southeast toward home. This was followed at 3:55 p.m. by a third Beatty signal: “Am engaging enemy.” Now Jellicoe knew that, forty or fifty miles to the south, Beatty and Hipper were fighting on a course that carried them directly away from him at speeds beyond the ability of his slower battleships to overtake. There was little he could do with the battle fleet except to increase speed to its maximum of 20 knots. But there was one way he might help Beatty: by sending him Hood, whose three Invincibles, already twenty-five miles ahead of the battle fleet, were capable of 25 knots. At 4:05 p.m., the Commander-in-Chief signaled Hood: “Proceed immediately to support Battle Cruiser Force.”

  Invincible, Inflexible, and Indomitable of Rear Admiral Horace Hood’s 3rd Battle Cruiser Squadron were Britain’s first battle cruisers, the eldest children of Jacky Fisher’s revolution in warship design. All had performed important service: Invincible in the Battle of the Bight and at the Falklands; Inflexible and Indomitable had pursued Goeben across the Mediterranean; Inflexible had gone on to the Falklands and afterward returned to the Dardanelles, where she had been heavily damaged by a Turkish mine; Indomitable was with Beatty at the Scarborough Raid and the Dogger Bank. Now, because of the temporary switch in assignments with the five Queen Elizabeths, the three old battle cruisers were with Jellicoe rather than with Beatty at Jutland. Hood’s force was screened by the newly commissioned light cruisers Chester and Canterbury, and by four destroyers, Shark, Acasta, Ophelia, and Christopher.

  When Beatty reported that Hipper, once sighted, had turned and bolted back to the southeast—thus beginning the Run to the South—Jellicoe signaled Hood to hurry to Beatty’s support. The Invincibles belched black smoke and dashed away, but locating the fight turned out to be difficult; ninety minutes later, Hood was still looking. At 5:30 p.m., however, the Invincibles had reached a point east of the German battle cruisers, which were beginning their turn to the east. Five miles ahead of Hipper were the four light cruisers of Bödicker’s 2nd Scouting Group, Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, Pillau, and Elbing. At 5:35 p.m., one British and several German ships caught sight of one another. To both sides, the dim shapes were unclear in the haze; the Germans were the first to make the correct identification. The British ship, steaming six miles west of Invincible’s starboard beam, was the light cruiser Chester, in commission less than a month and having had little opportunity for gunnery practice. Nevertheless, when her lookouts saw smoke to the west, her captain turned to investigate. Because, in the haze, Bödicker’s light cruisers resembled the ships of the British 1st Light Cruiser Squadron, Chester came closer to take a better look. To encourage the deception, one of the German ships flashed a British identification signal, tempting Chester to come still closer. She was 6,000 yards away and had just recognized the three-funnel ships as hostile when the four German cruisers simultaneously opened fire. A storm of shells swept over Chester and within five minutes she was hit seventeen times. Her gun crews and bridge and signals personnel were ravaged, her range finder and its crew were blown overboard, all voice-pipe and electrical communications were smashed, and three of her four 6-inch guns were destroyed. But her engines remained intact and, when, a moment later, her assailants suddenly found the tables turned and themselves in terrible danger, Chester was able to slip away to the north.

  Hood, not far away, saw the orange flashes illuminating the murk and turned toward them. He recognized Chester surrounded by shell splashes and then he saw the shadowy outlines of her assailants. At 25 knots, his three battle cruisers raced out of the mist, steering between Chester and her pursuers. Heavy battle cruiser guns opened fire at close range, catching Bödicker’s surprised light cruisers in a blizzard of 12-inch shells. For Invincible, these were the first shells fired at an enemy since the Falklands; for Inflexible, since the Dardanelles. These totally unexpected main battery salvos sent the German light cruisers flying, screaming to Hipper by wireless that they were “under fire from enemy battleships.” Within a few minutes, the Germans had vanished. Elbing escaped unhurt, but Frankfurt and Pillau had been hit and Wiesbaden was fatally wounded. A 12-inch shell from Invincible had burst in her engine room, piercing main steam pipes and putting both engines out of action. The crippled ship stopped and lay drifting in “a great cloud of steam and smoke.”

  To rescue the German light cruisers, Hipper sent Regensburg and thirty-one destroyers to charge the Invincibles, but before most could launch their torpedoes, they were met by a countercharge from Hood’s second light cruiser, Canterbury, and four British destroyers. In a free-swinging brawl at close quarters, the Germans somehow got the impression that many more British ships were present than was the fact. As a result, the Germans fired only twelve torpedoes, after which the thirty-one destroyers turned back. In this action, Shark was hit and lay immobile in the water. Acasta came up and her captain asked Shark’s captain, Commander Loftus Jones, how he could help. Loftus Jones sent him away, saying, “Look after yourself and don’t get sunk over us.” Acasta turned and followed in Inflexible’s wake
as she steamed north into the haze. With Shark sinking and many in her crew killed or wounded, Loftus Jones took a place at one gun; as he did so, “a shell took off his right leg above the knee.” German destroyers were approaching and he gave the order to abandon ship. His men got him overboard onto a raft where he died just as German torpedoes were sending Shark to the bottom. Only six of Shark’s crew survived, rescued that night by a Danish steamer. Posthumously, Loftus Jones was awarded the Victoria Cross.

  After sending Hood to join Beatty, Jellicoe received no news for thirty minutes—this was the period of Beatty’s Run to the South. The Commander-in-Chief was given no details of the battle cruiser action and he learned of the loss of Indefatigable and Queen Mary only the following day. At 4:17 p.m., he asked Evan-Thomas whether the 5th Battle Squadron remained in company with Beatty. The reply was ambiguous: “Yes, I am engaging enemy.” At 4:38 p.m., however, an “URGENT. PRIORITY” message came in from Goodenough in Southampton: “Have sighted enemy battle fleet.” Scheer was coming north and, Jellicoe assumed, Beatty would fall back on the Grand Fleet, drawing the enemy after him. At 4:47 p.m., the Commander-in-Chief signaled all ships in the Grand Fleet, “Enemy’s battle fleet is coming north,” and the news ran through the ships like wildfire. On Hercules, the Russian naval attaché observed “every face radiant with enthusiasm and delight.” At 4:51 p.m., Jellicoe informed the Admiralty, “Urgent. Fleet action is imminent.” When the message arrived in Whitehall, Admiralty signals flowed out; ports and dockyards were to prepare to receive damaged ships; tugboats were alerted to assist cripples. In Whitehall, even the usually imperturbable First Lord, Arthur Balfour, was “in a state of very great excitement.”

  [Balfour’s presence in the Admiralty chart room during the battle did not make things easier for Oliver, the Chief of Staff. The First Lord did not actively participate in command decisions as his predecessor, Churchill, had done during the Scarborough Raid and the Battle of the Dogger Bank; rather, Balfour was an excited spectator. As Oliver described the situation: “Balfour stayed all afternoon and some of the evening . . . with his Naval Assistant and his Private Secretary, and if I went to look at a chart some of them were bound to be in the way and all the talk was distracting. When I could stand it no longer, I went to Balfour and shook his hand and said ‘Good-night, Sir,’ and he said good night and took his supporters away with him. It was nice of him not to be offended.”]

  Tyrwhitt with the Harwich flotillas was ordered to fill his bunkers with fuel in order to be ready to supplement or relieve Grand Fleet light cruisers and destroyers that might run low.

  Then, for over an hour, the Commander-in-Chief was left in ignorance. The weather was partly responsible. Patchy haze, with visibility in some directions of up to 16,000 yards and down to 2,000 yards in others, hung over the water. Throughout the afternoon, the fleets were steaming at high speed through these shrouded seas, in which not only the enemy but their own forces frequently were hidden. Often, ships appeared only as pale, shadowy silhouettes, impossible to identify, appearing and then vanishing in the murk. In this confusion, heightened by the complexity of formations and maneuvers, scouting arrangements disintegrated and detailed information became impossible to acquire or pass along. The reports, when they did come in, were as apt to be wrong as right, with no way of knowing which was which. And beyond this general problem, which affected all commanders in both fleets, Jellicoe was afflicted by something else: the failure of a subordinate to perform his duty. Beatty’s primary role as a battle cruiser commander was to maintain contact with the enemy battle fleet and keep his own Commander-in-Chief informed of its strength, bearing, course, and speed. In the months before the battle, Jellicoe’s instructions to Beatty had constantly stressed the need for timely information. Yet between 4:45 p.m. and 6:06 p.m., Beatty, immersed in his own battle with Hipper, had neglected or forgotten this duty and sent Jellicoe nothing. Goodenough had signaled three times—at 5:00, 5:40, and 5:50 p.m.—reporting that the enemy battle fleet was coming north, but Goodenough’s descriptions of his own positions were so obviously inaccurate that Jellicoe wondered how much weight to give his information. Under enormous strain, the Commander-in-Chief reacted by attempting to tighten his tactical control of the battle fleet. Small, fidgety messages flashed from her searchlights or were signaled by semaphore. The 22-knot Royal Oak was reproved for slewing around astern of the 20-knot Iron Duke: “You must steer a steadier course in action or your shooting will be bad,” Jellicoe prompted. “Keep just clear of the wake of next ahead if it helps ships to keep up,” he advised the entire fleet. And to Thunderer, he signaled, “Can you pass Conqueror? If so, do so.”

  Meanwhile, the Grand Fleet’s dark gray columns steamed forward—but toward what? Where was the enemy? Jellicoe assumed that the High Seas Fleet was pursuing Beatty to the north, but still no one was providing him with fresh, reliable information. At 5:55 p.m., he signaled Marlborough, leading the dreadnought column on his starboard wing: “What can you see?” Five minutes later, Marlborough reported that she could see “our battle cruisers bearing south southwest, steering east, Lion leading ship.” So Beatty was nearby and, that being so, Hipper was not far away. But where was Scheer? Jellicoe heard the rumble of heavy guns on Iron Duke’s port bow and saw gun flashes on the southeastern horizon; these came from Hood’s assault on Wiesbaden and her sister light cruisers. Jellicoe, who was unaware of the nature of this action, wondered whether, somehow, this could be the bearing of Scheer’s battle fleet. “I wish somebody would tell me who is firing and what they are firing at,” he said.

  Then, just at 6:00 p.m., Jellicoe and his staff could see Lion for themselves; she was off his starboard bow, steaming east through the haze five miles away, driving right across the front of the battle fleet, thundering salvos to the south at an invisible foe. A long trail of smoke was pouring from a hole in her port side, the guns of her X turret were pointed up at a useless angle, and tall gray columns of water thrown up by German shells were rising between her and her sisters. A midshipman in Benbow also saw the British battle cruisers “suddenly burst through the mist . . . a wonderful sight, these great ships, tearing down across us, their huge funnels silhouetted against a great bank of red cordite smoke and lit up by sheets of flame as they fired salvo after salvo at the enemy whose flashes could be seen in the distance.” Jellicoe had no time for admiration. Instantly, at 6:01 p.m., he flashed Beatty by searchlight: “Where is enemy’s battle fleet?”

  Beatty did not know the answer; he had not seen the German battleships since he had left Evan-Thomas behind in order to give his own battered ships a respite. For five minutes, therefore, as Beatty and his four surviving battle cruisers raced across the front of the British battle fleet, Lion did not respond to Jellicoe’s question. Then, at 6:06 p.m., Beatty gave an answer of sorts by searchlight: “Enemy’s battle cruisers bearing southeast.” This was no help to Jellicoe. In desperation, he signaled Beatty again: “Where is enemy’s battle fleet?” Again, Beatty gave no immediate answer. Seven minutes passed while Beatty searched the southern horizon with his binoculars. Then, suddenly, he saw the distinctive massive shapes of König and Grosser Kurfürst. He now knew the bearing of the enemy battle fleet and, enormously relieved, he signaled Jellicoe, “Enemy battle fleet in sight bearing south. The nearest ship is seven miles.” But his signal provided neither course nor speed.

  Standing on the bridge of Iron Duke, a small figure in a belted blue raincoat with a white scarf knotted at his neck, Jellicoe stared intently at the hazy line of sea and sky to the south. The British Commander-in-Chief was facing the most critical decision of his life: how and when to deploy the dreadnought battle fleet. The Grand Fleet had been safer from U-boat attack in cruising formation—six columns abeam, with four ships in each column—but it was impossible to fight in this formation. If the fleet was forced to open fire while still in column, only the forward guns of the leading six ships could be used. “Deployment” was the maneuver that would convert the
fleet from cruising formation into a single, long battle line of twenty-four dreadnoughts, which would bring to bear all the fleet’s heavy guns on the enemy. To deploy effectively, however, it was essential to know the location, formation, course, and speed of the enemy fleet; this would determine the direction of the British deployment. A battle line deployed without this knowledge—or on the basis of wrong information—might place the British fleet in the position of having its own T crossed.

  [The naval maneuver called “crossing the T” places one fleet in a line moving squarely across the leading tip of an approaching enemy fleet. From this vantage, the first fleet can bring all or most of its guns to bear in a massive broadside; the enemy can reply only with the few forward guns of its leading one or two ships. In the days of naval warfare in which the big gun was the primary weapon, to “cross an enemy’s T” was every admiral’s dream.]

  Jellicoe, staring intently into the mist ahead, attempting to pierce the haze, knew that his own eyes were not sufficient. The range of heavy naval guns in 1916 exceeded normal North Sea visibility; that was especially true on this day, May 31. Once the order to deploy was given, its execution would require at least twenty minutes. As a result, if the Commander-in-Chief waited to give the command until he himself could see the enemy, he risked having his fleet caught in the act of deployment with many of its turrets masked by his other ships. Nevertheless, Jellicoe delayed until he could be certain, holding on in column formation, considering his next move methodically as if he were working out a mathematical problem. In the next few minutes before the firing began, he must swing his six columns into a single line—east to port, or west to starboard. His decision must be the right one; once started, there was no going back. Should he deploy on the right wing—to starboard and the west? At first, Jellicoe thought so; it would bring his fleet closest to where the enemy probably was and allow him to open fire sooner and at shorter range. But with every moment, deployment on the right seemed less wise. It would bring the two fleets within immediate torpedo range of each other, and nearby German destroyers would be able to deliver a massed torpedo attack on his battleships in the act of turning. If, on the other hand, he deployed to the left, on the port wing column, the Grand Fleet battle line, heading southeast, would be 4,000 yards farther away from the enemy fleet, but would have crossed the German T. Further, he would have achieved the best possible light for gunnery; his ships, except for gun flashes, would be invisible in the eastern mists while the German ships would be silhouetted against a bright, sunset horizon to the west. “I therefore decided to deploy on the port wing,” Jellicoe said later. After the war, the official German naval history endorsed Jellicoe’s choice: “One must agree that . . . [a deployment on the right wing] would have been only too welcome to the German fleet.”