Jutland_The Unfinished Battle

by Nicholas Jellicoe

  For some reason Jellicoe submitted to Beatty’s signal and signalled Jerram at 20:01: ‘Follow our battle-cruisers’. Jerram received Jellicoe’s signal but he, too, could see neither Beatty nor the Germans. He consequently turned south. It was an impossible order to follow and it is not to Jellicoe’s credit that he issued the order given the total lack of clarity of the situation and Beatty’s signalling ambiguity, as well as Jellicoe’s general distrust of Beatty’s judgement on issues like this. The question remains: could Beatty have maintained visual contact at this point? The Battle Cruiser Fleet was far from the Germans and with visibility being what it was, it is doubtful that he could have.

  At 19:40 Beatty had given Jellicoe an indication of the Germans’ whereabouts, the information that he needed, saying that the German battle fleet – its leading elements – ‘bears from me north-west-by-west distant 10 to 11 miles’.159 It was now, as Beatty stated in his dispatches, that he ‘lost sight’ of the enemy. At 19:59, Beatty’s second signal arrived, this one by searchlight – so there was less of a time lag – saying that the course of the leading battleship was ‘south-west’. Unfortunately, it was a confused report: Beatty was not only thirteen miles from the nearest enemy ships; the battleship that had been spotted was in reality a battle-cruiser. Jellicoe realised that he was too far from the enemy fleet. He thus ordered the Grand Fleet, at the time cruising at 17 knots on a course change of 4 points by divisions, to a course that was directly westerly. It was 20:00. Lion was out of sight of Iron Duke, making it difficult for Jellicoe to get an exact position. No course was referred to either. Jellicoe assumed that Beatty was six miles ahead of his van and slightly to the southwest. John Brooks points to this episode as yet another case where Beatty, keen to avoid any criticism of his own actions, shifts the blame to the commander-in-chief:

  It is unlikely to be a coincidence that at 08:00, Jellicoe ordered the guides of all his divisions to turn west. This put the battleships on a steeper approach than the battle-cruisers. At the same time, Beatty ordered his light cruisers to sweep to the Westward. But he did not order the battle-cruisers to follow until about 18:15. Almost immediately, they sighted German ships and, for the last time, opened fire with their heavy guns. More hits were made on the battered 1st Scouting Group and even on a pre-dreadnought, Schleswig-Holstein. Unable to see their assailants, the BCF did not follow them but also followed a course SW. Meanwhile Jellicoe’s battleships had not sighted the enemy and, at 20:20, also turned SW … Beatty’s course (SW, then WSW) and speed (only 18 knots) were too cautious to close an enemy last seen some ten miles NW by Wona course SW. It was Jellicoe who turned boldly West at 20:00, even though, as we now know, he risked the Germans crossing the ‘T’s’ of his columns … Yet again, the criticism of Jellicoe, for not responding immediately to the ‘Follow me’ signal, has distracted attention away from Beatty’s own failure to keep in contact with the enemy.160

  Scheer decided to steer for the Horns Reef. He reversed the German line with the old pre-dreadnoughts becoming the van, then the 1st and 3rd Squadrons at the rear. Goodenoughs second report arrived at the same time. For Scheer, the real damage had been confined to three ships: Markgraf, Großer Kurfürst and König. The second had shipped 800 tons of water, König close to 1,000. But Scheer also had important information, a little more than Jellicoe had. He had heard from the crippled Lützow, through a message passed on at 19:49 that the British fleet’s van – based on their earlier position – bore south-southeast at 20:02.161

  Heading for the Horns Reef, Scheer knew that every four miles that he was pushed westward would add a further half-hour’s steaming time to reach his goal. So at 19:52 he ordered his fleet to steer directly south at 16 knots. He positioned destroyers from the 2nd Flotilla and the 12th Half-Flotilla to take station around five miles to his east, to give early warning of a possible encounter with Jellicoe or Beatty. Ahead of the fleet were the cruisers of Bödicker’s 2nd (with Frankfurt) and the 4th Scouting Groups. Along with Frankfurt sailed five light cruisers: Stettin, München, Frauenlob, Stuttgart and Hamburg under the command of Commodore Ludwig von Reuter on Stettin.

  Beatty sent out scouting forces almost immediately after his battle-cruisers lost visual contact: ‘Sweep the westward and locate the head of the enemy’s line before dark’.162 Falmouth and Inconstant ran southwestward to try to find the van of the German battle line, with a mile between each of the five ships of the 3rd Light Cruiser Squadron spread northeast to southwest. At 20:09 Falmouth spotted a group of enemy ships to the northwest and one minute later these were positively identified as the five German screening light cruisers that Scheer had sent ahead.163

  Falmouth opened fire and was quickly supported by fire from Le Mesurier’s 4th Light Cruiser Squadron to his north. The fire caused the enemy ships to swing back off to their starboard. Moments before, at 20:00 Goodenough on Southampton signalled Jellicoe confirming that the High Seas Fleet was heading west. Goodenough’s feeling was that the Germans were doing this to break up and scatter. But while he was still fifteen miles to the northeast, Jellicoe felt that by heading south he would stand a better chance of cutting the Germans off from their goal, which he had assumed to be the Jade Basin rather than the Horns Reef.

  Roughly ten minutes later, at 20:12 Beatty resighted the German battle-cruisers. They were about 10,000yds off and drifting in and out of visibility.* Beatty’s ships opened fire at around 20:20. All four German battle-cruisers were hit hard, Seydlitz probably the hardest – twice by shells from Princess Royal, one of which hit the bridge, killing all and drenching the navigation charts in blood.

  Hipper was about to board Moltke, which he had ordered to heave-to. A 12in shell landed nearby and the transfer of the flag was abruptly halted so that Moltke could get under way. Lion hit Derfflinger once, and reported her listing and turning away. Her last turret was inoperable. But at the rear neither Tiger nor Indomitable made any hits. Hipper was left with little choice. His ships sheered off westward and in doing so caused confusion with Mauve’s pre-dreadnoughts in the van of the battleships. Schleswig-Holstein, Pommern and Schlesien were all damaged. If ever there was a time for strong and well-organised reconnaissance, it was now, but not even the Zeppelin (L.14) that had been cruising overhead could see much. The battle area below was completely hidden in the murkiness of the North Sea.

  On Castor, James R P Hawksley, the overall commodore of the British destroyers, spotted smoke to the west and pushed forward to investigate, with eight boats from the 11th Destroyer Flotilla. Le Mesurier, with cruisers Calliope, Comus and Constance, followed. Very quickly they spotted twelve torpedo boats of the German 5th Flotilla and after chasing them to the west, Scheers 3rd Battleship Squadron came into sight. Calliope fired off a torpedo at 7,000yds but, as described earlier, was badly damaged in the action, taking five hits and coming back with ten dead and twenty-three wounded.

  At 20:38 Jellicoe received some information from Comus: ‘Enemy battle fleet bearing west’. This seemed to comply with what Goodenough had reported half an hour before, but it was still frustratingly light on information. When Jellicoe queried Napier as to the enemy position at around the same time (20:25) he received the same exasperatingly scanty reply: Napier gave no bearing, distance or course, and it was only at 20:46 that he made a report.

  Daylight Scouting at Jutland

  At Jutland, the British fought as two fleets, the Grand Fleet and the Battle Cruiser Fleet; the Germans as one. Hipper’s battle-cruiser forces – appropriately named Entdeckungsflotte, or scouting groups – acted, first and foremost, as an extension of the High Seas Fleet, leading the way for, and communicating back vital information to, the main battle fleet. It has been said that Jellicoe was wary of too much use of WT, but his concerns were its use primarily prior to action being joined; it was too transparent and could give away too much information to the enemy. The implication of this, however, was that forces were possibly more bunched to keep within effective visual signalling distance and
that limited the effectiveness of throwing out wide nets of scouting forces.

  How well was Jellicoe supported by battlefield intelligence? In brief – with the exception of Commodore Goodenough (Southampton), whose performance was exemplary – appallingly. Beatty’s updates, which were vital to Jellicoe, were minimal. Even after the battle Jellicoe was told of the loss of Invincible and Queen Mary at 11:00 on 1 June, but only when the question was repeatedly put to Beatty. Scheer, by contrast, had been told of these critical losses the night before around 20:00.

  During the tense minutes leading up to the deployment, the battle-cruisers failed in their primary mission: they were bringing the enemy to Jellicoe, for sure, but not telling Jellicoe anything to aid his decisions. Beatty’s first signal to Jellicoe (at 16:45) was wrong on the enemy disposition as well as location. Between 16:48 (when fire was first opened) and 17:00, Jellicoe received five reports of the whereabouts of the HSF: three were from Goodenough, though they all varied on the actual enemy position. The Admiralty’s signal referring to a directional intercept at 16:09 was discarded as being outrun by events. Beatty’s only signal was scrambled in transmission, and when Beatty finally closed with the Grand Fleet, he then lost sight of Scheer. At 18:01 Jellicoe signalled Beatty, asking for updates. The reply came back: ‘Enemy battle-cruisers bearing south-east’ (there was nothing about the enemy battle fleet). Finally, at 18:14 Beatty signalled to Jellicoe: ‘Have sighted enemy’s battle fleet bearing south-south-west’.

  Jellicoe’s decision to deploy to port was made in the space of two minutes with practically useless information from his key commander. That the dead reckoning was out by eleven miles – Iron Duke’s by four miles and Lion’s by seven – might suggest that almost any information coming through would be fairly misleading but the frustration in Jellicoe’s final signals to Beatty was glaringly clear from their wording. The deployment was based on pure intellectual deduction, taken under extreme pressure, weighing up the assumed course and speed of the enemy, the setting sun’s position in the west, wind direction, deployment time and Scheers possible escape routes.

  On the other hand, it should be pointed out that Jellicoe was not uncritical of his own actions. He wrote (in his 1932 notes ‘Errors at Jutland’), that he should have sent Commodore Le Mesurier ahead of the Grand Fleet when he was not getting the information that he needed.

  See also ‘Lost Opportunities in the Night Action’, p257.

  There were a few patches of better visibility just before darkness. Even on Iron Duke, an officer in B turret caught a glimpse of Scheers 1st Squadron in the distance at 20:25, while on Orion the German capital ships were momentarily spotted to the west. Beatty himself was also in action against Hipper’s battle-cruisers and similarly did not report until 20:40. It is interesting that his later battle instructions made such a point of commanders on the spot reporting back such intelligence – it was one of the major lessons of the day – but Beatty’s information, passing through Galatea, did not reach Iron Duke until 21:04.

  Two other of his ships – the light cruisers Caroline and Royalist – did spot three battleships to their west at around 20:45, and Captain Ralph Crooke on Caroline turned west to investigate. He immediately told Admiral Jerram that he had seen Westfalen, but Jerram was concerned that they were Beatty’s ships and called Caroline back.164 Crooke stood his ground and would not take no for an answer. He signalled back for permission to open fire. ‘If you are quite sure, attack’, was the reply.

  Confirming what Caroline and Royalist thought, while they were launching a torpedo they were heavily shelled by Nassau and Westfalen. The torpedo ran true but too deep and passed harmlessly under Westfalen.165 Incredibly, despite everything, Jerram did nothing to back up Caroline and Royalist; he could have lent supporting fire. Instead, when Jellicoe signalled the preparations for night cruising, with ‘staggering lack of initiative’, Jerram led his squadron round to comply.* There was enough light, Macintyre maintains, for ‘deliberate shooting for another fifteen minutes’.166

  These – the lack of initiative, of inquisitiveness and of fighting spirit, and not Jellicoe’s turn-away, which more than likely saved quite a few of his dreadnoughts from assured hits – were the last chances conceded by the British at Jutland.

  * Harper, The Truth, pp76–7. Following Southampton’s message giving the first indications of the position of the German High Seas Fleet, there follows a flow of contradictory information, making Jellicoe’s deployment decision extremely complex. Iron Duke’s position was put at four miles out: Lion’s (since she had been heavily engaged in battle) nine miles, the combined total thirteen miles. Similarly, the dead reckoning (DR) between the 3rd BCS and the BCF was eighteen miles out, according to Gibson and Harper, p163.

  * Helgoland (Heligoland to the British) was the heavily defended island that protected the strategic entry point into the Jade Estuary; occupied by the British for most of the nineteenth century, they had exchanged it for Zanzibar in 1890. The agreement added a useless colonial acquisition but gave away the controlling point – even if it would have been very difficult to garrison or guard – to the German safe haven at Wilhelmshaven.

  * Because the British ships were turning at 90 degrees, the distance between the columns was always set as a multiple of the number of ships in the column times the interval plus the additional interval needed between divisions, usually an additional cable’s length. So if there were four ships in the column, this would mean ten cables plus one additional cable gap between the divisions, ie eleven cables in total. A very helpful paper on the deployment is Stephen McLaughlin’s ‘Equal Speed Charlie London. Jellicoe’s Deployment at Jutland’.

  * The meaning of the Equal Speed Pendant is summarised as follows: ‘When altering course by Equal Speed Pendant to form single-line ahead, the column which becomes the leading column alters course in succession to the point indicated, the remaining columns alter course “Leading Ships together. The rest in succession”, so as to form Astern on the Leading Column. The letter(s) below the pennant were selected from the compass table, in which one letter represented the major points in the compass, and two letters represented the minor points in the compass. Thus: A was north, AA was north ¼ east, AB was north ½ east, AC was north ¾ east, AD was north by east, AE was north by east ¼ east, etc. Jellicoe’s final signal read ‘Equal Speed Charlie London.

  † Agincourt was also known amongst British sailors as ‘A Gin Court’ because of its luxurious interior decoration, if one can call it that on a battleship. She had been built for the Turkish navy and although her toilets had to be redone as they were of the squat variety, there were also copious amounts of beautiful Turkish carpeting.

  * HMS Ophelia had not given her crew much time to get used to the new ship. She has only been completed the day before the battle, on 30 May.

  † Nothing was mentioned in the immediate aftermath of the battle of the need to recognize Loftus Jones’s bravery. Instead, the Navy first gave a gold watch to the captain of the Vidar and some money to crew members for their part in the rescue of the Shark’s crew. Since Jones had died, the only award with which he could be recognised was a posthumous Victoria Cross. At first the Navy balked. But Margaret Jones, Loftus’s wife, interviewed all the crew members she could find and wrote up an account which she sent to an officer in the flotilla, a Captain Gladstone. He, in turn, wrote to Commodore Hawksley, who organised a series of further interviews and then made an appeal directly to Beatty who had just taken over as C-in-C of the Grand Fleet after Jellicoe had left on 29 November (1916). Beatty agreed immediately, calling it a ‘fine story’.

  * Tarrant, Battle-cruiser Invincible, p128, lists the lucky ones who escaped their meeting with death. There were four officers and men on leave plus another five men listed as deserters on 31 May.

  * Charles Le Mesurier was related to the actor John Le Mesurier, who brought us the wonderful Sergeant Arthur Wilson in Dad’s Army. His family had been a very old Alderney family (a
namesake was governor general in 1922). I believe I heard that, when the Germans invaded, the family had to leave everything behind.

  † Lions original track chart showed the 360-degree turn. The revised one, dated 17 July 1916, changed this to an ‘S’ manoeuvre initiated by a 180-degree turn to starboard followed by the same to port and completed at 19:01. ‘The turn had brought the van of the battle fleet two miles nearer but it had also wasted seven valuable minutes – for at 19:01 Lion was back in the position she had been at the commencement of the turn at 18:45. This valuable seven minutes could have been better spent probing westward for the enemy’ (Gordon, p457; Irving, pp145–6).

  * The translation of the ‘Ran an der Feind. Voll einsetzen command is not that straightforward. Irving cited the original nine pendant ‘R’ flag as ‘Battle-cruisers: attack the enemy immediately regardless of the consequences’, evolving into ‘Close to the enemy and ram. Ships will fight to the death’ which he quoted from von Hase (Irving, p158). Bacon’s translation is probably more accurate: ‘Ships are to attack without regard to consequences’ (Bacon, Scandal, p118).

  † ‘Jellicoe’s battle fleet and Evan-Thomas’s 5th Battle Squadron had scored an estimated thirty-seven direct hits on Scheers battleships and Hipper battle-cruisers, the majority with 13.5- and 15-inch shells. Beatty’s ships had fired at the German battle-cruisers in the latter part of the action, but without any result… Revenge, Royal Oak, Colossus, Barham and Valiant… registered over half of the thirty-seven hits between them. The only German ship to register any hits during this phase was the Seydlitz (Yates, p175).