The seventh and last night encounter
By this point there was only one destroyer group left to challenge the advancing German van.
Captain Farie on Champion, along with Obdurate and Moresby, were some miles east of the 12th Destroyer Flotilla when they had attacked Pommern. They had become detached and were gradually moving south hoping to catch up with the fleet. At 02:15 they heard the sounds of gunfire and turned in its direction. At 02:20 Marksman was sighted and a signal made: ‘What are ships bearing south?’ Champion replied, ‘They are Germans, I think’, then turned away eastward, at 02:34.103 They too were detached and lost after the last night encounter.
At that moment, around 02:35, Roger Alison on Moresby, following Obdurate, spotted four German battleships about 4,000yds off. Alison fired a single torpedo at 02:37 and two minutes later felt the concussion wave of an explosion. He was sure he had hit the battle-cruiser but, in fact, had missed. Von der Tann had managed a sharp starboard turn-away to avoid the short-fused torpedo. The German line continued inexorably on its southeast course at 18 knots. One destroyer guard, V.4, was lost en route. She seemed to blow up for no obvious reason.104 Scheer later maintained that she had struck a drifting mine.
One other opportunity was missed. While Champion was heading back north, leading Marksman, Maenad and four destroyers, German torpedo boats were spotted close by to port. They had gathered there to guard the mortally wounded Lützow and help remove her crew. Fire was opened but after two minutes the Germans – G.37, G.38, G.40 and V.45 – were gone.
The time now was roughly 03:25. It was the last of the confusing, dangerous and incredibly courageous night actions.
Peter Kemp praises the individual courage and persistence of the British destroyers, but one is left with an awful sense of frustration that more did not materialise from these dangerous skirmishes:
The destroyers had done what they could, had claimed a battleship, two light cruisers and two destroyers as their victims … but had been unable to deflect the German battleships from their homeward course. Only heavy ships could have done that, and the heavy ships were not there.105
For their part, the assessment by the Germans is more critical, not of the evident bravery of the destroyer flotillas, but of their tactics, particularly the failure to attack as an organised group in order to launch fans of torpedoes, the evasion of which was far more difficult than individual runs, one after the other. The commanding officer of Westfalen, Kapitän Redich, reported that:
All attacks of British destroyers showed very little training in the methods of making the approach to the attack, inability to estimate the situation and the counter manoeuvres of the vessel attacked. All attacks were executed individually and after approach, and even though it is not in accordance with British tactics to fire during the approach, the destroyers came too close to the German ships before turning and were thus picked up and fired on before they were able to get into action.106
The British fleet
The night, even if there was little action on the battleships and battle-cruisers, was not restful. The men were exhausted, there were scenes of the day’s carnage all around, the decks slippery with blood and the remains of bodies shredded beyond recognition. One grisly sight aboard Lion, made light of by the badly wounded sailor, was described by Able Seaman Alec Tempest:
Passing along the stoker’s mess deck, first-aid parties were bringing wounded stokers up from the engine room. One of them had his leg blown off at the knee. He was yelling his head off, ‘Where’s my bloody leg?’ Repeatedly. The leg was eventually recovered and was found to have the stoker’s roll of bank notes tucked into the sock. The money was obviously of more importance than the leg.107
In Q turret, Private Wilson had gone back with the chief gunner to see what ammunition could be salvaged. The scene was almost frozen in the moment of Lions near-death: ‘The handling room, switchboard flat and shell room were completely burned out, and the crew were lying in all directions, some still hanging on the ladder in a last attempt to get out … The major [Hervey] was in the range-finder position close by the voice pipe.’108
The three anticipated German destroyer attacks had not materialised. The 2nd Flotilla and 12th Half-Flotilla could not find targets and, after receiving Heinrich’s 20:08 signal, headed back around midnight through the Skagerrak. Koch’s 7th Flotilla briefly skirmished with the 4th Flotilla and then started to search an area in which they were never to make contact with Jellicoe’s ships.109
One young commander of a flotilla torpedo boat, Leutnant Edgar Luchting* on S.23, recalled how bad the conditions of visibility were that day. After they had been out to try to find the British ships, they had come back ‘and looked for our own ships. There were none. There was smoke. Clouds but no German ships’ He continued: ‘suddenly the Derfflinger appeared … and our leader boat made a breakthrough behind the Derfflinger’. They were dangerously close, ‘damn near, as a matter of fact 10–12 metres away’. They scraped up against Moltke. The 5th Flotilla held close to the starboard side of the German battle-fleet van, so near that they were fired on by their own ships; G.ll was even nearly torpedoed by one of the 4th Flotilla attacks.
In daylight Jellicoe would realise how dispersed the fleet had become. Neither Vice Admiral Burney’s division nor Beatty’s battle-cruisers were anywhere to be seen. At 02:30 Jellicoe had ordered the Grand Fleet north. Only at 03:20 was shooting heard off to the southwest: it was Indomitable, unsuccessfully trying to down the Zeppelin L.11, which could not see much in any case.
The High Seas Fleet struggles back to safety
By 02:30 Scheer had reached the Horns Reef. Already, starting at 01:30, elements of the fleet had arrived back in the safety of the Jade and by 01:45 the main body was there.110 He waited for Lützow, but heard that she had had to be abandoned. Many of his ships were in poor condition. König was unable to pass through the Amrum channel until high tide, since she was drawing too much water from damage forward. Only three light cruisers, Frankfurt, Pillau and Regensburg, were ‘available’.
At 04:13 the Grand Fleet re-formed into daylight-cruising formation – lines of four battleships. Marlborough was missing. Just after midnight she had asked for help, and to leave the line. Escorts and trawlers from Hull and Grimsby would be standing by ready to take off her entire crew, should she not make it. At one point they came right alongside – there was real fear that she might go down.111 Later U.46 fired at her, but missed by about 50yds. Marlborough made it back.
Two minutes after the fleet re-formed, Jellicoe was handed the Admiralty signal saying that the High Seas Fleet was – at 03:00 – within sixteen miles of its home base. You could just imagine his frustration at its tardy arrival, compounded by the frustration of reading Beatty’s signal a quarter of a hour later: ‘Damage yesterday was heavy on both sides. We hope to cut off and annihilate the whole German fleet. Every man must do his utmost. The Lützow is sinking and another German battle-cruiser expected to have sunk’ Hopeful of claiming another enemy ship, Jellicoe immediately asked them to concentrate on finding and sinking Lützow.
The German battle-cruiser escape
With incredible luck, but also some sheer incompetence on the part of the British, the three heavily wounded German battle-cruisers Moltke, Lützow and Seydlitz got back to the Horns Reef. At one point during their escape, as darkness fell, they had spotted four ships on their port bow. The Germans did not know whose ships they were, but after considerable discussion the idea of launching torpedoes was dropped; the torpedo officer was unconvinced.
It had been clear for some time that Lützow was not going to make it. The destroyer G.39 went alongside and her commander, Oberleutnant Franz-Ferdinand von Löfen, finally succeeded in getting Hipper and Commander Prentzel off and into the safety of the less damaged Moltke – a third attempt to do so. Moltke continued back to port without further fighting, but had some close calls. At one point, Kapitän Johannes von Karpf saw the threatening shadows of so
me of the rear dreadnoughts of Jerram’s 2nd Battle Squadron. They were around 2,000yds (1,800m) off. It was not that he had not been seen; a British captain, hesitating about giving his own position away, let him escape.
On board Lützow the situation was really grim. By 00:30 there was so much water in the hull (around 8,300 tons) that Kapitän von Harder decided to get the crew off. He was very worried that she could capsize at any moment. When the fore and middle bulkheads gave out, things were further complicated by the news that a sizeable British force was bearing down on them: two cruisers and five destroyers. It was now around 02:00.
One thousand and forty of her crew transferred to smaller craft but many were still not able to escape despite the orders to abandon ship.112 Some stayed by choice, others because they had no choice. Twenty-seven men continued working in the diesel-dynamo chamber, keeping the ship supplied with light, giving their comrades the means to find their way out. Trapped, around one hundred heroic, dedicated men worked through to the end.
Lost Opportunities in the Night Action
Captain A D Doyle (Malaya) and Captain M Woollcombe (Valiant) both spotted ‘significant ships’ passing. Neither did anything about it, nor did Captains Farie (Champion) and Stirling (Faulknor) also, though the latter did tried to pass on information but was jammed.
Thunderer allowed Moltke to pass by and did nothing. As the captain later said: ‘It was inadvisable to show up the battle fleet unless obvious attack was intended’.113 At 22:30 she had edged over to the port towards the Grand Fleet and been seen as a dim outline from the ships of Rear Admiral Jerram’s 2nd Battle Squadron.
Seydlitz had a miraculous escape, maybe more so as she passed three British dreadnoughts without getting fired upon, apparently – according to some accounts – using the British recognition signal ‘J’ and even being answered. She had even passed down the starboard side of the British battle line, seen by Agincourt and then Marlborough, who later reported seeing ‘a large ship’, but did not fire. The gunnery officer, Lieutenant Commander Guy Royle, lamented: ‘I missed the chance of a lifetime on this occasion. I saw the dim outline of this ship from the top and had the main armament trained on it and put a range of 4,000 yards on the sights and a deflection of 24 right, then asked the Captain (George Ross), who was in the conning tower, for permission to open fire. He replied, “No”, as he thought that it was one of our ships. Of course, what I ought to have done was to have opened fire and blown the ship out of the water and then said, “Sorry”.’114
Again Thunderer. This time apparently thinking Seydlitz to be a destroyer. No report. She did not want to give her own position away was the later explanation. The scout cruisers Boadicea and Fearless decided not to attack: ‘It was too late to fire a torpedo when she could be identified’.115 Seydlitz was also seen by Revenge. Her 6in gun crews were given orders to fire but they were not at their stations. They had been watching the night action as though they were at a fireworks display; by the time they were back at their posts, it was too late.
But the lack of reporting was not just confined to the night action. Observers on the Canterbury and the Falmouth saw Scheer’s first battle turn and reported nothing.
One of the few ships that did try to get intelligence back was Faulknor. Despite Stirling’s efforts, his signals were jammed. Three separate signals from Faulknor to Iron Duke were sent at 01:56, 02:08 and 02:13. Even if Faulknor’s position was wrong it would have given Jellicoe an important indication of what was occurring behind the fleet (see Macintyre, p179).
At around 02:45 the decision was taken to put an end to the stricken Lützow. A destroyer, G.38, fired two torpedoes into the twisted mass of steel that was once a proud and powerful battle-cruiser. At the very same moment of the torpedo launch, seven men were seen running, desperately trying to get to the quarterdeck. Two other destroyers, V.2 and V.6, came to help take crew off. V.4 was also there, but had had its bow blown off. A torpedo from V.2 finally sank Hipper’s brave but crippled flagship. Lützow went under and took 597 lives. The wreck rests today at a depth of 44m (144ft). Much was picked over by commercial dive operations in the 1960s, but around her, a hundred years later, divers can still find a mass of her 12in shells with their characteristic 5ft-long shell cases.
On Seydlitz Kapitän zur See Moritz von Egidy’s intention was to follow Moltke, but she lost contact and very nearly lost her way entirely. Nothing was working. The compasses were broken, the charts covered in blood and even the spare charts inaccessible. But she escaped. At 01:40 she managed, somehow, to reach the Horns Reef, running aground twice and Egidy twice going astern to refloat her.
By the afternoon of 1 June, at around 13:30 Seydlitz was finally able to turn around and reverse in stern first. Her list was now at 8 degrees. Pillau had tried a tow, but the hawser lines broke. They found another way. As the wind started to blow more strongly, Pillau opened up her sea-cocks to let out oil, calming the furious waters. The Seydlitz then ran aground on the Weser river sandbank; in the end she was carrying around 5,300 tons of water inside her hull. When she had reached the Horns Reef she was so badly flooded forward that the middle fish (of the three stacked one on top of the other in her bow crest) was in the water, and to prevent her stern lifting out of the water entirely with the immense forward weight, a significant amount of counter-flooding was implemented in the after sections. Over the next four days two 11in guns were taken off to lighten her more, as well as armour from her forward turrets.
On 6 June at 15:30 Seydlitz finally made it back inside the sluice gates. She still could not get into the dry dock itself but she was now safe. Egidy and First Officer Commander von Alvensleben’s efforts to get her back to Wilhelmshaven had been extraordinary. She had received hits from ‘around 21 heavy and two medium’ shells, as well as having been hit by a torpedo. A full week later on the 13th she was finally secure inside the dry dock. Of her crew, ninety-eight were dead and a further fifty-five wounded: the figures were lower than at Dogger Bank, but this time she herself could almost be counted amongst the dead. She was little more than a floating husk
Beatty gives Jellicoe the bad news
By 06:00 the light cruisers had rejoined the Grand Fleet, and by 09:00 most of its destroyer screens. Jellicoe started to radio for reports. Just after 10:00 Beatty signalled Jellicoe the position of the wrecks of Queen Mary and Indefatigable, but he had not preceded this with any explanation of why they were ‘wrecks’ at all. It was a bombshell for Jellicoe.
One hour later, replying to Jellicoe’s continued inquiry as to when they had gone down, Beatty said: ‘Indefatigable sank at 4 pm, Queen Mary at 4.30 pm’. Jellicoe was mystified. The commander-in-chief almost had to coax the information out. The exchange of signals had been astonishing: 2,200 British sailors had perished and Jellicoe was only now finding out for the first time.
Jellicoe to Beatty: ‘Was the cause sinking mines, torpedoes or gunfire?’
Beatty to Jellicoe: ‘I do not think it was mines or torpedoes because both explosions immediately followed hits by salvos’
For a few hours, British ships continued looking around for wounded in the battle debris. One of Tipperary’s crew members blessed his luck that day as he was spotted from the Dublin. One sailor remembered:
There’s something in the water. It looks like a figure waving …a German… To everyone’s surprise he shouted, ‘Thank God!’ He had one arm on a tea box. We dropped a Jacob’s ladder over the side for him to climb up, but he was so exhausted and nearly dead. All we could do was send a man down with a heaving line.116
Others were not so lucky. As the ships made their way back to their home ports, the sad duty of ‘calling the roll’, to account for all crews, had to be carried out. On Barham, the scene was as it must have been on many other ships:
I was horrified to come on deck and see our fore mess deck gone, sickbay patients and staff wiped out, as the sick bay had received a direct hit. I thought to myself, ‘I must be lucky!’ Because nine of us boys wh
o had not been vaccinated during the last five years were attended to on 30 May. On the morning of the 31st, eight went sick and were detained in the sick bay: I put up with my sore arm and remained alive.117
The dead sailors were laid out on deal planks, sewn up in a hammock with a 6in shell tied between their feet and a Union Jack draped over them. To the sound of the bugle and hushed prayers, accompanied by mumbled and choked responses, the dead slid out, each splashing into the grey-brown waters of the North Sea.
Many did not sink immediately, but kind of floated in a horizontal position for a time until the weights took effect, when they gradually righted themselves to an upright position with about half of the canvas showing above the surface before finally disappearing beneath the waves. It was an eerie scene, as though they wanted to take one last look at their old ships before they went under.118
On Lion, Beatty was so overcome that he could not carry on. Fighting back tears, he handed the prayer book to Ernie Chatfield to honour the dead sinking to their graves.
Homecoming: what a difference a day makes
As Scheer was entering the Jade river, he ordered champagne up to the bridge of Friedrich der Große. It must have tasted good: maybe not quite the victory drink that he had foreseen, but Scheer had successfully brought most of his fleet home against huge odds. The outcome had nearly been very different.
Getting back to port first, the Germans were able – critically, as it turned out – to get word out about the battle in the way they wanted. A communiqué from the Admiralstab was prepared and released mid-afternoon on Thursday, 1 June. A Reuters dispatch, based wholly on what the Germans wanted to appear, led to newspapers around the world carrying their story while Jellicoe and Beatty were still at sea.
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