Jutland_The Unfinished Battle

by Nicholas Jellicoe

  The German announcement suggested a great sea victory off the Skagerrak, without mentioning the word ‘victory’; it talked rather of there having been ‘a successful engagement’:

  During the afternoon a series of heavy engagements developed between the Skagerrak and the Horns Reef that were successful for us and continued throughout the night. In three engagements, so far as has been learnt to the present, the large British battleship Warspite and the battle-cruisers Queen Mary and Indefatigable were destroyed, as were two armoured cruisers apparently of the Achilles type, one light cruiser, the new destroyer flotilla leaders Turbulent, Nestor and Acasta, a large number of torpedo-boat destroyers, and one submarine. Through observations beyond challenge, it is known that a large number of English battleships suffered damage from our ships’ artillery and from the attacks of our torpedo-boat flotillas during the day and night engagements. Among others, the large battleship Marlborough was struck by a torpedo, as has been confirmed by prisoners. Several of our ships rescued portions of the crews of sunken English ships, among them being the only two survivors of the Indefatigable. On our side the light cruiser Wiesbaden was sunk by hostile artillery fire during the day engagements and the Pommern during the night by a torpedo. The fate of the Frauenlob, which is missing, and of some torpedo boats which have not returned home, is unknown. The High Seas Fleet returned to our ports during the day.119

  In part, Scheers report on the British losses was correct or even understated. Three British battle-cruisers had been sunk, not two. Two armoured cruisers had also been sunk but a third, Warrior, sank on the way back to port; Scheer nonetheless vastly overestimated the number of destroyers – thirteen against the actual eight – and misled in his statement that ‘a large number of English battleships suffered damage from our ships’ artillery’.120

  The extensive damage that had been inflicted on the High Seas Fleet was entirely covered up. There was no mention of the severe damage to Seydlitz, Derfflinger or Von der Tann, or, indeed, of the actual loss of the most modern battle-cruiser, Hipper’s flagship Lützow. The pre-dreadnoughts also were all in bad shape and even ships of the first line were badly holed. König was drawing 10m (32ft) of water. When the loss of Lützow finally leaked out, the secrecy backfired. Their recounting of events, not questioned until then, now came under intense scrutiny. So it was with Rostock and Elbing. To use the expression ‘missing’ when talking about Frauenlob, or of other ships (S.35, V.4, V.27, V.29 and V.48) as not having ‘returned home’, were similar untruths that backfired.

  The afternoon Scheer arrived back in harbour, just after he had sent out a communiqué to the fleet with the words ‘Deutschland und unser Kaiser über alles’, he received a written note of congratulations from the Kaiser: ‘I am proud of our mighty fleet, which has proved by this feat of arms that it is a match for a superior enemy’.121 With such announcements it was hardly surprising that there was celebration all over Germany, flags flying wildly on Berlin’s Unter den Linden and headlines extolling the Trafalgar that Germany had won.

  The British, in total contrast, bungled the handling of the story from the first. In the Admiralty’s Room 37 the Royal Navy’s official censor, Captain Sir Douglas Brownrigg, received the text of the German communiqué; Jellicoe was radioed the text and asked for his response to the claimed British losses. Jellicoe responded openly, not thinking that his words would be used for any outside communication. He was alarmingly frank about the British losses and his words contained no spin.

  One of the first of Beatty’s battle-scarred ships back at Rosyth was the heavily damaged Warspite. Still on fire, she passed the Forth Bridge on 1 June at around 15:00, greeted by ‘loud cheers from the men at work on the bridge’.122 On the way back, once out of the battle area, the turret crews had been allowed to stretch their legs. It was the first sight that many had of the damage that their ship had sustained:

  When I got out [on top of the turret] I was amazed at what I saw. Part of the bridge was alight, a store of lifebelts under the bridge was in flames; I could see there was a fire raging in the 6-inch battery where the cordite was alight; the upper deck was riddled with shell; the funnels were holed, every boat on the ship had a hole in it and the ship looked reallybad.123

  Warspite’s hull was 4ft 6in lower in the water than it should have been. A lucky escape she might have had, but she still had fighting spirit: she had spotted U.63 on the journey back and had tried to ram her. (Luckily for the submarine, which had engine trouble, it was able to crash-dive fast.) As soon as she docked, nurses from the hospital ship Plassey went to work bringing the wounded ashore.

  At 08:30 on Friday, 2 June, as the scraps of news about the battle were starting to leak out, the Battle Cruiser Fleet made home waters, sailing into the Firth of Forth. Families lined the banks. Admiral Hood’s family, unaware of what had happened to Invincible, stood and waved the fleet in as enthusiastically as the rest. Only later that night, when an Admiralty communiqué was released, did they discover the news of the death of the 1,019 souls, including the head of the family, the Hon Horace Hood, who had gone down with the battle-cruiser two days previously.

  One sailor from Malaya was totally shell-shocked. He had endured appalling conditions and thought that he was still in his turret station:

  After landing at base we were taken by hospital train to Queensferry. Ladies on the train handed us cigarettes. I kept shouting, ‘Pass up Lyddite, pass up shrapnel’. A lady put a spoonful of jelly in my mouth to shut it. One chap said, ‘Do you know who that lady was?’ I said, ‘Haven’t the slightest.’ He said, ‘That was Lady Jellicoe!’124

  Not everything about the battle-cruiser homecoming was welcoming. As Lion returned to her berth at around 09:00, a black moment came for those who had fought so valiantly over the previous two days: the memory remained with them for many years after. Dock workers, hearing the news that the Reuters report had given out and that had started to spread, jeered the sailors; later, they spat on them in the streets. By late afternoon, the news was everywhere and crowds began to form, heckling sailors:

  My job in harbour was to run the second picket boat, so I took the steward in to a pier just underneath the Forth Bridge, at the bottom of the hill, South Queensferry. There was not a very big crowd of about 30 people and their attitude was one of, ‘Here, what do you think you are doing? What do you think we pay the navy for?’ Remarks like that. We said, ‘Well, we have just had a battle!’ ‘Yes,’ they said, ‘fine battle that was. The Germans beat you, didn’t they? We read about it in the papers.’ Now that was really a complete surprise to us and a great shock.125

  Before the Grand Fleet had made port at Scapa Flow the Admiralty, while doing nothing to help form a response from the British commanders, released the text of the German communiqué to the British public. It was a very strange thing to do. Jellicoe’s no-spin report, made in response to Admiralty requests for information, was signalled at 10:35 after the release of the German communiqué had started circulating. Jellicoe’s words were factual and talked of the known British losses, and of some of the assumed German casualties and sinkings.

  The way that he dealt with the information set the tone: ‘VAC BCF reports Queen Mary, Indefatigable blown up by enemy shell exploding in magazine. Invincible blown up, probably same cause but might be due to mine or submarine. She was blown in half. Defence similarly blown up’.126

  Three hours after the battle-cruisers had arrived in the Forth at 11:30, the Grand Fleet also made it home to the protection of Scapa Flow to a very different scene. No one was there. Nobody welcomed or cheered the battle-weary sailors as they slid silently through the cold grey waters of the flow. Almost before anything else was the business of re-coaling and restocking, accompanied by the duties of burying the dead on the island of Hoy.

  The British were clearly in a quandary. The Reuters radio reports were circulating furiously and rumours were growing. The battle-cruiser crews had been subjected to a baffling reception, in their mind
s, after coming out of a fierce and bloody fight. The Admiralty had to do something.

  The first communiqué was most likely written by First Lord of the Admiralty, Arthur Balfour, assisted by Admiral Sir Henry Jackson (1SL), and Vice Admiral Sir Henry Oliver (Chief of Staff). Douglas Brownrigg claimed that Jellicoe had been asked for a statement for publication, but this was not so: had Jellicoe known how his information was going to be used, he would probably have signalled none at all.

  The final text for the first Admiralty communiqué – several were to be released over the following days – was only concluded and handed to the British press that evening, at 19:00, more than forty-eight hours after the battle had started. It played right into German hands by not claiming the victory that Jutland was: like the German communiqué, the British one did not use the word ‘victory’. It talked instead of the losses among the British battle-cruisers as having been ‘heavy’, while saying that the enemy losses were only ‘serious’. Sir Shane Leslie described the net result pretty memorably: ‘It was so impartial it might have been issued from the planet Neptune’.127

  At 19:20 Brownrigg said that the Admiralty had to make a statement, as the ‘ports were full of damaged ships and our hospitals full of wounded men’, with no thought that it might not have got the statement right. Seventeen British ships were named as sunk or lost; no mention that the Royal Navy had been left with control of the North Sea, or that a flotilla had been sent out to ascertain this the next morning, was made. The overall impression on the British public was that a terrible defeat had been suffered. News vendors cried out the dreadful headline.

  Balfour tried to explain his position in a personal meeting with the same Major Claude Wallace of the 14th Hussars, aboard the St Vincent when she set sail for the fleet rendezvous. Wallace had witnessed the battle (and wrote about it later): ‘As I had received no definite news from the fleet as to the German losses I could not very well say anything about them. Something had to be issued in reply to the German account in order to allay anxiety at home.’128

  Saturday, 3 June 1916 was George Vs birthday. Jellicoe wrote to him on behalf of the fleets to offer their congratulations. The King’s response was a fine spin on the events that had robbed the British admiral of a more obviously understandable victory:

  I am deeply touched by the message which you have sent me … it reaches me on the morrow of a battle which has once more displayed the splendid gallantry of the officers and men under your command … I mourn for the loss of brave men, many of them personal friends of my own, who have fallen in their country’s cause. Yet even more do I regret that the German High Seas Fleet, in spite of its heavy losses, was enabled by the misty weather to evade the full consequences of an encounter which they have always professed to desire, but for which, when the opportunity arrived, they showed no inclination …129

  A second communiqué, increasing the known German losses, was issued at 01:15 Saturday morning after Jellicoe had updated the Admiralty three times on the evening of Friday the 2nd. It was also ‘shortly after midnight’ when Beatty had added his own long report.130

  Beatty’s perspective was that the Grand Fleet had only been ‘a short time in action. While he offered – and would retain – the public image of support for his commander-in-chief, it is clear from early accounts that he was unhappy. Hubert Dannreuther, the Invincible’s gunnery officer who had magically survived, remembered visiting him and said that Beatty ‘firmly believed that he had been deserted’.131 Finally came some added – albeit guarded – details of the presumed enemy losses: ‘of three enemy battle-cruisers (two of them believed to be the Derfflinger and the Lützow), one had been blown up, another was seen to be disabled and the third was observed to be seriously damaged … one German light cruiser and six German destroyers were sunk … repeated hits had been observed on three of the German battleships.’132 More and more it seemed that the public was willing to accept that Beatty had suffered heavy losses; the fact that the Germans had been allowed to escape and that Jellicoe had suffered no losses at all seemed to suggest that he had let Beatty down and not tried to engage the enemy.

  In Germany, by 2 June the propaganda machine was at full tilt. Wilhelm II visited the docks, building on a picture of a great victory. Surrounded by cheering sailors, he decorated the men with Iron Crosses. Each ship had a quota of awards. Scheer and Hipper were offered elevation to the nobility, although only Hipper accepted the Kaiser’s gift. He became Franz, Ritter von Hipper. Scheer was promoted to admiral (Hipper also accepted his own elevation to vice admiral). Both received the ‘Pour le Mérite’, Germany’s highest military honour.

  Jellicoe, meanwhile, communicated his displeasure at the first communiqué. His comments were received at the Admiralty at around 14:00 on Saturday, 3 June. By now there was a sense of desperation in senior British political and naval circles, and a realisation that they had seriously erred in communicating in the way that they had. Winston Churchill was called on for his journalistic skills. Brownrigg thought that he would be credible as he had always been seen as a ‘somewhat keen critic of the Admiralty’.133 He was given wide access to many confidential papers on the Saturday afternoon and asked to write for the Sundays. His main point was that ‘The British margin of superiority at sea remained in no way impaired’, and that it was the ‘hazy weather, the fall of night, and the retreat of the enemy’134 that frustrated the efforts of both Jellicoe and Beatty. But damage had been inflicted. ‘Seventy-two hours of confusion had done the mischief’ was how Langhorne Gibson and Vice Admiral JET Harper put it in 1936 in The Riddle of Jutland.135

  The British press now complained that it had not been given the same kind of access that Churchill had had. While the Germans had been first back to harbour and publicised their side of events immediately, the British had dithered. Rumours about the battle swirled around London society. Admiralty communiqués showing a complete inability to manage wartime spin did not help convince the British public of the facts. What had taken the British days had taken their adversaries hours.

  On the morning of Monday, 5 June a third communiqué from the Admiralty got to the point: ‘Sir John Jellicoe, having driven the enemy into port, returned to the main scene of the action and scanned the sea in search of disabled vessels’.136 What did the Admiralty now do? It opened up many of the files on the battle (except the secret ones dealing with the details of the loss of the three battle-cruisers) to all journalists; Jellicoe was, of course, astonished. He complained. The Admiralty reimposed censorship – from one extreme to the other. And with censorship thus reimposed, Jellicoe won a point, but only further angered his enemies in the press.

  On 7 June the Germans admitted to the loss of Lützow and Rostock. That same day, a Wednesday, saw other news that eroded the credibility of the Royal Navy: namely, Lord Kitchener’s death after Hampshire sank. She had been hit by a mine laid earlier by U.75, to the west of the Orkney Islands.

  Jellicoe worked on his dispatch now that he was able, back on dry land, to talk with his admirals. The issues in writing it were considerable: for example, could he mention the names of all the destroyers, including many new ones, that were unknown to the Germans? Another way had to be found, which was to mention only the ones that had rendered outstanding action during the battle.

  Some of the admiral’s less public reactions, written only days after the battle had ended, only became available for the first time in 2015.* He said it had been ‘next to impossible to make out the situation’ before the deployment. Quite surprisingly he said that he was ‘not quite sure if the firing ahead of me was at [my italics] the battle fleet’ and before making his decision, he ‘considered this point at the time’. When Iron Duke opened fire, ‘we could only just see the ship’ around 11,500yds (10,500m) distant that turned out to be König. He recognised that the bad visibility might have been the reason for the battle-cruiser losses when he was told about the action by Evan-Thomas, but he added that it was also ‘the fact that the enemy�
��s battle-cruisers have the protection of battleships whereas ours are most indifferently protected’. This private thought was very different from some of Jellicoe’s later, public statement, clearly written to maintain BCF morale and a faith in their own ships. At first light, visibility was down to ‘three or four miles’ and he concluded around 10:00 that ‘the enemy had cleared out’. He concluded saying that he ‘could not conceive of an action being fought under more difficult circumstances’. Mention has been made already of the fact that Beatty’s plot was twelve miles out; Goodenoughs was even more – twenty:

  consequently it was impossible for me to say where I was going to meet their fleet, or on what bearing, or where our ships were. That and the gathering mist and darkness gave a very difficult problem to solve. It was really bad luck striking them under such conditions. Had it not been for this bad luck, I think business must have been decisive.137

  Jellicoe was, at this point, under the impression that ‘three battleships and three battle-cruisers ‘were certainly sunk’, but he found public perception of the battle was like a yo-yo. ‘I am only annoyed’, he wrote in his covering letter, ‘because first the country looked on it as a defeat and now they are inclined to look on it as a 2nd Trafalgar’ [underlining in the original].

  By the time Jellicoe released the dispatch on 6 July, other concerns were in the air. The Somme offensive on the first day of the month had begun as an unmitigated disaster and so, even if Jutland could be seen in a better light, its moment in the light as a victory had now passed.

  Changing the guard

  In the days following the battle, the disappointment that Jellicoe felt was crushing. He felt let down by circumstances, subordinates and events. He was, according to Beatty, sick that he had missed this great chance. Jellicoe came to see Beatty: Beatty reported that he sank into a chair in his cabin, his head in his hands. For Beatty, it was about more than disappointment. He seethed at what he saw as Jellicoe’s caution that had, in his opinion, allowed Scheer and Hipper to slip away after they had been so brilliantly delivered into his hands.