Commander Walwyn counted Beatty’s warships off in order:
I suddenly saw our battle cruisers coming close by about four cables in the opposite direction and I realized they had turned back. I saw Queen Mary and Indefatigable were adrift but never for a moment realized they had gone.
Then Beatty’s ships were momentarily between the 5th Battle Squadron and the Germans, preventing the Queen Elizabeths from firing for fear of hitting their own vessels. Another attempt to signal the turn north was made by Beatty but towering shell splashes surrounding HMS Lion hid the message. Warspite was herself deluged with a number of near misses. Commander Walwyn confessed: ‘One salvo came very close, just short, smothering us with spray, and I am afraid I ducked....’
Then, like a curtain being torn aside, suddenly there it was – the whole High Sea Fleet. Squadron commander, Rear Admiral Hugh Evan-Thomas, instantly ordered an about turn. At 4.58p.m. the 5th Battle Squadron swung away from certain destruction but instead of turning one by one where they were, they followed each other around, enabling the Germans to range on the turning point. As the Warspite curved around on her reverse course, all her turrets swung to train on targets on the other beam. Now the full impact of danger facing the British battleships hit home. Commander Walwyn was again in awe of the terrible majesty of war:
Very soon after the turn I suddenly saw on the starboard quarter the whole of the High Sea Fleet; at least I saw masts, funnels, and an endless ripple of orange flashes all down the line, how many I didn’t try and count, as we were getting well strafed at this time, but I remember counting up to eight. The noise of their shells over and short was deafening... Felt one or two very heavy shakes but didn’t think very much of it at the time and it never occurred to me that we were being hit.
This moment is described graphically in a letter written after the battle by Royal Marine Captain R.A. Poland who commanded Warspite’s Y gun turret.
Captain Poland wrote:
...as we turned we got our first hit (the only one I actually saw). It got us very low down right aft and threw up a big cloud of grey smoke and shook the ship all over.19 Malaya, having seen her sisters straddled by very accurate fire at the turning point, cut the corner, curving inside the others and escaping any hits. But the Warspite wasn’t taking punishment without giving something back, for she and Malaya were hitting the leading German battleships hard. Commander Walwyn was delighted to see one of the enemy enveloped in flame and thought the vessel was surely doomed. He said:
I distinctly saw two of our salvos hit the leading German battleship. Sheets of yellow flame went right over her mastheads and she looked red fore and aft like a burning haystack; I know we hit her hard.
Admiral Beatty, who rashly left behind the protection of the 5th Battle Squadron at Jutland. Taylor Library.
During the run north, while Warspite and Malaya fired on the leading battleships, Barham and Valiant continued to engage the German battlecruisers.
Under the fire of the 5th Battle Squadron, the Seydlitz had her starboard waist turret wrecked while the aft waist turret was turned into an inferno. Half her guns were put out of action. The von der Tann also shuddered to more 15-inch hits, scaring the wits out of her crew. Lutzow and Derfflinger also felt the devastating weight of the 15-inch guns, the former soon unable to act as flagship for Hipper as all her wireless communication gear was shot away. The dreadful battering was so severe it seemed to make Hipper himself punch drunk and incapable of giving decisive orders.
Maximum Peril
From his well protected position behind inches of thick armour inside Warspite’s B turret, Commander Walwyn had so far been able to witness the most spectacular clash of battle fleets in history in comparative safety. However, damage to the battleship’s stern was now causing Captain Phillpotts some concern. He knew that if his ship faltered in the middle of this running battle she would be ripped apart by the pack of German wolves snapping at her heels. He therefore decided he had no option but to extract Commander Walwyn from his position and send him aft to investigate the damage and oversee emergency repairs. From this moment on Commander Walwyn would be exposed to considerable personal danger, involved in a desperate fight to keep the Warspite fighting and floating despite an increasing amount of heavy damage. For a few seconds after receiving the Captain’s message, Commander Walwyn contemplated whether he should exit via the hatch in the top of the turret or go down through the shell room. Personal safety recommended the latter, but ‘...I realized I ought to get there quickly and decided to go over the top of the turret.’ The hatch was opened by one of the gunners who melodramatically bowed. Commander Walwyn nervously clambered out and found himself the lone star of this theatre of war.
...directly I was on top they banged the hatch to. I didn’t waste much time on the roof as the noise was awful and they were coming over pretty thick.
The shock of Warspite’s own 15-inch guns going off a few feet away, while German heavy shells roared in overhead, their impact spraying tons of shrapnel-laced water, cannot be downplayed. Commander Walwyn later did his best to shrug it off in his action report:
As I got down the starboard ladder of B, both A and B fired and made me skip a bit quicker....
He found no way in. All the doors were securely shut as he had ordered:
Ran down the port superstructure ladder and tried to get into the port superstructure all clips were on, so I climbed up over 2nd cutter. Just as I got up one came through the after funnel with an awful screech and spattered about everywhere. I put my coat collar up and ran like a stag, feeling in a hell of a funk.
Commander Walwyn’s nerve nearly went. A German 12-inch shell had hit a fresh meat store, propelling a sheep carcass into some grating where it became wedged, giving the appearance of a badly mangled human corpse. Luckily Commander Walwyn found a door slightly ajar because some marines were watching the action. Once inside he ordered them to slam it tight shut. Inside the huge hull Commander Walwyn found himself cut off from the bedlam of battle.
Went right down to the mess deck and all along port side; all was quiet and could see nothing wrong at all.
Meeting a grinning sailor who seemed to have nothing better to do, Commander Walwyn sent him to the Captain with a message that nothing was wrong aft.
However, Warspite had been hit under the waterline – the shell impact Captain Poland had seen from Y turret. This would later send her on a suicide run straight at the German battle fleet.
As a portent of the moment of maximum peril about to hit their battleship, some of Warspite’s sailors were to look on in horror as the Germans obliterated a trio of foolhardy British armoured cruisers. The British ships – HMS Defence, HMS Warrior and HMS Black Prince – decided they would descend upon the gravely injured German cruiser Wiesbaden, which lay dead in the water after a mauling from passing British battlecruisers. Unfortunately, as the three British cruisers set about the Wiesbaden, the German battle fleet plunged out of the haze, its leading elements pouring a withering fire on the Royal Navy squadron.
The Warspite skirted this calamity, Sub Lieutenant Vaux watching the destruction of the Defence from Warspite’s foretop:
She was about a quarter of a mile on our engaged side when she blew up – I saw her very plainly first on fire for’ard and then a huge flame about twice the height of the mast, no noise, and nothing at all left of her, a ghastly sight.
The Warrior and Black Prince were left in a sad state, but continued to float and fight. However, unless the Warrior was blessed with a miracle the German battle fleet would pass so close she would surely be next to explode.
The strange tranquillity inside Warspite’s heavily armoured hull was rudely interrupted by a German 12-inch shell ripping through the side armour of the boy sailors’ mess deck. Commander Walwyn saw a ‘terrific sheet of golden flame’ followed by ‘stink, impenetrable dust, and everything seemed to fall everywhere with an appalling noise.’ Surgeon Lieutenant Ellis, in the forward aid distrib
uting station, was directly below the impact point: ‘There was a loud crash as it exploded and mess tables and stools seemed to be being thrown about all over the place judging from the noise and clatter.’ Senses reeling, Commander Walwyn called a nearby battle damage team into action. They played their water hoses onto a fire which went out easily but the dreadful stink remained.
Several of the fire crew were sick due to the sweet sickly stench, but there was no signs of poison gas. The shell hole was clean and about the size of a scuttle; big flakes of armour had been flung across the mess deck wrecking everything.
Smoke poured through holes in the deck and Commander Walwyn suddenly realized the ammunition magazine for the anti-aircraft guns was nearby and might explode. He immediately gave orders to stand by to flood the middle deck position. But before this was necessary water from severed fire mains pouring through holes in the deck doused the fire. While a damage control team struggled with closing off the damaged water mains other sailors scrambled about in the wreckage retrieving souvenir bits of shrapnel. Commander Walwyn told the fire hose teams to turn their jets of water on them ‘to make them take cover below again’.
Surgeon Lieutenant Ellis was meanwhile attending to his first casualty – the only wound victim of the shell in the boy sailors’ mess – a stoker hit in the neck by a piece of shrapnel. He stopped the bleeding by packing the wound with strips of gauze. In his diary, he later noted that another sailor blown down a ladder by the impact of the same shell escaped injury.
Going aft again, Commander Walwyn discovered serious damage to the Captain’s and Admiral’s accommodation. Commander Walwyn was surveying other areas of damage and ordering sailors evacuated from compartments that seemed in danger of flooding, when a shell burst in the Captain’s lobby. On arriving at the latest scene of carnage he found his own day cabin had been ‘completely removed overboard.’
Next Commander Walwyn saw his first casualties of war.
Three stokers were dead in voice pipe flat, one having his head blown off and another badly smashed to pieces, rather a horrible sight...
Then he came across a damage control team that had suffered dead and wounded.
A shell had come in further forward and hit X turret barbette armour, killing several of No.5 fire brigade in engineers’ work shop and wounding a lot more.
The Wireless Transmitting room had also had its door blown off and the young sub lieutenant working inside had been killed. Another shell-hit momentarily put out all internal lights but candles proved adequate in the circumstances. As he made his way forward again, the broken glass of lightbulbs crunched under Commander Walwyn’s feet and jagged shards of armour plating also made walking difficult.
Commander Walwyn now came across two stokers involved in an act of sheer stupidity:
The body of a 12-inch shell was found above engineers’ work shop, unexploded. The filling was sticking out like a chock of wood and a couple of stokers were trying to chip the fuze out. I luckily stopped this little effort.
The shell the stokers were meddling with had knocked a door down on top of a chief stoker and killed him, wrecked the bandmaster’s cabin before embedding itself at the top of the ladder leading down to the engineering workshop. But, despite all the damage he had encountered, and the shock to his own frail human senses, Commander Walwyn reckoned the tough battleship was still in good enough shape to carry on fighting. He sent someone to telephone Captain Phillpotts with the message that things were under control.
The Paymaster, who was wandering about ‘using appalling language as to when the Grand Fleet was going to turn up’, stopped by to have a good humoured chat. As the two officers enjoyed a grim chuckle at their potentially serious predicament, a 12-inch shell destroyed the Warrant Officer’s galley. A Warrant Officer stoker standing beside the Commander remarked: ‘There goes my **!!**! dinner!’
Making his way via the 6-inch battery deck on the port side to see what damage the shell had caused, Commander Walwyn was relieved to find very little. The gunners seemed ‘very cheery’. Moving along the starboard side of the mess deck, Commander Walwyn found some of the 6-inch battery support crews bunched up together and ordered them to spread out to reduce casualties.
Needing a breather after these exertions, Commander Walwyn decided to go up to the port side battery deck to see if he could see any of the battle through the 6-inch gun controller’s observation hood. A high explosive shell hit the ship on the port side aft just as the Commander was taking his look and, blinded by a terrific flash, he was knocked over by the shock of the impact, his eyes full of water and dust. A sailor came to his rescue, thinking he was wounded, but Commander Walwyn was only bruised. Picking himself up, he decided to inspect the damage down below as the ship appeared to be receiving more heavy hits.
Crossing to the starboard side of the ship Commander Walwyn heard a shell burst above in the 6-inch gun battery.
Sheet of flame came through slits of sliding shutters. Told them to open the shutter with a view to going up the escape to see what had happened... .
But fires were still burning above so Commander Walwyn ordered the shutter closed again. The disturbing sound of mortally wounded sailors groaning in agony could be heard.
As Commander Walwyn dashed forward to try and gain access he was told the superstructure of the battleship was ablaze but decided external problems would have to wait until he saw the extent of the damage to the battery.
A fragment from the shell bursting by the starboard 6-inch gun had come through the roof of the battery deck and actually hit the after 6-inch cordite case containing four full charges.
When the shell fragment struck, a sailor had been standing by ready to load a gun with a cordite charge half out of the protective case in his arms. In addition to the whole of the No 6 six-inch gun crew being dreadfully burned, together with some members of the neighbouring gun, there was a danger the fire could spread along the whole battery. Luckily a crucial protective door was shut and so the fire was contained while it was brought under control. Despite being badly burned himself, the ship’s fifty-six-year-old Roman Catholic padre, Father Pollen, heroically persisted in pulling casualties away from the flames.
As her crew dealt with the consequences of this latest hit, more shells were slamming into Warspite and the noise of battle was extraordinary.
At this time I thought our 6-inch were firing but I realized afterwards it was only hits on us. The noise was deafening and rather nerve shattering. You could not hear yourself speak and had to shout in anybody’s ear.
Amid this cacophony Commander Walwyn remembered he’d better investigate the burning superstructure.
As she raced north, German guns began to punch holes in Warspite’s superstructure. Franklin Collection.
Climbing out to the upper deck using the six-inch battery deck escape ladder, he found ‘the whole place ablaze’. Worst of all, the firefighting teams couldn’t do anything about it, as the water mains had been cut.
Through the observation slits in the ship’s conning tower Commander Walwyn could see signalmen and messengers who feared they would be roasted alive.
With their mouths agape calling ‘put the fire out!’ Commander Walwyn thought they looked like chicks trapped in a thrushes nest. Somehow Royal Marines and midshipmen managed to get hoses connected to a steam main and pulled up water that way. As a hose spurted into life, Commander Walwyn was accidentally knocked over by the force of its water jet.
Picking himself up, he decided to take a quick survey of the battleship’s exterior:
The upper deck and superstructure looked perfectly awful, holed everywhere. I think at this time the firing had slackened but the noise was still deafening, shells bursting short threw tons of water over the ship.
Treating the burns casualties from the six-inch gun battery was a grisly business. Surgeon Lieutenant Ellis and the Principal Medical Officer with their staff treated eleven cases, including Father Pollen, suffering from
&nbs
p; ...very severe and extensive burns of the face, body and limbs. They were so badly burnt that one could do very little to relieve them of their pain and shock, injections of morphine seeming to have little, if any, effect on them.
Specially treated bandages were tried, but laying them on the burns was so excruciating for the injured men that they tore them off. Instead an oil was used but still they suffered greatly. Surgeon Lieutenant Ellis:
It was no easy job either, as they required constant attention and watching to guard against them hurting themselves through moving about.
The medical staff ‘...could not keep them still even with repeated hypodermic injections of morphine.’
Using a ragged shell hole in the hull on the boy sailors’ mess deck as his window, Commander Walwyn tried again to catch sight of some action. Even with a crew of more than 1,000, only around two dozen could actually see what was going on and then the fog of war restricted their clarity of vision to flashes in the smoke.
Unsurprisingly Commander Walwyn was little the wiser after his look at the scene of battle. It ‘...looked red, lurid and beastly, heavy firing all round and splashes everywhere...’
It did, however, appear to him that Warspite had slowed down. Going aft to see how the battle against flooding was progressing, he found the centre engine room deluged with ‘a fair amount of water’ as shell hole plugs were washed away. Any handy items of wooden furniture or fittings were fair game for ongoing attempts to plug these holes, including mess stools, hammock bins and candle boxes which carpenters adapted to the emergency at hand. With very few, if any, of the crew knowing what was happening Commander Walwyn was forever being buttonholed by sailors anxious for news of how the battle was going. He told them he couldn’t really help.
Warspite Page 6
