The Great War at Sea: 1914-1918

by Richard Hough

  4. Scouting for the fleet and reconnaissance work from ships.

  5. To assist the Army whenever and wherever required.

  THE SEARCH FOR DECISIVE ACTION

  The new team at the Admiralty – Less inspiration, greater steadiness – Jellicoe’s concern for his Fleet’s strength, his personal health and the health of his admiral’s – Restlessness for action among both belligerents – The new German C.-in-C. provides a response – The Lowestoft raid – Consequent agitation for swifter defence and counter-action – British and German efforts to trap the enemy with similar plans – Jellicoe’s operation pre-empted – The Fleets sail – Their quality compared

  Asquith approached the problem of the succession at the Admiralty with caution, and with a desire for calm in this storm-battered seat of the naval war. He had quite enough on his mind politically and on the Western Front, to say nothing of the Dardanelles, to risk further internecine warfare. At the same time, his options were severely restricted in number. The civil post of First Lord of the Admiralty was more easily filled than that of the professional appointment of First Sea Lord. Arthur James Balfour had already been Prime Minister for three years (1902-5) and knew the political and defence scenes as well as anyone. With Churchill, who warmly approved of his appointment, he had ‘a complete understanding’.

  Balfour had been born in East Lothian in 1848, a nephew of Lord Salisbury, who later had no difficulty in attracting him to politics. His father had died young, and the influence of his charming, vivacious, and brilliant mother was all-consuming during his childhood. He adored her and never married, though he grew up as attractive to women – tall, handsome, elegant in style and manners, amusing, morally and physically courageous, and renowned as a conversationalist. He performed brilliantly at Oxford and Cambridge, became an essayist and philosopher. His rise as a Conservative politician was predictably exceptional and not by any means dependent upon the influence of his uncle. He was in the Cabinet at thirty-eight, and sixteen years later succeeded Lord Salisbury as Premier.

  To many there appeared no limit to Balfour’s qualities. F. E. Smith, the first Earl Birkenhead, once said that ‘Balfour gave to politics the finest mind of his generation.’ His manner was calm and ‘unflappable’, his mind keen and understanding, he appeared cheerfully ready to listen to all sides and to all men. By 1915, partly thanks to Churchill who took him into his closest confidence, Balfour had become an expert on the Navy. Graham Greene, the Secretary of the Admiralty when Balfour came to office, wrote that ‘in his presence all men seemed rather small and inferior, and this placed him as First Lord in an unrivalled position for settling differences of opinion or deciding important questions. Naval officers knew that he would give what they had to say the closest consideration and would support loyally his official colleagues and advisers, and would never attempt to influence them to do what, as practical seamen, they might consider unwise.’(1)

  Here, then, was a change from Churchill. Unfortunately, the differences extended into another sphere, that of working tempo. Balfour gave an impression of perennial lethargy. His style was the measured one of the patrician. As a philosopher, he cared about contemplation. His long and arduous studies of metaphysics did not tend towards haste and snap decisions, nor was he at his best in a crisis. He knew this and therefore did his utmost to avoid them. Lloyd George thought he was a ‘dawdler’. Arthur Balfour was not a man of the people, nor a man of the lower deck, and least of all a reformer. ‘His appeal’, it has been written, ‘was essentially to the few, and not the many, to the salon and to the senate rather than to the street.’(2) If it was Asquith’s intention to reverse trends at the Admiralty, Balfour was the man to change the gear.

  The same might be said of his professional partner. Admiral Sir Henry Jackson was sixty at the time he succeeded Fisher. He was the complete technician, with numerous achievements behind him, a Fellow of the Royal Society, author of technical papers. Like many of the Navy’s ‘brains’, Jackson had early specialized in the torpedo branch. By virtue of his own experiments and his work in conjunction with Marconi, he was instrumental in introducing W/T into the Royal Navy in 1900. As Third Sea Ford and Controller (responsible for the design and construction of ships) at the time of the Dreadnought he had been a brilliant member of Fisher’s special committee.

  Jackson was a man of Yorkshire, the son of a farmer, dour of manner, parsimonious of words, sombre of outlook, infertile of all but scientific imagination. The least inspired of men, he drew out nothing from his juniors and was not much liked by them, though grudgingly admired. His eyes were ever on the dark side of things. ‘He does nothing but groan and sigh and be miserably pessimistic’, wrote one of his Sea Fords. ‘I fear he will not last long.’(3) His part in the pre-Coronel dispositions was not widely acknowledged and had scarred his reputation among only a handful (including Richmond) at the Admiralty.

  Jackson’s qualities were those of the level-headed scientist, steady in approach, weighing and balancing before deciding. Although he remained throughout on polite and gentlemanly terms with Balfour, he did not mix well with politicians and was something of a problem at War Council meetings. He was also a problem to his subordinates, being a great man for paperwork and red tape and at the same time finding difficulty in delegating even the most trivial tasks.

  As a result of these top appointments, a profound change overcame the Admiralty. Solemn lethargy took over from exuberant and sometimes inspired activity. ‘The Admiralty jumped from one extreme to the other’, commented Hankey. ‘In place of two men of driving power, initiative and resource, but occasionally lacking in judgement, there were now in charge two men of philosophic temperament and first-rate judgement, but less dynamic than their predecessors.’(4)

  The Board of Admiralty as a body had scarcely counted during Churchill’s wartime administration. With heads down in their offices, the members were rarely called to meetings, Churchill experiencing no urgent need for their advice on anything. Balfour now received an appeal from Lord Selborne, that wisest of ex-First Lords: ‘Do at the Board all the business which possibly can be done at the Board. Churchill has almost killed it. You can give it fresh life.’’(5)

  The Board lacked neither interest nor variety. The Second Sea Lord was Sir Frederick Hamilton, much loved by the Fleet, though better known for his Court associations than for his dynamism. More competent and professional was Vice-Admiral Sir Frederick Tudor, the Third Sea Lord. The role of the Fourth Sea Lord – the ‘Junior’ Lord -had traditionally been that of a dogsbody. The man who filled that post from 1913-16, Captain Cecil Foley Lambert, subsequently suffered unfavourable comment, no doubt because his tasks were so wide and so many of them attracted unpopularity. He was nominally responsible for Transport and Supplies, including in 1914 and 1915 the passage of the armies to France and the Dardanelles, and the provision of all kinds of stores (except armaments – Third Sea Lord) to a rapidly expanding Fleet. Additionally, he was asked to for an armed Yacht Patrol at the outbreak of war, to take charge of the boom defences at refuges like Loch Ewe to which the Grand Fleet retreated from Scapa Flow while that anchorage was being secured, to supervise measures to deal with the menace from mines and U-boats (a formidable enough undertaking in itself), and to co-ordinate precautionary defences in the Fleet and at shore stations against poison gas attack when the Germans introduced this new weapon in 1915.

  When Fisher was still vacillating about the Dardanelles, Lambert joined with Tudor and Hamilton in sending him a memorandum (7 April 1915) expressing their grave doubts about the naval participation in the operation, and subsequently Fisher proposed the removal of all three members. In fact, Lambert was at this time doing all he could to find means of reconciling Churchill and Fisher, recognizing the cataclysmic consequences of a final split, and working late at his desk, a break with his usually precise timetable.

  ‘No one could call Capt. Lambert genial’, wrote his private secretary. ‘"Dour” and “Sardonic” would be mo
re appropriate epithets, but when his primary responsibilities were increasing and new ones thrust upon him he never lost his composure or his temper. He possessed the great secret of good administration – of knowing when and to whom to delegate work. Much of his business was done by word of mouth; his minutes on official papers were brief, lucid and to the point and by 7 his table was clear of papers.’(6)

  Oliver remained as Chief of Staff, an able and very nearly brilliant ‘brain’; but with serious shortcomings, as we shall see. Richmond remained too, cranky, curmudgeonly, his brilliance unqualified; and Wilson, too, like some oak with its ancient roots entwined through every department. In all, then, the demerits of Jackson were more than offset by the merits of the rest of the Board and Staff, if Balfour followed Selborne’s advice and used them. He was sagacious enough to do so, with the consequence that the Admiralty could now be likened to a stately dreadnought with an alert and cautious ship’s company steaming at best economical speed rather than a battlecruiser at 27 knots racing through minefields and hoisting a series of imprecise signals. It did, however, labour under a considerable handicap – a burden which it shared with the C.-in-C. of the Grand Fleet.

  Jellicoe had been quite capable of standing up to the barrage of vituperative, malicious, and not always true accusations about his recent associates – especially Wilson and Churchill – with which Fisher assailed him immediately following his resignation, and of drawing his own conclusions. Jellicoe kept his counsel about the new administration. He had strongly regretted Fisher’s departure, much less so the enforced resignation of Churchill.

  With Scapa Flow now relatively safe from torpedo attack by destroyers or submarines, one of Jellicoe’s first causes for complaint was removed. Many others remained. The new administration reached the conclusion that destroyers were the best antidote to submarines, and was soon attempting to coerce Jellicoe into dispensing with some of his seventy boats. The efforts were not successful. Jellicoe believed he was already at risk at sea, and with insufficient destroyers. Mines remained for Jellicoe an abiding anxiety. A further advantage possessed by the enemy was his Zeppelin force. When the day of the decisive fleet action came, Jellicoe feared that the High Seas Fleet with its Zeppelins scouting ahead, invulnerable and all-seeing, would know in advance the course, speed, and strength confronting it. Seaplanes were not the answer. ‘All my experiments with seaplanes in the north have shown that the chances are about a hundred to one against it being suitable for them to rise from the water’, he wrote to Beatty. He had by this time a carrier of sorts in the Campania, from which he ‘got one up yesterday, the first that has risen from a ship under way. It is not a nice job for the pilot,’ he went on, ‘as he has to get up a speed of 45 miles an hour before he leaves the deck… Therefore if there is any hitch, he comes a purler… ‘(7)

  It was a small example of Jellicoe’s attitude and philosophy as C.-in-C. that he has no sooner achieved a very considerable ‘first’ with a weapon that will one day revolutionize sea warfare than he contemplates with dismay what could happen if there is a mishap.

  It was right and proper for Jellicoe to communicate his concerns to his chief, to defend his Fleet against attempts to weaken it and to fight for its strengthening. But, like Jackson, he was a born complainer, and a querulous one at that, and lacked the virtues of positivism and optimism which are two of the most important attributes of a great leader.

  In a revealing message to Beatty ‘as a reminder of the possible difficulties of the situation’, he wrote: ‘The Admiralty and country’s attitude would certainly be one of great praise and laudation in case of success, and one of exactly the opposite should you have ill luck over such a venture [an offensive operation]. One need not worry about the attitude of others, possibly, but one must concern one’s self very seriously with the result to the country of a piece of real bad luck culminating in a serious decrease in relative strength. Of course the whole thing is a question of the game being worth the candle, and only the man on the spot can decide. If the game looks worth the candle the risks can well be taken. If not, then however distasteful, I think one’s duty is to be cautious.’(8)

  The burden which the Board of Admiralty shared with the C.-in-C. Grand Fleet, and others, was that of ill health, a condition which has lost battles and wars. The strain of running the Navy at war, whether from Whitehall or Scapa Flow, was great enough to tax the strength of the fittest men. Churchill and Fisher in office in 1914, for all their follies and their age difference of thirty-three years, were extremely fit and strong, and always had been. Churchill, watching Fisher ‘narrowly to judge his physical strength and mental alertness’ when considering him as a partner, was given ‘the impression of a terrific engine of mental and physical power burning and throbbing in that aged frame’.(9)

  Jackson, however, had always suffered from poor health, and when in one of his quite frequent bad phases, was unable to prevent himself from discourteous and even rude behaviour. Balfour, in spite of his strong and handsome looks, suffered from bad health all his life, too, and his eyesight was particularly poor. No doubt the impression of lethargy he left with everyone who worked with him stemmed from his weak health, leading Lloyd George to write of him: ‘He lacked the physical energy and fertility of resource, and untiring industry for the administration of the Admiralty.’(10)

  Although a keen ‘keep-fit’ man and presenting to the officers and men of the Grand Fleet an impression of rude health, Jellicoe had never been 100 per cent fit from his earliest days in the Navy. Like Nelson, he suffered greatly from tropical diseases when he was a young officer and he never quite threw off their effect on his constitution. Dysentery and Malta fever struck him down and left their scars. A burst eardrum while at Whale Island caused permanent slight deafness. At Scapa Flow he was much troubled by piles and pyrrhoea, and on several occasions had to leave the flagship for attention. On 29 January 1915, he wrote to his old friend, Hamilton, at the Admiralty: ‘I am laid up for a bit. It is of course due to the worry of trying to get things done which ought to be done without my having to step in. I hope to be right early next week, but the doctor says at present it is dangerous to move out of bed. A nice look out if [Admiral] lngenohl comes out…’

  Nine months later, Jellicoe writes to the commander of the 3 Battle Squadron, ‘I have not been well lately. Partly strain, partly the result of the fashionable complaint of pyrrhoea, which I have succeeded in developing and which has affected me in the way of rheumatism, neuralgia, etc. I’ve sacrificed several teeth but it has not yet stopped and a rest is suggested.’(11)

  Even if it is reluctantly accepted that the C.-in-C. Grand Fleet was a hypochondriac, the question remains: Should Jellicoe be sending to his subordinates discouraging bulletins on the state of his health? An officer suffering from piles, pyrrhoea, and exhaustion, they might well consider, is perhaps not the man to instil confidence in his fleet, nor lead it into a modern Trafalgar. The ‘quiet spell’ caused by Beatty’s victory at the Dogger Bank enabled him to have his piles operated on but he remained off and on below his best in health, which led to worry, which in turn led to further stress-derived maladies and his own expressions of dismay at them.

  It sometimes seemed that poor health was the norm in this vital service which relied so much on the alertness, keenness, and decision-making facility of the top commanders. The younger light-cruiser commanders like Tyrwhitt and Goodenough kept well, and no one could survive long in destroyers or submarines unless he was fighting fit. Amongst the admirals it was a different story. ‘My Vice-Admirals are always a little shaky’, Jellicoe himself complained to the First Sea Ford (16 June 1915). ‘Warrender gets awfully deaf at times and is inclined to be absent-minded… I am not always quite happy about him. Burney is first rate when in good health, which unfortunately is not always the case.’ Again on Burney, upon whom would devolve the supreme command if Jellicoe were stricken down by illness or incapacitated in battle: ‘He suffers from bad rheumatism in his joints, es
pecially his wrists. His depression is inclined to make him pessimistic and over cautious. It is not possible to say how he will stand the winter…’(12) And of other of his squadron commanders: ‘Bayly is I fear occasionally a little mad. Sturdee is full of fads. Warrendcr is too deaf. Jerram has not the experience…’(13)

  As for his own health and fitness to command, Jellicoe let his condition be known in detail to the Admiralty: ‘I had two teeth out last week as I was having a real bad go of neuralgia. My own opinion is that the strain is telling a bit on me. One can’t go on like this for ever without feeling it a bit. But there is nothing for it but to stick it out.”(14) He stuck it out for another eight months before facing the greatest test of his life.

  The spirit of the lower deck in both the Grand Fleet and High Seas Fleet remained remarkably high after eighteen months of war. There was a good deal of cynical grumbling about the enemy avoiding a show-down – ‘Another bloody sweep!’ was the usual comment in Jellicoe’s Fleet when they put to sea, with the chances of meeting the enemy predictably low. The German sailor was equally convinced, first that he was superior to his opposite number in an equal battle, and, second, that Jack Tar had lost his nerve. Only when the odds against him were overwhelming, claimed the average German rating, as at the Heligoland Bight skirmish and the Falkland Islands, could the German be beaten at sea. Outnumbered at the Dogger Bank, the Germans believed they had knocked out the British flagship and sunk the enemy’s newest and most powerful battle-cruiser, the Tiger, for the loss of their slowest and oldest ship. (German intelligence reported after Dogger Bank that the Tiger was now only a three-funnelled cruiser acting as a dummy substitute.)

  The German sailor had a softer time of it than his British counterpart. He spent the’ greater part of his time in barracks ashore at Kiel or Wilhelmshaven. The climate there in winter was more agreeable than at Scapa Flow where there were almost constant gales, squalls, low cloud, freezing rain, or snow. At Scapa Flow in December and January it was dark before four in the afternoon and scarcely light again by 9 a.m. Jellicoe sought to break the monotony and keep his men fit and occupied by encouraging every sort of inter-ship and inter-squadron competition. Football pitches were laid down ashore and a golf course for the officers. Training and practice shoots were frequent, and the men were never allowed to forget that they might be faced with the decisive battle the next day.