The Great War at Sea: 1914-1918

by Richard Hough

  But Beatty was too busy getting a message through to Jellicoe. And every second that passed reduced the advantage of the 13.5-inch guns of the flagship and the other ‘big cats’. Still the coincidence range-finders gave no certain reading, and it was Hipper with his 12-inch guns who opened fire first. ‘I could wait no longer,’ said Chatfield, ‘and told Longhurst to open fire. ‘(7)

  Beatty thought he had opened fire at 18,500 yards, his flag-captain thought it was 16,000 yards, the reality was around 15,000 yards. Every shot was therefore an ‘over’, and it took much longer than the Germans’ five minutes or so to adjust the range. As soon as Beatty saw that he was much closer to the enemy than he had thought, he opened the range by altering course to SSE. Hipper in reply turned onto a southerly heading, and a steady gunnery duel, the most destructive in history, developed on parallel courses.

  The Lion was hit twice within the first few minutes. ‘On the bridge’, wrote Lieutenant William Chalmers, ‘we were blissfully ignorant of the fact that two large shells had exploded in the ship: the rush of wind and other noises caused by the high speed at which we were travelling, together with the roar of our own guns as they fired, four at a time, completely drowned the noise of bursting shell.’(8)

  After the signalling fiascos at the Dogger Bank, it seems remarkable that there could have been confusion again about the distribution of fire as ordered by Beatty at 3.46 p.m. But this is just what happened. To gain maximum advantage from his numerical superiority, Beatty ordered his own ship and the next in line, Princess Royal, to concentrate on Hipper’s flagship, Lützow, and the others to engage ship for ship. The Queen Mary missed the signal, as transmitted by flags only, and fired at her opposite number, the third in the German line, Seydlitz, leaving von Hase in the Derfflinger to fire unimpeded for ten precious minutes. This error was compounded by the Tiger which also failed to see the Lion’s signal. This resulted in her and the New Zealand both firing at the Moltke. Meanwhile, at the end of the line, the two oldest battle cruisers present, the von der Tann and Indefatigable, fought their own private duel.

  The effect of the cannonade intensified as both sides warmed to the work, nerves steadied and spotters and range-takers corrected, and the complex sequence of directing and laying and reloading assumed a desperate rhythm amidst the cacophony of sound that reached to every quarter of every vessel. Already the Dogger Bank engagement seemed a relatively tame business. No amount of gunnery practice could simulate these conditions. ‘All round us huge columns of water, higher than the funnels, were being thrown up as the enemy shells plunged into the sea’, wrote Lieutenant Chalmers of this period on the Lion’s bridge. ‘Some of these gigantic splashes curled over and deluged us with water. Occasionally, above the noise of battle, we heard the ominous hum of a shell fragment and caught a glimpse of polished steel as it flashed past the bridge.’(9)

  After the battle, many other eyewitnesses were puzzled that a serious explosion elsewhere on a ship was not even noticed. When the Lion received its most serious hit soon after 4 p.m., many of the officers on the bridge felt nothing at all, and the first news was delivered by a Royal Marines sergeant, groggy from shock, his face black, hair singed and clothes burnt. He managed to stagger up to the flagship’s bridge, stand to attention, salute, and report in a dull voice, ‘“Q” turret knocked out, sir. All the crew are killed, and we have flooded the magazines.’ He was, in fact, the only survivor from this holocaust. A heavy German shell had penetrated the front armour plate of the turret at its joint with the roof plate, blowing half the roof into the air. The cordite in the loading cages was ignited and half the men had been killed or mortally wounded. Major F.J. W. Harvey did not die instantly. He managed to reach a voice pipe and ordered the handing room crew to close the magazine doors and flood the magazines to prevent the flames reaching the magazine itself. He was later awarded a posthumous VC.

  No such opportunity for courageous and instant reaction was granted to Beatty’s last ship. The Indefatigable had been firing accurately and steadily at the von der Tann, and hitting the German ship several times, when a salvo of three 11-inch shells fell onto the upper deck at 4.02 p.m. The German AP (armour-piercing) shell had only an inch of steel to pierce. All the shells appeared to explode deep inside the battle-cruiser. She hauled out of line, already sinking by the stern. Like a vicious kick at a dying dog, the next salvo caught the big ship near the fore 12-inch ‘A’ turret. There was another gigantic explosion and she heeled over and disappeared from sight.

  Seconds later, Chalmers went out on the Lion’s bridge and looked down the line of firing ships. ‘How magnificent they looked with their huge bow waves and flashing broadsides’, he recorded. But astern of the last of them he saw only an enormous pall of grey smoke. ‘I gazed at this in amazement, and at the same time tumbled to the fact that there were only five battle cruisers in our line… I glanced quickly towards the enemy. How many of them were afloat? Still five.’(10)

  No matter how accurately the British guns fired, at no matter what range, and while certainly scoring hits, the enemy’s ships remained afloat, with the rate and destructive capacity of their fire seemingly undiminished.

  The Germans thought they had done for the Lion, too, and the lucky few who could see what was happening experienced a great sense of elation at the way they seemed to be mastering the enemy. The huge explosion on the enemy flagship was followed by a steadily burning fire, and when Chatfield ordered a 5-degree turn to starboard to open up the range, Hipper thought she was hauling out of line like the Indefatigable before her. But a few minutes later, Hipper recognized the harsh reality of his position. He made two more observations, as well, both of which added to the certain truth that no matter what losses he had caused the enemy he still had a fight on his hands.

  Beatty had sent in the 9th Destroyer Flotilla to take some of the pressure off his ships, and at almost the same time, he observed even taller shell splashes falling among the German ships. Evan-Thomas’s 5th Battle Squadron was at last in range, and his 15-inch shells were now adding a new dimension to the destructive gunnery duel which had already blown up one ship and severely damaged others. ‘As many-headed as a Hydra,’ the German Official History describes this moment, ‘the British Navy thus produced four more powerful opponents to take the place of the destroyed Indefatigable.’

  The officers and men in the fore-top of the Derfflinger continued to enjoy an uninterrupted view of the enemy line. For them, it might have been peacetime target practice in the Baltic. Through his periscope the chief gunnery officer could make out the bearing of the turrets and gun barrels of the Queen Mary, and confirm that they were directed at the Seydlitz.

  This peace was short-lived. Von Hase observed the distant fingers of the 13.5-inch barrels swinging onto his ship, and the stab of muzzle flash as they fired. What astonished him, and so many of those few on both sides who were above decks during this engagement, was the clarity with which they could observe the enemy shells racing towards them, one more feature of modern sea warfare that no manoeuvres nor gunnery practice could prepare them for.

  ‘With each salvo fired by the enemy,’ von Hase recalled, ‘I was able to see distinctly four or five shells coming through the air. They looked like elongated black spots. Gradually they grew bigger, and then crash! they were here. They exploded on striking the water or the ship with a terrific roar. After a bit I could tell from watching the shells fairly accurately whether they would fall short or over…’(11)

  The Queen Mary was shooting superbly, the Germans reported, and was scoring – hits on the Derfflinger. When the Lion appeared to fall out of line, burning fiercely, the Derfflinger turned her guns from the Princess Royal onto a new target. With the loss of the lndefatigable, the Seydlitz, too, concentrated her fire on the Queen Mary, which was firing full eight-gun broadsides but also taking a lot of hits, each one momentarily marked by a dull glow. The range was about 15,000 yards, and for the German gunners the target remained sharply outlined ag
ainst the western sky.

  At 4.26 p.m., after receiving a number of hits from the 11-inchgunned Seydlitz, the Queen Mary took a full salvo – four 12-inch shells – forward. This caused a massive explosion, which was at once followed by an even greater explosion amidships. The 26,000-ton battle-cruiser broke up as if crushed underfoot. Her bows disappeared, her stern for a moment rose high in the air, and as the Tiger and New Zealand raced past, littered by hot falling debris, the propellers were seen to be still turning as if to accelerate mercifully her descent to the bottom.

  Von Hase described the dying moment of his victim, with black debris flying, ‘and immediately afterwards the whole ship blew up with a terrific explosion. A gigantic cloud of smoke rose, the masts collapsed inwards, the smoke hid everything and rose higher and higher’(12); to a height, he estimated, of 300 to 400 metres.

  Captain Percy Oram, in the destroyer Obdurate, thought ‘the stark reality too stupendous to take in. One felt involved in the occult, a trick in which a conjuror’s black pall lifted to reveal – nothing.’(13) A gunlayer in the Tiger described how the German shells had been straddling the Queen Mary, ‘when suddenly a most remarkable thing happened. Every shell that the Germans threw seemed suddenly to strike the battle cruiser at once. It was as if a whirlwind was smashing a forest down, and reminded me very much of the rending that is heard when a big vessel is launched and the stays are being smashed.’ The Queen Mary’s launch had taken place on the Clyde four years and two months earlier. Hall had been her first captain, and by sensible and liberal treatment of his men had made her the happiest ship in the Fleet. Now ‘she seemed to roll slowly to starboard, her masts and funnels gone, and with a huge hole in her side. She listed again, the hole disappeared beneath the water, which rushed into her and turned her completely over. A minute and a half, and all that could be seen of the Queen Mary was her keel, and then that disappeared.’(14) A midshipman and a rating were later picked up by a German vessel, and a handful more survivors by the British destroyer Laurel – that was all of a total complement of 1,266.

  The battle-cruiser fight was now at its most savage, its sound and fury increased by a close-fought contest between the destroyers. Hipper had ordered his destroyers into the shell-torn seas between the two lines of big ships at the same time as Beatty. Here, for some fifteen minutes the German light cruiser Regensburg (4,900 tons, twelve 4.1-inch) with fifteen destroyers fought a tumultuous gun and torpedo duel with twelve of Beatty’s destroyers led by the light cruiser Champion (3,800 tons, three 6-inch, six 4-inch) at ranges down to less than two miles. According to Corbett, ‘It was a wild scene of groups of long low forms vomiting heavy trails of smoke and dashing hither and thither at thirty knots or more through the smother and splashes, and all in a rain of shell from the secondary armament of the German battle cruisers, as well as from the Regensburg, and the destroyers, with the heavy shell of the contending squadrons screaming overhead. Gradually a pall of gun and funnel smoke almost hid the shell-tormented sea, and beyond the fact that the German torpedo attack was crushed, little could be told of what was happening.’(15)

  On the British side, there were several reckless charges to close range against the German battle-cruisers, which threw over their helms to dodge the torpedoes. Only one of them struck home, doing relatively little damage, on the Seydlitz. Two destroyers on each side were sunk in this mêlée before Beatty called off the attack at 4.40 p.m.

  On the Lion’s bridge, Captain Chatfield, assuming the temporary mantle of a naval Boswell, reported on Beatty’s comments as the battle entered its climax and the second loss, the second disaster, struck his fleet. ‘The thought of my friends in [the Queen Mary] flashed through my mind’, wrote Chatfield. ‘I thought also how lucky we had evidently been in the Lion. Beatty turned to me and said, “There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today", a remark which needed neither comment nor answer.’

  For the present, however, there was nothing wrong with the giants of the 5th Battle Squadron, nor with their shooting. Still at their maximum speed of 24-25 knots, the Barham led the Valiant, Warspite, and Malaya south until they were as close to the German line as Beatty’s surviving battle-cruisers. Barham had opened fire on the von der Tann, and had shifted to the second to last ship when, Moltke came within range. ‘The Germans saw the salvoes falling absolutely together and closely concentrated,’ according to Corbett, ‘and were full of admiration for the remarkable fire direction it revealed.’(16)

  Hipper’s concern about this new accretion of enemy power and his need for relief was as great as the need for reinforcement Beatty had felt and which Evan-Thomas had provided. It was a characteristic of this ding-dong ‘run to the south’, as it will always be called and which had proved so tragically destructive, that each side, when pressed to the limit, was relieved in the nick of time. No G. A. Henty would have dared to construct a plot so pat as this battle was formulating. In spite of the loss of one of his best ships, and another of relatively small value, Beatty still had three of his ‘big cats’ battleworthy, the 12-inch gunned New Zealand, which seemed to bear a charmed life (it was said later because her captain always wore a good-luck Maori skirt in battle, which had been presented to the ship for that purpose), and the 5th Battle Squadron.

  Beatty’s tactical situation to the west of his adversary remained disadvantageous, but he could still cut him off from his base, and with his overwhelming superiority in gun power must destroy him before darkness set in.

  Everything appeared set for this last triumphant strike against his old adversary, when Beatty’s flagship took in a W/T signal from his most advanced scouting cruiser: ‘Have sighted enemy battle fleet bearing approximately SE, course of enemy N… ‘

  Light-cruiser commanders are as different in temperament and outlook from battleship commanders, as destroyer men, with their own unique and dashing style, are different again. Goodenough was typical of the cruiser breed – the successors to Nelson’s frigate men and combined all the best attributes: a burning need to search out the enemy and learn his strength and likely intentions, the tenacity to hold on like a terrier, the coolness and precision of expression to communicate swiftly to his C.-in-C. all the intelligence he could offer.

  The task of complementing the earlier work of Alexander-Sinclair in bringing the battle-cruiser forces into contact appropriately fell upon ‘Barge’ Goodenough, whose performance in the past had not always met with Beatty’s approval, but should have done. At 4.30 p.m., as the furious destroyer action opened up, Goodenough in the Southampton, with the Birmingham, Nottingham, and Dublin, was on a south-easterly course, two and a half miles ahead of the Lion. He had resisted the temptation of throwing his squadron into the destroyer attack, which would have suited his temperament admirably, and correctly stuck to his first duty of scouting ahead.

  Suddenly, dead ahead, there came into sight a great black pall of distant smoke, and then almost at once the masts, funnels and upper-works of battleships. Arthur Peters, the flag-lieutenant, spoke for all those on the bridge of the racing Southampton. ‘Look, sir, this is the day of a light cruiser’s lifetime. The whole of the High Seas Fleet is before you.’

  The look-out filled in the details: sixteen battleships, with a destroyer screen disposed around them on each bow, in single line ahead, with six more battleships taking up the rearguard – the entire strength of Scheer’s battle fleet. The range, rapidly closing, was about 13,000 yards, little more than seven land miles. Peters was ready to send the news to Beatty. Edward Rushton, ‘efficient and cool’ according to his commodore, remarked laconically, ‘If you’re going to make that signal, you’d better make it now, sir. You may never make another.’

  There were other remarks from the officers present, ‘some acid, some ribald’; but Peters had already got off the signal. ‘I held on a little longer,’ recalled Goodenough, ‘and [Rushton] laughed and said, half to himself, “This is madness.” It was curious that I said to him, “No, no, Commander, I can do n
o wrong today, whatever stupidities I may have committed on other days.”(17)

  The Southampton was brought in to within 12,000 yards of the enemy’s vanguard, the battleship König, flying the flag of Rear Admiral Paul Behncke. Any one of more than fifty heavy guns could have blown the little cruiser out of the water with one hit. Not one opened fire, while Goodenough completed his examination. The German gunnery officers had seen him before he had made his first report, but with only a hazy end-on view of his ship failed at first to identify the Southampton for certain. When fire was finally opened, the Southampton turned on full helm, heeling hard over until her rails were close to brushing the water. Zig-zagging at 25 knots, she made off with her consorts, signalling by searchlight as the shells fell about her and the tall fountains of water from near misses fell like trees across the cruiser, soaking everyone above decks.

  ‘Damn, how I hate this wet!’ complained Lieutenant Ralph Ireland, navigating officer. Another officer claimed that he had never before known how much protection there was in a canvas screen.

  Sensitive to the criticism he had attracted after the Scarborough raid eighteen months earlier, Goodenough was not going to let go of the High Seas Fleet now that he had found it. ‘If ever I see another German ship,’ the Commodore had declared, ‘I won’t lose sight of her until one or other of us is sunk.’(18)

  The speedy, evasive little cruisers made a difficult target for the German gunners, streaming smoke from their four funnels, zigzagging unpredictably. Lieutenant Stephen King-Hall reckoned that forty large shells fell within 75 yards of the Southampton, and many more almost as close. ‘We seemed to bear a charmed life… How we escaped for an hour, amazes everyone from the Commodore downwards… I can truthfully say that I thought each succeeding minute would be our last… Needless to say we could not fire a shot in return as the range was about 16,000 yards.’(19)