At 7.30 p.m. it was as if a cease-fire had been sounded, the contestants withdrawn from the ring to prepare for the night during the last hour before the sun set. Repair parties went into action, hot cocoa was served to the men at the guns who took off their scarves and gauntlets and took the cotton waste from their cars. In the aftermath of the noise and danger and excitement, everyone wanted to talk – of what they had seen, of what might have been. News which had been silenced by the thunder of the guns, began to circulate from deck to deck as it always circulates on board a ship at sea, but now with twice the note of drama and at twice the speed. Where there had been casualties, these were the first topic, and as always after a battle the details were recounted with a touch of relish or hilarity to cover the fear and horror.
In the worst hit British ships – all three of ‘the big cats’ and the Barham and Malaya – there was a lot of activity in the sick bays, often under difficult conditions. There were twenty-six dead and thirtyseven wounded in the Barham, as many wounded and nearly twice as many dead in the Malaya. In the Lion, Chatfield took advantage of the lull to go below to check on the damage.
‘Passing down the gangway to the lower deck [he wrote] I found the gallant Fleet Surgeon, Maclean, and his only remaining surgeon, Horace Stevens, a highly skilled officer standing up to their ankles in water, dressing the wounded who were lying on the mess-tables. The mess-deck was flooded by the fire mains being damaged by shellfire… As the ship surged in the swell the water swept unpleasantly from one side of the mess deck to the other. The electric light was out, and only the candle fighting lights illuminated a rather grim scene. The dead still lay here and there, and some fifty men, many seriously wounded or burnt, were awaiting treatment.’(25)
In the Warspite, left far behind by her involuntary complete circle and the battering she suffered with it, there were thirty dead and wounded. A cordite fire had broken out in the starboard 6-inch battery, and many were burnt. ‘Father Pollen, the Roman Catholic Chaplain,’ according to one report, ‘did very well with the wounded, although badly burnt himself.’(26)
Jellicoe had turned the battle fleet away from the torpedo attack and Scheer’s retreating fleet until it was steering SE. But at 7.35 p.m. he ordered course to be altered to starboard to continue the pursuit on a SW heading, and at 8 p.m. the Grand Fleet in orderly single line ahead was steering across what everyone believed was Scheer’s line of retreat. Beatty, some six miles ahead, had already (7.47 p.m.) signalled Jellicoe. ‘Submit van of battleships follow battle cruisers. We can then cut off whole of enemy’s fleet.’ This reached Jellicoe, after transmission and decoding at 7.59. From the Lion, the rear of Scheer’s ships had briefly been glimpsed some ten to eleven miles ahead, and while Beatty was as enthusiastic as ever to get at the enemy, he rightly judged it as rash to brush seriously with the High Seas Fleet – even if it was in full retreat – with his now much depleted force. What he wanted was the immediate support of Admiral Jerram’s powerful squadron, headed by the King George V, in lieu of Evan-Thomas’s 5th Battle Squadron which (less the Warspite which was hors de combat) had now taken station at the rear of the line of battle. But Jerram’s ships were 20-knot battleships. some 4 knots slower than Evan-Thomas’s, whose high speed had been such a godsend to Beatty earlier in the battle. At 8.15, therefore, when Beatty once again sighted Hipper’s battle-cruisers and opened fire minutes before the sun went down, he was alone and without support.
The disposition or the two fleets was a repeat in reverse of their relative positions two hours earlier. The German battle fleet was in line ahead on a southerly heading with Hipper’s battle-cruisers (as Beatty’s had been earlier) between his C.-in-C. and the enemy. And this time it was Jellicoe’s battle squadrons which were heading straight for the centre of the German line and the theoretically disadvantageous position of having their ‘T’ crossed. The differences were that for Jellicoe a meeting would he not a surprise but a relief; and that the poor visibility must now restrict if not prohibit a full-scale gunnery duel.
As Hipper had sighted the Grand Fleet in line at 6.15 and opened fire, so it now it fell to Beatty to sight and open fire on the leading German ships at the close range of 10,000 yards. It was 8.23 p.m. He at once began to score hits, and within a few minutes inflicted severe damage on the Seydlitz and Lützow. while himself remaining immune from German fire because of the lack of any light behind him.
‘The leading ship was hit repeatedly by Lion and turned away 8 points,’ claimed the Official Despatch, ‘emitting very high flames and with a heavy list to port. Princess Royal set fire to a 3-funnelled battleship; New Zealand and Indomitable report that the 3rd ship, which they both engaged, hauled out of the line heeling over and on fire.’
Once more, the heat of combat expanded the claims, but the Seydlitz and the Derfflinger lost the use of their last guns, and there were fires burning in both ships. The élite First Scouting Group was now a spent force deprived of its teeth. The von der Tann was still without a heavy gun. The Moltke was the least devastated by shellfire, and it was to her that Hipper later, at 10.50 p.m., shifted his flag from the Lützow, left wallowing and almost ready to sink far astern. In a few minutes all four surviving battle-cruisers would certainly have been brought to a standstill or sunk by the combined fire of Jerram’s battleships and Beatty’s battle-cruisers.
It was at this moment (8.30 p.m.) that Scheer made the decision to use his old pre-dreadnoughts, whose loss would not seriously deplete the strength of the High Seas Fleet, as a screen against further attack. Up to now their presence, which had further limited his speed by 3 to 4 knots, had been an embarrassment. Now the time had come for the old ships to prove themselves, even if it was only to fulfil their contingency ‘suicide’ role. As a result of the repeated turn-abouts, they were at the head of Scheer’s line. He now ordered them to the rear by allowing Hipper’s battle-cruisers to make off to the west under cover of a smoke-screen while they held their southerly heading. In this way the gallant Admiral Mauve, who had been so keen to sail with the rest of the fleet, found himself leading his men o’war of another era in front of the guns of the enemy at a range of 8,000 yards. Gunnery was by now a highly speculative business but shots were exchanged with Beatty before the British Commander ordered a cease-fire, and Admiral Mauve successfully escaped to the west. Beatty had succeeded in forcing the High Seas Fleet some eight miles to the west and away from its bases but had been robbed of his ambition to ‘bag the lot’ – of Hipper’s battle-cruisers – by half a dozen old ships which in more favourable circumstances he could have blown out of the water in their estimated five-minute survival time.
At 9 p.m. the leading battleships of both sides, the Westfalen and the King George V, were a mere six miles apart, and on converging courses, but neither knew of the other’s proximity, and the last shots between dreadnoughts in the Great War at sea had been fired.
Darkness, which was complete soon after 9 p.m., did not however mean the end of contact or the end of lighting. In the vanguard and on both flanks of the two fleets light forces sped about their business, groping in the dark for one another then suddenly finding themselves in a fearful fairyland of Hitting searchlight beams and yellow spatters of gunfire. It was even more nerve-testing than the slugging matches between the dreadnoughts of the daylight hours, with the mysteries of mist and smoke of daylight increased many times over as shapes loomed up out of the blackness – friend or foe? – and were gone with a dull murmur of engines, a whisper of bow wave and wash, or the shatter of point-blank gunfire.
It is impossible to recount in any tidy detail the happenings of the night of 31 May-1 June. No one at the time was able to record much more than the sequence of events as seen from their own ship, and that was mostly confusing and limited, with the problem of correct identification always foremost. All that can be coherently reconstructed arc the encounters, more or less definable but sometimes almost fused into a continuous linked engagement.
The first conta
ct between the light forces occurred little more than an hour after Beatty ‘lost’ Hipper’s battle-cruisers. The two fleets were still converging but on almost identical southerly courses, their tracks forming the two sides of a very narrow ‘V’. If a reconnaissance Zeppelin had been out, the crew must have judged that the protagonists were certain to meet within two hours at the most, the light forces fanned about the British rear and the Germans’ vanguard even sooner. This latter clash occurred at 9.50 p.m. in almost total darkness. German destroyers fired torpedoes at the British 4th Flotilla. The Garland replied and, with no damage on either side, the Germans made off. A few minutes later, there was a sharp and confused exchange between the light cruiser Castor and her flotilla (the 11th) and part of the German 4th Scouting Group. The Castor was heavily hit by German gunfire directed by searchlights, and there was shooting elsewhere, which would have been heavier if certain identification had been possible. One British destroyer captain was convinced that he had been fired on by his own side until, in daylight, shell fragments with German markings were found among the debris. The next action occurred at ICl.30 p.m. between Goodenough’s light cruisers and the German 4th Scouting Group, and was a much more frenzied and damaging business. Goodenough had sustained his splendid record of scouting and reporting which had marked the ‘run to the south’ whenever opportunity occurred. Now, outnumbered by a determined enemy, the light cruisers fought back. The Southampton succeeded in torpedoing and sinking the Frauenlob at close range, but not before she herself had been severely damaged, including the loss of her W/T which had played such a significant part in the operation so far. At one point, recounts Corbett, a shell from the Dublin ‘could be seen to tear a hole in the side of one of the strangers; instantaneously a dozen searchlights were switched on to her and the Southampton, and they were smothered with rapid fire by the whole enemy squadron. In a moment all was a roar of passing and exploding shell and a wild confusion of gun-flashes, dazzling searchlight beams, and rapid changes of course.’(27)
Then, for fifty minutes, between 11.30 p.m. and 12.20 a.m., the British 4th Flotilla was again in action, this time with Scheer’s battleships, and as a result was scattered and badly mauled, and ceased any longer to be in the reckoning. Although it lost five destroyers in all (and that any survived after attacking battleships at 1,000 yards was a miracle) they damaged and reduced the speed of the dreadnought Nassau (by ramming), and accounted also for the light cruisers Rostock (torpedo) and Elbing, (collision).
A few minutes later, three more British flotillas, led by the light cruiser Lydiard, also brushed against the German battle fleet but in the course of a much less determined action, which did the enemy no damage, and lost one destroyer.
The sixth encounter, at 1.45 a.m., was the most effective. There was already a trace of light in the sky, which was to his advantage, when Captain Anselan Stirling in the Faulknor led the 12th Flotilla against a line of six great dark shapes spotted on his starboard bow and on a south-easterly course. He was correctly positioned for the classic destroyer attack as they went in through a forest of exploding shells. He and five of his flotilla succeeded in discharging seventeen torpedoes in all, and were rewarded by the sound of a rending explosion and the sight of a yellow flash that lit the sea and sky. Recovered from the temporary blinding, Stirling could sec that the symmetry of the line had been broken by a gap. A single torpedo had struck the pre-dreadnought battleship Pommern in a vital and vulnerable part, and the ship had instantly disintegrated without trace. No sinking could be more decisive, or horrifying.
Of greater potential importance than the destruction of this battleship. the only one to be sunk, was the message which Captain Stirling managed to transmit at 1.56 a.m.: ‘Urgent. Priority. Enemy battleships in sight. My position 10 miles astern of 1st Battle Squadron.’
The end of another British armoured ship was as spectacular as that of the Pommern. Ever since Admiral Arbuthnot’s doomed charge at the German line, one of the survivors, Black Prince, had been searching for the battle fleet like some lame lost animal seeking its herd. It was typical of the luck of the 1st Cruiser Squadron that she found the wrong fleet, and that it was in the few hours of total darkness which gave her no warning of her fate. It was the dreadnought Thüringen that spotted her first, illuminated her with her searchlights, opened fire, and blasted her into torn wreckage in minutes. The armoured cruiser became a blazing furnace which was extinguished only when her magazines blew up with the same decisive and terrible result which had demolished her sister ship.
The last encounters of that night did not match up to ‘The Glorious First of June’ 122 years earlier – something that everyone was hoping for. The participants were the light cruiser Champion, Captain James Farie, and four destroyers of the 12th and 13th Flotillas. Farie was drawn towards the scene of Stirling’s skirmish and successful attack, and at 2.30 a.m. made out the shapes of Admiral Mauve’s pre-dreadnoughts. One of his destroyers fired a torpedo which sank an enemy destroyer. But that was all. The Champion made no attack, and made no attempt to report this sighting to the C.-in-C. In this way, the surviving five ‘five-minute ships’, followed by the crippled von der Tann and Derfflinger, made their wav safely across the rear line of the Grand Fleet.
The finnal encounter took place at 3.30 a.m. when the Champion sighted four German destroyers on an opposite course at a range of 3,000 yards. The Champion opened fire briefly, and one of her destroyers fired two torpedoes, one of which made a hit. But no turn was made, nor attempt to close the greatly inferior enemy, which was also handicapped by being crowded with 1,250 survivors from the sunk Lützow – who, as twice-escapers, can be regarded as the luckiest ship’s company to survive the battle.
It was in keeping with the whole nature of the operation that it should peter out in this inglorious manner twelve hours after it had begun. It was as if the British were too tired to act or care. Numerous sightings of units of the German battle fleet were made during the night by destroyers scattered about the Grand Fleet. Not a word reached Jellicoe. Evan-Thomas’s three surviving super-dreadnoughts, taking up Jellicoe’s rearguard, all made sightings of’ what could have been, or were, German heavy ships, but neither the Admiral nor his captains bothered to report to Jellicoe.
Two of’ Hipper’s mauled battle-cruisers, the Moltke and Seydlitz, which had become separated from the main fleet, had remarkable escapes when they were sighted, the first by the Thunderer at 10.30 p.m., the second by the Agincourt (fourteen heavy guns against two or three) at 11.45 p.m. Both were allowed to slip away into the darkness, unreported.
The main body of the High Seas Fleet, the sixteen dreadnoughts and Admiral Mauve’s surviving five pre-dreadnoughts, reached the safety of Horns Reef by 3 a.m. A heavy mist had formed with the first touch of light from the east. There were still some gun crews whose elation at earlier successes kept alive their enthusiasm for a renewal of battle. But in the commanding echelons there was profound relief that they were safe now, with only the Amrum Bank to negotiate behind minefields which the British would never enter. Many officers had not slept for thirty-six hours, none for the past twenty-four hours. They were without a heavy scouting force, they were depleted in numbers in light cruisers and destroyers, whose ammunition and torpedoes were low, the battleships of the 3rd Battle Squadron had been knocked about and were not fully lit for battle, while the older dreadnoughts of the First Battle Squadron, like the relatively early von der Tmm, had experienced various troubles, including jamming, with their earlier mark of 12-inch gun.
All in all, the High Seas Fleet was in no condition to face a fleet action against an enemy which, in spite of its losses, was far superior in gun power and possessed a Battle C:ruisrr Fleet as powerful as it had been twenty-four hours earlier. As Scheer’s Chief of Staff later wrote to Tirpitz on the subject of a renewal of battle, ‘Perhaps it was just as well we didn’t.’(28)
And Jellicoe? ‘At 2.47 a.m., as dawn was breaking.’ he wrote, ‘the Fleet altered course
to north and formed single line ahead… The weather was misty and the visibility even less than on May 31, being only some three or four miles. and I considered it desirable under these conditions, and in view of the bet that I was not in touch with either my cruisers or destroyers, to form a single line, accepting the danger of submarine attack on a long line in order to be ready for the enemy’s Battle Fleet, if suddenly sighted.’(29)
Jellicoe had never for one moment contemplated a night action. It was not a contingency planned for or trained for in the Grand Fleet. There had been occasional night firing – practices before the war but the results had been near-chaotic. Besides, Jellicoe believed (quite rightly) that German searchlights and searchlight control were far superior to his own. ‘Nothing would make me fight a night action with heavy ships in these days of T.B.D.s [torpedo boat destroyers] and long – range torpedoes. I might well lose the fight. It would be tar too risky an affair.’(30) During the long haul south during the night, it had been Jellicoe’s intention to close Horn Reefs in daylight if he had not then made contact with Scheer. But now, the lack of a proper screen ‘rendered it undesirable’. ‘It was obviously necessary to concentrate the Battle Fleet and destroyers before renewing action.’(31)
At the critical dawn hour of 3 a.m. then, the German fleet had eluded its foe and was safe, and the British fleet (or at least its C.-in-C.) had no wish yet for a renewal of action. No situation could be more negative than this. And yet at 3.30 a.m. Jellicoe was still hopeful of a renewal of the battle when he was ready for it, believing that Scheer was still to the west, in spite of the flashes of gunfire which had intermittently lit up the northern horizon during the short night.
The Great War at Sea: 1914-1918 Page 34
