The Great War at Sea: 1914-1918

by Richard Hough

  Over the years since the battle was fought, Jellicoe has been the victim of heavy criticism and the subject of the highest praise. His performance has been compared to Beatty’s, in his favour and against; and for two decades and even after their deaths, supporters of the two admirals have fought bitter battles of words as relentlessly as in the Fisher-Beresford feud of the years before the Great War at sea. Feuds in the Royal Navy have commonly been more ferocious than in other closed communities, like the Army or Civil Service. Ford Mountbatten used to say that this was because of the physical conditions of life, in a confined shell often for weeks or months at a time, and, since the days of sail, with not enough to do and cheap drink readily available. Naval service at sea is a highly artificial life, rarely dangerous in the twentieth century in peacetime but often tedious and uncomfortable, especially in the smaller men o’war, and lacking the natural presence of women.

  Be all that as it may, the Beatty-Jellicoe feud was one of the hardest fought, with the tide running first one way and then the other. On the whole, though, the criticism of Jellicoe has been sharper than that of Beatty, in part because there was nothing heroic about Jellicoe’s style and appearance, which Beatty possessed in abundance.

  Jellicoe has been taken to task for deploying to port rather than to starboard and towards the enemy; for twice turning away from destroyer attacks during the critical German ‘battle about-turns’; for failing to follow Beatty when the battle-cruisers regained contact; for failing to anticipate Scheer’s line of escape and renewing the action the next day; and for much else.

  The pros and cons of these points have been debated at all levels, from the intellectual down to the emotional, and only a summary and conclusion are called for here. A number of authorities, from Churchill who was not there, to Doveton Sturdee who was, argued that by deploying to port Jellicoe with only a few hours of daylight left to him delayed the moment of contact and thus reduced the chances of a decisive victory. Many more commentators, and not all of them uncritical supporters of the C.-in-C. argue that any other deployment would have resulted in chaos, the German Fleet being so near that its van would have butchered the first Grand Fleet battleships it encountered in the midst of a complex evolution, with many of their guns masked and in no fit state for close action against a powerful enemy. Additionally, Jellicoe knew from reports from his light cruisers, earlier detached on this errand, that the light was more favourable for gunnery with the enemy to the west; and he also recognized that deployment to port placed him between the Germans and their bases.

  Jellicoe was absolutely right to deploy as he did, his timing was brilliant, and the result all that he could, quite rightly, hope for. He deprived Scheer of the chance to carry out the manoeuvre he had so often rehearsed, to concentrate on a part of the British line with gun and torpedo, commit the maximum damage swiftly, and retire behind a smoke-screen. Instead, Scheer found himself faced with the entire strength of the Grand Fleet spread out in an arc and concentrating their fire on his van. No wonder Scheer’s Chief of Staff was ‘emphatic that Jellicoe acted rightly’. He had crossed his enemy’s ‘T’ and placed himself in the ideal tactical situation with the light advantage previously enjoyed by Hipper against Beatty.

  In accordance with Jellicoe’s own rules, he had no alternative but first to turn away from Scheer’s destroyer attack to cover the enemy fleet’s first turn-about. He did all that he could within his self-imposed restraints on an immediate pursuit to position himself favourably for a renewal of action, by placing ‘himself as soon as possible athwart their line of retreat to the Bight, for along that line, sooner or later, they were almost certain to be discovered’.(12)

  After the battle it was possible to recognize that the massed destroyer attack with torpedoes had been a greatly overestimated menace. Ever since the French had built up a powerful torpedo boat force in the 1880s and 1890s, the Royal Navy demonstrated in its tactics and matériel great concern for the threat of the mass torpedo attack. The lessons of battle were limited to the Russo-Japanese War, and since then the torpedo had been improved in power, range, and accuracy many times over. The threat of the flotillas was an unknown quantity but every navy reckoned it as high and there was no reason before Jutland to believe anything else. The Germans were just as nervous as the British were and took as many precautions against the flotillas’ swarm attack. In the event, after numerous attacks by both sides in daylight and darkness, the destroyer’s torpedo proved if not a bent weapon a much less effective one than had been feared, damaging only one British dreadnought and sinking one German pre-dreadnought.

  In view of the commonly held view of the torpedo threat, Jellicoe could do nothing else but turn away from that first destroyer attack by Scheer’s flotillas, even though it was later seen to be a relatively limited attack, all torpedoes being easily avoided. (The Germans had been less successful than the British in concealing the track of their torpedoes, and towards the end of their run they travelled very slowly anyway).

  The turn-away during the second encounter is less easy to justify Fate, and Admiral Beatty, had been abundantly generous to Jellicoe by presenting him once with the High Seas Fleet on a plate. That it did so a second time was perhaps more than the British C.-in-C. deserved. Certainly for Jellicoe to allow one plate to be snatched away a second time is hard to explain and forgive. The turn-away was carried out in two stages, at 7.22 p.m. and 7.25, each turn of 2 points (45 degrees total), leaving the fleet on a south-easterly heading, and with the chances of a renewal of contact that evening now out of the question.

  Jellicoe had just seen how relatively inoffensive the first German flotilla attacks had been. But he stuck by his own rule book. The inflexibility of mind which had led to the formulation of the GFBOs in the first place was now applied to the critical moment of battle, and was found as unyielding as ever. Only Jellicoe’s rear was seriously threatened by this second attack so why turn the whole fleet away? This was the moment when to turn from the defensive to the offensive posed none of the risks Jellicoe had always feared. He knew that he held in his hands the fate of Britain and her empire, that so long as the Grand Fleet survived, they would survive. But he failed to grasp the opportunity (which would never come again) to destroy the enemy, with all the untold benefits this could bring to his country’s cause.

  Sturdee’s second in command wrote, ‘To meet the situation all that was necessary was to turn away our tail. What [Jellicoe] did was to turn the whole battle fleet away… and thereby lose all hope of a decisive action which until then it was in our power to force by turning our van towards the enemy.’(13) There was consternation on the Lion’s bridge, too, when this turn-away was observed. One of Beatty’s Staff said that he was ‘horrified’. ‘I felt instinctively that here was the sad climax of all our long discussions about defensive tactics.’(14)

  This failure to follow up the enemy, whose tactical position was a shambles, and destroy almost certainly Hipper’s battle-cruisers, and very likely half a dozen of Scheer’s most valuable dreadnoughts, is a serious and valid criticism of Jellicoe’s leadership.

  Certainly Jellicoe’s opportunity to ‘cut off whole of enemy’s battle fleet’ as advocated by Beatty twenty minutes later was greater at this second enemy turn-about than at the time Beatty used this phrase in his signal beginning ‘Submit van of battle fleet follow battle cruisers’. There was for a time much spurious criticism of Jellicoe by Beatty supporters who claimed that if only Jellicoe had acceded to Beatty’s plea ‘to follow’ the battle-cruisers, the whole High Seas Fleet could have been sent to the bottom. This much-repeated theme underlines the caricatured image of the two admirals which developed in the emotional aftermath of the engagement, with Beatty seen as the dashing, bold commander intent only on the complete annihilation of the enemy, à la Nelson; and Jellicoe the anxious, fussy commander flinching back from a showdown.

  In fact, at 7.30-7.45 p.m. it was Beatty who, in touch with the enemy, wisely called for support, not wishi
ng to risk facing the full strength of the High Seas Fleet alone. And Jellicoe at this time, as he wrote later, ‘was steering 4 points more in the direction of the enemy than were the Battle Cruisers.’(15), The ‘Follow me and we will sink the whole German Fleet’ controversy lasted until the publication of the Official Despatches in 1921 settled the matter. Both admirals maintained a discreet silence over the affair, and the only hint of Jellicoe’s feelings was contained in an entirely private remark to a friend after the war. ‘To tell the truth,’ he was reported to have remarked quietly of Beatty’s signal, ‘I thought it was rather insubordinate.’(16)

  Deprived of reports to the contrary from both the Admiralty and his own forces, Jellicoe steamed through the night certain in his knowledge that Scheer was to the west of him. He was right to complain so vehemently at this absence of intelligence to the contrary. But was he right to conclude that all the firing to the north stemmed from attacks by the German screen against Grand Fleet destroyers at the rear:’ At least he could have asked for reports. but he did not. He had made up his mind, and that was that. It was equally possible that this firing was the German screen clashing with Grand Fleet destroyers preparatory to a German break-through to the east; which is what it was.

  It was the British C.-in-C.’s tactical inflexibility as much as the failure of reporting that led to Scheer’s safe arrival at Horns Reef at dawn. The German C.-in-C.’s first bold attempt to break through to the east had been mistimed and was foiled by the Grand Fleet. After this warning of Scheer’s intention, there was no excuse for Jellicoe not to anticipate a second attempt. It was, after all, as obvious as a householder, deprived of his key to the front door, going round to the back.

  Whatever tactical successes or failures Jellicoe experienced at Jutland, given the conditions and time of day, the rigid centralization of his command, the strict limitations of initiative allowed to his subordinates, the unexpected failure of the torpedo, the unwillingness of the enemy to face a full-scale general engagement, and his own belief that the survival of the Grand Fleet battle squadrons was more important than the destruction of the enemy’s battle squadrons, a decisive victory was well-nigh impossible to achieve.

  If Beatty had had the 5th Battle Squadron with him from the opening rounds, he would probably have sunk two or three of Hipper’s battle-cruisers instead of one. If Jellicoe had turned away only the rear of his line at the second turn-about and destroyer attack and pursued Scheer to the west with his other battle squadrons, he could have severely mauled the High Seas Fleet before it got away. If Jellicoe had received – and believed – earlier news of Scheer’s night route he might have cut him off before he reached Horns Reef, but any dawn engagement would have been bedevilled by much worse conditions than the previous afternoon. ‘Visibility was so poor that we couldn’t see beyond a squadron length’, reported Scheer’s Chief of Staff. ‘We could hardly even find the entrance to the Amrum Bank passage.’(17)

  Whatever tactical errors were committed on the British side, therefore, the chances of an annihilating victory were negligible, even if British shell had been less fallible and the battle-cruisers less vulnerable to magazine explosion. The first day of June would still have seen Germany in possession of a formidable enough fleet to sustain the future U-boat campaign, keep the Baltic closed and the trade routes open to Scandinavia, and oblige Britain to keep an Army of 100,000 men at home against the invasion risk. All that Germany would have lost by sustaining a partial defeat was the propaganda advantage of claiming a victory and the boost to morale in the Fleet and at home which she gained by sinking more ships than she lost.

  A decisive defeat by either side would have had catastrophic results for the loser. For Germany the effect of defeat on neutral opinion, especially American opinion, on the Russian campaign, the renewed U-boat war, the Army, the civilian population, and her allies would certainly have been serious, quite apart from the knowledge that Britain’s Trafalgar reputation for supremacy at sea would be sustained. For Britain defeat at sea would have meant total defeat within a few months, with the nation exposed to landings, trade and supplies and troops from overseas exposed to an Atlantic blockade, and even communications to France severed. The relatively worse consequences of defeat for Jellicoe than for Scheer would have justified greater boldness than shown by the German C.-in-C. and provided some justification for the greater caution shown by the British C.-in-C. Churchill wrote a good deal of nonsense about Jutland but it is his definition of Jellicoe as being ‘the one man who could lose the war in an afternoon’ which history will remember.

  On 1 June 1916 Britain still controlled the world’s trade routes and sustained the blockade of Germany. Her Fleet was ready for action within twenty-four hours, bunkers and magazines full, the spirit of the men unimpaired, except by disappointment that they had been deprived of a great victory. As one midshipman wrote after the battle, ‘We have met the Germans at sea and only weather conditions of the most unfavourable sort, in Admiral Jellicoe’s words ‘robbed the fleet of that complete victory which I know was expected by all ranks and which one day will be ours’. The technical experience gained in every department has been immense, but the general effect on the morale of the Fleet cannot be over-estimated. Our one desire is to meet the enemy once more on his own ground and under any conditions, our only stipulation being that the visibility and the disposition of our Battle Fleet will force him for the first and last time to accept a general action which can and will be fought to a finish. The British Navy has entire confidence in the result.’(18)

  Germany’s Fleet was unfit for sea, and would be for many weeks. And when it was it took no further risks of a gunnery duel with the Grand Fleet. The spirit of the men, who were at first elated at the damage they had inflicted and the victory they were accorded by their Emperor. their C.-in-C., the populace, and the newspapers, which hailed ‘the victory of Skagerrak’, began rapidly to decline when they returned to the barren and austere regime they had endured previously in anticipation of this great victory. Disillusionment in the Navy led eventually to political restlessness which ended in mutiny.

  Two commentators, one a British statesman, the other a German naval officer, deserve the last words on the results of Jutland.

  Two months later, Balfour claimed: ‘Before Jutland, as after it, the German Fleet was imprisoned; the battle was an attempt to break the bars and burst the confining gates; it failed, and with its failure the High Seas Fleet sank back again into impotence.’(19)

  Then many years later Korvetten Kapitän Friedrich Forstmeier wrote: ‘The greatness of personality of a Jellicoe perhaps rests in the very fact that he did not yield to fighting impulse, but evinced a statesmanlike mind… To him it was more important to keep his country’s fleet intact at all costs for the main strategic task – remote blockade of the German Bight. A total victory over the High Seas Fleet might well have hastened the defeat of Germany but the risk inherent in such an attempt was not justified when the blockade, slowly but with deadly certainty, achieved the same end.’(20)

  For Beatty the battle was a shattering disappointment, and he always refused to celebrate its anniversary. He felt a great opportunity had been missed and that Jellicoe had let him down by failing to gobble up the fleet he had, in effect, presented to him ready-cooked. Dannreuther recalled a conversation with Beatty at Rosyth after the Lion’s return. ‘I spent an hour or more alone with him in his cabin on board the Lion while he walked up and down talking about the action in a very excited manner and criticizing in strong terms the action of the Commander-in-Chief in not supporting him.’(21) Outside the privacy of his cabin and the letters he wrote to his wife, Beatty was discretion itself and showed an unwavering loyalty to his chief during the months that followed. He regretted as deeply as Jellicoe the internecine strife the engagement aroused.

  Beatty’s courage and dash were never in doubt. But he was strongly criticized for(1) failing to ensure that the 5th Battle Squadron was in close support on meeting H
ipper;(2) for failing to ensure that the 5th Battle Squadron turned before being forced dangerously to confront Scheer;(3) for failing to keep Jellicoe fully informed of the progress of the battle and of Scheer’s whereabouts; and(4) for crossing in front of the Grand Fleet during and after deployment thus obscuring the High Seas Fleet from Jellicoe.

  Chatfield validly argued that if Hipper had identified the four 15-inch-gunned ships he most feared, in addition to Beatty’s battle-cruisers, he would never have opened the action, and would simply have warned Scheer and fallen back on the High Seas Fleet. Beatty kept Evan-Thomas’s big battleships in reserve for just the situation that developed. He was very conscious of Jellicoe’s strict orders referring to his use of the 5th Battle Squadron. Jellicoe, according to Beatty, ‘was obsessed with the ideas that the ships of the 5th Battle Squadron were not as fast as anticipated [and] that the German Battleships were faster than anticipated’. Just as Hood believed that Beatty would misuse the precious 15-inch-gunned new ships, Jellicoe had been most reluctant for Beatty to have them at all when the 3rd Battle Cruiser Squadron went up to Scapa for gunnery practice. Jellicoe ‘only consented to agree to my urgent request’, continued Beatty, ‘on the strict understanding and definite instructions that they were only to be used as a Supporting Force to avoid the possibility of their being engaged by a superior force when their lack of speed would prevent them from making good their retreat. Consequently, they were disposed as they were 5 miles away from the anticipated position of sighting the enemy.’(22)