THE GERMAN RETREAT
The next phase of the action was a fruitless chase of the enemy from seven o’clock until 8:20. “At 7:6,” says Sir David Beatty, “I received a signal that the course of the fleet was south.... We hauled round gradually to S.W. by S. to regain touch with the enemy (who were lost to sight at about 6:50), and at 7:14 again sighted them at a range of about 15,000 yards.... We re-engaged at 7:17 and increased speed to twenty-two knots. At 7:32 my course was S.W. speed eighteen knots, the leading enemy battleship bearing N.W. by West.... At 7:45 P.M. we lost sight of them.”
The two quotations I have made from Sir David Beatty’s despatch divide themselves naturally in this way. The first deals with the plan he had attempted to make possible and to share, the second describes his course after that plan had proved abortive. Between them they make it clear that Sir David kept an easterly course at full speed from six o’clock till 6:25. He then turned a quarter of a right angle to the south, that is, to his right, and held this course for twenty-five minutes when, having lost sight of the enemy and, the Grand Fleet being still three miles from him, he dropped his speed from say twenty-seven or twenty-eight knots and awaited developments. As soon as he heard that the Grand Fleet, after recovering from the first torpedo attack, had turned south in pursuit of the Germans, he increased his speed by four knots, hauled round to the southwest, found and re-engaged the enemy at 7:14. By this time, as we have seen, the enemy’s whole line would be following the leading ships on a southwesterly course, so that Sir David Beatty’s movements between 6:0 and 7:14 were approximately parallel to those of the enemy. He had been able to keep parallel by availing himself of his ten or eleven knots’ superiority between 6:0 and 6:50 and by his four or five knots’ superiority between 7:0 and 7:14.
On hearing that at last he was to be supported, Sir David Beatty raised his battle-cruiser speed to twenty-two knots and made a last effort to get in touch with the retiring enemy. He soon found and engaged him at a range of 15,000 yards and contact coincided with a sudden improvement in the seeing conditions. Four ships only, two battle-cruisers and two battleships, evidently the van of the enemy’s line, were visible, and these were at once brought under a hot fire, which caused the enemy to resort to smoke-screen protection, and, under cover of this he turned away to the west. At 7:45 the mist came down again and the enemy was lost to sight. The First and Third Light Cruiser Squadrons were then spread out. They swept to the westward and located the head of the enemy’s line again, and at 8:20 the battle-cruisers—whose course had been southwest up to now—changed course to west and got into action apparently with the same four ships as before, at the short range of 10,000 yards. The leading ship soon turned away emitting high flames and with a heavy list to port. She had been brought under the fire of Lion. Princess Royal set fire to one of the two battleships. Indomitable and New Zealand engaged a third and sent her out of the line, heeling over and burning also. Then the mist came down once more and the enemy was last seen by Falmouth at twenty-two minutes to nine.
The Commander-in-Chief is far less explicit as to the occasions on which his ships got into action. The action between the battle fleets, he said, lasted intermittently from 6:17 to 8:20. At 6:17 we know that Burney’s division got into action, and at 6:30 until some time up to 7:20 the other divisions also. But no details of any kind of encounters later than that are mentioned. It is clear that after 6:50 the weather made any continuous engaging quite impossible. There was a second torpedo attack during the stern chase—and once more the enemy “opened the range.”