III.
It was immediately after the destroyer action between the lines that the Mariner first sighted another body of ships looming up to the southward. The new-comers, about sixteen large ships accompanied by many smaller vessels, came on at full speed towards the scene of action, and at first the men in the destroyers imagined them to be the battleships of the British Grand Fleet. Their spirits rose accordingly, for with the arrival of these powerful units the enemy's battle-cruisers, cut off from their base, could not escape annihilation. But a few minutes later, when the great ships had come nearer, their unfamiliar shape and unusual light-gray colouring proclaimed them for what they really were—the battleship squadrons of the German High Sea Fleet.
Some of the destroyers which were favourably placed at once dashed in to attack with torpedoes, retiring as soon as they had fired, and before very long most of them had rejoined the heavier vessels.[ [38] Their next chance of doing something was to come after nightfall.
From about six-fifteen onwards it is very difficult to give a comprehensive account of what occurred, for with the arrival on the scene of the British Grand Fleet, the German main squadrons turned and retired to the southward. Sir John Jellicoe chased at full speed; and, as he says in his despatch, 'the enemy's tactics were of a nature generally to avoid further action,' while he refers to his own ships as the 'following' or 'chasing' fleet. Moreover, in the engagements which ensued, the enemy were favoured by the weather, for banks of heavy mist and smoke-clouds from the hostile destroyers reduced the visibility to six miles or less, and periodically screened the opponents from each other's view.
The fighting between the opposing battleships, which began at six-seventeen P.M., seems to have resolved itself into a series of ship to ship and squadron to squadron encounters rather than a formal fleet action; but, while our vessels remained in their organised divisions throughout, the enemy, soon after the fight began, seem to have become more or less scattered, and to have had a trail of injured ships struggling along in rear of their main body.
A hostile vessel would suddenly loom up out of the haze a bare eight or ten thousand yards distant, to be greeted with salvo after salvo of shell as the British battleships drove by. She would reply to the best of her ability; but, whereas our vessels had just come into action, and their shooting was very accurate, the German firing was not good, and had little or no result. Ship after ship of the enemy appeared through the murk to be fired at heavily for three, four, or five minutes, then to disappear in the haze, badly hammered and perhaps on fire.
To give some idea of what took place during this period it is advisable to quote largely from the official despatches of Sir John Jellicoe and Sir David Beatty. There was the battleship Marlborough, which, with the First Battle-Squadron, came into action with the retiring enemy at six-seventeen P.M. at a range of eleven thousand yards. She first fired seven rapid salvos at a German vessel of the Kaiser class, then engaged a cruiser, and again a battleship, doing them all serious injury. At six-fifty-four she was struck by a torpedo, the only one which took effect out of the many fired by the hostile destroyers; but, though damaged and with a considerable list to starboard, she remained in the line, and opened fire again at a cruiser at seven-three P.M. Nine minutes later she started to fire fourteen rapid salvos at another battleship, hitting her badly and forcing her out of the line. Her firing throughout was most effective and accurate, and this in spite of the injury caused by the underwater explosion of the torpedo.
The First Battle-Squadron closed the range to nine thousand yards, and wrought great havoc with its fire, but only one of its vessels, the Colossus, was struck, despite the hail of shell from the enemy.
The Second Battle-Squadron was in action with other German battleships between six-thirty and seven-twenty P.M., and also with a battle-cruiser which had dropped astern seriously injured; while the Fourth Battle-Squadron, with which was Sir John Jellicoe's flagship the Iron Duke, engaged two battleships, as well as battle-cruisers, cruisers, and light cruisers. The vessels of the Fourth Light-Cruiser Squadron remained ahead of the British battleships until seven-twenty P.M., when they moved out to counter the attack of hostile destroyers, and successfully drove them off. They did it again an hour later, in company with the Eleventh Destroyer Flotilla, and came under a heavy fire from the enemy's battleships at ranges of between six thousand five hundred and eight thousand yards. It was then that the Calliope, flying the broad pendant of Commodore Le Mesurier, was hit several times, and suffered casualties, but luckily escaped serious injury. In the course of these attacks torpedoes were fired at the foe, while four hostile destroyers were sunk by the British fire.
At seven-fourteen Sir David Beatty, who, with his battle-cruisers, was apparently separated from Sir John Jellicoe, sighted two battle-cruisers and two battleships in the mist. He promptly engaged them, and, setting one on fire, so damaged another that she was forced to haul out of the line. The enemy's destroyers thereupon emitted dense volumes of gray smoke, under cover of which the enemy turned away and disappeared.
But they were very soon relocated by the British light cruisers acting as scouts, and between eight-twenty and eight-thirty-eight P.M. Sir David was once more in action at ten thousand yards. During this period the Lion forced one of the enemy, badly on fire and with a heavy list to port, out of the line; the Princess Royal set fire to a three-funnelled battleship; and the New Zealand and the Indomitable caused another vessel to leave the line heeling over and blazing furiously. The enemy then disappeared in the mist and were no more seen.
These various semi-isolated actions, and particularly the performance of the Marlborough, which fired at no fewer than five different ships between six-seventeen and seven-twelve, show only too well how the mist aided the foe; but in spite of it, the enemy was badly beaten, and suffered far greater casualties than the British.
At nine P.M. darkness was rapidly approaching, and at about this time the British heavy forces retired temporarily from the immediate neighbourhood to avoid hostile destroyer attacks, remaining, however, in positions between the enemy and his base from which the battle could be renewed at daylight. At the same time the light cruisers and destroyers were ordered in to do what damage they could.
To those in certain of the destroyers which were present during the latter part of the afternoon and evening, and happened to be unengaged, the sensation was a most uncanny one. Their area of vision was bounded by a narrow circle of four or five miles radius, but all round them until nightfall the air resounded and shook with the distant rumble and the nearer thudding of heavy guns as the great ships engaged each other. The uproar never ceased. Fighting seemed to be furious and continuous; but though the vessels of the Mariner's flotilla were steaming to the southward with their guns ready and torpedo-tubes manned, it was not until after darkness had fallen that they were vouchsafed another chance of using them. But they saw many signs of the battle. At one moment they would catch a glimpse of a huge British battleship vomiting flame and smoke as she engaged some invisible opponent. She would fade away in the mist, to be followed presently by a fleeting vision of two light cruisers, one British and the other German, their sides a quivering spangle of gun-flashes as they mutually hammered each other. They also would disappear, swallowed up in the haze; and a British destroyer, steaming at full speed, would dash across the horizon on some errand of destruction, with smoke pouring from her funnels and an immense white wave piled up in her wake.
They passed the bows of a sunken enemy light cruiser standing up out of the sea like some gigantic spearhead; and once, just before dark, they sighted what remained of a sorely wounded German cruiser. She was sinking fast. Her guns were silent, and she lay over to an alarming angle, with a blaze of orange and cherry-coloured flame leaping and playing about her from end to end. The whole interior of the ship must have been a raging furnace; and a mushroom-shaped pall of dark smoke, its under-side stained a vivid carmine by the flames, hung over her like a canopy, and added its contribution to the thickness of the atmosphere. The sea was strewn with wreckage, masses of débris, and floating corpses wearing life-belts.
And so the night came.