THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND
We have seen Admiral Cradock, fighting against odds, sunk in the Southern Pacific; Admiral Sturdee victorious in the battle of the Falkland Islands; Admiral Beatty chasing the German raiders back to their minefields over the Dogger Bank; Admirals Carden and de Robeck battering the Turkish forts from the Ægean and the Dardanelles; British lieutenants harrying the enemy in the recesses of the Baltic and the Sea of Marmora; British yachtsmen patrolling the home coasts in search of German submarines; British fishermen in steam trawlers sweeping the fairways for enemy mines; and British liners, guarded by cruisers and destroyers, gathering up troops from the ends of the earth. If we have not seen, we have been conscious behind these of a host of craft of every description—bringing sheep from Australia, horses from Uruguay, and grain from the Argentine and American prairies; of Tyne-side colliers battling through the Bay with coal for France and Italy, so woefully short of it; of munition ships, laden to their utmost capacity, crossing daily to the French ports; of letters and parcels by the thousand million always afloat on every sea. We have seen that admiralty alone, and the sons of admiralty, were the guarantee of that stupendous traffic; and we have seen that the bedrock upon which the whole rested, and with it the dearest ideals of human freedom, was the Grand Fleet, based on its northern harbours, standing sentinel over Germany's navy. Upon its integrity all depended. Any disaster to it would have been irreparable. And when it is remembered that there were many days when its margin of effective superiority was small—when some ships were absent being refitted and others were suffering from mechanical defects—it becomes clear that no British admiral was ever in a parallel position to that of its commander.
At the Battle of Trafalgar, for instance, Nelson was in command of but one section of the British Fleet, and the forces vanquished by him were far from representing the whole sea-power of the enemy. Had Nelson been defeated or even annihilated, the command of the sea would not necessarily have passed from us. Other squadrons would have been speedily collected and the enemy again challenged. But now, for the first time, practically all our battle units of real fighting value had been placed and were assembled under the command of a single leader—and with them our empire, the world's liberty, and the fate of every army then fighting for it.
That must have been, then, the root fact in the mind of its Commander-in-Chief—the "Hell-fire Jack" of earlier years—and in no operation could he allow himself to forget it. Ashore it was different. Here a key position, a province, even an army might be lost—might at any rate be gambled with justifiably—and the ultimate victory still not be compromised. But at sea it was not so. Nor was the German navy in any sense comparably placed. Its capital ships might be sunk or destroyed without the empire behind them falling to the ground. It could therefore afford to take chances denied to the British, and it was to find them doing so that the Grand Fleet yearned. For this its outposts probed the Ems and the Weser, and the Grand Fleet itself swept the seas. But it was a long vigil, though not so long as Nelson's, watching the Toulon Fleet for over two years; for the Jutland Battle, as decisive at sea, though not at once so demonstrably so, as that of Trafalgar, was fought within twenty-two months of the outbreak of the war. During that time, as we have seen, a continual marine struggle had been in progress; there had been a few collisions of capital ships; and the Grand Fleet had been constantly on patrol. But there had been no pitched battle on a grand scale; and it had even begun to seem that there never would be. Time after time, for its exercises, the Fleet would vanish silently from its berths. There was hardly a day when some fraction of it, large or small, would not be away at sea—sailing so unobtrusively, even to those most intimate with it, the wives and families of its men and officers, that they would not be aware of its departure till the empty berths told them the secret.
That was the position then, when, on May 30, 1916, the Grand Fleet left its harbours—a fleet that covered when cruising, and this must always be remembered in considering the events that followed, an area somewhat larger than the County of London. It was a lovely afternoon of almost summer warmth, with a clear sky ashore and a promise of settled weather; and, as usual, the Fleet put to sea in two main divisions. Of these the southernmost and faster, consisting of the First and Second Battle-Cruiser Squadrons, had left the Firth of Forth under Vice-Admiral Beatty—the former being composed of the four famous "Cats," as they had been christened, the Lion, the Tiger, the Princess Royal, flying the flag of Rear-Admiral O. de B. Brock, and the Queen Mary; and the latter containing the New Zealand, under Rear-Admiral W. C. Pakenham, and the Indefatigible. Besides these, Admiral Beatty had four of the latest battleships of the Queen Elizabeth class—the Barham, flying the flag of Rear-Admiral Evan-Thomas, the Valiant, Warspite, and Malaya. With him were also the First, Second, and Third Light Cruiser Squadrons and the First, Ninth, Tenth, and Thirteenth Destroyer Flotillas. Under Admiral Jellicoe to the north there had issued out from Scapa Flow the main body of British sea strength—Admiral Jellicoe's flagship, the Iron Duke, sailing with the Fourth Battle Squadron, and the other divisions of the Fleet being under the command of Vice-Admirals Sir Cecil Burney, second-in-command, Sir Thomas Jerram, and Sir Doveton Sturdee, and Rear-Admirals Alexander Duff, Arthur Leveson, and Ernest Gaunt.
Now to appreciate the significance both of these two main divisions and the composition of Beatty's command—the swiftest and most heavily-gunned vessels that had ever flown the White Ensign—there are two further considerations that must always be borne in mind. Placed as it was, the German navy could scarcely be brought to action against its own will, and the deployment in line of battle of so great a fleet in the North Sea—notably in its restricted southern area—would have been a matter of the greatest difficulty even on a clear day. It was Beatty's task, therefore, to lure the enemy, should he be encountered, into the arms of the Battle Fleet; and, for that reason, he had to be strong enough to engage considerable hostile forces, and yet not so strong as to scare them home again. He had to be swift enough to chase, but also swift enough to run away; and, in order that his mission might be fulfilled, it was essential that Jellicoe with his battleships should at once be not too distant and yet far enough away to escape the wide vision of the German aircraft. In a word, Beatty's squadron, cruising in accordance with the orders of the Commander-in-Chief, had been made both strong enough and swift enough to deal with any probable development. Remembering all this then, and to perceive more clearly the general trend of the approaching conflict, let us forget for a moment about Jellicoe's giants, and follow the fortunes of his junior.
Throughout the afternoon and evening of May 30th nothing had been seen of the enemy, and, though he had put to sea in full force on the morning of May 31st, steaming northward parallel to the Jutland coast, Beatty had not come into touch with him by noon. About that time, therefore, he turned north again on his way to rejoin the Battle Fleet, with his light cruisers ahead of him, forming an extended screen, and the four super-dreadnoughts—the vessels of the Queen Elizabeth type—bringing up the rear. The weather was still fine, but the sea was hazy, and clouds had begun to overspread the sky. By this time, unseen by Beatty, the German Fleet, also in two divisions, was bearing to the northwest—Admiral von Hipper, with his five battle-cruisers, the Derfflinger, the Seydlitz, the Moltke, the von der Tann, and the Lutzow, being well in advance of the main force under the command of Admiral von Scheer—as far in advance indeed, at that moment, as Beatty was in advance of Jellicoe. Thus a bird's-eye view, taken just before two o'clock, would have shown the Jutland coast stretching north and south, a hundred-mile strip of more or less empty sea, lying almost unrippled to the east of it; then the thin line of the German Fleet steaming north and a little west, the dark smoke from its funnels lazily rolling in the same direction; then another strip of empty sea, from fifteen to twenty miles wide; and finally Beatty's squadron, with its light cruisers ahead, also steaming to the north—the two fleets drawing together on gently converging lines.
Twenty minutes later, from the light cruiser Galatea, flying the broad pennant of Commander E. S. Alexander-Sinclair, a message was received by Admiral Beatty in the Lion that enemy forces had been sighted to the eastward; and the order was at once given to alter course to the south-southeast to cut them off from their base. Five minutes afterward, the Galatea signalled that the enemy was present in considerable strength—a signal also received by Admiral Jellicoe on board his flagship the Iron Duke—and, within ten minutes, a drift of smoke, far to the east, became visible to the Lion. Admiral Beatty now ordered the Engadine, the seaplane carrier attached to his fleet, to send up a seaplane on reconnaissance, and this was most promptly and gallantly carried out. Unable to fly, owing to the clouds, more than 900 feet high, she came under a fierce fire from the enemy cruisers, but brought back very valuable information.
The presence of enemy battle-cruisers ahead was now accurately known, and the course had been changed again to the northeast, the First and Third Light Cruiser Squadrons having spread themselves to the eastward to form a screen for the battle-cruisers. At half-past three the report from the seaplane was received, and, a minute later, enemy ships were sighted by the Lion, Admiral Beatty then forming into line of battle, and again changing his course, this time to east-southeast. All three Light Cruiser Squadrons were now ahead of the "Cats," these being followed up by the New Zealand, and the Indefatigable, the Barham, Valiant, Warspite, and Malaya bringing up the rear a few miles behind. Von Hipper, with his five cruisers and accompanying mosquito-craft, had also turned to the southeast, and the two forces were again steaming parallel, and again slowly drawing together. For the moment, the Germans were considerably outnumbered, at any rate in capital ships, and Beatty had the advantage, both tactically, in that the sun was in his favour, not low enough to silhouette him, and illuminating the enemy, and strategically, in that he was upon a course cutting off von Hipper from his base. On the other hand, he was, at the moment, and in accordance with a correct appreciation of his duty, drawing further away from Admiral Jellicoe and the Battle Fleet to the north; while von Hipper was aware that the whole German High Seas Fleet was hurrying to meet him from the south. For the German rear-admiral it was a race against time, and it cannot be denied that for the fifty minutes in which he was thus outweighted, his gunnery was as excellent as it had always been assumed that, in the first stages of a fight, it would be. It was only under the ordeal of casualties, both in men and machinery, that his accuracy began to waver and that of the British to increase; and it was while he was at his strongest, as it chanced, that Beatty's losses were most severe.