With the battle-cruisers swinging round to the north, the destroyers having been recalled, let us return for a moment to the Nomad, Nestor, and Nicator. Proceeding with their attack, the destroyer Nomad had soon been put out of action, but the Nestor, most spiritedly led by Commander the Hon. E. B. B. Bingham, had fired her third torpedo at the second of the enemy cruisers from a distance of less than two miles. Before being able to fire her fourth, she too had become crippled; while the Nicator, having to turn inside her in order to avoid a collision, had been unable to fire her last torpedo, but had succeeded in escaping and rejoining her flotilla.
The position was now as follows—the Light Cruiser Southampton, obeying orders to reconnoitre, was still steaming south; the British battle-cruisers, led by the Lion, were steaming north, parallel to von Hipper; and the four 24-knot battleships, led by Admiral Evan-Thomas, were still on their original course, not having yet made the turn. This brought them, for a few minutes, into closer range of von Hipper's battle-cruisers, and it was at this stage that the German Lutzow was severely damaged, subsequently to be lost. This was von Hipper's flagship, and, leaving her in a destroyer, under the heaviest British fire, the German admiral, later in the action, transferred his flag to the Battle-Cruiser Derfflinger. A quarter of an hour afterward, the four Queen Elizabeths swung round astern of Beatty; and it was now upon these vessels that the fire of von Scheer's approaching battleships began to be concentrated.
There had thus begun the second stage of this great battle, in which Beatty, confronted by odds that he could not face, was now heading to the north, and drawing the whole hungry German Fleet toward Admiral Jellicoe, some fifty miles away. Ahead of the Lion was the Light Cruiser Fearless, another memorable figure in the Battle of the Bight, and the destroyers of the First Flotilla; also ahead and to starboard were the First and Third Light Cruiser Squadrons; while, behind and to port, was the Second Light Cruiser Squadron—the Light Cruiser Champion, with the rest of the destroyers, remaining in touch with Admiral Evan-Thomas.
It was now past five o'clock and the weather conditions were becoming rapidly more unfavourable. Against the clearer sky to the west, the British vessels were far more clearly defined than the German, the latter passing in and out of the patches of mist, thus making the task of the British gunners one of the extremest difficulty. Nevertheless it was now that the British fire was definitely beginning to assert its superiority, while the shooting of the Germans, under their heavy punishment, was becoming increasingly more wild—the main brunt of their fire, during this northward race, being borne, as we have said, by the Queen Elizabeths. For some time, indeed, it would scarcely have been an exaggeration to say that the four of them were engaged with the whole High Seas Fleet; while some of them at least had the narrowest of escapes from being torpedoed by submarines. Thanks to their admirable handling, however, they came through unscathed, one of the enemy's submarines being certainly sunk.
By his rapid appreciation of the new position, his instant decision, and the course that he had taken, Admiral Beatty was now ahead of the long parallel German line and slowly bending it toward the north-east, keeping within an eight-mile range of the leading cruisers. To von Hipper and von Scheer—the latter newly in command of the German High Seas Fleet—he must have seemed, for a few minutes, but a retreating and easy prey; but, a little to the north-west, the British Battle Fleet was hurrying at full speed to his assistance—the space between them diminishing at the rate of forty-five miles an hour.
The most crucial moments of the whole engagement were now irrevocably approaching—moments that were to test, as they had scarcely been tested before, perhaps, the initiative and tactical skill of the commanding admirals. Already there was in progress a naval action extending over many miles of sea, and being fought under conditions of mist and fog of the most complex and baffling nature. It was an action that even then, involving every device of modern offensive warfare, had assumed proportions more titanic than that of any sea-fight ever fought; and there was now to be committed to it—and so committed to it that not a moment was to be lost—the mightiest battle fleet in the world and the one vital safeguard of the Allies. When it is further remembered that the situation, however accurately signalled by the engaged squadrons, was changing with lightning-like rapidity from moment to moment; and that the deployment—the dove-tailing, as it were—of the six parallel columns of twenty-four dreadnoughts into the line of battle-cruisers already formed would, under any circumstances, have been an operation of the most delicate nature, something may be conceived of the sort of task that Admiral Jellicoe had to undertake. By no other hand could this stupendous manoeuvre have been more ably carried out, and, as a commander at sea, by the sternest of all tests, he proved himself among the finest that Britain has produced. Nor were his admirals unworthy of him either in their divination of the movements demanded by their relative positions, or in the seamanship and machine-like precision with which such movements were carried out. Let us follow these, as far as possible, in the order in which they occurred.
Steaming in advance of the main fleet under Admiral Jellicoe, was the Third Battle-Cruiser Squadron, under Rear-Admiral the Hon. Horace A. L. Hood; and this had received orders from the Commander-in-Chief to find and support Beatty at the earliest possible moment. Led by the flagship Invincible, formerly Sturdee's flagship at the Battle of the Falkland Islands, the first sign of fighting was seen by them in the southwest about half-past five. Necessarily uncertain as to the exact position of affairs, Admiral Hood sent one of his light cruisers to reconnoitre—the Chester, which soon found herself fiercely engaged with three or four of the enemy's light cruisers. For nearly twenty minutes she fought single-handed, suffering a large number of casualties; but, thanks to the skill of her commander, Captain R. N. Lawson, and the devotion of all on board, she escaped comparatively unscathed, though with some honourable scars. It was during this action that John Travers Cornwell, a first-class boy, just over sixteen, though mortally wounded and with every member of his gun's crew lying disabled about him, remained alone, in a most exposed position, till the end of the action, awaiting orders—exemplifying a devotion to duty for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross.
It was now clear to Admiral Hood that he was too far to the east, and, at the same time, Beatty had sighted the first of the reinforcing cruisers. Six minutes later, and five miles to the north, he caught a glimpse of the leading British battleships; and it was then that he judged the moment to have come to try and work between the enemy and his bases. To decide was to act, and, just before six, therefore, working up his engines to their highest capacity, Beatty altered the course of his ships to the direct east, closing the range. Some time before this, the destroyer Moresby had torpedoed the enemy sixth of the line, and, ten minutes after changing course, her fellow-destroyer Onslow torpedoed an enemy light cruiser.
While this was in progress, Admiral Hood with his battle-cruisers had come into sight, and, acting on Beatty's orders, had taken the head of the line in a manner, as Beatty said, worthy of his great ancestors. For a quarter of an hour, so fiercely did he attack, with the strenuous support of Admiral Napier and the Third Light Cruiser Squadron, that the enemy's leading ships were forced to the south and west, and the British line was already beginning, as Beatty had designed, to insert itself between the Germans and their coast-line. Unhappily at the close range at which Admiral Hood was now fighting—something less than four miles—an enemy shell found one of the Invincible's turrets, firing the magazine, and sinking her in less than two minutes.
The imminent approach of the British Battle Fleet had, of course, by this time become known to the German commander, and, indeed, it seems probable that he mistook Admiral Hood's battle-cruisers for its leading ships. With the head of his line definitely menaced by Admiral Beatty's dash, he was on an easterly, becoming southeasterly, course; Admiral Beatty and his battle-cruisers were already threatening to intervene between him and his bases; and he now turned to starboard again, through south to southwest, in the endeavour to escape disaster, if that were possible. Moreover, the weather conditions that, for the last hour or so, had been almost wholly in his favour, were now beginning to tell against him almost as much as they were handicapping the British. One after another, his cruisers and battleships, emerging for a few minutes from the fog, would be instantly picked up and remorselessly hammered by the heavy guns of the British Battle-Cruiser Squadrons; while the leading battleships of the Grand Fleet were already beginning to fall into line behind these.