The Heroic Record of the British Navy: A Short History of the Naval War, 1914-1918

by Archibald Hurd; Sir H. H. Bashford

Superior in destroyers, he did his utmost, by putting up smoke-screens and ordering torpedo-attacks, to add to the difficulties of our capital ships in bringing his own to close quarters; and, during the night, after sustaining heavy casualties—more particularly in personnel—he succeeded in rounding the shaft of the hook and bringing his shattered forces home to port. Of that wild night, therefore, the picture resolves itself into one of destroyers and light cruisers searching the darkness; of flying glimpses of enemy units; of fierce but momentary bursts of fire. Thus, at twenty minutes past ten, the Second Light Cruiser Squadron fought a quarter of an hour's engagement with five enemy cruisers; at half-past eleven, the Birmingham sighted two capital ships making their way southward to be lost in the night again; an hour later, the Petard and Turbulent, two destroyers, were suddenly transfixed by the searchlights of a retreating battleship, the Turbulent being sunk by the enemy's secondary armament as she raced past, seeking safety. The destroyer Tipperary, with her commander, Captain Wintour, the leader of the Fourth Flotilla, was also lost, but not before the flotilla had inflicted severe casualties upon the enemy. Another organized destroyers-attack was that of the Twelfth Flotilla, under Captain A. J. B. Stirling, in which a large detachment of the enemy was taken by surprise, one of his vessels being blown up and another hit.

So the night passed, never to be forgotten by any who lived through it, and, for only too many, slipping benumbed off rafts and wreckage into the water, or going down in the roar of explosions, the last night of all. "When a battleship is hit and seriously damaged," afterward wrote the famous American, Admiral Dewey, "there is no way of knowing whether or not she is about to sink. It may be possible that she will remain afloat for hours, or that she may not sink at all. Her purpose is to continue to damage the enemy to the greatest possible extent. A single final shot fired from a sinking ship may be the blow that will turn the tide of battle and the destiny of empires. The damaged battleship, therefore, continues to fight. The men remain in the fire room, in the turrets, at their guns. Every man continues that particular job which is his in fighting the ship as long as she may strike a blow. It therefore happens that, when a battleship goes down, there is practically nobody on deck, and there is no man who may leave his post in time to put on a lifebelt or launch a raft. Quite naturally, every man dies with the ship."

In this way Admirals Hood and Arbuthnot and many a gallant sailor, long to be remembered, went down with their ships, though, despite all risks, when the run of the battle permitted, rescues were attempted and often with success. A typical example of this was the action of the destroyer Defender, under Lieutenant-Commander Laurence R. Palmer, who, herself having been severely damaged by a 12-inch shell in her foremost boiler, struggled to the assistance of the Onslow, under Lieutenant-Commander J. C. Tovey, who had been rendered helpless by an enemy shell.

This latter destroyer, having sighted a light cruiser about to attack the Lion with torpedoes, had at once assailed her with the utmost spirit, closing to within a range of a little over a mile, and firing no less than fifty-eight rounds at her. She had then proceeded to attack some enemy battle-cruisers, and had already fired one of her torpedoes, when she was struck by a shell; and her commander, thinking his torpedoes all gone, had then ordered her retirement. Learning, however, that he still had three torpedoes left, he again attacked and torpedoed the light cruiser, with which he had been previously engaged, sighted some more battleships and loosed the rest of his torpedoes, before his vessel gave out and came to a standstill. It was while thus drifting helplessly, and with shells plunging all about her, that the Defender, whose own speed had been reduced to about ten knots, came alongside and took her in tow. Twice during the night, owing to the rising sea, the tow between these two heroic cripples became parted, and twice it was made good, the two journeying together till the afternoon of the following day. Lastly must be mentioned the Abdiel, which, under the command of Captain Berwick Curtis, had been ordered by Admiral Jellicoe to lay mines behind the retreating Germans. This her great speed—40 knots an hour—and the gallantry of all on board enabled her to do, the flying enemy sustaining several casualties as the result of her enterprise and skill.

So ended the Battle of Jutland, as regarded the sea, the most gigantic that the world had known—for, when the next day dawned, June 1st, a day already glorious in British annals, it was to find the enemy gone and Admiral Jellicoe in unchallenged possession of the field. Breaking through mists, well-nigh as dense as those in which it had set, the sun rose and with it the hopes of the British admirals that the work of the night might be completed. Those hopes, alas, remained unfulfilled, for, when the fog cleared and the sea lay revealed, it became apparent that the enemy had fled, broken and dispirited, under the cover of darkness, and was in no mood to rejoin the battle that he was already proclaiming as a German victory.

Four hundred miles from its bases—in enemy waters, close to his very harbours—the Grand Fleet waited till eleven in the morning before reluctantly sailing for home. And it was this fact, in itself a proof of triumph, that was partly accountable for the immediate sequel. For there now followed, thanks to the precipitate German flight, and the enemy's neighbourhood to his bases; to the world's unfamiliarity, after nearly a century, with the cost and criterion of naval success; and to the prompt and wholly unscrupulous use by the German Government of its wireless press agencies—an almost world-wide belief that the British Fleet had met with disaster.

With the Grand Fleet still at sea off its own coast, Germany flooded the world with the following statement: "During an enterprise directed toward the North, our High Seas Fleet, on Wednesday last, met a considerably superior main portion of the British Battle Fleet. In the course of the afternoon, between the Skager Rack and the Horn Reef, a number of severe and, for us, successful engagements developed and continued all night. In these engagements, as far as is at present ascertained, we destroyed the great battleship Warspite, the battle-cruisers Queen Mary and Indefatigable, two armoured cruisers of the Achilles class, one small cruiser, and the new destroyer leaders Turbulent, Nestor, and Alcester. According to trustworthy evidence, a great number of British battleships suffered heavy damage from the artillery of our vessels and the attacks of our torpedo-boat flotillas, during the day battle and during the night. Among others, the great battleship Marlborough was hit by a torpedo, as is confirmed by the statements of prisoners. A portion of the crews of the British vessels that were sunk were picked up by our vessels. On our side the small cruiser Wiesbaden was sunk by the enemy's artillery in the course of the day battle, and, during the night, the Pommern by a torpedo. Regarding the fate of the Frauenlob, which is missing, and some torpedo-boats, which have not returned up to the present, nothing is known. The High Seas Fleet returned to its harbour in the course of to-day."

This was the German version, by twenty-four hours the first in the field; and a certain kind of triumph undoubtedly followed it. In every neutral country, including America, heavily captioned newspaper articles proclaimed a British defeat—an impression hardly dissipated by the candour and caution of the first British official report. That our losses were heavy could not, of course, be denied, and they were instantly and frankly confessed. Six cruisers, including three battle-cruisers, and eight destroyers had paid the price of admiralty; while, on the other hand, the German losses were only grudgingly announced as it became impossible to conceal them. How heavy they were and how profound was the loss of moral that followed the Jutland defeat was only later to become manifest, though a good deal might have been guessed from the foregoing message. Further evidence, too, might have been deduced from the hurried visit of the Kaiser to Wilhelmshaven, and the almost hysterical exaggeration of his address to his broken fleet. There he assured them that "the gigantic fleet of Albion, ruler of the seas, which, since Trafalgar, for a hundred years, had imposed on the whole world a bond of sea tyranny," had "come out into the field," and had been beaten; that "a great hammer blow" had been struck; and that the "nimbus of British world supremacy had disappeared."

Such were the Kaiser's words, breathed into the ear of the world to conceal the result of Jutland, if this might be done; and hardly was the armistice signed before they were openly given the lie by one of Germany's leading authorities. After the Battle of Jutland, said Captain Persius, so shattering had been its results for the German navy, it had at once become clear to all thinking men that no second engagement must be risked; and, even at the time, it soon began to be suspected by the rest of the world that this was the truth. As for the Grand Fleet itself it was content to wait. It knew that it had won, and it had long learned patience. Let the Kaiser harangue. To-morrow would come, and, with to-morrow, the truth would out. Meanwhile it rode the seas on its accustomed ways, while, behind its shield, and beneath its pressure, the armies of freedom poured into Europe, and the strength of Germany continued to crumble.