The British Navy in Battle

by Arthur Joseph Hungerford Pollen

It followed from such very opposite views, that their tactical methods differed also. At each stage of the action Sir David Beatty’s tactic was to get his forces into action at the first possible moment and to keep them in action as long as possible. Thus when the news first reaches him that the enemy is to the northeast, he leads his whole fleet at top speed straight for the Horn Reef to get between him and his base. And this he does without waiting for any information about the composition of the enemy’s force. Whether it is the battle-cruiser and light forces only, or the whole German Fleet, his first idea is to make sure that he is in a position to engage if he wishes to. As it was at 3:0 P.M., so it was at each stage after he got into action. The reduction of his squadron by one third does not seem to have upset the coolness of his judgment or the firmness of his determination in the least degree. When he found himself opposed, no longer by five battle-cruisers, but by sixteen Dreadnought battleships as well, he reversed the course of the fleet, made Evan-Thomas fall in behind him, and, during a holding action for the next hour, kept the Germans under his guns, risking their fire, threatening the head of their line, and half-cajoling, half-forcing Scheer northward to where the British fleets would be united. The moment contact becomes imminent—knowing that the light might at any moment fail—he forces the pace and discounts risks incalculably greater than at any time during the day, if only the enormous striking power of the Grand Fleet can be brought for once into action as a whole. And so, regardless of the punishment his fleet had received earlier in the day, he shortens the range from 14,000 yards to 12,000 and then from 12,000 to 8,000, in a last effort to hold the enemy, while the Grand Fleet deploys and comes into action. There is no foolhardiness in his tactics, for the speed that enables him to head the German line is not only the best defence of his own squadron against torpedo attack. He has made it almost impossible for the German destroyers to enfilade the Grand Fleet, if only it deploys at full speed on him. He knows, of course, that at 8,000 yards the side armour of his ships will not keep out the enemy’s shells. But he has demoralized the German gunfire by his own once before and, confident in the superior coolness and nerve of his officers and crews, he relies on this element again as the best defence of his squadron.

It is not till 6:50, when he realizes that his whole effort has miscarried, that he makes the entry in his despatch which seems to me one of the most tragic phrases ever used by a great master of fighting. He had been baulked of victory at the Dogger Bank by a chance injury to his ship, when his squadron came under the command of an Admiral trained in the tenets of Whitehall. Now on May 31 he had executed a master stroke of tactics. The armoured cruiser, designed to be a swift bully over the weak, he had used to confound and paralyze the strong. There had been many a discussion as to the tactical value of speed when the Dreadnought type was first designed, but no thinker had had the daring to forecast any such stroke as Sir David Beatty planned and executed off the Jutland Reefs. But it was a stroke struck in vain. “By 6:50 the battle-cruisers were clear of our leading Battle Squadron, then bearing about north northwest three miles and I ... reduced to 18 knots.”

There was no more to try for that day. When, a quarter of an hour afterwards, the Grand Fleet starts south, he hunts for and heads the German line again. But it is all to no purpose. Yet he does not give up hope. At half-past nine darkness makes further pursuit impossible, but at any rate “our strategical position was such as to make it appear certain that we should locate the enemy at daylight under most favourable circumstances.” It is plain, then, that he had a plan for next day’s battle, just as he had had one for the hard and costly day just passed. To the last the thought still preoccupies him that has been his guide throughout. The enemy must be found and destroyed.

The Commander-in-Chief, however, whatever his anxiety for victory, is plainly concerned throughout by the enormous responsibility that weighs upon him as the guardian of the fleet under his command. Only one of the ships was hit by gunfire and only one was struck by torpedo! In summing up the story of the day, “the hardest fighting,” he says, “fell to the lot of the Battle Cruiser Fleet ... the Fifth Battle Squadron, the First Cruiser Squadron, the Fourth Light Cruiser Squadron, and the flotillas.” But he must add a note, that the units of the Battle Cruiser Fleet were less heavily armoured than their opponents! The obsession of the defensive idea is obvious. “The enemy constantly turned away and opened the range under cover of destroyer attacks and smoke screens.” “The German Fleet appeared to rely very much on torpedo attacks, which were favoured by low visibility, and by the fact that we had arrived in the position of a ‘following’ or ‘chasing’ fleet. A large number of torpedoes were apparently fired, but only one took effect (on Marlborough), and even in this case the ship was able to remain in the line and to continue the action.”

“The enemy opened the range under cover of destroyer attacks ... which were favoured by the fact ... that we had arrived in the position of a ‘following’ ... fleet.” Had Admiral Jerram’s squadron followed full speed straight into the wake of the battle-cruisers, had the whole Grand Fleet deployed on Sir David Beatty’s track, the enemy’s business should have been finished, for Scheer never could have turned under such a concentration of fire. But the form of the deployment created the situation that Scheer needed. It exposed the fleet to the torpedoes. And the risk was not faced. Speaking eight months afterwards at the Fishmongers’ Hall, Admiral Jellicoe explained why. “The torpedo, as fired from surface vessels, is effective certainly up to 10,000 yards range, and this requires that a ship shall keep beyond this distance to fight her guns. As conditions of visibility, in the North Sea particularly, are frequently such as to make fighting difficult beyond a range of 10,000 yards, and as modern fleets are invariably accompanied by very large numbers of destroyers, whose main duty is to attack with torpedoes the heavy ships of the enemy, it will be recognized how great becomes the responsibility of the Admiral in command of a fleet, particularly under the conditions of low visibility to which I have referred. As soon as destroyers tumble upon a fleet within torpedo range the situation becomes critical for the heavy ships.”

At Jutland three British and one German battle-cruiser were sunk by gunfire. At Dogger Bank Lion was disabled by a chance shot. Ten German battleships and one British were struck by torpedoes on May 31. One of these, one only, and she in all probability hit simultaneously by several, blew up. The other nine German ships and Marlborough all reached port in safety. Surely, if the situation of heavy ships is “critical” when within torpedo range, their situation when within reach of heavy guns must be more critical still. Is it possible to distinguish and say that one form of risk is always, and the other never, to be run? Is not the issue identical with that raised by the abandonment of the Dogger Bank pursuit—if it is true that pursuit was abandoned, as the Admiralty told us, on account of the presence of submarines?

At any rate, we see in this attitude one that stands in sharp contrast to Sir David Beatty’s. He had faced torpedo attack in the Bight of Heligoland, and submarine attack in the Dogger Bank affair, and seemingly in the early fighting of May 31, without allowing the menace to influence him to avoid action. He took the right precautions against it. He had his cruisers and flotillas out as a screen, but having done all that was humanly possible to parry the attack he then, with a clear conscience, went for victory.

The same contrast is seen in the events of June 1. Sir John Jellicoe was perfectly willing to fight if the Germans would come out and fight on his conditions. At 4:0 A.M. an enemy Zeppelin flew over the fleet, so that its position was known to Scheer. Yet says the Commander-in-Chief, “the enemy made no sign.” His own pre-occupation is not to find the enemy, but his own light forces. He thinks it worth recording that he hung about the scene of the yesterday’s battle, “in spite of the ... danger incurred in waters adjacent to enemy coasts from submarine and torpedo craft.” Napoleon speaks bitterly of his admirals, who acted as though they could win victory without taking risks.

A strong case can, of course, be made for the doctrine on which Sir John Jellicoe acted on these two days, a doctrine endorsed by the Admiralty, so far at least as it was shown in action on the first and only opportunity the British Fleet was given of utterly destroying the enemy. The defence can hardly be put better than it was by Mr. Churchill in his London Magazine article. Nor am I concerned here to argue the pros and cons on a point on which there can be little doubt as to the judgment of posterity. I direct attention to the singular fact that the British Fleet on May 31 fought as two separate units until six o’clock, and that the leaders of the two sections were animated by conflicting theories of war. One admiral represents the fighting fervour of the fleet: the other the caution—perhaps the wise caution—of the Higher Command.

There is no getting out of this dilemma. If Admiral Jellicoe was right in refusing to face the risks inseparable from a resolute effort to make the battle decisive, then Sir David Beatty must have been wrong to have fought in a way which cannot be intelligently explained except on the basis that from first to last he had decisive victory as his object. If the tender care that brought the Grand Fleet through the action with hardly a man killed and only two ships touched, was right and wise, then the clear vision, all the more luminous for seeing and counting the cost, which exposed Indefatigable, Queen Mary, and Invincible to destruction, was woefully wrong. Now it seems extraordinary, if the strategy of waiting to fight till the Germans attacked was right—if this was the Admiralty doctrine—that it was not communicated to Sir David Beatty as well as to Sir John Jellicoe. If it was axiomatic to avoid the risk of ships being destroyed, so that Admiral Moore was right to break off the action at the Dogger Bank and Admiral Jellicoe right in letting the enemy “open the range under the cover of torpedo attacks,” why was not Admiral Beatty forbidden to jeopardize his ships, and Admiral Arbuthnot warned against any pursuit of the enemy’s cruisers or destroyers, that might possibly bring him within range of the German gunfire? How are we to explain Bingham’s attack on the head of the German line or Goodenough’s reconnaissance which brought him under the salvoes of the German guns at 12,000 yards? Is the doctrine of caution and ship conservation to apply only to battleships and not to battle-cruisers, armoured cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers? Is it only the battle fleet that is not to fight except when it risks practically nothing by doing so? All these questions are forced to the student’s attention when he reviews the events here recorded.