The British Navy in Battle

by Arthur Joseph Hungerford Pollen

Sketch plan of the action from 6 p.m. when the Grand Fleet prepared to deploy, till 6:50 when Admiral Scheer delivered his first massed torpedo attack

Sir David Beatty’s account of his movements up to now is singularly brief. “At six o’clock,” he says, “I altered course to east and proceeded at utmost speed.... At 6:20 the Third Battle Squadron bore ahead steaming south towards the enemy’s van. I ordered them to take station ahead.... At 6:25 I altered course to E.S.E. in support of the Third Battle-Cruiser Squadron, who were at this time only 8,000 yards from the enemy’s leading ship.” Nothing is said of his movements in the next twenty minutes. “By 6:50,” he continues, “the battle-cruisers were clear of our leading Battle Squadron, then bearing N.N.W. three miles from Lion.” (Lion was now third ship in the line). “I ordered the Third Battle Cruiser Squadron to prolong the line astern and reduced to eighteen knots.” There was nothing now to hurry for. The daylight action was, in fact, over. For that matter good visibility was at an end. From 6:0 to 6:50, though never perfect, it had been more favourable to us than to the enemy. Could the British forces have been concentrated for united effort during this period, what might not have resulted? But from 6:0 to 6:17 Scheer had been engaged by Sir David Beatty’s four battle-cruisers only. For a short period after 6:17 it was engaged by some ships of the rear division as well. From 6:30 till the torpedo attacks broke up the Grand Fleet’s gunnery, it was engaged intermittently and at longer range by all three of the main squadrons. But by this time Sir David Beatty had passed ahead, and the survivors of the enemy’s van had begun their turn.

THE GERMAN RETREAT

The next phase of the action was a fruitless chase of the enemy from seven o’clock until 8:20. “At 7:6,” says Sir David Beatty, “I received a signal that the course of the fleet was south.... We hauled round gradually to S.W. by S. to regain touch with the enemy (who were lost to sight at about 6:50), and at 7:14 again sighted them at a range of about 15,000 yards.... We re-engaged at 7:17 and increased speed to twenty-two knots. At 7:32 my course was S.W. speed eighteen knots, the leading enemy battleship bearing N.W. by West.... At 7:45 P.M. we lost sight of them.”

The two quotations I have made from Sir David Beatty’s despatch divide themselves naturally in this way. The first deals with the plan he had attempted to make possible and to share, the second describes his course after that plan had proved abortive. Between them they make it clear that Sir David kept an easterly course at full speed from six o’clock till 6:25. He then turned a quarter of a right angle to the south, that is, to his right, and held this course for twenty-five minutes when, having lost sight of the enemy and, the Grand Fleet being still three miles from him, he dropped his speed from say twenty-seven or twenty-eight knots and awaited developments. As soon as he heard that the Grand Fleet, after recovering from the first torpedo attack, had turned south in pursuit of the Germans, he increased his speed by four knots, hauled round to the southwest, found and re-engaged the enemy at 7:14. By this time, as we have seen, the enemy’s whole line would be following the leading ships on a southwesterly course, so that Sir David Beatty’s movements between 6:0 and 7:14 were approximately parallel to those of the enemy. He had been able to keep parallel by availing himself of his ten or eleven knots’ superiority between 6:0 and 6:50 and by his four or five knots’ superiority between 7:0 and 7:14.

On hearing that at last he was to be supported, Sir David Beatty raised his battle-cruiser speed to twenty-two knots and made a last effort to get in touch with the retiring enemy. He soon found and engaged him at a range of 15,000 yards and contact coincided with a sudden improvement in the seeing conditions. Four ships only, two battle-cruisers and two battleships, evidently the van of the enemy’s line, were visible, and these were at once brought under a hot fire, which caused the enemy to resort to smoke-screen protection, and, under cover of this he turned away to the west. At 7:45 the mist came down again and the enemy was lost to sight. The First and Third Light Cruiser Squadrons were then spread out. They swept to the westward and located the head of the enemy’s line again, and at 8:20 the battle-cruisers—whose course had been southwest up to now—changed course to west and got into action apparently with the same four ships as before, at the short range of 10,000 yards. The leading ship soon turned away emitting high flames and with a heavy list to port. She had been brought under the fire of Lion. Princess Royal set fire to one of the two battleships. Indomitable and New Zealand engaged a third and sent her out of the line, heeling over and burning also. Then the mist came down once more and the enemy was last seen by Falmouth at twenty-two minutes to nine.

The Commander-in-Chief is far less explicit as to the occasions on which his ships got into action. The action between the battle fleets, he said, lasted intermittently from 6:17 to 8:20. At 6:17 we know that Burney’s division got into action, and at 6:30 until some time up to 7:20 the other divisions also. But no details of any kind of encounters later than that are mentioned. It is clear that after 6:50 the weather made any continuous engaging quite impossible. There was a second torpedo attack during the stern chase—and once more the enemy “opened the range.”

THE NIGHT ACTIONS AND THE EVENTS OF JUNE 1

The form that the deployment actually took, and the fifteen minutes’ respite from attack won by the torpedo attack at 7:40 which enabled Scheer to get his whole fleet on to a southeasterly from an easterly course were, tactically speaking, the explanation of the German escape on the 31st. It is more difficult to understand exactly why they were not brought to action on the following day. Very little is actually known of what happened in the course of the night, and the despatches throw little light on it because, though many incidents are mentioned, very few have any definite hour assigned to them. The facts, so far as they can be gathered, are as follows:

The Grand Fleet seems to have lost sight of the Germans altogether after 8:20 and Sir David Beatty’s scouts saw the last of their enemy at 8:38. The Vice-Admiral continued searching for forty minutes longer and then fell back east and to the line which was the course of the Grand Fleet when he was last in touch with it by wireless. Both fleets seem to have proceeded some distance south and to have waited for the night in the proximity of a point about equi-distant—eighty miles—from the Horn Reef and Heligoland. One destroyer flotilla, the Thirteenth, and one light cruiser squadron were retained with the capital ships for their protection. The rest were disposed, as the Commander-in-Chief says, “in a position in which they could afford protection to the fleet and at the same time be favourably situated for attacking the enemy’s heavy ships.” They must have been placed north of the British forces. No British battle or battle-cruiser squadron was attacked during the night, but the Second Light Cruiser Squadron, which was disposed in the rear of the battle line, got into action at 10:20 with five enemy cruisers, and at 11:30 Birmingham sighted several heavy ships steering south or west-southwest. The Thirteenth Flotilla, which seems to have been associated with the Second Light Cruiser Squadron astern of the battle fleet, reported a large vessel half an hour after midnight, which opened fire on three of the flotilla, disabling Turbulent. At 2:35 another, Moresby, sighted four pre-Dreadnoughts and had a shot at them with a torpedo. We are not told the course they were steering.