THE BATTLE OF THE GIANTS.
Word runs round the ship that the enemy has been sighted, but since we know nothing of his numbers or of his quality—Jutland, though anticipated and worked for, was essentially a battle of encounter—our light cruisers fly off to make touch and find out for us. Away also soars seaplane, rising from the platform of our carrying ship Engadine, a clumsy-looking seagull, with its big pontoon feet, but very fast and very deftly handled. The seaplane flies low, for the clouds droop towards the sea, it is heavily fired upon, but is not hit, and it returns to tell us—or rather the Admiral, in his conning tower below—just what he wishes to learn. There is an enemy battle cruiser squadron immediately in front of us, consisting of five armoured ships, with their attendant light cruisers and destroyers. The German battle cruisers are: Derfflinger (12-inch guns), Lützow (12-inch), Moltke (11-inch), Seydlitz (11-inch), and another stated by the Germans to be the von der Tann, which had more than once been reported lost. Since our four big battle cruisers carry 13.5-inch guns, and two other guns of 12-inch, and the four battleships supporting us great 15-inch weapons, we ought to eat up the German battle cruisers if we can draw near enough to see them distinctly. By half-past three the two British battle cruiser squadrons are moving at twenty-five knots, formed up in line of battle, and the Fifth Battle Squadron, still some five miles away, is steaming at about twenty-three knots. The Germans have turned in a southerly direction, and are flying at full speed upon a course which is roughly parallel with that which we have now taken up. During the past hour we have come round nearly twelve points—eight points go to a right angle—and are now speeding away from Jellicoe’s Grand Fleet, which is some forty miles distant to the north and west. Since we are faster than Jellicoe, the gap between us and him is steadily opening out.
From the signal bridge, a very exposed position, we can see the turret guns below us and the spotting top above. The turrets swing round, as the gunners inside get their directions from the gunnery-control officer who, in his turn, receives every few moments the results of the range-finding and rate-of-change observations which are being continually taken by petty officers charged with the duty. Further corrections will be made when the guns begin to shoot, and the spotting officers aloft watch for the splashes of the shells as they fall into the sea. Naval gunnery, in spite of all the brains and experience lavished upon it, must always be far from an exact science. One has to do with moving ships firing at other moving ships, many factors which go to a precise calculation are imperfectly known, and though the margin of error may be reduced by modern instruments of precision, the long fighting ranges of to-day make the error substantial. The lower the visibility, the greater becomes the gunner’s uncertainty, for neither range-finding nor spotting can be carried on with accuracy. Even on the clearest of days it is difficult to “spot” a shell-splash at more than 14,000 yards (eight land miles), a range which is short for the huge naval gun. When many guns are firing, it is not easy to pick up the splashes of one’s own shells, and to distinguish between their water-bursts and the camouflage put up by an enemy.
At our position upon the signal bridge, though we are there only in spirit, we probably feel much more of excitement than does any officer or man of the big ship upon which we have intruded our ghostly presence. Most of them can see nothing; all of them are too busy upon their duties to bother about personal feelings. There is an atmosphere of serene confidence in themselves and their ship which communicates itself even to outsiders like us. At 3.48 the enemy is some 18,500 yards distance, and visible, for the light has improved, and firing begins almost simultaneously from us and our opponents. The first crash from the Lion’s two fore-turrets nearly throws us off the bridge, so sudden and fierce it is, and so little does its intensity seem to be subdued by our ear-protectors. But as other crashes follow down the line we grow accustomed to them, grip tightly at the hand-rail, and forget ourselves in the grandeur of the sight unfolding itself before us. Away, far away, is the enemy, hull down, smothered in smoke and by the huge gouts of spray thrown up by our bursting shells. He is adding to the splashes by firing his own side batteries into the sea to confuse the judgment of our spotters.
At each discharge from our ship, a great cone of incandescent gas flames forth, cutting like a sword through the pale curtain of smoke. From the distant enemy ships we can see thin flashes spurt in reply, and his shells pitch beside us and over us, lashing our decks with sea foam and sometimes throwing a torrent of water over the spotting top and bridge. Before five minutes have passed, we are wet through, our ears are drumming in spite of the faithful protectors, and all sensation except of absorbed interest in the battle has left us. At any moment we may be scattered by a bursting shell, or carried to the bottom with our sunken ship, but we do not give a thought to the risks.
While we are firing at the enemy, and he is firing at us at ranges varying from ten to eight miles, a fierce battle is going on between the lines of big ships. Light cruisers are fighting light cruisers, destroyers are rushing upon destroyers. At an early stage in the action, the German Admiral Hipper—in command of the battle cruisers—launched fifteen destroyers at our line, and was taught a rough lesson in the quality of the boys who man our T.B.D.s. Twelve of our heavier and more powerfully armed destroyers fell upon the German fifteen, huddled them into a bunch, and had started to lay them out scientifically with gun and torpedo, when they fled back to the shelter of their own big ships. Following them up, our destroyers delivered a volley of torpedoes upon the German battle cruisers at less than 3,000 yards distance. Probably no damage was done, for it is the forlornest of jobs to loose mouldies against fast manœuvring ships, but lack of success does not in any way dim the splendour of the attempt. As light cruisers and destroyers fight and manœuvre, the torrent of heavy shells screams over their heads, flying as high in their course as Alpine mountains, and dropping almost vertically near the lines of battle cruisers.
As soon as we turned to the south in pursuit of Hipper’s advance squadron of battle cruisers, Admiral Evan-Thomas closed his supporting battleships upon us, and we can now see them clearly about two miles away on our starboard quarter, formed in line of battle, the flagship Barham leading. At eight minutes past four they join in the fight, firing at a range of 20,000 yards (twelve miles), not an excessive distance for their tremendous flat-shooting 15-inch guns if the light were good, but too far for accuracy now that the enemy ships can be seen so very indistinctly. Up to now the German gunnery has been good; our ships have not often been seriously struck, but the shells in bunched salvoes have fallen very closely beside us. Our armour, though much thinner than that of the battleships behind us, is sufficient to keep off the enemy’s light shells—our 13.5-inch shells are twice the weight of his 11-inch, and the 15-inch shells fired by the Queen Elizabeths astern of us are more than twice the weight of his 12-inch. We feel little anxiety for our turrets, conning towers, or sides, but we notice how steeply his salvoes are falling at the long ranges, and are not without concern for our thin decks should any 12-inch shells of 850 lb. weight plump fairly upon them from the skies. By half-past four the German fire has slackened a good deal, has become ragged and inaccurate, showing that we are getting home with our heavy stuff, and the third ship in the line is seen to be on fire. All is going well, the enemy is outclassed in ships and in guns; we are still between him and his bases to the south-west, he is already becoming squeezed up against the big banks which stretch out one hundred miles from the Jutland coast, and for a while it looks as if Beatty had struck something both soft and good.
But a few minutes make a great change. All through the last hour we have been steaming fast towards the main German High Seas Fleet and away from Jellicoe, and at 4.42 the leading German battleships can be seen upon the smoky horizon to the south-east. Though we do not know it yet, the whole High Seas Fleet is before us, including sixteen of the best German ships, and it were the worst of folly to go any farther towards it. We could, it is true, completely outflank it by continuing on our present course, and with our high speed might avoid being crushed in a general action, but we should have irrevocably separated ourselves from Jellicoe, and have committed a tactical mistake of the biggest kind. We should have divided the English forces in the face of the enemy, instead of concentrating them. So a quick order comes from the conning tower below, and away beside us runs a signal hoist. “Sixteen points, starboard.” Sixteen points mean a complete half-circle, and round come our ships, the Lion leading, turning in a curve of which the diameter is nearly a mile, and heading now to the north, towards Jellicoe, instead of to the south, away from him. Our purpose now is to keep the Germans fully occupied until Jellicoe, who is driving his battleships at their fullest speed, can come down and wipe Fritz off the seas. As we come round, the German battle cruisers follow our manœuvre, and also turn through sixteen points in order to place themselves at the head of the enemy’s battle line.
As we swing round and take up our new course, we pass between the Queen Elizabeths and the enemy, masking their fire, and for a few minutes we are exposed in the midst of a critical manœuvre to the concentrated salvoes of every German battleship within range. The range is long, the German shells fired with high elevation fall very steeply, and we are safe except from the ill-luck of heavy projectiles pitching upon our decks. From the signal bridge of the Lion we can see every battle cruiser as it swings, or as it approaches the turning point, we can see the whole beautiful length of them, and we also see a sight which has never before been impressed upon the eyes of man. For we see two splendid battle cruisers struck and sink; first the Indefatigable, and then the Queen Mary. It is not permitted to us to describe the scene as actually it presented itself to our eyes.
Beatty has lost two battle cruisers, one of the first class and one of the second. There remain to him four—the three Cats and the New Zealand; he is sorely weakened, but does not hesitate. He has two duties to carry out—to lead the enemy towards Jellicoe, and so dispose of his battle cruisers beyond the head of the German lines as powerfully to aid Jellicoe in completing their development. Beatty is now round, and round also comes the Fifth Battle Squadron, forming astern of the battle cruisers, and with them engaging the leading German ships. The enemy is some 14,000 yards distant from us in the Lion (8½ miles), and this range changes little while Beatty is speeding first north and then north-east, in order to cross the “T” of the German line. We will continue to stand upon the Lion’s bridge during the execution of this most spirited manœuvre, and then leave Beatty’s flagship in order to observe from the spotting top of a battleship how the four Queen Elizabeths fought the whole High Seas Fleet, while our battle cruisers were turning its van. What these splendid ships did, and did to perfection, was to stall the Germans off, and so give time both for the enveloping movement of Beatty and for the arrival and deployment of Jellicoe’s main Fleet.