“Yet I have known them do it,” said I drily, and then slid away from the delicate topic. “Let us return to the first part of the action, and examine the division of the Fleet between Jellicoe and Beatty. Was this division, admittedly hazardous, a sound method of bringing the Germans to action?”
The Gunner took upon himself to reply.
“It is not, and never has been, possible to bring the Germans to action in the southern part of the North Sea except with their own consent. There is no room. They can always break off and retire within their protected waters. Steam fleets of the modern size and speed cannot force an action and compel it to be fought out to a finish in a smaller space than a real ocean. You must always think of this when criticising the division of our fleets. Beatty was separated from Jellicoe by nearly sixty miles, and strengthened by four fast Queen Elizabeth battleships to enable him to fight an action with a superior German Fleet. He was made just strong enough to fight and not too strong to scare the Germans away. In theory, the division of our forces within striking distance of the enemy was all wrong; in practice, it was the only way of persuading him into an action. Both sides at the end of May, 1916, wanted to bring off a fight at sea. Fritz wanted something which he could claim as a success in order to cheer up his blockaded grumblers at home, who were getting restive. We wanted to stop the projected German naval and military onslaught upon Russia in the Baltic. The wonderful thing about the Jutland Battle is that it appears to have achieved both objects. Fritz, by sinking three of our battle cruisers, has been able to delude a nation of landsmen into accepting a highly coloured version of a great naval success; and we, by making a sorry mess of his main fleet, did in fact clear the northern Russian flank of a grave peril. The later Russian successes in the South were the direct result of Jutland, and without those successes the subsequent Italian, French, and British advances could not have been pushed with anything like the effect secured. Regarded in this broad international way, the division of our fleets justified by its results the risks which it involved. What I don’t understand is why we suffered so much in the first part of the action when Beatty had six battle cruisers and four battleships against five battle cruisers of the enemy. He lost the Indefatigable and Queen Mary while he was in great superiority both of numbers and of guns. Then, when the German main fleet had come in, and he was carrying out an infinitely more hazardous operation in the face of a greater superior force, he lost nothing. If the Indefatigable and Queen Mary had been lost during the second hour before Jellicoe arrived I should have felt no surprise—we were then deliberately risking big losses—but during the first hour of fighting, when we had ten ships against five—and five much weaker individually than our ten—we lost two fine battle cruisers. I confess that I am beaten. It almost looks as if at the beginning the German gunners were better than ours, but that they went to pieces later. What do you think?” He turned to the Salt Horse, who spoke little, but very forcibly when he could be persuaded to open his lips.
“Everyone with Beatty, to whom I have spoken,” declared the Salt Horse, “agrees that the German gunnery was excellent at the beginning. We were straddled immediately and hit again and again while coming into action. Our gunners must have been a bit over-anxious until they settled down. We ought to have done something solid in a whole hour against five battle cruisers with our thirty-two 13.5-inch guns and thirty-two 15-inch. And yet no one claims more than one enemy ship on fire. That means nothing. The burning gas from one big shell will make the deuce of a blaze. There is no explanation of our losses in the first part, and of Fritz’s comparative immunity, except the one which you, my dear Gunner, are very unwilling to accept. Fritz hit us much more often than we hit him. There you have it. I have spoken.” Admiral Salt Horse, a most abstemious man, rang the bell of the club of which we were members, and ordered a whisky and soda. “Just to take the taste of that admission out of my mouth,” he explained.
The Maker of Ships and Guns smiled ruefully. “I have reckoned,” said he, “that the Cats fired twenty rounds per gun during the first hour and the Queen Elizabeths ten. That makes 640 rounds of 13.5-inch shell and 320 rounds of 15-inch. Three per cent. of fair hits at the ranges, and in the conditions of light, would have been quite good. But did we score twenty-eight hits of big shell, or anything like it? If we had there would have been much more damage done than one battle cruiser on fire. The Salt Horse has spoken, and so have I. I also will wash the taste of it out of my mouth.”
“You will admit,” muttered the Gunner, “that in the second part, after Beatty and the Queen Elizabeths had turned, our control officers and long-service gunners came into their own?”
“Willingly,” cried Admiral Salt Horse. “Nothing could have been finer than the hammering which Evan-Thomas gave to the whole High Seas Fleet. And Beatty crumpled up his opposite numbers in first-class style. Our individual system, then, justified itself utterly. Fritz’s mechanical control went to bits when the shells began to burst about his fat ears, but it was painfully good while it lasted. Give Fritz his due, Master Gunner, it’s no use shutting our eyes to his merits.”
I had listened with the keenest interest to this interchange, for though I should not myself have ventured to comment upon so technical a subject as naval gunnery, I had subconsciously felt what the old Salt Horse had so bluntly and almost brutally expressed.
“We have arrived, then, at this,” observed I, slowly, “that during the first hour, up to the turn when the main High Seas Fleet joined up with Hipper’s battle cruisers, our squadrons got the worst of it, though they were of twice Fritz’s numbers and of far more than twice his strength. It is a beastly thing for an Englishman to say, but really you leave me no choice. Though I hate whisky, I must follow the example set by my betters.”
The Master Gunner laughed. “In the Service,” said he, “we learn from our mistakes. At the beginning we did badly on May 31st, but afterwards we profited by the lesson. What more could you ask? . . . Civilians,” said he, aside to his colleagues, “seem to think that only English ships should be allowed to have guns or to learn how to use them.”