Of the 80 destroyers belonging to the Grand Fleet at the end of May, 1916, 70 were available to go to sea on May 30th (an unusually large proportion). There happened, also, to be on this date at Rosyth eight destroyers belonging to the Harwich force, and these accompanied the battle cruisers to sea, making a total of 78, of which 47 were with the Battle Fleet and cruisers, and 31 with the Battle Cruiser Fleet, including the 3rd Battle Cruiser Squadron. The smaller German Fleet had 88, a far larger proportion to each ship.
This superiority in numbers on the part of the Germans arose from three causes:
(a) The formation, by us, of a light cruiser and destroyer force at Harwich, the presence of which force during a Fleet action was very improbable, owing to the fact that a Fleet action would, if it took place, probably do so at Germany’s selected moment and not at ours, and to the difficulty of concentration under such circumstances.
(b) The necessity of utilising a large number of our destroyers for patrol purposes in the Straits of Dover and elsewhere.
(c) We had not built an adequate number of destroyers in the years before the War to meet the many needs that only this class of vessel could fulfil, particularly as the enemy developed his submarine warfare against merchant-ships.
The shipbuilding programmes of 1908–09, and following years up to 1912–13, included provision for twenty destroyers each year. Subsequent to the latter date, the programme of destroyers was somewhat reduced in order to provide for light cruisers, a class of vessel in which we were woefully deficient. In spite of the continual rise in the Estimates, there was never sufficient money to meet all the Admiralty’s needs. It was intimated that one or other of the requirements had to give way at a time when the Navy Estimates were mounting up year by year, and as the light cruisers were considered to be even more necessary than the destroyers, the number of the latter class of vessel was reduced.
Although, in spite of the great destroyer programme initiated by Lord Fisher at the end of 1914, the shortage of destroyers was most seriously felt throughout the whole War, the conditions would probably have been even worse had the pre-War programme of light cruisers been sacrificed to maintain the output of destroyers to the standard desired by the Admiralty.
A third consideration that was present in my mind was the necessity for not leaving anything to chance in a Fleet action, because our Fleet was the one and only factor that was vital to the existence of the Empire, as indeed to the Allied cause. We had no reserve outside the Battle Fleet which could in any way take its place, should disaster befall it or even should its margin of superiority over the enemy be eliminated.
The situation was in many respects different from that with which our Navy was faced in the time of the old wars. In those days disaster could only come about by reason of bad strategy or tactics owing to our enemy being in overwhelming strength when met, or handling his force better, and, apart from manœuvring, the action was invariably decided by gunfire, a well-known and well-tried weapon.
During the recent War two entirely new features of the greatest importance were introduced. First, the torpedo could be fired at very long range, up to 15,000 yards, either from large ships or destroyers, and at shorter range from submarines, and the mine had been developed; the invisibility of these weapons made it difficult for it to be known when they were being employed.