Great Britain gave the Navy what most voters think are needed for a war, especially such things as the papers talked of most, like dreadnoughts, guns, and torpedoes. But there was a lack of light cruisers and destroyers to fight off the same kind of German craft, guard the seaways, and kill the sneaking submarines. The docks in which ships are built and mended make little show for the money spent on them; so the Government never asked Parliament for enough till the war broke out, which meant that some dreadnoughts had to be more or less cramped so as to fit into the old-fashioned docks. The decks of the battle cruisers were not strong enough to keep out armour-piercing shells; so two of them were sunk at Jutland that might have otherwise been saved. The means of guarding the big ships against mines and submarines wore not nearly good enough at the start. There were fishing craft enough, and fishermen who were as good sailors as the world has ever seen, and dockyard hands enough to build new boats to fish for the deadly mines and spread the nets for nosing submarines. But they were not used in time.
Now look at the Germans. Their officers knew their navy had no chance in a fair stand-up fight with Jellicoe's Grand Fleet. But even these officers hoped that their mines and submarines, with a streak of good luck, might make the odds more even. Apart from their naval experts the Germans had no doubt at all. Their bluejackets and the German people as a whole thought everything German the best in the world; and long before the war the million members of the German Navy League had been persuading the people to vote most of the money the Kaiser wanted for his fleet. The Kiel Canal let the German High Sea Fleet play hide-and-seek between the North Sea and the Baltic without the slightest risk on the way. The British, on the other hand, could only get into the Baltic by going round between Denmark and Sweden, both being neutrals whose territories could not be touched. The way through is so narrow that the water is all "territorial," that is, it belongs to the countries beside it, and was, therefore, as neutral as they were. But even if Denmark and Sweden had let the Grand Fleet go through, it would have gone to certain defeat; for a weaker navy inside the Baltic could have crushed the British as they came through one by one—the only possible way.
Now look at the North Sea, which was the real battleground. The area is about a hundred and twenty-five thousand square miles. But the average distance you can see clearly, taking one day with another all the year round, is only five miles. This was very nice for lurking mines, sneaking submarines, and sudden cruiser raids against the British coasts. The coastline of the British Isles is more than twenty times as long as the North Sea coast of Germany, much easier to navigate and very much harder to defend—another advantage for the Germans. The Grand Fleet could not attack the German coast, which has only three good seaways into it, which has a string of islands off it, and which, difficult for foreign ships in time of peace, is impossible in time of war. The whole of the shore and off-shore islands were full of big guns in strong forts—and remember that you can sink a fleet, though you can't sink a coast—while the waters were full of mines and submarines.
Moreover, in destroyers, which are as dangerous out at sea as they are round a base, the German "High Sea Fleet" began with no less than eighty-eight against the forty-two in the British "Grand Fleet." The British had so many narrow seaways to defend that they could not spare Jellicoe nearly enough light cruisers or destroyers. It was only after Jutland that the Grand Fleet became so very much stronger than the High Sea Fleet. Before Jutland the odds in favour of the British battle squadrons were only about four to three; and the Germans had special advantages in searchlights that showed up everything except the position of the ships that carried them, in wonderfully bright and bewildering star-shells, in the gear for bringing all the quick-firing guns of the big ships to bear at once on light craft trying to torpedo them, and in very cleverly made delay-shells, which could go through all but the thickest armour and then burst inside the vitals of a ship. It was one of these shells that blew up the Queen Mary, the finest of all the British battle cruisers.
Then, as we have seen already, another German advantage, and a very great advantage, was that, while most British men-of-war had to be built for general service all round the world, the German High Sea Fleet (which meant nine-tenths of all the German Navy) could be built specially for one great battle close at home. Not nearly so much room was needed for the men to live in, because they were always near the naval barracks at Wilhelmshaven; and not nearly so much space was required for fuel. The weight and space saved in these two ways could all be used for extra shells, thicker armour, and other kinds of special strength. Thus the Germans were even stronger than the number of their men-of-war would lead you to think; and they were strongest of all for battles at night or in misty weather near their own base. The battle of Jutland seemed to have been made on purpose to suit them.
In 1914 the Germans had been very much encouraged by the sinking of the three British cruisers, Hague, Cressy, and Aboukir in the North Sea, by the Emden's famous raid in the Indian Ocean, by von Spee's victory at Coronel in the Pacific, and by the way the Kaiser and all the German papers boasted. In 1915 they were encouraged by the French and British failure against the Turks and Germans at the Dardanelles. In 1916, however, they began to feel the pinch of the British blockade so badly that they were eager for a sea-fight that would ease it off. If they had the finest navy in the world, why didn't it wipe the Grand Fleet off the North Sea altogether? At the same time the British public and the Allies wanted to know why the Grand Fleet didn't wipe the Germans off.
We have just seen why the Grand Fleet could not force on a battle round the German base. But the reason why the Germans could not try to snatch a victory out of some lucky chance at the beginning of the war, when the odds were least against them, was of quite a different kind. The fact was that thousands of their trained seamen were hopelessly cut off from Germany by the British Navy. Nearly every German merchant ship outside of the North Sea or the Baltic was either taken by the British or chased into some neutral port from which it never got out. The crews were mostly reservists in the German Navy. They were ready for the call to arms. But they could not answer it. So new men had to be trained. Meanwhile the one good chance slipped away; for by the time these recruits had been trained the Grand Fleet had grown much stronger than before.
On the 31st of May, 1916, Jellicoe's whole force was making one of its regular "drives" across the North Sea in two huge but handy fleets. The Battle Cruiser Fleet under Beatty was fifty miles south of the Battle Fleet, which was under Jellicoe himself. Jellicoe and Beatty, the chosen leaders of the greatest fleet of the greatest navy in the greatest war in the world, had long been marked men. They were old friends, having fought side by side against the Boxer rebellion in China in 1900, the year the German Navy Bill was passed by the German Parliament on purpose to endanger the "mightiest" of foreign navies—that is, the British. They had both been wonderfully keen students of every branch of naval warfare, from the handling of a single gun or ship to the supreme art of handling this "mightiest" of fleets; and both they and Sir Charles Madden, the Chief of Staff, were looked upon as being the very fittest of the fit.
But even the best of men and ships will not make the best fleet unless trained and "tuned up" to act together; and here, in its combined manuoeuvres, lay the crowning glory of the vast Grand Fleet. One day a visitor was watching it fight a sham battle against an enemy firing big guns at long range, when up came a real enemy, in the form of a German submarine, much closer than the sham. Of course the visitor turned his glasses on the "sub" and on the destroyers racing after it, like greyhounds slipped from the leash. But when, a few minutes later, he looked round at the fleet, he could hardly believe his eyes; for there it was, moving, mile upon mile of it, in a completely new formation, after a sort of magic "general post" that had made light craft and battle-line entirely change places, over an area of a hundred square miles, without a moment's slackening of speed. Hundreds of vessels had been in the best formation to fight each other on the surface. Now they were in the best formation to fight submarines. Then came four of those "sea-quakes" that make you feel as if your own ship had been torpedoed, but which really were depth-charges dropped round the submarine. Then an anxious pause, quickly followed by "all clear," and that by another fleet order which changed the whole formation back again as easily as if the lines of wheeling ships had been a single piece of clockwork and their two million tons of steel had simply answered to the touching of a single spring.
First Round of the Great Fight: 2.30 to 4.38 P.M.
Beatty and Hipper with their Battle Cruisers.