November 17, 1914.
We have carefully reviewed the position and given fullest consideration to your wishes. We are confident that your fleet with its cruisers and flotillas is strong enough for the definite task entrusted to it. In view of the grave needs we have to meet elsewhere we cannot reinforce you at present, nor alter our dispositions.
The 3rd Battle Squadron, 3rd Cruiser Squadron and eight destroyers should proceed to Rosyth as ordered. You have, of course, full discretion to move your Fleet in any way necessary to provide for its safety and enable you to meet the enemy, and are not tied to Scapa. Every effort is being made to accelerate the completion of the submarine defences.
The destroyer question was one of real difficulty. Although we had more than double the sea-going strength of the German flotillas, we had so much to guard, that we could not provide a superior force kept always intact in the hand of the Commander-in-Chief for a great Fleet action. ‘I know perfectly well,’ wrote Sir John Jellicoe on December 4 to Lord Fisher, ‘that the First and Third Flotillas [from Harwich] will not join me in time.’... The Germans, he declared, would have eight flotillas comprising 88 torpedo boat destroyers, all of which would certainly be ready at the selected moment. ‘They have five torpedoes each: total 440 torpedoes—unless I can strike at them first.’ He himself might, he claimed, fall as low as 32 or even 28. ‘You know,’ he added, ‘the difficulty and objections to turning away from the enemy in a Fleet action: but with such a menace I am bound to do it, unless my own torpedo boat destroyers can stop or neutralise the movement.’ There was no doubt that all the Commander-in-Chief’s thought fitted together into one consistent whole and was the result of profound study and reflection. Lord Fisher, however, remained obdurate. ‘I think we have to stand fast,’ he wrote to me, enclosing Sir John Jellicoe’s letter. ‘The Tyrwhitt mob and our oversea submarines are our sole aggressive force in the South.’ He proposed however to put one of the Harwich flotillas in the Humber. ‘We wait your return before action[[92]]—Humber and Harwich each 290 miles from Heligoland—but the complete flotilla at the Humber is very much nearer Jellicoe, and so a salve to him in reply to enclosed. As A. K. Wilson observed a moment ago, both he and I would probably have written exactly the same letter as Jellicoe trying to get all we could! Yours till death, F.’
This was a wearing discussion, and no one can blame the Commander-in-Chief for expressing his anxieties and endeavouring to keep his command up to the highest strength. I always tried to sustain him in every possible way. His powerful orderly brain, his exact and comprehensive knowledge, enabled him to develop and perfect in this first year of the war the mighty organisation of the Grand Fleet. He bore with constancy the many troubles and perplexities of the early months. His fine sailorlike qualities made him always ready night or day to take his whole gigantic Fleet to sea, and he was never so happy as when he was at sea. Even when I did not share his outlook, I sympathised with his trials. The opinions of Lord Fisher at this period upon the margin of strength required for the Grand Fleet were, as will be seen, in sharp contrast with those he expressed at a later period during the operations at the Dardanelles. Personally I always considered our line of battle amply superior; nor did I believe the Germans would be able to bring out at a given moment all the 88 torpedo boats with which Sir John Jellicoe always credited them. We now know the actual forces which the enemy assembled on December 16 of this same year, on the occasion when the whole High Sea Fleet made almost the most ambitious sortie into the North Sea which its history records. There were 13 Dreadnought battleships and 4 battle cruisers, total 17 Dreadnoughts instead of the 20 which were completed and which the Admiralty counted as available; and 53 torpedo boats in place of the Commander-in-Chief’s 88. Against this Sir John Jellicoe had (until refits were reopened at the end of November) 27 superior units (subject to what he says about them); and as many of the 71 destroyers as were fit for sea on any given day. The Germans also took to sea on December 16 a squadron of 8 pre-Dreadnoughts, and against this our Third Battle Squadron, which had been rightly restored to the Grand Fleet, was a proper and superior provision. This balance of strength represents the period of our greatest strain in Home waters and all over the world.
At this, as at all other times, the Admiralty would have welcomed a general battle. An attack by seaplanes launched from carrying ships upon the Zeppelin sheds near Cuxhaven, was planned by us for November 22. On the 20th we telegraphed to Sir John Jellicoe:—
‘Our reliable German information and also our telegram No. 338 to you shows, firstly, concentration of German cruisers, battle cruisers and battleships in Weser and Elbe; and secondly, disposal of their submarines to hunt in the Shetlands and English Channel. In these favourable circumstances the aerial attack on Cuxhaven Zeppelin sheds, which we had previously planned and considered desirable in itself, might easily bring on a considerable action in which your battle cruisers and the Grand Fleet might take part without undue risk from German submarines.
‘We suggest for your consideration Tyrwhitt and aeroplanes attacking on Monday at daybreak, with you supporting him from the northward with whatever force is necessary, if the enemy respond to the challenge. Further, if it should prove, as some reliable information indicates, that the enemy is preparing an offensive raid or sortie himself, our movement would bring on a collision at the outset unexpected and disconcerting to him.’
The Commander-in-Chief, after some discussion, preferred Tuesday daybreak for the attack, as the longer notice would enable him to finish certain repairing work. The Admiralty plans were altered accordingly. We telegraphed on the 21st:—
‘We consider the present a good occasion for a sweep southward by the Grand Fleet. The seaplane attack is incidental and subsidiary, though very desirable in itself. It may bring on an action now that the German Fleet is concentrated near Wilhelmshaven, and their cruisers and battle cruisers are active. It will frustrate any offensive movement they may intend, as reported.... Tuesday, 24th, at 5.30 a.m., will be the time.’