CHAPTER 30
For weeks, little Hugo von Pohl, the Commander-in-Chief of the High Seas Fleet, had been struggling with cancer of the liver, and on January 8, 1916, he was taken from his flagship, Friedrich der Grosse, to a hospital in Berlin. Most officers in the fleet doubted that he would return and, aside from personal considerations, were glad to see him go. Pohl’s eleven months in command of the fleet had been marked by a monumental and almost unbroken passivity. Five times, the battle fleet had gone to sea, but never more than 120 miles from Wilhelmshaven and never into any situation where there was serious danger of encountering the British. Meanwhile, the ships of the German battle squadrons had followed a dreary schedule: a week on patrol inside the minefields of the Bight; another week anchored, but ready for battle in Schillig roads; then passing through the Kiel Canal to practice gunnery in Kiel Bay; and then two weeks or more tied up to Wilhelmshaven quays so that their men could walk the streets, drink beer in the saloons, and sleep in redbrick barracks ashore. Tirpitz might rage that the sharp weapon he had forged was being allowed to rust, but Pohl stoutly maintained that, as the kaiser had instructed him not to risk the fleet, he was doing his duty. On January 18, the moribund Pohl was succeeded by Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer; on February 23, Pohl died.
Scheer’s appointment delighted the navy. He was fifty-three—four years younger than Jellicoe—a man of middle height, with piercing black eyes, closely trimmed hair, high cheekbones, a black mustache, and sometimes a small, tufted goatee. His thirty-eight-year career epitomized that of the professional naval officers rising through the ranks of the young German navy. Now at the top, in supreme command of Germany’s forces at sea, Scheer was alert, aggressive, and confident, a strategist and tactician who could plan a campaign and then conduct a battle. “We knew that Scheer was made up of different stuff from Pohl,” said Ernst von Weizsäcker, his Flag Lieutenant at Jutland. “There were many stories of his exploits as a young lieutenant. His old friends had given him the odd nickname Bobschiess [Shooting Bob] on account . . . of his likeness to his fox terrier which he was fond of provoking to bite his friends’ trousers.” Now, as Commander-in-Chief, Scheer wished and intended to attack his country’s enemies with every weapon at his disposal.
Reinhard Scheer rose from the same middle-class background that produced the Imperial German Navy’s other Great War senior admirals: Tirpitz, Hipper, Ingenohl, Müller, and Pohl. A schoolmaster’s son from Hanau, on the river Main, Scheer entered the navy at fifteen without financial support or social connections. His training began on the sailing frigate Niobe where, in daylight and at night, Scheer and his fellow cadets scampered up the masts and crawled out on the yards. He served on the armored frigateFriedrich Karl and then on the armored corvette Hertha, which, circling the world, introduced Scheer to Melbourne, Yokohama, Shanghai, Kobe, and Nagasaki. He had two tours of duty with the German East Africa Cruiser Squadron; during the first of these, he befriended Lieutenant Henning von Holtzendorff and, a few years later, he served under Holtzendorff in the cruiser Prinzess Wilhelm on a voyage to the Far East. Between his African tours, Scheer spent four years at technical schools ashore, studying torpedo technology and warfare; thereafter, during his second East Africa tour, he was torpedo officer in the light cruiser Sophie. Returning to Germany, he became an instructor at the Torpedo Research Command in Kiel.
Scheer’s growing reputation brought him into contact with Admiral von Tirpitz, himself a former torpedo specialist. With Tirpitz’s appointment to the post of state secretary of the Imperial Navy, Scheer was transferred to the Navy Office Torpedo Section. In 1900, Scheer went back to sea as commander of a destroyer flotilla and then enhanced his reputation by writing a textbook on destroyer torpedo tactics. In 1903, he became chief of the Central Division of the Navy Office, which supported the Grand Admiral’s efforts to expand the fleet by amendments to the Navy Laws. Scheer’s work was purely technical and he had nothing to do with politics or public relations; nevertheless, on strictly naval matters, he was supremely confident and spoke freely. By now, he was in demand both in the fleet and at the Navy Ministry, which kept him on shore by making him director of the Torpedo Inspectorate. In 1905, Scheer was promoted to captain and in 1907 he took command of the predreadnought battleship Elsass. On December 1, 1909, Henning von Holtzendorff, now Commander-in-Chief of the High Seas Fleet, offered Captain Scheer the position of fleet Chief of Staff; six months later, Scheer, now forty-seven, was promoted to rear admiral. He left the High Seas Fleet in 1911 to return to work for Tirpitz as chief of the General Naval Department; then, in January 1913, he rejoined the fleet as admiral of the six predreadnought battleships of the 2nd Squadron. In December 1914, Scheer took command of the 3rd Battle Squadron of new König- and Kaiser-class dreadnoughts, the most powerful ships in the High Seas Fleet. During the thirteen months that Scheer commanded this squadron under Ingenohl and Pohl, not one of those eight enormous ships fired a gun in battle. Now, with Scheer promoted to Commander-in-Chief, this was about to change.
Scheer was greatly admired by those who worked with him and for him. Weizsacker recalled that the admiral “was of cheerful disposition, had a quick mind and was without any pretensions. His optimistic nature always recovered quickly from a setback.” Captain Adolf von Trotha, Scheer’s Chief of Staff, had a similar view:
One could not find a better comrade. He never stood on ceremony with young officers. But he was impatient and always had to act quickly. He would expect his staff to have the plans and orders for an operation worked out exactly to the last detail, and then he would come on the bridge and turn everything upside down. He was a commander of instinct and instant decision who liked to have all options presented to him and then as often as not chose a course of action no one had previously considered. In action he was absolutely cool and clear. Jutland showed his great gifts and a man like that must be allowed to drive his subordinates mad.
Scheer, like Tirpitz, was a forceful advocate of unrestricted submarine warfare, but, also like Tirpitz, he believed that submarine warfare alone would not defeat Great Britain. Certain—again, like Tirpitz—that German ships were qualitatively superior to British ships and that German officers and men were equal to their British opponents, Scheer was determined to go on the offensive. In February, Scheer conferred in Berlin with Admiral von Holtzendorff and the two men agreed to attempt to break the stranglehold of the British blockade at sea. Scheer’s staff in Wilhelmshaven produced a document titled “Guiding Principles for Sea Warfare in the North Sea.” The first principle was acceptance of the continuing fact that the unfavorable ratio of numbers of ships ruled out a decisive, all-out battle with the Grand Fleet. The second was that, within this framework, constant pressure should be exerted on the British fleet to force it to send out some of its forces to respond to German attacks. The third was that in these offensive operations, the German navy should use every weapon available: airship and submarine operations were to be combined with operations by the High Seas Fleet in deep offensive thrusts into the North Sea.
On February 23, the kaiser, accompanied by Tirpitz, Holtzendorff, and Prince Henry, arrived in a snowstorm in Wilhelmshaven to listen as Scheer personally presented these plans to the sovereign. In the wardroom of Friedrich der Grosse, Scheer described to the emperor his plans to use his battle cruisers and light forces to draw the British piecemeal out of their bases. These operations, in effect a resumption of Hipper’s earlier bombardments of English coastal towns, would constitute such an insult that the British navy must respond. And when the first British squadrons came out, the High Seas Fleet would be there. William listened, overcame his qualms, and agreed.
In fact, a small, preliminary offensive operation had taken place even before the kaiser’s approval had been given. On February 10, German destroyers made a night sweep beyond the Dogger Bank, where they fell upon a group of British minesweepers and sank one of them. This sortie brought additional profit when Tyrwhitt’s flagship, the famous light cruiser Arethusa, returning to Harwich, struck a German mine, parted a line while being towed, and eventually went on a shoal and broke in half. Scheer’s first major effort with the entire High Seas Fleet came three weeks later when he attempted a trap of British forces in the southern North Sea. On March 5, he took the fleet to a position off Texel at the mouth of the Zuider Zee, the farthest south the German battle fleet would venture during the war. Unfortunately, snow, hail, restricted visibility, and heavy seas forced Scheer to order the fleet home before any contact was possible.
The British then made an offensive thrust of their own. Nightly zeppelin raids on London and other cities had prodded the Admiralty to attack the airship bases. On March 25, five seaplanes flying from the carrier Vindex, a converted merchant ship, attempted to bomb a zeppelin shed at Hoyer on the Schleswig coast. Tyrwhitt with five light cruisers and eighteen destroyers escorted Vindex while Beatty cruised forty-five miles away. The weather was bitterly cold, snow was falling, and the wind was rising to gale force. The result was a British fiasco: three seaplanes, launched forty miles offshore, developed engine trouble and came down in German territory, where their crews were captured. A fourth pilot discovered that there was no zeppelin shed at Hoyer and bombed what he said was a factory. The fifth pilot discovered an actual zeppelin shed farther inland at Tondern, but when he dived to attack, his bomb-release cable jammed. Meanwhile, at sea, German destroyers arrived and in a confused fight in a snowstorm, the British destroyerLaverock rammed her sister Medusa, which later had to be abandoned. Tyrwhitt’s new flagship, the light cruiser Cleopatra, then rammed the German destroyer G-194, cutting her in half, but then herself was rammed by the British light cruiserUndaunted. A larger British disaster was avoided only when Scheer, who had ordered his battle fleet to sea, again ran into a full gale with low visibility and mountainous seas and decided to turn back.
On April 22, another British thrust toward the Skagerrak cost Beatty and Jellicoe even more heavily. The battle cruisers, steaming off the Danish coast, ran into a sudden bank of dense fog and Australia and New Zealand, zigzagging at 19 knots, collided and were badly damaged. Then the dreadnought Neptune collided with a neutral merchant ship and, later that night, three British destroyers ran into one another. On April 24, Jellicoe was back at Scapa Flow coaling his ships; at 4:00 that afternoon, he learned of the Easter Rebellion in Ireland and that the High Seas Fleet had put to sea. At dawn the next day, German battle cruisers were bombarding the English towns of Lowestoft and Yarmouth.
Before this happened, physical disability had temporarily removed from command the most active German North Sea admiral, Franz Hipper. As commander of the battle cruisers and other ships of the Scouting Groups and also as the officer responsible for the defense of the Heligoland Bight, Hipper was bending under the weight of his duties. Fatigue was compounded by sciatica. He had difficulty sleeping, and when he managed to doze off, every sound—a step on the deck above his cabin, the slapping of halyards in the wind—reawakened him. Hipper knew he needed a rest, but once Scheer had replaced Pohl, he decided not to ask for leave just as a new Commander-in-Chief was taking over. Two months later, on March 26, Hipper, feeling “terrible pain and exhaustion,” applied for sick leave. The following day, Scheer visited him on board Seydlitz and approved the request.
Before leaving Seydlitz, Hipper summoned Erich Raeder, his Chief of Staff, and described one of his worries about turning over the command to Rear Admiral Friedrich Bödicker:
“You know I am very fond of music, I mean good and refined music,” Hipper began. “I’m particularly fond of Richard Wagner, particularly Lohengrin! Our band . . . is at the top of its form just now.”
“Indeed it is, Your Excellency. We will take the greatest care to see that it remains so—”
“I certainly hope so, for music is perhaps the best form of relaxation I get on board. What’s worrying me is that there might be a change for the worse during my absence—”
Hipper lapsed into silence. . . . After a time Raeder ventured: “Why should there be any change?”
Hipper jumped from his chair, strode up and down and blurted out: “Bödicker knows nothing about music. His taste runs to nothing but Prussian marches, treacly waltzes and bits out of Fledermaus. I’m sure he’ll end by mucking up my whole band—mucking it up, I tell you!”
. . . [But] he ended up by bursting out laughing. “After all, I’ll soon get them right again. I’ve often had to show them myself when the fiddles were going wrong!”
Hipper took a five-week cure at Bad Neundorf, then visited a nerve specialist who listened to his complaints, examined him carefully, and announced a complete absence of any damage to Hipper’s central nervous system. The admiral’s symptoms, the doctor declared, were caused by stress. Relieved, Hipper returned to his new flagship, the recently commissioned Lützow, on May 13 and resumed command.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Hipper, he had survived another kind of crisis. Scheer’s promotion to command had pleased him; he looked forward to the promise of more vigorous North Sea action. Nevertheless, when Hipper asked for sick leave, Scheer telephoned Holtzendorff and asked that Hipper be retired. Scheer felt that “Vice Admiral Hipper no longer possesses the qualities of robustness and elasticity which . . . [command of the Scouting Groups] demands and it is also his view that the end of the leave will not effect a complete restoration of his abilities.” Holtzendorff rejected the proposal because it seemed inappropriate for Scheer to be “coming forward with such radical suggestions so soon after his assumption of command.” Müller wrote on this memorandum, “I agree.” There is evidence that Scheer had a certain envy of Hipper’s fame and sometimes belittled him in service records, but the two men worked together for another two years—at which point Hipper succeeded Scheer as Commander-in-Chief of the High Seas Fleet and Scheer became Chief of the Naval Staff in Berlin.
Conceived and executed in Hipper’s absence, Scheer’s Lowestoft plan was to deliver a hit-and-run raid on the English southeast coast timed to coincide with the rising of the German-supported Irish nationalists on Easter Sunday. The German battle cruisers, screened by six light cruisers and two destroyer flotillas, would bombard, and then retreat before the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow could intervene. But his own battle fleet would be at sea, and if—as he hoped—either Beatty or Tyrwhitt came out to intercept, these separate elements of the British fleet would be overwhelmed. In this operation, the German battle cruisers were to be commanded by Rear Admiral Friedrich Bödicker.
Early on the afternoon of March 24, 1915, Bödicker, sailing for England, was northwest of Norderney when Seydlitz, still the battle cruiser flagship, struck a British mine. An explosion on the starboard side below the waterline tore a hole in the ship’s hull plating fifty feet long. Eleven men were killed, 1,400 tons of water flooded in, and the ship settled four and a half feet deeper into the water. With her speed reduced to 15 knots, the battle cruiser turned back to the Jade. Bödicker shifted his flag to the new Lützow and continued forward. Meanwhile, Tyrwhitt with three light cruisers and eighteen destroyers of the Harwich Force was steering to intercept this overwhelmingly superior German force. Around 4:00 a.m., with the first light in the eastern sky, he saw them: six light cruisers, many destroyers—and then four battle cruisers. Too weak to attack, he turned away to the south, hoping that the German force would follow. Bödicker, however, refused to be diverted from his objective, and a few minutes later the four German battle cruisers opened fire on Lowestoft at a range of 14,000 yards. Within nine minutes, they destroyed two 6-inch shore batteries and 200 houses, killed three civilians and wounded twelve. Then Bödicker swung north to attack Yarmouth. There, visibility was so poor that, after the first salvo from all four ships, only Derfflinger continued firing. At this point, the German light cruisers reported that they were in action with Tyrwhitt, and Bödicker decided to go to their support.
Tyrwhitt, seeing that he was not being followed, had turned back and found himself engaging the six German light cruisers. This ended when the four German battle cruisers suddenly loomed out of the mist and opened fire at him from 13,000 yards. Again, Tyrwhitt turned to escape to the south, but this time his flagship, Conquest, was hit by a 12-inch shell, which killed or wounded forty men and reduced the light cruiser’s speed to 20 knots. Bödicker now had an opportunity to overtake and annihilate a weaker British force, the supposed object of Scheer’s offensive. Unfortunately, he failed to grasp what was offered. Satisfied with having flung a few shells into England and chasing Tyrwhitt away, he now himself reversed course and steamed east to join Scheer, only fifty miles away. Scheer, however, had had enough; suspecting that the Grand Fleet was coming south (Neumünster Radio had warned him that the British battle squadrons had sailed from northern harbors), he turned his whole fleet around and headed for home. In fact, Jellicoe and the Grand Fleet, pushing south, were handicapped by seas so heavy that Jellicoe had been forced to leave all his destroyers behind. When Scheer turned back, Beatty was still more than 200 miles away and Jellicoe was 300. There was no chance of intercepting the German fleet; both Jellicoe and Beatty were ordered home.
Scheer was disappointed. A strong German force had failed to take advantage of its superiority over a much weaker British force. In addition, Seyd-litz had been severely damaged and would require at least a month in dry dock. In Britain, the Admiralty moved the 3rd Battle Squadron—the seven remaining King Edwards—from Rosyth to the Thames, permitting First Lord Arthur Balfour to reassure the distressed mayors of Lowestoft and Yarmouth that “another raid on the coast of Norfolk will be henceforth far more perilous to the aggressors . . . and, if our enemy be wise is therefore far less likely.” HMS Dreadnought was dispatched from Scapa Flow to the Thames to add her ten 12-inch guns to the twenty-eight 12-inch guns carried by the seven King Edwards. It was for this reason that the ten-year-old grandparent of all the dreadnought battleships in the world missed the Battle of Jutland.
On the morning of April 25, when Scheer was still at sea on Friedrich der Grosse, returning from the Lowestoft Raid, he received a wireless message from Holtzendorff in Berlin telling him that the German government had bowed to the American president’s threat to sever diplomatic relations. Until further orders, Scheer was informed, unrestricted submarine warfare would be abandoned and U-boats were to conduct commerce warfare only in accordance with prize regulations: surfacing, visiting, and searching. Scheer was enraged. Before his flagship was back in the Jade, he decided that, under these conditions, the entire U-boat offensive against merchant shipping must be abandoned. Without consulting Berlin, he recalled all High Seas Fleet U-boats then at sea.
Scheer was angry not only because the sharp sword of unrestricted submarine warfare—which he fervently believed must be used—was being laid aside, but also because the German government had been compelled to take this step by President Wilson. In the early spring of 1916, the German people had been led to expect that the U-boats would deliver a decisive stroke against England. Now, on America’s demand, this campaign had been prematurely terminated. To Scheer, and to many of his admirals and captains, this submission came as a public humiliation, inflicted not only on the German government but specifically on the German navy. Something must be done about this; some new stroke must wash away this stain and justify the faith of the German people in their naval power. Scheer’s solution was obvious: the High Seas Fleet must go back to sea.
Scheer’s decision to recall the submarines opened new tactical possibilities. At his disposal now were a large number of modern, efficient submarines released from commerce warfare and available for use in cooperation with the surface fleet against enemy warships. Scheer had always liked the idea of submarine ambush—of U-boats, stationed off the Grand Fleet’s bases, attacking British ships as they came out. What Scheer needed was a lure sufficient to draw the British to sea. The best way to bring the British out, Scheer judged, would be a German battle cruiser raid on a place near a major British base. He knew that Beatty’s battle cruisers and other heavy ships were based on the Firth of Forth. He also knew that Seydlitz was scheduled to be out of dry dock by the middle of May. Accordingly, he decided that on May 17, Hipper should bombard the town of Sunderland, near Newcastle upon Tyne, 100 miles south of the entrance to the Forth. Such a challenge directly under Beatty’s nose could not fail to bring the British admiral out—and into the waiting submarine ambush that Scheer intended to prepare. As Lion and her sisters steamed into the crosshairs of U-boat periscopes, Scheer hoped that Beatty might lose two or three of his battle cruisers to torpedoes. Meanwhile, Scheer himself with the whole High Seas Fleet would be in the North Sea only fifty miles away, ready to meet and destroy any British battle cruisers that evaded the U-boats and were pursuing Hipper. Although he knew that the Grand Fleet would come south to Beatty’s support, Scheer, unaware of Room 40, assumed that he would have six or seven hours to bring Beatty to action before Jellicoe’s battle squadrons could appear.
The grim possibility that the entire Grand Fleet might intervene to disrupt Scheer’s operation called forth another key element of his plan. Air reconnaissance must be available to give the High Seas Fleet ample warning of the approach and composition of any British force. Scheer had no intention of becoming involved with Jellicoe’s massed dreadnoughts. To prevent any possibility of this, the operation must take place in clear weather, when zeppelins could be aloft to scout. As Hipper moved across the North Sea toward Sunderland, zeppelins would patrol the area from the Skagerrak to the Forth and along the English coast down to the Channel. But zeppelins could not leave their sheds in bad weather or high wind. Further, out over the sea, they were subject to the hindrance of mist and fog covering the surface. Calm, clear weather, therefore, was essential to the Sunderland plan.
Even before Scheer’s planning was complete, the operation was postponed. On May 9, it was discovered that several of the new König-class battleships of the 3rd Battle Squadron had developed condenser problems and the Sunderland plan was delayed until May 23. The additional time permitted Scheer to expand the operation, embracing a larger area than simply the Firth of Forth. Now sixteen High Seas Fleet U-boats and a half-dozen boats from the Flanders Flotilla were to be stationed off a number of British harbors with orders to remain on patrol from May 23 to June 1, reporting any movements of British ships and seizing any opportunity to attack. In addition, the exits from British bases were to be mined.
With the bombardment now set for May 23, Scheer dispatched his U-boats on May 17. From this moment on, a clock was ticking: the timing of the whole operation was subject to the oil supply of the submarines. By May 30, their fuel would be almost exhausted; the surface fleet operation, therefore, must be concluded on or around that date. By May 23, the U-boats were in their positions off British harbors: seven off the Firth of Forth, waiting for Beatty; one farther north, off the coast of Scotland; two in Pentland Firth, to attack the Grand Fleet when it sortied from Scapa Flow. In addition, UB-27 had specific orders to force her way into the Firth of Forth to attack warships there. Four minelaying submarines were sent to lay twenty-two mines each off the Firth of Forth, off Moray Firth, and to the west of Pentland Firth in the Orkneys. In addition, Flanders Flotilla U-boats sailed to attack the Harwich Force. All of these submarines had been ordered to remain on station until June 1 and to avoid being discovered prematurely. Wireless reports were to be made only in urgent situations: on sighting the enemy’s main body putting to sea, and then only after all possibilities of attack had been exhausted.
On May 22, the High Seas Fleet was preparing to sail the following day when Scheer received disturbing news: Seydlitz still was not ready for sea. Previously, the Wilhelmshaven dockyard had reported that her repairs would be completed by May 22, but a flooding test carried out in the dock the night before had revealed that her damaged underwater broadside torpedo area still was not watertight. Unwilling to leave without Seydlitz, Scheer again reluctantly postponed the operation, this time until May 30. This left only two days for the Sunderland operation to take place before the fuel endurance of the submarines already at sea would be exhausted.
Meanwhile, the U-boats patrolling off British coasts were waiting. On May 22, U-42, stationed off Sunderland, reported everything clear for the next day’s bombardment—which, of course, had been canceled. Thereafter, fog and low visibility made it difficult for the submarines to observe while, at the same time, the sea was so smooth that even the appearance of a periscope was enough to give them away. British patrol activity was intense. One submarine minelayer, U-74, was sunk by trawler gunfire as she was making her way into Moray Firth. Another, U-72, developed an oil bunker leak before laying her mines off the entrance to the Firth of Forth. A broad trail of oil on the surface made her too easy to locate and she had to return to port. A third minelayer, UC-3,disappeared on May 27, perhaps after hitting a British mine in the eastern Channel. On May 29, a fourth minelayer, U-75, operating in thick fog, laid her twenty-two mines off the Orkneys, between Marwick Head and the Brough of Birsay. This minefield had no effect on the Battle of Jutland, but on June 5, four days after the battle, one of the mines exploded to strike an immense psychological blow at the British nation.
During these days, Scheer, on board Friedrich der Grosse, was watching the window of opportunity closing inexorably on his Sunderland raid. First, the repairs to the battleships’ condensers and then to Seydlitz had postponed Hipper’s bombardment until May 29. That was dangerously close to June 1, the last day the U-boats manning his ambushes would have sufficient fuel to remain on patrol. Now, increasingly, this three-day window had to be considered in conjunction with another factor: the weather and its effect on zeppelin operations. Unfortunately, after the U-boats sailed for Britain, a spell of bad weather set in; day after day, the fleet airship commander reported air reconnaissance impossible.
Disappointed, Scheer was yet unwilling to give up on the operation and waste the mine and U-boat ambushes staked out. He formed an alternative plan: if the weather continued bad and the zeppelins could not fly, he would not fling his battle cruisers across the North Sea at Sunderland; instead he would send Hipper north to cruise provocatively off the Norwegian coast as though to attack British shipping in the Skagerrak. The overriding objective would be the same: to lure the British out and expose them to U-boat attack. Hipper’s presence off Norway would be reported; the operation still would likely bring Beatty rushing out—over the waiting submarines. Meanwhile, Scheer and the battle squadrons, steaming north in Hipper’s wake, would be waiting for Beatty only forty miles to the south. And if the Grand Fleet should also come, these were safer waters for the German fleet. The Skagerrak was much closer to German than to British bases, and with the Danish coast protecting his starboard—eastern—flank and destroyer and light cruiser screens spread far to the west on his port flank, zeppelin reconnaissance was unnecessary; Scheer still would have sufficient warning and ample time after annihilating Beatty to retreat to the safety of the minefields in the Bight.
May 28 was the day of decision. The U-boats lying off British bases had orders to depart and return to base on the evening of June 1. Departure of the High Seas Fleet therefore was imperative if the U-boat trap was to work. The possibility of putting Scheer’s original Sunderland plan into operation now hung on the availability of air reconnaissance over the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours. At that moment, strong northeasterly winds in the Bight ruled out airship reconnaissance and Scheer decided that if the wind did not moderate by May 30, he would abandon Sunderland and substitute the Skagerrak.
At midnight, May 28, all ships anchored in Jade roads were ordered to prepare to raise steam. At noon on May 29, Seydlitz was declared seaworthy and released from the dockyard. At 3:00 p.m. the following day, with strong northeasterly winds still blowing, the commander of the Naval Airship Division reported that no adequate zeppelin reconnaissance could be done during the next two days. Scheer immediately decided to execute his alternative plan; at 3:40 on the afternoon of May 30, a wireless signal fromFriedrich der Grosse, “31 G. G. 2490,” went out to the assembly of ships in Schillig roads. The signal meant “Carry out top secret instruction 2490 on May 31.” The Skagerrak operation would commence before dawn the following morning.
An hour after midnight on Wednesday, May 31, the ships of the High Seas Fleet began raising their anchors. First out to sea were the battle cruisers, led by the new Lützow, a sister of Derfflinger. On her bridge, returned from sick leave and restored to self-confidence, was Franz Hipper, who predicted to the officers standing near him that by afternoon, they would be “at it hammer and tongs” with the British. Further, he thought that there would be “heavy losses of human life.” “Well,” he consoled himself, “it is all in God’s hands.” In Hipper’s hands that day were forty ships: five battle cruisers, five light cruisers, and thirty destroyers.
An hour and a half later, as dawn was breaking, the main German battle fleet began to weigh anchor. Scheer was taking with him that day sixteen of Germany’s eighteen dreadnought battleships; König Albert remained behind with continuing condenser problems and the new Bayern, the first German battleship carrying 15-inch guns, was considered too recently commissioned to be ready for battle. Six light cruisers and thirty-one destroyers sailed to screen the heavy ships. At 5:00 a.m., south of Heligoland, the six old predreadnought battleships of the 2nd Battle Squadron, coming from their base on the Elbe, joined up astern of Scheer’s sixteen modern battleships. To most High Seas Fleet officers, their presence seemed a serious mistake. Able to make only 18 knots, armed with only four 12-inch guns apiece, they were dubbed the five-minute ships, that being their anticipated survival time in action against dreadnought battleships. Scheer was thoroughly aware of these facts and gibes, having once commanded the squadron himself, and he had not originally intended to take the old ships with him. Nevertheless, as the time for departure approached, Rear Admiral Mauve, the squadron commander, begged the Commander-in-Chief not to leave the predreadnoughts behind. Sentiment prevailed and Scheer gave way. By including them, he handicapped himself by reducing the speed of the German battle line to 18 knots and awarding the British battle fleet a 2-knot advantage.
Scheer’s main battle fleet now included fifty-nine ships: sixteen dreadnought battleships, six old battleships, six light cruisers, and thirty-one destroyers. Adding Hipper’s force to Scheer’s, a total of ninety-nine German warships were steaming north up the mine-free channel running to Horns Reef, a group of sandbanks stretching out into the North Sea from Denmark’s Jutland peninsula. When the sun rose, “covering the sea with its magnificent golden rays,” exulted the Derfflinger’s gunnery officer, men throughout the fleet looked out at the great spectacle of which they were a part: the famous battle cruisers in the van; then the huge light-gray dreadnoughts in a single column, rising and plunging in the swell, black smoke pouring from their funnels; and, all around, the light cruisers and destroyers. Today or perhaps tomorrow would be Der Tag, the Day, for which the German navy had worked so hard and waited so long.
As the day began, three messages were brought to Scheer on the bridge of Friedrich der Grosse. One of his submarines, U-32, on the surface 300 miles away, reported sighting two British dreadnoughts, two cruisers, and several destroyers off May Island, sixty miles east of the Firth of Forth. They were heading southeast. An hour later, a second submarine, U-66, reported eight British battleships attended by light cruisers and destroyers sixty miles east of Cromarty on an easterly course. About the same time, the German radio station at Neumünster reported intercepting British wireless messages indicating that two British dreadnoughts—or groups of dreadnoughts; the call signs did not make clear—had left Scapa Flow. Scheer considered these pieces of information and discarded them; they seemed too vague and disconnected to be related to his operation. The enemy forces were far apart and they seemed to represent isolated movements by separate units of the British fleet. There was no indication that the entire Grand Fleet was at sea; Scheer held to his northerly course.
In this sequence of early events lay Scheer’s greatest miscalculation at the Battle of Jutland. Before the first shot was fired, his U-boats had failed. The submarine ambushes—the underlying reason for the entire operation—had been spectacularly useless. Submarines had neither provided Scheer with useful information nor reduced Jellicoe’s superiority by a single vessel. Now, the full might of the Grand Fleet was at sea, coming toward him, unattacked, undiminished, and undetected.
The twelve months following the Dogger Bank had been difficult for the officers and men of the Grand Fleet. As long as the kaiser held his fleet in port, Great Britain exercised command of the sea. Yet Royal Navy tradition demanded more. British naval officers yearned for a new Trafalgar, although they knew that, before Trafalgar was fought, Nelson had spent two monotonous years patrolling off Toulon. Nor did they consider the slow strangulation of Germany by blockade a substitute for battle. Not only were they frustrated and bored; they were plagued by guilt. The army—their brothers, cousins, and friends—was dying in the trenches while they, cooped up in their gray ships, swung uselessly around mooring buoys in remote northern harbors.
Beatty, particularly, chafed. “I heard rumors of terrible casualties on the Western Front,” he wrote to Ethel on May 15, 1915. “I don’t think, dear heart, you will ever realize the effect these terrible happenings have upon me. . . . I feel we are so impotent, so incapable of doing anything for lack of opportunity, almost that we are not doing our share and bearing our portion of the burden laid upon the nation. . . . We spend days doing nothing when so many are doing so much. . . . [It] makes me feel sick at heart.” Six months later, things seemed, if possible, worse. “The horrid Forth like a great ditch full of thick fog makes everything so cold,” he wrote to Ethel. “There is no joy in life under such conditions. . . . My time must come.” Beatty’s time would come, but not before still another seven months had passed.
Jellicoe and the Admiralty shared Beatty’s frustration. Correspondence between London, Scapa, and Rosyth continually discussed offensive projects that might lure or force the Germans out: Bombard Heligoland. Fill six tankers and twelve trawlers with oil, set them alight, and drive them into the middle of Heligoland dockyard. Bombard the High Seas Fleet in Schillig roads, then send destroyer flotillas in to attack with torpedoes, then have at them again with a midnight ram, gun, and torpedo suicide attack by five old battleships. Penetrate the Baltic with predreadnoughts to open a path to Russia. Jellicoe vetoed all these suggestions. The Commander-in-Chief favored action, but even more strongly, he opposed risk. Without a battle, Britain possessed command of the sea. Frustrating as it was, a new Trafalgar would have to wait.
The new Admiralty Board endorsed Jellicoe’s caution. Lacking a Churchill, who had tried to thrust battleships through the Dardanelles, and a Fisher, who had wanted to storm into the Baltic, they made suggestions, but never pushed the Commander-in-Chief. The tone was set by Jackson, who once wrote wistfully to Jellicoe, “I wish we could entice them out from Heligoland to give you a chance. Have you any ideas for it? I wish I had.” Jellicoe’s replies—like this one on January 25, 1916—always came back to the bedrock of British naval strategy: “Until the High Seas Fleet emerges from its defences, I regret to say that I do not see that any offensive against it is possible. It may be weakened by mines and submarine attack when out for exercises, but beyond that no naval action against it seems practicable.”
While the Grand Fleet waited, it grew. By April 1916, there were thirty-three dreadnought battleships and ten dreadnought battle cruisers in the Royal Navy; thirteen of these ships had been added since the beginning of the war. The battleships Benbow andEmperor of India had come to the fleet in December 1914. Canada, requisitioned from Chile in 1915, had been added to Agincourt and Erin, requisitioned from Turkey. Five Queen Elizabeth–class superdreadnoughts had joined the Grand Fleet: Queen Elizabethherself, along with Warspite and Barham in 1915 and Valiant and Malaya early in 1916. These five, each mounting eight 15-inch guns and firing projectiles weighing 1,900 pounds, were then the finest battleships in the world. They were heavily armored and able to take severe punishment; their 25-knot speed was 4 to 5 knots greater than the designed speed of any German battleship and almost the same as that of the older British and German battle cruisers. They burned fuel oil, which permitted greater steaming endurance and saved their crews the exhausting labor of hand coaling and stoking. In addition, another five superdreadnoughts of the Royal Sovereign class, each carrying eight 15-inch guns, were on their way: Royal Oak and Revenge arrived in time to fight at Jutland; Royal Sovereign was a few days too late, and Resolution and Ramillies were still under construction. Overall, the British margin over the Germans in dreadnought battleships had increased substantially. Since August 1914, the Germans had added five dreadnoughts: fourKönigs—all of them present at Jutland—and the new 15-inch-gun Bayern, which was left behind at Wilhelmshaven.
From day to day, however, the numbers were never the same. On Janu-ary 6, 1916, the predreadnought King Edward VII, proceeding from Scapa Flow to Belfast for dockyard maintenance, hit a mine, turned over, and sank off the Scottish coast. Fortunately, she went down slowly and all her crew was saved. On December 3, 1915, the superdreadnoughts Barham and Warspite collided in heavy seas. Barham, the flagship, had hoisted a signal reducing squadron speed to 8 knots; Warspite misread the signal as 18 knots and began to overtake. Then just as Barham’s stern sank into a deep trough, Warspite’s bow, coming up behind, lifted high in the air. When the bow dropped, it came down on Barham with a noise described as “a horrible crunching, like a giant robot chewing crowbars.”Barham was able to repair her damage at Cromarty, but Warspite had to go south to Devonport.
As for battle cruisers, Beatty now commanded ten of these fast ships. Two more were coming, Renown and Repulse, converted from battleships on the building ways during Jacky Fisher’s brief second term as First Sea Lord. Meanwhile, to the four battle cruisers Hipper commanded at the Dogger Bank, only Lützow, a sister of Derfflinger, had been added. Their third sister, Hindenburg, was still under construction. Beatty’s battle cruisers remained at Rosyth, where they had been based since December 1914. In addition to his flagship Lion, the vice admiral now had three squadrons of three ships each: the fast, 13.5-inch-gun Cats, which were Lion’s sisters: Prin-cess Royal, Queen Mary, and Tiger; the second-generation, 12-inch-gun ships New Zealand, Indefatigable, andAustralia; and finally, Britain’s three oldest battle cruisers, Invincible, Inflexible, and Indomitable. Beatty never ceased trying to augment this force, and he and Jellicoe had been wrestling for possession of the new Queen Elizabeth superdreadnoughts, which had been coming to Jellicoe at Scapa Flow. Beatty declared that he needed these fast, powerful ships to stiffen the Battle Cruiser Fleet, as Lützow and Hindenburg were reported ready to join Hipper; Jellicoe resisted, wanting to keep maximum strength in his own command and to use the new dreadnoughts as a fast wing of the Grand Fleet battle line. Beatty, the Commander-in-Chief pointed out, already had ten battle cruisers to Hipper’s four (five with Lützow, six with Hindenburg) and, he confided in Jackson, his feeling was that “the stronger I make Beatty, the greater is the temptation for him to get involved in an independent action.” Twice—in February 1916, and again in the middle of March—Jellicoe had overruled Beatty’s request for these new ships.
Three circumstances joined to reverse Jellicoe’s decision. At the end of March, the Admiralty learned that Lützow had indeed joined the High Seas Fleet and become Hipper’s flagship. Then, the collision on April 22 of New Zealand and Australia and the need of both for repairs reduced Beatty’s strength from ten to eight. Meanwhile, both Jellicoe and Beatty were concerned about British battle cruiser gunnery. In one shoot in November 1915, both Lion and Tiger had performed abominably; Beatty had admitted to Jellicoe that it had been a “terrible disappointment.” In March 1916, a group of junior officers from the light cruisers attached to Beatty’s force, meeting one night in Southampton’s wardroom, agreed “collectively and separately . . . that the battle cruisers’ shooting was rotten.” One explanation was that Beatty’s ships, lacking a gunnery range near the Firth of Forth, were unable to carry out sufficient practice. At a conference held at Rosyth on May 12, 1916, Jellicoe decided to rectify this problem by bringing the battle cruisers north from Rosyth to Scapa, squadron by squadron, to do heavy-caliber firing on the ranges developed near Scapa Flow. To plug the gap in Beatty’s ranks while some of his battle cruisers were away, Beatty was to get what he wanted; the Queen Elizabeths would join him at Rosyth. Accordingly, in the third week of May, Rear Admiral Horace Hood’s 3rd Battle Cruiser Squadron—Invincible, Inflexible, and Indomitable—was detached from Beatty for three weeks of gunnery practice, while Rear Admiral Hugh Evan-Thomas’s 5th Battle Squadron—the five Queen Elizabeths—came south to bolster Beatty. Hood was displeased by the order. “This is a great mistake,” he said. “If David [Beatty] gets these ships [the Queen Elizabeths] with him, nothing will stop him from taking on the whole German fleet if he gets the chance.” Once the five superdreadnoughts arrived, Queen Elizabeth herself went into a Rosyth dry dock, leaving Beatty with four. With the three Invincibles gone north and Australia still in dry dock, Beatty’s force now consisted of six battle cruisers plus four fast battleships. This was the force he led at Jutland.
There were many flaws in Beatty’s leadership during the battle, some of which can be traced to a curious failure beforehand. Having succeeded in his persistent effort to add the 5th Battle Squadron to his force, Beatty—inexplicably—did little to ensure its effective use. Ten days passed between the arrival of the Queen Elizabeths at Rosyth and their sailing for Jutland. During this time, the four great battleships lay at anchor not far from Lion in the Firth of Forth. Not once did Beatty summon Rear Admiral Evan-Thomas on board his flagship so that the two men could sit down and Beatty could explain his tactics. Normally, such a conversation would take place with any new subordinate; here, it was especially important because Evan-Thomas was a battleship man, devoted to Jellicoe and the Grand Fleet, where all tactical maneuvers were controlled by explicit signals from the flagship. Evan-Thomas had never served under Beatty, and his squadron had never operated at sea with the battle cruisers. If he and they were now to fall in with Beatty’s freer “Follow me!” style in battle, he needed to be told what was expected of him. Andrew Gordon, whose recent history of Jutland is one of the best ever written, calls Beatty’s behavior “shockingly unprofessional. . . . For how long Evan-Thomas would have had to swing around a buoy a few hundred yards from Lion before Beatty bothered to talk to him, is unknown.” In any case, Evan-Thomas sailed uninstructed.
There was another change in the array of the British fleet, of less significance for the moment, but with portent for the future. On April 12, 1916, a bulky, unusual-looking ship joined the fleet at Scapa Flow. She was the converted 18,000-ton Cunard linerCampania,a veteran of the North Atlantic tourist run, coming up from a Liverpool yard that had converted her into an aircraft carrier. Jellicoe was pleased to see her. From the beginning of the war, he had asked the Admiralty for aircraft-carrying vessels to counter the zeppelins that soared over his fleet, reporting its movements. He also yearned for some means of providing himself with aerial scouting of his own. Britain’s small, early carriers, the 3,000-ton cross-Channel steamers Engadine, Riviera, and Empress,with their canvas shelters for three seaplanes, had remained with Tyrwhitt at Harwich while the Admiralty worked on something better for Jellicoe.
Seaplane operations in the open sea were inherently difficult: any combination of light wind, fog, and rough seas hampered takeoff. More important, the virtual uselessness of seaplanes as antizeppelin weapons had become obvious; the weight of their floats limited rate of climb, speed, altitude, and radius of action. The solution embodied in Campania was a flight deck, extending forward from the bridge over the bow, from which single-seat aircraft with wheels could take off into the wind. With their minimal weight, these craft could rise to the altitudes where the zeppelins flew, attack the monsters, then return and land in the sea near their ship; air bags would keep the plane afloat long enough for the pilot to be rescued. Jellicoe followed these developments closely and hoped for great things. “I’m glad to say we got one up yesterday,” he wrote to Beatty on August 7, 1915, “the first that has risen from a ship underway. It is not a nice job for the pilot as he has to get up a speed of 45 miles an hour before he leaves the deck. . . . If there is any hitch, he . . . is certain to be finished.” This system fulfilled one of Jellicoe’s wishes—attacking the zeppelins—but not the other—providing himself with scouting information. Unfortunately, Campania’s new forward platform-ramp was not long enough for takeoff by the larger, heavier two-seat planes needed to carry the wireless equipment essential for reconnaissance work. Therefore, the new carrier remained a fore-and-aft hybrid: along with its forward flight deck, it retained a large afterdeck hangar for seaplanes, which, as before, had to be placed in the water for takeoff. Seven seaplanes and three fighters made up the new carrier’s air group.
While the ships increased in number and evolved in design, the men in the fleet continued to wait. In many ways, their situation had improved. Scapa Flow now was a heavily fortified anchorage, and its minefields and the strong steel nets spread across its entrances permitted British admirals and sailors and their hundreds of vessels—battleships, battle cruisers, armored cruisers, light cruisers, destroyers, submarines, depot ships, oilers, colliers, store ships, ammunition ships, hospital ships, trawlers, and drifters—to rest in the same tranquil security enjoyed by their German counterparts in Wilhelmshaven. But safety in harbor was only one ingredient of life at Scapa Flow. There also was the bleak isolation of the base, the often fierce, always changeable weather, and the sheer, grinding boredom of the endless wait.
Jellicoe did what he could with fleet exercises to keep the men alert. Again and again, the admiral took the fleet to sea, drilling the ships tirelessly in battle evolutions. Because the water inside the Flow was secure from torpedo attack and ships could practice there without danger, gunnery and torpedo drills were held every day except Sundays. At regular intervals, battleship squadrons went outside to the west of Pentland Firth for main battery firing at towed targets. On most days, the little bays around the Flow were occupied by ships firing at small targets towed by steam picket boats. After dark, the Flow would be lit by the gun flashes and searchlights of ships exercising in night firing. Occasionally, battleships exercised steaming in company without lights inside the Flow to give practice to their officers of the watch.
The island anchorage had no railway connection with the rest of the British Isles, so everything had to be brought by ship: coal, oil, ammunition, and food. Every month, 320 tons of meat, 800 tons of potatoes, 6,000 bags of flour (each weighing 140 pounds), 1,500 bags of sugar (each weighing 120 pounds), and 80,000 loaves of bread were delivered to the fleet. For the men, of course, the most important delivery was the daily mail, brought around to all ships every morning except when the seas were too high for the mail boat to come alongside.
The seasons at Scapa Flow offered spectacular contrasts. Winter was an elemental world of darkness, wind, and snow. Nightfall arrived between 3:30 and 4:00 p.m. and did not fade until 9:00 the next morning. Sometimes, the sun did not appear for days. In December 1915, Jellicoe noted fog or mist at Scapa on the fifteenth, twenty-second, and sixteenth, gales on the sixth, eighth, and twenty-third, snow on the third, fourth, eighth, and twelfth. The following month, January 1916, he recorded winds of up to eighty miles an hour on the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-second, twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and thirtieth: fifteen days out of thirty-one. When it blew hard, bending the stunted trees on shore to the ground, the heavy seas inside the Flow made it impossible to lower boats, leaving the men penned up on ships rolling on double anchors. On clear winter nights, the Northern Lights burned and crackled, flinging giant curtains of green and silver across the sky. Summers were gentler and often lovely. Scapa Flow became a world of airy space and seabirds, of blue skies and green fields, of towering cloud formations and red-gold sunsets. Looking at the shore from their anchored ships, the men saw low hills and moors purple with heather. In June, a man could fish at dawn from the deck of a battleship at 2:00 a.m. and then sit on the same spot and read his mail or a newspaper at 11:30 that night.
But fishing and reading were not enough. In the early months of war, when the fleet was continually at sea, the few hours spent in harbor were consumed in coaling and replenishing stores; then it was back to sea. As the months passed and the Germans failed to come out, the Grand Fleet spent more time at anchor. It became necessary to provide the officers and men—between 60,000 and 100,000 of them, many wrenched from their homes on the eve of war—with something more than “coaling, sleeping, sleeping, eating, sleeping, reading mail, writing letters, arguing about the war, eating, sleeping and then to sea.” Leave was given only when a ship left the fleet to enter a yard in the south for repair and maintenance; then a week or two might be granted. Meanwhile, Kirkwell, a sleepy Orkney town of 4,000 inhabitants, offered a medieval redbrick cathedral and a single hotel. “I should not select it for a cheery weekend,” said an officer of a light cruiser.
Football (Americans call it soccer) was one antidote. In the autumn of 1914, on the island of Flotta, football grounds were laid out in rectangles burned and smoothed out of the heather and used year-round, whenever the boats could bring players ashore. An eighteen-hole golf course was built, with battleships competing to construct individual holes. The winner was Canada, which imported turf from an established Scottish course and made its green “as smooth as a billiard table.” Nevertheless, said a Grand Fleet officer, “it was, I suppose, one of the very worst golf courses in the world. There were no prepared tees, no fairway, no greens. But there was much bare rock, great tufts of coarse grass greedy for balls, wide stretches of hard, naked soil destructive of wooden clubs, and holes cut here and there of approximately the regulation size.” Despite complaints, the course became so popular that alacrity in play was essential. A foursome would drive off the tee, then have to run down the course in order to be out of range of the next players, already shouting “Fore!” Tennis in its normal form was impossible owing to rain and continual wind, but two courts of gravel and ash were constructed and rarely went unused. There was fishing, boating, and even some shooting of ducks and grouse, although the four resident ducks on Flotta—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—were religiously protected. Officers enjoyed walking, hiking, and picnicking; on a summer’s day, the 1,500-foot summit of Ward Hill on the island of Hoy offered a magnificent panorama of emerald-green islands set in sparkling blue water with the gray ships lined up in rows like children’s toys. Flotta offered a pistol range for officers, a rifle range for men, and an annual Grand Fleet boxing championship, which drew 10,000 cheering spectators. Sailing and rowing matches between ships were frequent. Gardening became popular among both men and officers and, although neither soil nor climate were promising, edible vegetables were harvested. These were welcome, because the vegetables brought by sea to Scapa Flow sometimes arrived unrecognizable.
Most men on the ships remained on board. Deck hockey played with homemade sticks, throwing heavy medicine balls, and tugs-of-war were popular. Officers played billiards, the rolling of the ship even at anchor adding an element of challenge to the game. Motion pictures drew standing-room-only audiences. There were frequent lectures, with officers speaking about famous naval battles, great explorations, visits to the Western Front, and other subjects. Education was encouraged and, at Jellicoe’s request, the Admiralty provided naval schoolmasters who held evening classes for boys and men.
Two service ships, both primarily storage lockers for frozen meat, played important roles in distracting the crews. Borodino became a nautical canteen, a sort of floating Fortnum & Mason dispensing extras and luxuries, where officers could buy salmon, trout, frozen game, pâté, fruit, nuts, and stuffed olives. Ghourko was the theater ship, fitted with a stage and places for an audience of 600. Amateur reviews, pantomimes, and musical comedies were presented and large sums were spent on props, musical instruments, scenery, and lighting. In addition, Ghourko offered church services, cinema, lectures, and boxing in a full-sized ring. Jellicoe visited Ghourko whenever he could. Although slightly deaf from a burst eardrum, he loved musical comedy, especially Gilbert and Sullivan. Surrounded by his staff and the admirals and captains of the fleet, he sat in a big armchair placed in the front row, smoking his after-dinner cigarette in a holder while he roared at a chorus line of bare-kneed midshipmen.
Jellicoe was the figure around whom everything in the Grand Fleet revolved. His staff admired him without qualification. “Jellicoe . . . worked with amazing rapidity,” said one of these officers. “When the Iron Duke was in harbour, he sat at a tiny writing table in the middle of his cabin, reading despatches and memoranda, making pencil annotations and corrections, interrupted from time to time by the mass of matters and signals requiring immediate action. . . . Never did the writer see him out of temper or anything but cheerful. . . . His calm outlook never deserted him.” In the evening when not at sea, Jellicoe dined at a round table in his cabin with six or seven officers from his staff and Iron Duke’s captain, Frederic Dreyer. The admiral was abstemious. “Every night,” said the captain, “he would ask me: ‘Will you split an apple, Dreyer?’ and then cut it in halves and offer the plate to me with a charming smile.”
Aware that his health and power of concentration were vital assets to the fleet, Jellicoe did everything possible to maintain his own physical fitness. He went ashore and walked furiously up hills and over moors. In the evenings, he played with the heavy medicine ball on Iron Duke’s upper deck. “It’s splendid,” he told Beatty. “I’ve already sprained a finger and a knee.” At one point, Jellicoe was dissuaded with difficulty from trying out for Iron Duke’s gun room rugby team. His favorite exercise was golf, played on the Flotta course. Always allowed to play through, Jellicoe nevertheless played at the run, practically sprinting between holes. Wearying, the Bishop of London, an old friend, once cried a halt: “Look here, Jack, is this golf or a steeplechase?” At night in his cabin, Jellicoe did what he could to slough off the weight of responsibility by reading thrillers “of a particularly lurid description.”
Nevertheless, “living over the shop” on Iron Duke, he found his health deteriorating. Telegrams flowed in; streams of people arrived. There were constant civilian visitors: the king, who could not be ignored; the prime minister, who also must be attended to; the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Archbishop of Westminster, the Archbishop of York, forty colonial MPs, “five French gentlemen of eminence,” and “a representative of the United States press.” Always reluctant to delegate, Jellicoe received them all. Meanwhile, beneath his veneer of calm and hospitality, his worries—awareness of the weak points of the British navy, fear of German submarines, constant arguments with the Admiralty; above all, his sense of the unique immensity of his own responsibilities—wore him down. Inevitably, nervous strain brought physical repercussions.
By the beginning of January 1915, he was suffering severely from hemorrhoids. On January 25, he had a particularly bad attack. “I am not at all well,” he wrote to Beatty. “Crocked up yesterday. Very bad attack of piles and general run down.” Beatty, just back from fighting at the Dogger Bank, was concerned. “You must take the greatest care of yourself,” he replied to the Commander-in-Chief. “What we should do without you, Lord knows.” To a former colleague still at the Admiralty, Jellicoe wrote, “I am laid up for a bit. It is of course due to the worry of trying to get things done which ought to be done without my having to step in. I hope to be right early next week, but the doctor says at present it is dangerous to move out of bed.” Late in January, he entered a hospital ashore to have an operation under the name “Mr. Jessop.” Fisher sent up a specialist surgeon from London to take charge. Subsequently, the First Sea Lord wrote:
My beloved Jellicoe:
It is good news that the doctors telegraph to me that you are doing so well. Now do please take it easy, and damn Rosyth and everything else that worries you and simply play bridge. You are worth more than a hundred Rosyths or dozens of battleships so put that in your pipe and smoke it and take things easy.
A minor operation corrected the physical ailment, but it was a month before he returned to duty, “feeling really fit for work, though going a little slow at first.” But before the end of the summer of 1915, his health began to deteriorate again. Beatty noticed and wrote, “Please don’t overdo yourself. You are our only hope and must take care of yourself.” In September, Jellicoe, suffering from rheumatism and neuralgia, sent for a specialist, who diagnosed pyorrhea and pulled two teeth. The Admiralty suggested that he go ashore to rest, which he did at Kinpurnie Castle in Forfarshire, belonging to his father-in-law. He paid several visits to an Edinburgh dentist and, after a fortnight, returned to Scapa Flow, still under medical supervision, but temporarily refreshed and declaring himself “a totally different being.”
Through all of this, Jellicoe’s relationship with the men in the fleet deepened in mutual respect and affection. Both officers and men sensed that, beyond the requirements of command, the admiral would do everything in his power to ease their lot. Once when Jellicoe read in a newspaper that one of his young staff officers had become a father, he sent for him. The young man was told to go to London and call at the Admiralty eight hours after arriving in order to bring back any official papers there for the Commander-in-Chief. Jellicoe paused, then added, “I expect you will know how to employ those eight hours.” Somehow, Jellicoe managed to remember the names of an extraordinary number of ordinary seamen in the fleet and it was said that he knew and spoke to every member of the crew of Iron Duke. On these occasions, when the admiral approached and the sailor sprang to attention, Jellicoe always said, “At ease,” and wanted to know what the sailor was doing. Reports of this behavior spread through the fleet. One day, a small boat carrying a victorious regatta crew back to its ship passed near the stern of Iron Duke, where Jellicoe was walking alone on the quarterdeck. When he saw the silver trophy in the bows of the boat, Jellicoe leaned over the rail, “smiling, clapped his hands, applauding. . . . A wild tumult of frantic cheering burst out almost like an explosion from every throat. . . . There was gratitude and passionate loyalty in the demonstration and it continued long after the figure on the quarterdeck had turned away. ‘That’s what I likes about ’im,’ said a bearded seaman hoarsely. . . . ‘E’s that ’uman.’ ”
Scheer’s apparent willingness to lead the High Seas Fleet to sea led to dialogue between the Admiralty and the British sea admirals. Jackson suggested further seaplane raids to draw the Germans out, but Jellicoe continued wary. “I am being pressed to plan another [air raid], the idea being that it will bring the German fleet out,” he wrote to Beatty. “But if carried out at daylight and the German heavy ships do move, they won’t be clear of the minefields and in a position where we could engage them before about four p.m. This is no time to start a fight in those waters. It also involves our hanging about for a whole day in a bad locality, using up fuel, especially of our destroyers. . . . Patience is the virtue we must exercise. . . . What do you think?”
Beatty, despite his eagerness to fight the Germans, agreed: “You ask me what I think? I think the German fleet will come out only on its own initiative when the right time arrives. . . . Your arguments regarding the fuel question are unanswerable (and measure the situation absolutely). We cannot amble about the North Sea for two or three days and at the end be in a condition to fight the most decisive battle of the war. . . . When the Great Day comes, it will be when the enemy takes the initiative.”
Nevertheless, the staff on Iron Duke cudgeled its brains to devise a plan that would tempt the Germans out of harbor. By the end of May, Jellicoe was ready with a scheme he hoped would lure Scheer out to a position farther north than the High Seas Fleet had yet ventured. Beginning at dawn on June 2, eight British light cruisers would sweep down the Kattegat as far south as the Great Belt and the sound between Denmark and Sweden. The ships were meant to be seen from shore so that German agents would communicate with Scheer and provoke him to act. Behind the light cruisers, a single British battle squadron would cruise in the Skagerrak while, hovering to the northwest, the entire Grand Fleet would wait to pounce. This plan differed from previous bait offerings in that the cruisers would press deeper, suggesting that they meant to enter the Baltic to attack German communications. If the High Seas Fleet did not take the bait and come out far enough, Jellicoe still hoped that the German ships might venture far enough to pass over three Harwich submarines, which, as part of the plan, would submerge and wait for them from June 1 to June 3 just south of Horns Reef on the northern edge of the Bight.
Before this plan could be executed, however, the Admiralty began pick-ing up signals that suggested that the German fleet might move first. Since May 17, Room 40 codebreakers had been peeking at Scheer’s plans. The signals arranging the departure of the U-boats from their bases were the first to be deciphered; these messages were subsequently confirmed by the unusual number of signals coming from submarines in the northern North Sea. Strong antisubmarine patrols had been sent out. By May 28, it was clear to the Admiralty that something unusual was afoot: the numerous U-boats in the North Sea were not molesting merchant ships; the German fleet was assembling in the mouths of the Elbe and Jade. Early on Tuesday morning, May 30, Room 40 began deciphering signals from Scheer ordering his U-boats to remain at sea and telling the High Seas Fleet to assemble in the outer Jade by 7:00 p.m. Later that morning, Room 40 intercepted the German signal “31 G.G. 2490” addressed to all units of the High Seas Fleet. Although its meaning was unknown, it seemed likely to be an operational order of supreme importance. From the number 31, the cryptologists deduced that an operation by the German fleet was to begin the following day.
The Admiralty waited no longer. At noon, using the land telegraph direct to the flagships at Scapa Flow and Rosyth, Whitehall told Jellicoe and Beatty that the High Seas Fleet was assembling in the outer Jade and that there were indications the Germans were coming out. At 5:16 p.m. the Admiralty ordered the main fleet and the Battle Cruiser Fleet to raise steam. And then, at 5:40 p.m., a further message came to Jellicoe and Beatty: “Germans intend some operations commencing tomorrow morning leaving via Horns Reef. You should concentrate to eastward of Long Forties ready for eventualities.”
That afternoon, the Honorable Barry Bingham, captain of the destroyer Nestor attached to the battle cruisers at Rosyth, was ashore playing golf with a friend near Edinburgh. “After a thoroughly enjoyable game,” he wrote later, “we adjourned for tea to the little house I had rented on the side of the links, and then found our way down to Queensferry Pier at the regulation hour of 6:00 p.m. to catch a routine boat. While we stood waiting on the pier amid a throng of fellow officers, all eyes were suddenly drawn in the direction of the Lion from whose masthead there floated a string of flags with their message to all ships: ‘Raise steam for 22 knots and report when ready.’ ”
At Scapa Flow and Cromarty as at Rosyth, signal flags snapping at the halyards of the flagships sent streams of boats scurrying from ship to shore, picking up crew members, while scores of funnels billowed black smoke showing that furnaces were raising steam. At Scapa, officers just beginning a game of deck hockey on board the new battleship Revenge began behaving like schoolboys, cheering, dancing, and hugging one another. That night, the sun set with a “blazing red and orange coloring caused by storm clouds . . . which seemed a foreboding of something dreadful about to happen.” Twilight arrived and through the summer evening air came the shrill of boatswains’ pipes as ship’s boats were hoisted aboard, followed by the clank of anchor chains coming in. Ship after ship hoisted the flag signal, “Ready to proceed.” At 9:30 p.m., beacons marking Hoxa Sound flashed on and the boom defense trawlers began to haul away the system of nets and flotation buoys and open the gates. In the growing darkness, the gray ships began to move, passing in procession through the harbor, down the four miles of Hoxa Sound, and out through the net defenses into the rolling swell of the open sea. There, the night was calm, with an overcast sky covering the stars and the islands receding into the heavy, wet mist. The dreadnoughts, silent and black, were seen by their neighbors only as shadowy forms except for a small, shaded light on the stern of each. On the bridges, officers stared ahead, while the crews at the guns looked out in all directions. “Inside the ships,” wrote coauthors Langhorne Gibson and J.E.T. Harper, “in another world of bright electric light, and intense heat, the turbines hummed with steady drone and the stokers’ shovels rasped as they fed coal into the boiler fires.”
When the last vessels of Jellicoe’s fleet cleared Hoxa Sound, the great anchorage was practically deserted. The admiral had left five warships behind, four of them deliberately: these were the new 15-inch-gun battleship Royal Sovereign, commissioned only three weeks before, and three destroyers. By mistake, the aircraft carrier Campania, which Jellicoe had so much wanted with him, was also left behind. Anchored in an isolated bay inside the Flow, she had somehow not received the order to sail. By the timeCampania’s captain was told and got his ship to sea, he was far behind; unwilling to risk a large ship steaming unescorted in the North Sea, Jellicoe ordered her back to harbor. The Commander-in-Chief thereby deprived himself of a significant asset—aerial reconnaissance—he might have used the following day.
From Scapa Flow, on that eve of Jutland, Jellicoe in Iron Duke brought two battle squadrons (sixteen dreadnought battleships) and three battle cruisers (Hood’s Invincibles), plus four old armored cruisers, eleven light cruisers, and thirty-six destroyers; in all, seventy warships. From Cromarty came another twenty-three ships: eight dreadnoughts, another four armored cruisers, and eleven destroyers. In the Forth, Beatty’s six battle cruisers slipped silently past the waterside cottages and under the iron spans of the great railway bridge. Close behind followed the four Queen Elizabeths led by Rear Admiral Hugh Evan-Thomas in Barham. Beatty also brought three squadrons of light cruisers—twelve ships in all—including the veteran 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron commanded by Commodore William Goodenough in Southampton. He had twenty-seven destroyers and the small aircraft carrier Engadine carrying three seaplanes: fifty ships in all. Elsewhere, other British ships and squadrons made ready for sea. The Admiralty believed that a German thrust might aim at the Channel, so the Harwich Force was ordered to raise steam. And the 3rd Battle Squadron—Dreadnought herself, and the seven remaining predreadnought King Edwards—was ordered to raise steam and to concentrate off the Thames estuary.
So it was that by 10:30 p.m. on May 30, while Friedrich der Grosse still lay at anchor in the Jade, the Grand Fleet was at sea in three great formations, 150 ships, all heading toward the Jutland Bank. That night Jellicoe was bringing 28 dreadnought battleships, 9 dreadnought battle cruisers, 8 armored cruisers, 26 light cruisers, 78 destroyers, a minelayer, and an aircraft carrier. The Grand Fleet’s numerical superiority over the Germans was marked: 28 to 16 in dreadnought battleships; 9 to 5 in battle cruisers, 113 to 72 in lighter craft. In gun power, Jellicoe’s superiority was even more pronounced. The British battle fleet carried 272 heavy naval guns against the German fleet’s 200. And the guns of the British battleships were bigger: 48 15-inch, 10 14-inch, 110 13.5-inch, and 104 12-inch. The Germans brought 128 12-inch and 72 11-inch. Comparative figures for the battle cruisers were even more disparate: 32 13.5-inch and 40 12-inch British guns versus 16 12-inch and 28 11-inch German barrels. In addition to this overwhelming superiority in number of guns, caliber of guns, and weight of shell, the Grand Fleet also had a significant speed advantage over the High Seas Fleet. Beatty’s four Cats could steam 3 knots faster than Hipper’s battle cruisers, while, because Mauve’s predreadnoughts were in company with the German battle line, Jellicoe’s battle fleet was at least 2 knots faster than Scheer’s.
At 7:37 p.m., before Iron Duke departed Scapa Flow, Jellicoe signaled Beatty his orders for the following day. The battle cruisers were to steer for a point 100 miles northwest of Horns Reef, arriving there at 2:00 p.m. At that time, the Grand Fleet would be sixty-five miles to the north. Then Jellicoe said, “If [there is] no news by 2 p.m. stand [north] towards me to get in visual touch.”
Now, on both sides, the orders were given. Fifty-eight moving castles of gray steel—thirty-seven under one flag, twenty-one under the other, the dreadnoughts of the two greatest navies in the world—were about to collide.