Seydlitz avoided Lützow’s fate by the narrowest of margins. With thousands of tons of water in her own damaged hull, she tried to follow Moltke, but lost her in the dark. Ordered to make her way independently to Horns Reef, she began a voyage filled with suspense and misery. Her charts were covered with blood and her gyrocompass was wrecked; steered by hand machinery, listing, and with her bow under water, she stumbled down the starboard side of the British battle line. Agincourt, with fourteen 12-inch guns, saw her. “I did not challenge her,” said Agincourt’s captain, “so as not to give our division’s position away.” Passing through a gap in the British battle line, Seydlitz came within less than a mile of the 5th Battle Squadron. Malaya, with eight 15-inch guns, saw and recognized the German battle cruiser but did nothing. Marlborough, with ten 13.5-inch guns, identified her as “a large ship” but did not fire. “I missed the chance of a lifetime,” Marlborough’s gunnery officer said later. “I saw the dim outline of this ship and had the main armament trained on it and put a range of 4,000 yards on the sights and asked the captain for permission to open fire. He replied ‘No’ as he thought it was one of our own ships. Of course what I ought to have done was to have opened fire and blown the ship out of the water and then said ‘Sorry.’ ” Revenge, with eight 15-inch guns, saw Seydlitz, too, and her 6-inch guns were ordered to fire, but the secondary battery gun crews were out on deck watching the fireworks of the destroyer actions and by the time they were back at their guns it was too late. Thus, when a few short-range broadsides would have finished her, Seydlitz, already sinking, was allowed to wander safely past three British dreadnoughts.
At 1:40 a.m., Seydlitz reached Horns Reef—and twice ran aground on it. Twice, Captain von Egidy backed the ship off with her own engines, but by 4:40 a.m., she was down eleven feet by the bow. The light cruiser Pillau arrived to pilot, but in spite of this, Seydlitz went aground again. Again, by reversing her engines and with the aid of a rising tide, she backed off, but wind and sea also were rising and waves swept over the forward deck up to the base of the bridge. Passing through the Amrum Bank, the ship settled deeper until the keel began scraping along the bottom. The bulkheads inside the hull strained under the pressure of the sea. Men standing thigh-deep in water bailed with buckets in devastated, badly lit compartments filled with jagged fragments and, sometimes, human remains. The list reached 8 degrees and continued to grow. At 1:30 in the afternoon, Seydlitz turned and reversed engines to proceed stern first. Pillau and several minesweepers tried to tow the waterlogged ship backward, but the wire hawsers broke. Finally, at the end of the afternoon, she grounded hard on a Weser River sandbank. Tugs and two pumping ships arrived from Wilhelmshaven and she was dragged off and towed stern first to the outer Jade. There, her wounded were taken off and she was towed backward across the bar into Jade roads. She remained for four days, while, to reduce weight, the two 11-inch guns and much of the armor plate from the forward gun turret were removed. On June 6, Seydlitz was moved inside the harbor gates, but another week of caulking and pumping was necessary and the two 11-inch guns of the port wing gun turret were stripped out. Finally, on June 13, the ship was able to enter a floating dry dock to begin three months of repairs.
Moltke was the only relatively unharmed German battle cruiser. Hipper was on board when she became separated from the fleet, and he knew that Scheer’s course was southeast toward Horns Reef. The Grand Fleet, unfortunately, was in the way. At 10:30 p.m., as Moltke attempted to edge through the British squadrons, Captain Johannes von Karpf suddenly saw the shadows of British dreadnoughts—the rear division of Admiral Jerram’s 2nd Battle Squadron—looming up 2,000 yards away. Hoping that his ship had not been sighted, Karpf quickly put the helm hard over and the phantom ships faded silently into the darkness. In fact, Moltke had been seen by one of these ships, Thunderer, but the British captain did not open fire. “It was inadvisable to show up the battle fleet unless obvious attack was intended,” he said later. A few broadsides at that range would have destroyed Moltke, and Hipper as well, but it was not to be. Twice more, Karpf groped eastward, trying to break through, but each time the menacing shapes of Jerram’s dreadnoughts stood up against the eastern sky, and each time, Karpf altered course back to the west. After the third attempt, he gave up and with Hipper’s permission ordered maximum speed to the south; at midnight Moltke was able to cross in front of the Grand Fleet with a clear passage home.
Two German light cruisers, Elbing and Rostock, were scuttled, like Lützow, by friendly hands. Elbing, after being rammed by Posen, had come to a stop with her engine rooms filled with water. At 1:00 a.m. a destroyer was ordered alongside and the crew, with the exception of a small salvage party including the captain, was taken off. When his derelict ship drifted close to a group of undamaged British destroyers, Captain Madlung gave the order for Elbing to be sunk with explosive charges. Rostock had been hit by a torpedo at 11:50 a.m. and was taken in tow. But the ship continued to settle and at 4:15 a.m., with her crew transferred, she was sunk by German torpedoes.
Jellicoe rose from his cot on Iron Duke prepared to resume the battle. His ships were ready, the crews were at action stations, the guns had remained loaded all night. The Commander-in-Chief’s plan had been to turn from his southerly course and arrive off Horns Reef at daylight, but now, looking at the sea, he reconsidered. The sky was gray, visibility was less than 4,000 yards, and the fleet was disorganized and widely dispersed. Seven of his battleships—Marlborough’s division and the three Queen Elizabeths—had dropped far astern. Beatty and the battle cruisers were nowhere in sight; missing with them were the two light cruiser squadrons Jellicoe needed for scouting. Of greatest concern, the British destroyer flotillas were scattered far and wide. Jellicoe now was in waters close to the German coast, facing the possibility of destroyer or U-boat attacks with no light forces available to screen his dreadnoughts. “These difficulties rendered it undesirable to close Horns Reef at daylight as had been my intention,” he was to write in his usual laconic style. Still believing that Scheer was northwest of him rather than south or southeast, he ordered the Grand Fleet to reverse course and turn north for “the double purpose of catching Scheer and collecting the light craft which should be astern of me.” At 2:30 a.m., the battle fleet swung around to the north and formed a single line ahead, accepting the danger of submarine attack in this exposed formation in order to be ready for the German surface fleet if it suddenly appeared.
At 3:15 a.m., Jellicoe sent another dreadnought home. Marlborough, which had been dropping steadily astern, reported that her torpedo wound would force her to reduce speed to 12 knots. Vice Admiral Cecil Burney shifted his flag from Marlborough to Revenge and, with Jellicoe’s permission, ordered Marlborough back to the Tyne. About this same time, a zeppelin, L-11, appeared over the fleet and hovered four miles away. Neptune raised one gun of its X turret to maximum elevation and fired a 12-inch shell. The airship, said a midshipman in the battleship’s foretop, “lifted its nose disdainfully to the morning breeze and disappeared to the southwest.” Other British battleships fired at L-11 with equally poor results. The significance, obvious to all in the Grand Fleet, was that now the Germans knew their exact position.
Beatty, fifteen miles southwest of Jellicoe at sunrise, was convinced that the High Seas Fleet lay to his own southwest, and, at 4:04 a.m., asked permission to sweep in that direction to find the enemy. It was too late. Five minutes earlier, an Admiralty message had been handed to Jellicoe that gave Scheer’s 2:30 a.m. position as sixteen miles from Horns Reef lightship, his course as southeast, and his speed as 16 knots. Ninety minutes had passed since 2:30 and it was evident to Jellicoe that by now Scheer must have passed Horns Reef and reached safety in the protected channel. At 4:30 a.m., Beatty, unaware of this Admiralty message and not waiting for the Commander-in-Chief’s reply, began exhorting his battle cruisers: “Damage yesterday was heavy on both sides. We hope today to cut off and annihilate the whole German fleet. Every man must do his utmost. Lützow is s
inking and another German battle cruiser expected to have sunk.” Ten minutes later, the author of this rhetoric received a crushing message from Iron Duke: “Enemy fleet has returned to harbor. Try to locate Lützow.”
The Battle of Jutland was over. Nothing remained for the Grand Fleet to do except to sweep north, hoping to find enemy stragglers and damaged vessels. At 4:13 a.m., Jellicoe re-formed the battle fleet into its daytime cruising order—battleship divisions of four ships each; the divisions spread abeam of one another—in order to search on a wide front and to provide better protection against U-boats. Through the morning, the fleet steamed through the desolate waters that had been the scene of the previous day’s and night’s battles. Flotsam of all kinds, including wooden mess stools, broken timbers, and thousands of dead fish floating belly up, killed by the detonation of shells, rolled gently in vast patches of oil. Frequently, the surface was disturbed by air bubbles rising from far below, where water had penetrated a compartment of a sunken ship. Bodies wearing the uniforms of both nations floated in life preservers; many of these men had died, not of wounds or drowning, but of exposure. Among the survivors picked up was the captain of the destroyer Ardent, who had watched many of his own crew die in the water during the night. “None appeared to suffer at all,” he said. “They just seemed to lie back and go to sleep.”
Jellicoe devoted the morning to collecting his scattered fleet and gathering information about his missing and damaged ships. By 6:00 a.m. his light cruisers had rejoined, but not until 9:00 a.m. were all British destroyers back in company. At 9:07 he signaled Beatty, “I want to ascertain if all disabled ships are on the way. Are all your light cruisers and destroyers accounted for? Where are New Zealand and Indefatigable?” Beatty replied, astonishing the Commander-in-Chief by giving the positions of the “wreck of Queen Mary . . . wreck of Invincible . . . [and] wreck of Indefatigable.” This first knowledge of the loss of a second and third British battle cruiser provoked a long silence between the two admirals. Then, at 11:04, Jellicoe asked Beatty, “When did Queen Mary and Indefatigable go down?” Beatty replied that it had been the previous afternoon. At 11:25, Jellicoe was back: “Was cause of sinking mines, torpedoes or gunfire?” and Beatty answered, “Do not think it was mines or torpedoes because both explosions immediately followed hits by salvos.” It was in this manner that the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet learned of the sinking of two of his capital ships, nineteen hours after they went down. Heavyhearted, but with nothing more to be done, Jellicoe reported to the Admiralty that he had swept the area where the battle had been fought, found no enemy ships, and therefore was returning to base. A little after 11:00 a.m., the Grand Fleet turned northwest for Scapa Flow.
Meanwhile, a procession of wounded British ships was struggling homeward across the North Sea. At one point, Marlborough seemed to be sinking; in the hour after midnight, the dreadnought ordered the small ships in her escort to be prepared to come alongside and take off her crew; this was never necessary. Along the way, both crippled British dreadnoughts, Marlborough and Warspite, were attacked by submarines. U-46 fired one torpedo at Marlborough, which missed by fifty yards; the battleship turned away and eventually made the Humber. About the same time, Warspite, still 100 miles from the Firth of Forth, was sighted by U-51. Despite a heavy sea, the submarine managed to maintain periscope depth, approach unseen to within 650 yards, and fire two torpedoes. Only one torpedo left its tube, however, because at just that moment, a large wave plunged the submarine’s bow into the sea. This missile broke the surface, betraying the presence of the submarine, and Warspite’s captain swung his ship around, increased speed, and hurried away. Two hours later, a lookout sighted a periscope 100 yards ahead of the ship. Warspite attempted to ram, but U-63, returning with a disabled engine from its patrol off the Forth, crash-dived and escaped. At 3:30 on the afternoon of June 1, Warspite passed under the Forth bridge and reached Rosyth, her hull four and a half feet lower in the water than normal. Immediately, her sister Queen Elizabeth was moved out of dry dock so that Warspite could go in.
Sparrowhawk, helpless after her collision with Broke, drifted until dawn, when a dim shape appeared out of the mist two miles away. When the crew of Sparrowhawk recognized a modern German light cruiser, they readied their one remaining gun and prepared for the end. But to their astonishment, the enemy did not open fire; instead, the light cruiser rolled over, stood on her head, and sank. The stranger was the crippled ghost ship Elbing, abandoned by her crew.
Meanwhile, water was rising steadily in the engine rooms of the shattered armored cruiser Warrior. After staggering away from the battle, the cruiser had been sighted by Engadine, the small cross-Channel steamer converted into a seaplane carrier that had flown off a scouting seaplane early in the battle. The smaller ship’s captain, seeing the big armored cruiser in trouble, had offered help. Warrior asked Engadine to remain near and when Warrior’s engines stopped altogether, the seaplane carrier took the waterlogged cruiser in tow. Engadine—a 1,600-ton ship towing a 13,500-ton ship—did her best and together they struggled along at 3 knots. During the night, however, the wind rose and Warrior yawed so much from side to side that Engadine, “bobbing about like a cork,” was forced to cast off the tow. By 7:00 a.m., the armored cruiser was obviously sinking and her captain decided to abandon ship. Engadine tried to come along Warrior’s starboard side to take off her crew, but it was too difficult. The seaplane carrier backed off and tried the port side, but this attempt also failed. Engadine then lay off the starboard quarter—and for a while, the hundreds of men of Warrior’s crew believed that they would have to swim across or go down with the ship. But Engadine was only waiting for Warrior’s yawing to steady; then, once again, she came up along the starboard side. This time her approach succeeded and the two ships made fast. While their steel plates ground against each other in the heavy seas, Warrior’s crew mustered on deck to transfer to the other ship. The wounded went first on stretchers; then the captain ordered his crew to go by sections. Considering that the men were moving too hastily for safety, he had the bugler sound “Still.” Every man fell back into ranks on deck; later, Engadine’s captain was to marvel at this “triumph of organization, discipline and courage.” When “Carry on” sounded, the transfer resumed. Seven hundred and forty-three men were taken off, and the last to leave were the officers and the captain. At 8:00 a.m., Warrior was left 160 miles east of Aberdeen, never to be seen again. Thus, three of the four armored cruisers that sailed with Sir Robert Arbuthnot from Cromarty—Defence, Black Prince, and Warrior—were gone. Of the 1st Cruiser Squadron, only Duke of Edinburgh returned from Jutland.
On every British ship, men slumped and dozed wherever they were. Officers returning to their cabins and finding them wrecked and uninhabitable went to the wardroom to find every chair occupied by someone fast asleep. Admirals were no less weary. Aboard Lion on the afternoon of June 1, Beatty came into the chart house, “sat down on the settee and closed his eyes. Unable to hide his disappointment at the result of the battle, he repeated in a weary voice, ‘There is something wrong with our ships.’ Then, opening his eyes, he added, ‘And something wrong with our system.’ Then he fell asleep.” In another part of the ship, Chatfield went down to his quarters to find his bathroom being used as an operating room. “[It was] an awful sight,” he said, “[with] bits of body and arms and legs lying about.” No one was more exhausted than the ships’ surgeons, but their work could not end. “The wounded who could speak were very cheerful and wanted only one thing—cigarettes,” remembered one officer. “The most dreadful cases were the ‘burns’—but this subject cannot be written about.” Nevertheless, years later, one surgeon did write about his experience at Jutland with flash burns from exploding powder: “Very rapidly, almost as one looks, the face swells up, the looser parts of the skin become enormously swollen, the eyes are invisible through the great swelling of the lids, the lips enormous jelly-like masses, in the center of which a button-like mouth appears. . . . The great c
ry is water. . . . They die and die very rapidly.”
Not all sailors were sentimental about wounds or death. A gunner on Warspite, who had lost a leg, sent his friends back to look for it, hoping to recover the money he kept wrapped up in that sock. And a Cockney cook on Chester cheerfully told an officer “how he had found his mate lying dead with the top of his head neatly sliced off, ‘just as you might slice off the top of a boiled egg, Sir.’ ” The tradition of the British navy required that dead men on board be buried at sea before a ship reached port and throughout the day, all across the North Sea, bodies were committed to the deep. Sail makers stitched bodies into hammocks with a hundred-pound shell at their feet, placed them on a plank, and covered them with a Union Jack. Ships slowed in heavy seas with spray sweeping the decks, chaplains with gowns blowing in the wind read prayers, bugles sounded, the planks were lifted, and the hammocks slid out from under the flags and into the water. Not all of the remains could be identified. On Lion, “poor charred bodies” were removed from Q turret and at noon, ninety-five mutilated forms, including six officers and eighty-nine men, were buried. Malaya interred many “poor, unrecognisable scraps of humanity.” Afterward, on Tiger, “an awful smell penetrated all over the ship and we had to get busy with buckets of disinfectant and carbolic soap. Human flesh had gotten into all sorts of nooks, such as voice pipes, telephones, and ventilating shafts.”
The following morning, Friday, June 2, 1916, Lion and the battle cruisers reached the Firth of Forth, passed under the great railway bridge, and anchored off Rosyth. At noon the same day, the Grand Fleet passed through Pentland Firth and entered Scapa Flow. During the afternoon and early evening, the battle squadrons coaled, oiled, and took on ammunition. And at 9:45 p.m., Jellicoe reported to the Admiralty that, on four hours’ notice, the British fleet could go back to sea.
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