From Ice Floes to Battlefields

by Anne Strathie

  The war from a naval (big ship) point of view is about as dull as it could be. However this fleet is the advance face of the Grand Fleet & so if & when the Huns come out, we ought to be there.

  Jane [Atkinson] is ‘seriously’ ill at Malta. He had a fever & then got pleurisy. I understand that he is better & likely to come home, but my news only comes through my wife, who heard from Mrs Kinsey who heard from Lady Nicholson [Atkinson’s aunt]. After Jane left the Grand Fleet the only one of the expedition I’ve seen has been [Frankie] Davies who is on the Blanche and as merry as usual … Burton is in one of the Light Cruisers based south & occasionally sees a German. He has a son & heir (some 5 or 6 months old now) & is as proud as Lucifer in consequence.

  William Burton, in appreciation of the kindness Pennell had shown him following Brissenden’s death at French Pass in 1912, had named his son Lewin (one of Pennell’s middle names); he had also asked Pennell to be the boy’s godfather.3

  Pennell had news of several other ‘Antarctics’, some of which he suspected Cherry already knew:4

  Drake is in the Undaunted & safely married to a very charming girl … Mather is (or was) at Crystal Palace instructing recruits. He is a Lieut R.N.V.R. I believe. Ponting is still in town & very sad that the War Office couldn’t make use of him as a photographer. He volunteered but was refused as being not required. He is 46 & so cannot do anything in the military line …

  It is very unfortunate about Jane. Luck of war of course, but one hoped he might escape … There is no news from the fleet & if there were it would be taboo. The men are absolute gold, they all seem to realise what is at stake & keep their spirits up & try to keep efficient; at it does require some patience.

  Well so long, my dear, I do hope you are getting better luck than you had at first …

  Pennell had kept in touch with Emily Bowers, with whose son he had spent an ice-bound Christmas in the Ross Sea five years previously:5

  Dear Mrs Bowers

  A short note to send you the season’s greetings. ‘Hope for the present & Peace & Happiness in the future’ is the nicest motto I have seen in the cards.

  It is a time when it is necessary for the British Public to keep their heads & they are not assisted much by the great London Daily newspapers except the Telegraph. The position though dangerous is not unfavourable & it seems likely that during 1916 the Germans will make a bid for an inconclusive peace, which for us would be no peace but only a truce. The more the war drags on the more plain becomes the enemy we are fighting against & the fact that we can no more make a truce than we can between wrong & right in one’s own life.

  All the family are scattered now, the old home having broken up at my mother’s death early this year. My eldest sister [Winifred] is in Nyasaland teaching natives the rudiments of Christianity … The youngest [Nesta] is married & gone to Australia, her husband having been invalided out of the Army … & blown up by a bomb after he got back again … two brothers are in Egypt & Burma & Dorothy is joining the Canterbury hospital this month. Ann, married to a clergyman, is safely settled down at Wool & is the only one who has resisted the ‘call of the wild’.

  I myself was married last April, but of course can as yet see nothing of my wife. That good time will come when the business in hand is settled. I much hope then that she may have the pleasure of meeting you.

  With all good wishes to you & the Misses Bowers

  Pennell had married Katie Hodson on 15 April 1915 during a short spell of home leave. The couple had been married at Oddington parish church by Katie’s father; Cyril Hodson, Katie’s vicar brother (whose profession exempted him from military service), had served as best man. Atkinson had been sorry to miss the wedding, but Pennell had introduced him to Katie in London a few weeks before the wedding. (Atkinson later told Cherry-Garrard that Pennell’s ‘Missus’ was ‘nice and pretty’.6)

  The Cheltenham & Gloucester Graphic had devoted several column inches to Pennell’s ‘very pretty’ wedding.7 Oddington’s streets had been festooned with flags and other decorations. Katie Hodson wore a white satin dress trimmed with Honiton lace (made near Awliscombe) and carried a bouquet of orchids and lilies of the valley. She wore an antique pearl and diamond necklace around her neck which Pennell had given her as a wedding present. Pennell wore full dress uniform. The wedding was very much a family affair: one of Katie’s bridesmaids, ‘Maynie’ Hedderwick, would soon be marrying Pennell’s friend, Katie’s brother Gerry, and three of Pennell’s sisters had travelled to Gloucestershire for the wedding. After the ceremony there had been a wedding tea at the vicarage: the cake, decorated by Cheltenham’s Oriental Café with models of penguins, seals, lifebelts, anchors and a model ship, had been much admired.

  It had been a happy day, but since then Katie Pennell had lost her father and her brother Hubert. The latter had been killed near Ypres whilst serving with his Canadian regiment.8 Another of Katie’s brothers, Francis, had been wounded while serving with the 7th Gloucestershire Regiment at Gallipoli.

  Although Pennell sometimes found life on the Queen Mary rather dull, the appointment of Captain Prowse to command of a large modern battlecruiser had not been without controversy.

  Prowse’s predecessor, William Hall (the Queen Mary’s first captain) had been a ‘moderniser’ who had insisted his ship should be fitted out with all modern conveniences, including a hot water system, laundry, bookstall, cinema and chapel. After Hall moved to his next command one of his protégés, Commander William James, requested a transfer from the Queen Mary rather than serve under an ‘old school’ captain like Prowse.9 James was regarded as exceptionally bright but not as hardworking as ambitious young commanders were expected to be.10 ‘Bubbles’, as James was known (from a painting of him, by his grandfather Sir John Everett Millais, which had been used to advertise Pears soap) had left the Queen Mary early in 1916.

  After Gallipoli, the British press and public had become increasingly impatient for Britain’s navy to deal a knock-out blow to the enemy. It was not only Edward Atkinson who was waiting for the ‘big show’.

  On Sunday, 24 April 1916, ships from the German High Seas Fleet emerged from Jade Bay, crossed the North Sea and began bombarding Lowestoft and Yarmouth. The German ships were on their way back to Jade Bay long before any Grand Fleet ships arrived from Scapa Flow. Soon afterwards the Battlecruiser Fleet, including the Queen Mary, was relocated to Rosyth, near Edinburgh; the 5th Battle Squadron was moved south to the Cromarty Firth.

  In early May ships from the British Grand Fleet crossed the North Sea to Jutland Bank, from where seaplanes attacked the German Zeppelin base at Tondern. Some damage was done, but the raid failed to lure the High Seas Fleet out of Jade Bay.

  In mid-May cryptographers working at the navy’s Intelligence Division intercepted German wireless signals which suggested that the High Seas Fleet was preparing for a major offensive.

  On the afternoon of Tuesday, 30 May, after it was confirmed that the German fleet was about to put out from Jade Bay, captains of coal-fired Dreadnoughts were ordered to raise steam. That evening Admiral Jellicoe’s flagship, King George V, led a convoy of Dreadnoughts, destroyers and smaller ships out of Scapa Flow.

  Jellicoe had issued a seventy-page battle-plan which outlined his strategy and provided instructions for almost every eventuality. Pennell and his fellow officers were confident that, with fifty more ships than the Germans and, on average, newer and better equipped vessels, the odds were in favour of the Grand Fleet.

  The Battlecruiser Fleet which emerged from Rosyth consisted of HMS Lion (Beatty’s flagship), Queen Mary, Princess Royal, Tiger, New Zealand and Indefatigable. They would engage directly with five German battlecruisers: SMS Lützow (the German flagship), Seydlitz, Derfflinger, Von der Tann and Moltke. Well before any German ships were in sight, everything was ready on the Queen Mary and her sister ships: decks were clear, gunners on alert, ammunition piles to hand and sickbays clean and ready to receive any casualties.

  Just before 3.30 p.m
. New Zealand and Princess Royal signalled that they could see the German battlecruisers. The Queen Mary’s guns, like those of the other five battlecruisers, had a range of almost 14 miles – although accuracy could not be guaranteed when firing at grey-painted German battlecruisers through North Sea mists.

  The Germans opened fire first and by 3.50 p.m. the eleven ships were engaged in battle. The Lützow began firing on the Lion, Derfflinger on Princess Royal, Seydlitz on Queen Mary, Moltke on Tiger and Von der Tann on Indefatigable. As the Germans had one less ship, the New Zealand was unmarked. The Indefatigable returned fire on the Von der Tann, while the Lion and Princess Royal both fired on the Lützow. The New Zealand began firing at Moltke, but there appeared to be some signalling or other confusion as the Queen Mary, which had been ordered to fire at the Derfflinger, spent the first half-hour firing at the Seydlitz. Meanwhile the Tiger, which should have been firing at the Seydlitz, was aiming at the Moltke.

  Waterspouts shot into the air as shells landed over or under target, but eventually gunners on both sides began to find their range. From the British side, the Queen Mary and Lion scored two hits each on the Seydlitz and Lützow respectively. But before Princess Royal, Tiger, New Zealand and Indefatigable scored their first hits, all the British battlecruisers except New Zealand had been struck by shells. Beatty withdrew Lion from the line, to allow his men to deal with fires which had broken out and assess the damage.

  Around 4 p.m., as the Indefatigable and the Von der Tann traded salvoes, a shell from the Von der Tann hit one of the Indefatigable’s magazines. In the explosion which followed, turrets, funnels and debris shot 200ft into the air, followed by a huge column of flames and smoke. Within minutes the stricken ship keeled over and began to sink. From what those on the Queen Mary and other ships could see, it seemed unlikely than anyone could have survived the explosions or escaped before the ship sank.11

  Just before 4.10 p.m. the ships of the 5th Battle Squadron arrived on the scene and began firing on the German battlecruisers. They inflicted some damage on Von der Tann and Moltke, but with the Lion still out of the fighting line, the Queen Mary, Princess Royal, Tiger and New Zealand were now outnumbered five to four.

  A few minutes later Seydlitz and Derfflinger both turned their guns on the Queen Mary. Her gunners managed to score four hits on the Seydlitz but just after 4.20 p.m. one of the Queen Mary’s gun turrets was hit. Most of the gunners in the turret were killed instantly. As unloaded shells exploded, toxic gases began spreading around the ship. Suddenly a second huge explosion almost broke the Queen Mary in two. Her bow section, including the bridge, lifted clean out of the water, then plunged downwards and sank beneath the waves. As the now-detached stern tilted forward into the water, it became impossible for survivors to launch life-boats or drop ladders into the sea. Those who had been blown or jumped into the water now risked being pulled down with the remaining part of their ship.

  When the Queen Mary had been hit the Tiger and New Zealand had been forced to swerve to avoid ramming into her. By the time they emerged from the smoke all that remained of the Queen Mary was a partial skeleton, some floating chunks of debris and a few oil slicks. In the sky, a huge tower of black smoke floated upwards above where the Queen Mary had been. There were less than twenty survivors in the water waiting to be rescued.

  Beatty had entered battle with the odds 6–5 in his favour; they were now 5–4 against him. If he chased his assailants he risked finding himself against the full force of the German fleet. He ordered the Lion, Princess Royal, Tiger and New Zealand to swing round and rejoin the rest of the Grand Fleet. The ‘run south’ was over.

  The sea-battle continued into the evening and the short night. By 3 a.m. on 1 June (by which time the sky was becoming light again) Lion, Princess Royal, Tiger and New Zealand had joined other ships of the Grand Fleet in battle line. But as the High Seas Fleet retreated to Jade Bay, it was clear that the ‘big show’ was over.

  On 2 June 1916 The Times reported that Sir Ernest Shackleton had rescued members of his expedition from Elephant Island and brought them safely to Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands. Raymond Priestley, who was working the army’s Wireless Training Centre in Worcester, was puzzled that no official communiqué had been published in The Times or elsewhere about the major naval engagement which he knew from wireless messages had taken place in the North Sea two days previously.

  On 3 June The Times published an official announcement which the Admiralty had issued at 7 p.m. the previous evening.

  On the afternoon of Wednesday May 31, a naval engagement took place off the coast of Jutland. The British ships on which the brunt of the fighting fell were the Battle Cruiser Fleet and some cruisers and light cruisers, supported by four fast battle ships. Amongst those the losses were heavy.

  The German Battle Fleet, aided by low visibility, avoided prolonged action with our main forces, and soon after these appeared on the scene the enemy returned to port, though not before receiving severe damage from our battle-ships.

  The battle-cruisers, Queen Mary, Indefatigable, Invincible, and the cruisers Defence and Black Prince were sunk … the destroyers Tipperary, Turbulent, Fortune, Sparrowhawk, and Ardent were lost, and others are not yet accounted for …

  The enemy’s losses were serious.

  On 5 June The Times listed the names of over 300 officers known to have died during the engagement. The third name on the list of the officers who had died on HMS Queen Mary was that of its navigator, Harry Pennell. Edward Atkinson wrote immediately to Cherry-Garrard:12

  Penelope has gone and I am very sore at his loss as I know you will be too … Our fellows did splendidly, outnumbered as they were … and made the Germans suffer even more than they did. I am so sorry for [Pennell’s] poor little wife … I hope soon the tide will turn and we shall wipe the scum still further from France … Apparently Crean was with S[hackleton] and got through again. I don’t believe you could kill old Crean he is wonderful.

  Atkinson was doubly relieved that Shackleton’s Weddell Sea party were safe as he had been approached about joining a relief party to assist Shackleton but been reluctant to do so, given his war service duties.13

  Over the next week Atkinson received several letters about Pennell’s death. There was one from Sir Lewis Beaumont which he told Cherry he would like to show to Katie Pennell at the appropriate time.14

  Atkinson, who was now in France, could not disclose his current location to Cherry, but assured him it was ‘all pretty interesting, very much more peaceful than Gallipoli and much more comfortable’. He was, he could reveal, under canvas, in weather which was ‘beastly cold and wet with hailstones and thunder’. In closing, Atkinson, who knew Cherry would be deeply affected by Pennell’s death and worry about his own limited war service, assured his friend he had already done ‘far more than most’ and must concentrate on getting better.

  William Burton, father of Pennell’s godson Lewin, had been at Jutland on HMS Midge of the Fourth Destroyer Flotilla; his squadron had lost five of its nineteen ships but, happily, the Midge was not among them. Campbell had also been there, but had also returned unscathed.

  The ‘big show’ was over. But one of the most admired and popular ‘Antarctics’ had not survived it.

  Ancre area of operation, showing Beaucourt and Thiepval. Map © and courtesy of Roy C. Swales.

  Beaucourt-sur-Ancre area, showing trenches and overview of Royal Naval Division to plan to take Beaucourt. Map © and courtesy of Roy C. Swales.

  Notes

  There is (for obvious reasons) no ship’s log for HMS Queen Mary covering most of this period. Information is drawn from sources including Pennell’s correspondence, articles by Christopher Bilham and other publications cited or listed in the biography and publicly available information.

  1. Otago Daily Times, 28 April 1915. Pennell does not specifically mention these events in letters held in archive collections, but news of the birth of Rennick’s son is likely to have been communicated through
the ‘Antarctics’ network.

  2. Pennell to Cherry-Garrard, 17 December 1915, SPRI/MS559/101/5.

  3. Pennell sent William Burton a bible for his son Lewin (confirmed by Lewin Burton’s grandson).

  4. Pennell to Cherry-Garrard, 17 December 1915, SPRI/MS559/101/5.

  5. Pennell to Emily Bowers, Spinks auction, 14 July 1910 (part of lot 1858).

  6. Atkinson to Cherry-Garrard, 8 March 1916, SPRI/MS559/24/26.

  7. Cheltenham & Gloucester Graphic, 17 April 1915.

  8. Information on Hodson brothers from sources including Gloucester Journal, 21 August 1915.

  9. Although James writes unfavourably about Prowse in his biography of Hall he does not, for unknown reasons, mention Pennell, despite having served with him for several months at a crucial time in the history of the Grand Fleet.

  10. James’ father-in-law noted in his diary (11 July 1915, soon after his daughter married James): ‘It appears that James is getting himself disliked, or rather has a bad name for being constantly onshore. This failing is of long standing. He apparently has the young Lieutenant’s view that days off are days when one must go onshore, a very unfortunate view in the case of a Commander.’ (DFF/15, National Maritime Museum, quoted in Dreadnought Project biography of James.)

  11. Two men had in fact been blown clear and were captured by the Germans.

  12. Atkinson to Cherry-Garrard, 5 June 1916, SPRI/MS559/24/31.

  13. Atkinson to Cherry-Garrard, 25 May 1916, SPRI/MS559/24/30.

  14. Atkinson to Cherry-Garrard, 12 June 1916, SPRI/MS559/24/32.

  14

  Deaths on the Western Front

  In February 1916 Edward Nelson and other RND officers who had served continuously on Gallipoli were given a period of home leave (other ranks were sent to Malta). Nelson, Freyberg, Asquith and Kelly travelled on the troop-ship Olympic to France. Before they disembarked Kelly gave his friends a private performance (on the ship’s saloon piano) of the elegy he was composing in memory of Rupert Brooke.1 They broke their train journey to the Channel in Paris, where the four of them, together with some other friends, enjoyed a delicious lunch at a restaurant in the Place de la Madeleine. Afterwards they all jumped into a car and drove to the Louvre in the hope of seeing Leonardo’s famous portrait La Giaconda (also known as Mona Lisa), but the galleries turned out to be closed.2