Blood and Thunder

by Alexandra J Churchill

  Whilst they were thus engaged, Scheer was planning to make his move. The Germans had constructed battlecruisers of their own to keep pace with the Royal Navy and he had planned to use some of them for a raid on Sunderland. Just near enough to a major British naval centre, he hoped to attract David Beatty’s attention and coax him out with the remainder of the British battlecruisers under his command at Rosyth. Submarines would be waiting for them and if they got clear of those, 50 miles away he would be skulking in the North Sea. Scheer intended to dispense with British battlecruisers and then make a run for it before Jellicoe and the Grand Fleet could reach him from Scapa Flow. In this way he would avoid confronting the numerically superior British fleet.

  Unfortunately for the German admiral his plan, set for the end of May, was scuppered by bad weather. Rather than abandon it altogether he formulated an alternative scenario based on the same principles. He would apply the initial attack aimed at drawing out Beatty to British shipping in the Skagerrak to the north of Denmark’s Jutland peninsula instead of at Sunderland. The British battlecruisers would still have to steam past his submarines and he could still corner the survivors in the absence of Jellicoe and his battleships before making his getaway.

  At 1 a.m. on 31 May Scheer’s battlecruisers, led by Franz von Hipper, began raising anchor. The main High Seas Fleet followed an hour-and-a-half later, and ninety-nine ships headed towards Horns Reef, just off the westernmost point of Denmark. On the way Scheer received three messages relaying movements of British ships. He brushed them aside. There didn’t seem to be any unity to them and they were spread out. Little did he know that the entire Grand Fleet had put to sea and was heading in the same direction as his own ships.

  Intelligence had seeped through that seemed to indicate that the High Seas Fleet was getting ready to move. Both at Scapa Flow and Rosyth the Royal Navy began to raise steam on 30 May. At 5.40 p.m.the orders arrived. ‘Germans intend some operations commencing tomorrow.’ They were to proceed to the east of the Long Forties in between the coasts of Scotland and Norway and be ready for whatever awaited them.

  At Scapa Flow the steel submarine nets were pulled aside. Excitement was rippling through the ships at anchor, including Hood’s battlecruisers. Two hours before Scheer and Hipper had even sailed, 150 British ships were already moving. On a damp misty night Invincible steamed south through the Hoxa Sound and out into the North Sea with Jellicoe’s force, carrying 18-year-old Midshipman Charlie Acland-Hood with her. They would have had no idea what was in front of them, for an oversight in Room 40 informed Jellicoe that Scheer was at anchor when in fact the two fleets were on a collision course.

  The first shot of the Battle of Jutland was fired at 2.30 p.m. on 31 May 1916 when Beatty and his battlecruisers engaged von Hipper’s smaller force. Sailing gung-ho into trouble, Beatty found himself in the midst of the entire High Seas Fleet. The Germans were ecstatic, but what they didn’t realise was that Jellicoe was at sea and that Beatty was now in a position to turn and run to the north, luring them into a trap.

  On board HMS Lion, Beatty sailed towards the Grand Fleet to deliver the pride of the German Navy into its hands. Jellicoe had been steaming south towards him, but he had dispatched Hood and his fast battlecruisers to go to Beatty’s aid. Invincible sped south. Screened by light cruisers, Hood’s squadron, however, couldn’t find Beatty and his ships. The weather was deteriorating and the light was becoming dim. An hour later, as Charlie Acland-Hood’s ship ploughed through the North Sea looking for their countrymen, Jellicoe sent a communication to the Admiralty. ‘Fleet action imminent’.

  Half-an-hour later the Invincibles steered into the path of four of Hipper’s light cruisers. One of the ships travelling with the squadron, HMS Chester came under heavy fire. Hood saw the flashes through the murk, heard the guns and Invincible steered towards the stricken ship. He arrived just in time. The crew of the Chester was massively relieved to see Hood put his flagship in between her and the enemy. The Germans were taken completely by surprise and fled the British battlecruisers back to their admiral. Hood sent a message over to Indomitable congratulating them on their shooting. Spirits were high. They believed that they were indeed ‘indomitable’ and that their admiral was ‘invincible’.

  Hipper responded by sending a large contingent to engage Invincible and the rest of Hood’s force. HMS Shark was sunk but the German sailors, although vastly outnumbering the British at this point, panicked at the sight of the Royal Navy ships. Hood turned his squadron back towards the main fleet and continued looking for Beatty.

  On board HMS Iron Duke Jellicoe had continued sailing south, but with no effective communications from Beatty he had no idea what he was steaming towards. At 6 p.m. he finally came within sight of Lion, 5 miles away, going east off his starboard bow. Where was the enemy fleet? He asked Beatty but he had no idea. Jellicoe’s position was precarious. It would take time to deploy his ships and if he delayed too long they might sail into danger. He was desperately in need of accurate information. At 6.15 p.m. he gave the order to deploy anyway and the Grand Fleet began swinging into line. It was a crucial decision. In twenty minutes, if he had played his hand right, he could have a 6-mile-long line of ships ready and waiting to open fire and the High Seas Fleet would have sailed right into his range.

  After its engagement with Hipper’s light cruisers, Invincible had sailed west. Off their starboard bow the Grand Fleet loomed into view. Suddenly Beatty appeared on their other side, coming right at them. Hood’s Invincibles were supposed to be sailing off Lion’s stern but if they attempted to get there they would obstruct the fire of Jellicoe’s ships. Hood took the decision to have Invincible turn and take up a position in front of Beatty instead.

  At about 6.20 p.m. she led the squadron on a turn and they began steaming 2 miles in front of Lion on a parallel course with five German battlecruisers some 5 miles off her starboard beam. Beatty had already begun firing on the three to the rear and so Hood ordered his force to do the same on Derfflinger and Lützow. Indomitable watched the flagship from behind. It was ‘a glorious sight … a huge bow wave and white wake, her smoke streaming back and her battle flag flying’. On Lion’s bridge excitement built as they watched Hood’s flagship steam towards what looked like the decisive moment of battle. The gunnery practice undertaken by the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron at Scapa Flow paid off. Every time Invincible fired a salvo the vessel shuddered and lurched about in the water. As Charlie and the crew ran back and forth through the ship the stench of cordite fumes increased.

  Atmospheric conditions meant that although the British ships had a clear field of vision, Hipper’s men found themselves masked by cloud in return. In the failing light ships drifted in and out of the mist and low-lying cloud, lit up by flashes from the guns. The Germans were tormented by the Royal Navy’s fire when they could not themselves see what they were shooting at. Invincible flung shells at Derfflinger. In eight minutes she hit Lützow numerous times. From the bridge Hood called up to the ship’s gunnery officer. ‘Keep it up as quickly as you can! Every shot is telling!’

  German shells were managing to find her in return though. One salvo hit aft but luckily didn’t do any damage. Then suddenly the German battlecruisers emerged from the haze on the starboard beam and caught sight of their opponents. On Derfflinger hearts leapt. ‘The veil of mist in front of us split like a curtain at the theatre … Clear and sharply silhouetted against the horizon, we saw a powerful ship … on an almost parallel course at top speed. Her guns were trained on us and immediately another salvo crashed out, straddling us completely.’

  Still under fire, the Germans were ecstatic. Finally they would be able to see where their shells were landing. They had taken enough punishment from the British warships and now they could fight back. When Hipper’s ships trained their guns on Hood’s squadron it was terrifying. ‘On the starboard bow we had the German Fleet throwing everything they had, including their toothbrushes at us.’ They continued firing frantically back at
them.

  A veil of smoke and flame began to descend over the water. The worst of the shelling began falling upon Invincible at the front, targeted by two German battlecruisers. With her light armour she was no match for the shells now being flung at her. The thin armour of the battlecruisers had already been tragically exposed two hours previously, when HMS Queen Mary went to the bottom with over 1,200 men onboard. It was a lottery. If a shell hit one vulnerable spot then disaster would strike.

  And that is exactly what happened. A salvo rang out from the German battlecruisers and fell amidships. Towering above the deck was a gun turret, ‘Q’. A shell plunged through 7in of steel, blowing the roof off and barrelling down towards the ship’s magazines, packed with tons of cordite.

  At just past 6.30 p.m. a red glow appeared in the middle of Invincible as a flash ignited all the way down the turret. There was a terrific flash as two of the ship’s magazines blew up and the ship was ripped in half. The whole central section, boiler rooms, coal bunkers and the two gun turrets, was consumed by a huge fireball. An awning from the bridge was tossed skyward, masts collapsed inwards and a huge column of black smoke mushroomed several hundred feet high. Metal rained down and debris engulfed the ship. As soon as the explosion was finished the ship plunged into the sea. In just a few seconds HMS Invincible and almost her entire crew had ceased to exist. Boiling hot bits of shrapnel pelted down on top of Indomitable nearby. When the smoke cleared she was gone. Cheers rang out from Derfflinger. The two pieces of the hull came to a stop sticking out of the shallow water.

  When other British ships swept past the scene they thought it was a German wreck and cheered. The awful realisation sank in as they went past the shattered hull and saw Invincible’s name painted on the side. Men who had survived her instant destruction had been clinging to the stern, but they gradually slipped into the water. They began to drown. The waves were littered with floating kitbags and hammocks. Of just over 1,000 crew, only six men were eventually saved by HMS Badger.

  Neither Charlie Acland-Hood, the only OE lost at sea with the Royal Navy during the Great War, nor his cousin Admiral Hood were amongst the men saved. Back at Eton, Mr Brinton had seen yet another of his boys go. Mr Heygate was forced to steel himself, knock on George Nickerson’s door and tell him that his stepfather was dead. His own daughter Elizabeth was in a state of shock. She remembered her visit to Portsmouth and her tour of Charlie’s ship. ‘HMS Invincible I read under the … quarter deck, HMS Invincible circled the sailors’ caps in gilt letters and as we walked away again I saw the name in foot-high letters on the bow.’ Now those letters stuck out of the North Sea on her broken hull and everything she and the rest of the country had been led to believe about the infallibility of the Royal Navy was rocked. She had not been invincible at all.

  With the sinking of the Invincible came the next phase of the battle. Regie and George Fletcher’s brother Leslie sailed into action with the rest of Jellicoe’s ships aboard HMS Colossus as the two fleets engaged. Scheer was suddenly faced with the Grand Fleet deployed for battle when he did not even know they were at sea. After an emergency manoeuvre he eventually fled. Leslie’s ship was hit twice throughout the course of the evening but the last surviving son of Charles Fletcher was to be spared at the Battle of Jutland. Scheer managed to slip away and despite scattered fighting through the night, by daybreak on 1 June he was out of sight. The battle, which had ended in a draw of sorts, was over.

  Whilst the Battle of Jutland was the only full-scale engagement between the Royal Navy and her German counterpart, this did not mean that Britain’s sailors sat idle for the rest of the Great War. Neither did all of their activity revolve around dreadnoughts and large-scale warships. Of 163 OEs serving at sea almost 65 per cent of them had found their way there via the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. Founded in 1903, its mandate was to facilitate civilians who did not work at sea, but were enthusiastic sailors, yachtsmen and the like to volunteer for naval service in times of war.

  Amongst over a hundred OEs serving with the RNVR was Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Heneage Drummond. Born in 1886, he came from a large banking family that would found the Royal Bank of Scotland and was a cousin of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the future queen. The Drummonds were more than doing their bit for the war effort with seven sons and a daughter in various uniforms and one brother was the same ‘Bones’ Drummond who had been killed at Hooge in July 1915 with the Rifle Brigade.

  In childhood Geoffrey had fallen down a stone stairway and dislocated his neck. As a result a bone still pressed on his spine and he suffered from severe headaches. His education at Eton was thus limited to a few terms, as was his time at Christ Church, but Geoffrey, charming and witty, always had an interest in the water. He had spent much time yachting on the south coast and around Europe prior to the outbreak of war.

  Desperate to do his bit, even though he once referred to himself as a ‘professional invalid’, in December 1915 Geoffrey was accepted into the RNVR at the age of 29. Although an expert yachtsman Geoffrey presented himself at Southampton in January 1916 for what was to be extensive training. He was forced to ‘pig it with fourteen or so other bravos’ (‘the scramble for eggs and bacon and steak and kidney pie was hectic’) whilst they were all instructed in an array of subjects including seamanship, navigation, gunnery, Morse and semaphore.

  He was eventually given command of a motor launch. These little craft were a new concept during the Great War. Some 80ft long, they were designed for anti-submarine activity and harbour defence. By January 1918 Geoffrey was in command of ML254 at Dunkirk. The flotilla at Zeebrugge was busy with intensive training and he and his crew picked up the slack. At one point he did thirty-two consecutive night patrols along the coast. Then, on the thirty-third patrol, he was suddenly summoned to take part in a daring enterprise.

  An initial raid on Ostend and Zeebrugge had taken place at the end of April 1918 to try to block the port of Bruges, which sat some 6 miles inland. Populated by U-boats. The Germans had been developing it since 1914 and used it is a base to launch their U-boat attacks on Allied shipping. The plan was to sink two old cruisers in the mouth of the canal at Ostend and three at Zeebrugge to stop submarines getting out. The raid on Zeebrugge enjoyed limited success, but at Ostend they failed completely.

  On the night of 9 May the Royal Navy attempted to resolve that failure. A host of volunteers from the first attempts to cut off Bruges put up their hands again. HMS Sappho and HMS Vindictive were selected, stripped bare and reinforced with concrete ready to be sacrificed. Admiral Keyes took four monitors along for support with eight destroyers and five motor launches, including ML254. They sailed in under a smoke screen, with support from an RAF bombardment and artillery on the water. Once in position the two cruisers would scuttle themselves whilst the monitors and destroyers covered them. Then Geoffrey and the other motor-launch commanders would pull up alongside and take off the volunteers.

  The Royal Navy contingent sailed from Dunkirk after dark on 9 May. En route, Sappho was hampered by a minor explosion that forced her to turn back after her speed plummeted to six knots. They were down to one cruiser but the operation pressed on. By 1.30 a.m. they had approached Ostend. The fog had thickened considerably and now completely shrouded the water as the aerial attacks and the Royal Marine artillery bombardment began. Two piers marked the entrance to the canal but Vindictive was forced to sail back and forth looking for them. The motor launches supporting her had lost sight of their charge. Geoffrey too was flailing but turned inshore and luckily managed to find her again.

  ‘Just as I got there Vindictive loomed up going all out.’ His launch sped off, but try as they might it was all they could do to keep up with her. At the third attempt she had managed to find the canal. German artillery immediately began showering Vindictive with shellfire. One dropped by the side of ML254 and Geoffrey was blown off his feet. ‘The fireworks were amazing and very pretty. The star shells were red, green, blue and yellow.’ Then there were the flaming onio
ns being flung in consecutive green strings. ‘I got one string along my bridge; it took off the back of my right hand and broke everything there; signal lamps, switches etc. but by the mercy of Providence the compass and its light and the telegraph handles and chains were untouched.’ Shells continued to dog the motor launch. One burst right by the mast, killing a crew member and maiming the coxswain and Geoffrey, a copper driving band plunging into the back of his left thigh.

  Already damaged from the Zeebrugge raid, one of Vinidictive’s propellers was severely hampered. As she attempted to swing sideways to block the harbour entrance, crippled by shellfire, her commander was killed along with most of the occupants of the bridge. His wounded first lieutenant, Victor Crutchley, tried desperately to manoeuvre but the ship would not respond and she drifted into a sandbank and came to a stop, only partly blocking the canal.

  Geoffrey, detailed to pick up her crew, approached her. They had just reached the piers at the mouth of the canal when a bullet penetrated his collarbone. In the fog he could barely see what was happening and he ripped open the canvas roof to his bridge. Despite his wounds and the numbness brought on by serious blood loss, Geoffrey hauled himself up to balance on a shelf, his head and shoulders sticking out into the open whilst he worked the telegraphs with his feet.

  Crutchley was not going to be able to rectify the situation and so he ordered everyone to evacuate Vindictive and for the ship to be scuttled. Whilst the charges were being prepared he staggered around the decks looking for men to shoo on to ML254. The plan had been for Geoffrey to approach her on the opposite side to the enemy fire, but things had gone awry when Vindictive’s steering ceased to function.