Jutland_The Unfinished Battle

by Nicholas Jellicoe

  Instead, the British talked about the seizure of ‘contraband’. They had declared the entire North Sea a war zone and so claimed a right to stop and search neutral ships entering that zone, and, if the cargo manifest was complex, to tow them back to a harbour for a search to be carried out there. The British definition of what constituted war materiel or contraband was wide, because of the issue of the secondary usage of most materials. Cotton, for example, could be used in ammunition manufacture, as well as for clothing and bandages. On the Lusitania, one dive expedition found copper ingots, substantiating the German claim that the ship was carrying dual-purpose, contraband military cargo (more overtly, the ship was also supposed to have been carrying around 4,200 cases of ammunition).* These, then, were considered ‘war materiel’ and, as such, labelled ‘conditional contraband’. But if the latter went to a neutral port, the British, technically, could not seize it.

  It did not take long for the British to change the rules. On 20 August, with an Order in Council, the British said that they would now also seize conditional contraband even if consigned to a neutral port. In September iron ore, copper, lead, glycerine and rubber were added to the British list of what was considered conditional contraband. While diplomatic efforts by the Americans were able to rescind the British rights of seizure on conditional contraband, the British merely enlarged the list of what they considered ‘absolute contraband’.

  These practices infuriated neutral nations and British methods were, no doubt, seen as extremely dubious and a double standard. Cotton and copper were key American exports that the Allies wanted to control. It was not surprising that there was business pressure in the US for the country to change its allegiance in favour of Germany in protest at British actions of seizure. Comments such as Lloyd George’s, ‘Nations fighting for their lives cannot always pause to observe punctilios’, did not go down well.7 The British, nevertheless, managed to tie up 95 per cent of American copper exports by pressure on neutral countries, saying that they would maintain the supplies only to the level needed by that neutral country if re-export to Germany was guaranteed to be blocked.8

  While there were some notable exceptions to the Allied success in cutting down Germany’s supply of much-needed resources – for example, coal, which was additionally sourced from newly conquered territory in Belgium and northern France – Germany’s overall import-exports certainly suffered. After a year of war, imports had fallen by 55 per cent and exports were at 53 per cent of what they had been. A large quantity of materials reached Germany through the neutrals, such as Holland or the Scandinavian countries. If you compare the two months of December and January 1913/14 against the same period 1914/15, there was an explosion of exports to Germany. There was an eightfold increase from Sweden, while from Norway and Denmark it was fivefold.9

  In planning the war, Germany’s leaders did not think that there would be food shortages. The country’s high use of fertilisers would give it wheat and meat independence (it was thought), as ‘85–90 per cent of her essential food’ was domestically produced.10 Nevertheless, wheat had not been stockpiled and soon the country began to feel the effects. An ersatz economy grew up: bread was made with a mixture of turnips and potatoes. The problem of food shortages would not just be limited to the civilian population: a major reason for the decline in morale in the navy (as we will later see) was lack of food. Some studies have suggested that shortages of food and fuel would eventually cause the death of more than 400,000 Germans.11

  The navy’s commanders, Ingenohl and his chief of staff, Pohl, both felt that Germany should turn the tables and ‘wound England most seriously by wounding her trade … the whole British coast, or at anyway a part of it, must be declared to be blockaded … the gravity of the situation demands that we should free ourselves from all scruples which certainly no longer have any justification. In vain they tried to persuade the German Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg. He would not change his position as he feared the international consequences. But there was support from the Kaiser himself, who preferred not to risk his precious surface fleet and from German submariners, wanting to prove the newest arm of the fleet.

  Commerce-raiding

  Germany was initially extremely successful in using a small cruiser force for commerce-raiding: sending small groups of fast cruisers out onto the major shipping lanes worldwide to wreak havoc. Before the war the Admiralty feared the large-scale use of armed merchantmen (civilian vessels with decks strengthened for gun mountings). They were well-suited to the task of commerce-raiding, being fast and having a lot of free stowage area for captured cargo, or for the more urgently needed coal supplies (the British were able to coal at many more ports). However, this never really came about. Of the sixty available, forty had already been impounded when war broke out.

  One armed liner that did manage to break out of a German port was Kaiser Wilhelm der Große, which had won the Blue Riband on her maiden Atlantic voyage in 1887. Heading south, she encountered two passenger liners, Galician, on her way back from South Africa, and Arlanza. Kapitän Reymann at first thought about sinking both, but spared them as they had so many women and children on board. In a gesture of gratitude, Galicians Captain Day gave the Germans 300 cigars and 1,200 cigarettes. These were early days. Kaiser Wilhelm der Große was eventually sunk by the cruiser HMS Highflyer on 26 August off the west African coast. Despite being outgunned, Reymann had chosen to fight: ‘German warships do not surrender. Before being fired upon, however, the captain put his British prisoners in boats to get them to safety (Reymann had earlier sunk three other vessels: Tubal Cain, Kaipara and Nyanza).

  Opening Actions – German Commerce Raiders

  Perhaps the best-known of the naval raider actions were those of Vice Admiral Maximilian Reichsgraf von Spee, who commanded the four cruisers of the East Asia Squadron based in what is today Tsingtao – it was then a German colony. Spee split up his force and sent SMS Emden to the Indian Ocean while he took the armoured cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau with the light cruiser Nürnberg across to the Pacific Ocean. There, he was joined by a merchant supply ship, Prinz Eitel Friedrich. However, of the eight supply ships that were to have joined Spee, half were intercepted and fell victim to British or French guns.

  It was a formidable force, not least since Scharnhorst’s and Gneisenaus gunnery was top-notch and the two had vied for first place in the 1913 and 1914 Kaiser’s gunnery prize. The German force started causing as much damage and interference as it could. Nürnberg cut telegraph lines on Fanning Island and Tahiti was bombarded, but Spee was desperately cut off from supply. There was hardly anywhere where he could re-coal, though he was informed by Berlin that Chile would probably supply Spee’s squadron. After stopping at Easter Island, he was joined by Leipzig and Dresden, both under the command of Fregattenkapitän Haun.

  Britain’s first great naval defeat of the First World War was at the Battle of Coronel, off the Chilean coast. Rear Admiral Sir Christopher ‘Kit’ Cradock, on his flagship, Good Hope, had come round from the Atlantic chasing Dresden, then dashed north in pursuit of his foe, leaving behind him the 12in guns of the pre-dreadnought Canopus. He had heard signals from Leipzig and thought that he would be engaging only light forces, at best. The Germans, however, were passing all their signals back through this one ship.

  Cradock was totally outgunned: Good Hope’s two 9.2in guns faced Scharnhorst’s and Gneisenau’s sixteen 8.2in guns. Good Hope went down with all hands lost – more than 1,500 men, including Cradock. Another of his ships, Monmouth, continued north. The fact that she survived even for another hour was surprising, as her crew were completely green reservists and they had only managed to fire a few practice rounds before being pitted against the real thing. The shooting from Scharnhorst and Gneisenau took its toll, but it was left to Nürnberg to finish off Monmouth. A pause offering the British a chance to surrender was not heeded. Monmouth’s guns were useless; her list was so heavy that the guns could not be trained. She sank with all hands. The Brit
ish lost 1,600, the Germans none (three on Gneisenau were wounded).

  But Cradock had achieved something. Spee had used up almost all his ammunition and lamented: ‘I cannot reach Germany; we possess no secure harbour; I must plough through the seas of the world doing as much mischief as I can, until my ammunition is exhausted’.12

  Churchill reacted immediately, sending two fast battle-cruisers, Invincible and Inflexible, to seek revenge, while a third, Princess Royal, went to guard the Panama Canal. Under the command of the fifty-five-year-old Vice Admiral Sir Frederick Doveton Sturdee, the British force was coaling in the Falkland Islands when the German raiders came into sight on 8 December. Despite having had their keels cleaned to give them more speed, the battle-cruisers had proceeded across the Atlantic at only 10 knots to preserve fuel.13

  Spee ordered the light cruisers off back to South America, while blocking the British with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Initially, Gneisenau was able to obtain hits after only her third salvo against Invincible, but gradually Sturdee turned the action around and soon Gneisenau was listing. Scharnhorst was on fire: she suddenly stopped firing, rolled over and sank; there were no survivors. Two hours later, Gneisenau joined her, sinking with only 200 of her crew making it to the water, most of whom died of exposure, even after rescue.

  Haun could not escape on Leipzig. Eventually, HMS Glasgow caught up with her. Only after he had expended all his ammunition and fired off his torpedoes did Haun order the sea-cocks opened. Seven officers and eleven ratings survived; Haun went down with his ship. Nürnberg was eventually caught by the nominally slower HMS Kent and sunk, even though the latter was peppered with nearly forty hits herself.

  In extraordinary scenes, British seamen jumped over the sides of Kent trying in vain to rescue German sailors. There were twenty-five survivors from the combined crew of 580 from the two light cruisers: eighteen from Leipzig, seven from Dresden. Dresden alone escaped, but was caught later when her radio transmissions gave away her position. She was sunk near the island of Más a Tierra in Chilean waters.

  To the west, on the Indian Ocean, Emden’s forty-one-year-old captain, Fregattenkapitän Karl Friedrich Max von Müller, was extremely successful, sinking fifteen ships in addition to bombarding Penang, where he sailed into the harbour unchallenged and managed to torpedo the Russian light cruiser Zhemchug from under 400yds (460m).

  The Australian cruiser, HMAS Sydney, eventually caught up with him, sinking Emden on 9 November near the Cocos Islands. The Australian ship had taken heavy fire and after ten hits in the first quarter of an hour, was on the point of succumbing to an ammunition explosion, when a young sailor picked up a live shell and threw it overboard, suffering terrible burns in the process. Only after nine of Emden’s ten guns were put out of action was the white flag run up. Almost half her crew, 122 men, had been killed.

  Müller was an audacious and chivalrous commander. He had on several occasions erected a false fourth dummy funnel made of canvas to give his ship the appearance of a typical British cruiser. He ‘earned the admiration of his crew and the gratitude of his victims’.14 But the top-scoring ship was Karlsruhe, whose captain, Erich Köhler, was responsible for seventeen sinkings before his ship mysteriously blew up on 4 November, probably from faulty ammunition.

  Germany had secretly built much of its passenger liner fleet with a dual military role in mind. Decks were reinforced in anticipation of guns being mounted later, and they were given very fast turbines to chase down enemy merchant ships. Around sixty had been designated for this purpose but when war broke out many were caught in Allied-controlled ports. Around ten were not. Two in particular, Prinz Eitel Friedrich and Kronprinz Wilhelm, became successful commerce-raiders. Between them they took twenty-six merchantmen before being interned in the United States in April 1915. A T Mahan’s summation of the difference between fleet actions and trade destruction is illuminating: ‘The essence of one is concentration of effort, whereas for commerce destroying diffusion of effort is the rule. Commerce destroyers scatter that they may see and seize more prey.’

  In all, the raiders sank around 280,000 tons of merchant shipping. While Spee’s squadron accounted for only one British merchantman (and two warships), the propaganda effect was large. Yet despite Müller’s success, total tonnage lost was not large in the light of what happened later during unrestricted submarine warfare, nor did it really achieve what Tirpitz had wanted: a significant diminution of British North Sea presence. What was remarkable was that during this episode of maritime chivalry, when over sixty merchant vessels had been sunk by the raiders, it is said that not a single crew or passenger life was lost.

  Mining

  While its cruisers were conducting a campaign on the seven seas with punctilious regard for the Hague Conventions and the sanctity of human life, minelayers in the North Sea and in the Channel were depositing their deadly cargoes in waters where they inevitably took a toll on civilian lives from belligerent and neutral nations alike.15

  In its opening actions of the war Germany did not employ the Kaiser’s precious fleet. They focused instead on using mines – cheaper, deadly but indiscriminate.

  On the night of 5 August 1914, the day after war was declared, HMS Amphion reported seeing a vessel ‘throwing things overboard’. It was the German converted ferry Königin Luise – she was laying mines. Amphion gave chase but her adversary’s captain decided that if he could not outrun his pursuer he would at least scuttle his ship. Amphion stood by and picked up forty-six of her 100 crew but then, ironically, fell victim to her defeated enemy, being struck by several German mines. She went down with her captured German sailors unfortunate enough to have been rescued and then die as a result of their own actions. Contrary to the gentlemanly manner in which the commerce-raiding war was managed, this attack not only targeted Germany’s new enemy but, being far off the Suffolk coast, was also aimed at neutral shipping. It caused quite a backlash against the Germans in the world’s press.

  Two weeks later, the German light cruisers Mainz and Stuttgart, accompanied by a specially fitted minelayer, SMS Albatross, laid minefields thirty miles off the Humber and Tyne ports. Admiral Lord Charles Beresford made serious efforts to combat mines, employing fishing vessels. At the start of the war there were eighty-two trawlers operating in this manner; within a month another 250 vessels were added. By the end of 1914 a clean shipping lane – 800yds (730m) wide and two hundred miles long – was cleared twice daily along the east coast of England. The work involved was monumental.

  It was felt, as time passed, that even neutral vessels were dangerous and could be active minelayers. The pre-war offshore territorial limits were unilaterally expanded by the British to between thirty and one hundred miles from the shoreline. Any neutral vessel within these limits was treated as belligerent.

  German coastal raids

  A new approach by the Germans in their playing of the ‘klein Krieg (little war) – by which they meant warfare on a lesser scale than fleet actions – was coastal bombardment. It was specifically designed to lure the British out into mine traps and ultimately into the hands of the High Seas Fleet. This helped ‘to some extent the dispositions of the British fleet’, as the attacks were planned to overpower a smaller battle-cruiser force before the battleships could catch up in support.16 As was the case with mining, civilians were caught in the line of fire, but the coastal raids were different. They were specifically conceived of to cause a public outcry, thereby putting increased pressure on the Royal Navy for a prompt response, one that might give Germans the chance of catching a small force off-guard and luring them into a trap.

  The day after the British declared the North Sea a war zone, the Germans sortied in a long-planned attack, but one designed more as a propaganda coup than one with any real military benefit. Great Yarmouth was only 280 miles from Heligoland, an easy night’s cruise. Arriving offshore early on the morning of 3 November 1914, Hipper’s 1st Scouting Group (the battle-cruisers Moltke, Seydlitz, Von der Tann and the armou
red cruiser Blücher) commenced a rather ineffective bombardment. As the Germans withdrew, they laid mines in which an attacking British submarine, D.5, was caught, as was also, ironically, one of the German armoured cruisers, Yorck. Hipper had given the British notice that the Royal Navy was incapable of defending its shores, let alone dominating the North Sea.

  The next raid, on 16 December, was different. It was better planned and resulted in high British casualties. One group attacked Scarborough and Whitby, the other Hartlepool where, over almost an hour, around 1,500 heavy shells were fired, causing the loss of 600 houses, killing 119 men, women and children, and wounding 300. Scarborough, utterly defenceless apart from an old cannon dating back to the Crimean War, was hit by around 500 shells. In half an hour seventeen were dead. Whitby, with three killed, was the least damaged.

  Hipper had succeeded in luring out the battle-cruisers, but not quite as he expected. Alerted by Room 40 intercepts, the British ships had already been at sea at midday on the 15th in anticipation of the raid. Room 40 in the Admiralty was where the British housed their cryptographic resources, decoding intercepted German naval messages before passing the results on to the Admiralty’s operations staff. The existence of this capabilitywas a closely guarded secret and so the information would never be passed on without a consideration given to covering the tracks of where the information might have been garnered, something that would have dire consequences for the night action at Jutland. Not wanting to indicate that they had any knowledge of German intentions, the British played along, hoping, as later at Jutland, to turn the trap on its head. And as at Jutland, the British were unaware of Admiral von Ingenohl’s presence with the main battle fleet; he, unlike Scheer, turned tail and left Hipper to defend himself, to Tirpitz’s fury. At Jutland the consequence of waiting to batch signals together to form the basis of information sent to the fleet at sea would have equally negative consequences. The result of the raid was that the battle-cruisers were moved south to Rosyth, better placed there for a future interception.