Once the line of eleven British destroyers had passed across the German van, the group disintegrated. Three of the leading four – Sparrowhawk, Contest and Broke – each, at really close range, fired a single torpedo and then peeled off to port. The rest (Achates, Ardent, Fortune, Porpoise and Unity) did not open fire or launch torpedoes. Only Ambuscade did. At the end, Broke gathered up the stragglers (minus Garland) and headed south.
Broke s group was not left alone for long.
Almost as soon as the ship was steadied on her course south, the hull of a large ship was sighted on the starboard bow on a more or less parallel course, but this time well before the beam and not more than half a mile away. The captain immediately gave the order to challenge but almost as soon as he spoke the stranger switched on a vertical string of coloured lights, some green and some red, an unknown signal in our service.57
There was not enough space in which Captain Allen could launch a torpedo attack. He was already at point-blank range, around 150yds (140m) off. Broke ran into a wall of fire. She was heavily shelled by the combined firepower of the light cruiser Rostock (which was on the port beam of the battleships), and the dreadnoughts Westfalen and Rheinland.
She tried to get a torpedo into the water, but the gear was out of action: the wheel and the engine telegraphs had been destroyed. In the few minutes of Broke’s daring attack, fifty of her crew were killed and another thirty injured. One of the dead was the helmsman and the ship, running at a full 28 knots, swerved to her port when the helm jammed, on a collision course with Sparrowhawk. The latter was heading back northeast. On Sparrowhawk a young sub lieutenant, Percy Wood, saw what was happening and shouted warnings, to no avail. Broke hit Sparrowhawk at full speed on the starboard side. The force of the collision must have been enormous. Twenty-three crew members were catapulted from Sparrowhawk and landed hard on the decks of Broke. There was mass confusion as each commander ordered his own crew to abandon ship and move to the other vessel. Twenty men from Sparrowhawk transferred to Broke, fifteen from Broke to Sparrowhawk. The scene was chaotic.
The twisted and heavily damaged Broke was reversing engines to disengage when Contest, steering close astern of Sparrowhawk, now also came in at full speed, ramming the unfortunate Sparrowhawk once again, this time on her port side. Five or six feet was cut from her stern structure and the rudder jammed hard to port.58 It took half an hour but eventually Broke and Contest were able to disentangle themselves, while Sparrowhawk – without either a bow or a stern – could only sit where she was and gently drift. With thirty of Sparrowhawk’s crew taken on board, Broke headed off. The scene on board Broke could symbolise what had happened to the whole flotilla:
When we could see and I had time to think it dawned on me what a terrible scene had been enacted. We thought of the ‘Honour’ and the ‘Glory’ which so many people in their ignorance say is attached to warfare. You should have seen the decks of HMS Broke at 4.00 am, 1 June 1916. There you would have seen an exhibition of ‘Honour’ and ‘Glory’ in reality. Forty-eight of our crew lay dead and most of them shattered beyond recognition; another 40 were wounded very badly. We were about five hours finding all our dead chums, dragging them out of the wrecked mess deck and throwing their bodies over the side to be buried in the deep ocean … You wonder how men can have the audacity, for if we stopped to think of what we were going to do we should never fight at all.59
Unfortunately, Broke’s suffering was not over. Around 01:30 she came upon more enemy ships, this time a group of destroyers. Despite being badly damaged (she had lost her own bow), she managed to get off one shot in answer to the six that the Germans fired at her. Miraculously, she made it back into the Tyne, two and a half days after the battle ended.
Now it was Hutchinson’s turn to take over the lead of what remained of the 4th Flotilla, after Wintour and Allan before. On Achates Hutchinson led the remaining ships in the flotilla, Ambuscade, Ardent, Fortune, Porpoise and Garland (the last having just rejoined the group) into a renewed attack on the leading German ships.
Turning away, Achates fired her torpedoes at Rostock, which, while manoeuvring desperately to avoid the incoming track, ran through her own line between Westfalen and Rheinland, only still to be hit in the no. 4 boiler room. She was badly holed and took on 930 tons of water and in minutes was listing 5 degrees. The next day she was scuttled.60
An ever-decreasing group of British destroyers now came around to launch more torpedoes at the huge German battleships. It really was a matter of many Davids against a Goliath, but with little of the success and a large loss of life. A hit on Elbing was claimed, but later denied by the Germans. Three cruisers, Elbing, Frankfurt and Pillau, desperate to avoid the British torpedoes, threaded their way through the line. Elbing’s luck did not hold. She was rammed by one of her own, the battleship Posen. Both her engine rooms flooded; the lighting plant and the steering engine room were damaged. The stricken Elbing took on an 18-degree list and ‘then drifted down the starboard side of the German line, incapable of manoeuvring or fighting’.61 Her crew was taken off by S.53, but Madlung and some officers stayed aboard, trying to see if they could get the vessel back in to German waters using a jury-rigged sail. When enemy ships were spotted around 03:00, Elbing was finally abandoned. Her last moments could be seen from Sparrowhawk and Tipperary. She sank after explosive charges had been laid and the order to abandon ship given by her captain, Commander Rudolf Madlung. From the small cutter that they were in they rescued one of their foes, the surgeon from Tipperary.
Eleven small British destroyers had just come into direct contact with, and taken hostile fire from, the van of the German battle fleet. Taffrail said that the British then spotted what were ‘seen to be light cruisers with four funnels’ ‘coming up abaft the beam’.62 First impressions were that they were British.
The head of the line had turned away from the torpedo threat, Westfalen out in front, Nassau, Rheinland and Elbing following closely her lead. Spitfire had been just behind Tipperary. She fired off two torpedoes at the second ship in the German line. Lieutenant Commander Clarence W E Trelawny on Spitfire wrote in his official report: ‘The torpedo struck her between the second funnel and the foremast. She appeared to catch fire fore and aft simultaneously, and heeled right over to starboard and undoubtedly sank.’63 What ship it actually was is hard to say now. He had identified her as having four funnels, so it could not have been Nassau (which only had two).
After letting loose the torpedoes, Spitfire hauled out of line to port and swung around westwards to reload, hoping to launch a further salvo. She could not. ‘Unfortunately, as we turned back the torpedo davit was struck in three places … and the torpedo could not be got into the tube’.64 The gunner and two torpedo ratings had also been wounded. Trelawny decided to take his 935-ton destroyer back around to see if he could help the crippled Tipperary which was by now ‘a mass of burning wreckage and looking a very sorry sight indeed’.65 On his way there, the story goes, Spitfire literally ran into the Nassau.
The story of the collision is one of those that still today continues to stoke a heated debate over what really happened. The ships’ identities could have been mistaken. Given the conditions, the speed of the engagement and the darkness, different stories were bound to emerge. At the worst there is the accusation of the truth being hidden.
There were quite a few people from both sides whose accounts can be used, from the captain of Spitfire, Lieutenant Commander Clarence Trelawny, one of his officers on the bridge and First Lieutenant Athelstan P Bush. On the German side, there were Sepp Schlager, who used his contemporary notes to write about the action forty years later, Rupert Berger, an able seaman who later became the mayor of Traunstein in southern Germany and a parliamentary figure,66 Heinz Bonatz, a cadet, and Otto Thomas, a junior officer in one of the 5.9in casemates.67 Only Bonatz’s account is well-known.68
Berger’s first thought was that Nassau had been torpedoed, but later realised that there had been a collision in w
hich the bow of the enemy ship penetrated the hull of Nassau by more than 2m. At that point, apparently, there was a huge explosion on the destroyer. It was right up against Nassau, so the carnage on both ships was gruesome. Instantly, three sailors on the Nassau were killed; there was blood everywhere. Berger thought that an English sailor must have slipped along that gun barrel and smashed against the turret as there were bloody pieces of flesh and skin still hanging from the turret. There was a gruesome reminder of another unknown sailor, a kid glove on the blooded deck with part of a severed hand inside. A letter was next to it with a curl of hair. His child? The enemy ship’s flags had ended up on the German ship. On the port side, Bonatz had been in the casemate and had survived:
We sustained a direct hit on the forward group of lights and, soon after, rammed HMS Spitfire, which had not seen us. The destroyer brushed against the 15cm gun in my casemate, and ripped it and its carriage from the deck. Just a few seconds before the collision, I had been looking through the telescopic sight on the right side of the gun but was then called away to my proper battle station of the starboard side, because destroyers were reported there. Thus I stood right in the doorway of the middle casemate that lay between the two 15cm gun casemates. With the tilt of the ship, the armour-plated door struck me on the right foot and the back. We believed the British ship to be destroyed at the time, especially as a great number of pieces of wreckage, both great and small, were floating round us.69
Trelawny’s own account of the encounter was gripping.70 The German battleship, he said, opened fire, but could not depress her guns far enough; still, the blast from Nassau’s guns knocked Spitfire’s bridge, funnels, boats and searchlight platform clean off. Trelawny had a close shave as a shell passed through the bridge screen, blowing his cap off and leaving a bad gash on his head. It was nothing short of miraculous, as the pressure wave created by a heavy calibre shell would normally have killed him. In the words of Athelstan Bush:
She was coming at us full speed across our port bow. The captain ordered, ‘Hard a starboard: full speed ahead both’ and leaning over the bridge screen, shouted ‘Clear the fo’c’sle’. It wasn’t a minute too soon, as with an awful crash the two ships met end on, port bow to port bow, we steaming at almost 27 knots, she steaming not less than 10 knots (perhaps 20 or more).71
Spitfire was almost rolled over by the collision. His actions crumpled her bow, but saved his ship, but none had any idea that what they were ramming was a 20,000-ton battleship. On the bridge, Trelawny had taken much of the impact full-on. He discovered, as he was being supported by his chief stoker, Weavers, that he had broken his jaw. Bush added some further detail:
Fires started breaking out forward and to make matters worse all the lights were short-circuited, so that anyone going up to the bridge received strong electric shocks. Moreover, all the electric bells in the ship were ringing, which made things feel rather creepy. It was extraordinary the way the fire spread, burning strongly in places where one thought there was hardly anything inflammable, such as on the forebridge and the decks, but flags, signal halyards and the coconut matting on the deck all caught fire, and sparks from the latter were flying about everywhere. We thought the light would be sure to draw some enemy fire upon us, but fortunately it didn’t. There was a large hole in the base of the second funnel through which flames were pouring out, and every single hosepipe in the ship seemed to be cut by splinters and useless.
So far it seemed that the incident was a case of last-minute manoeuvring under battle conditions from which neither ship could avoid a collision. But then the questions start to appear.
It was not Nassau that rammed Spitfire as she claimed. In his book, Scheer still upheld Nassau’s story and talked about the signal that she sent when she was ‘standing by the Vyl lightship at the Horns reef and that during the night had rammed and cut through a destroyer’.72 In reality it was the other way around. It was Spitfire that rammed Nassau. The German repair yard photos show Nassau’s bow perfectly intact and the war log also confirmed that the destroyer’s crumpled metal bow was lodged in her side. Who in their right mind would charge a 20,000-ton battleship with a puny destroyer displacing less than a twentieth? It was an unintentional ramming, at best. Spitfire slammed into the port bow section, metres from the bow.
One can see little evidence of the deep horizontal gashing that would have occurred if the impact really had been ‘port to port’. While Spitfire would have slid along the battleship, it might be true to say that it is more likely that the damage would be more extensive on the thin skin of a destroyer rather than on the armour-plated side of a battleship; nevertheless one would also expect to see telltale signs. It suggests that the initial impact might have been closer to 90 degrees than 45 degrees.
The German accounts include torpedo explosions. The British accounts from Spitfire do not mention anything about this, only that the davit was damaged so the tubes could not be reloaded. Indeed, Schlager maintained that there were multiple explosions and Berger recalled that there were British dead strewn on the foredeck. Had they been blown there by the blast of the explosion? Was it this explosion that really caused the huge carnage on board Nassau?
What is not visible in the surviving German damage plan is the huge waterline hole that had been blown in the Nassau’s port bow (‘durch Rammen und Torpedoexplosion großes Loch im Backbord Vorschiff’) documented in the official damage report and in the war log. The damage report said that ‘the bow section was torn open at about a length of 20 metres and the gaping hole reached from the waterline up to the deck’, although this is not shown in the surviving photographs.
If Nassau heeled 5–10 degrees to starboard as Campbell maintains, what on earth would have happened to a small destroyer, especially with the enormous suction that would have been present between Nassau and the destroyer?
Most of the German accounts maintain that either the British destroyer sank or that at least one half did. This is true for Berger, Nassau’s war log and for the cadet, Heinz Bonatz, as well as Schlager, who was on the bridge at the time. If that was the case, what was the identity of the ship that caused the damage? If the ship that was involved sank and Spitfire arrived back in the Tyne thirty-six hours later, it could not have been Spitfire. Only Bonatzs account was a little less sure. He only said that they ‘believed the British ship to be destroyed at the time, especially as a great number of pieces of wreckage, both great and small, were floating round us’. Spitfire’s account maintains that the ‘cruiser passed down the length of us, cleared us astern and disappeared, leaving us still afloat, but drifting and in a somewhat pitiful condition.
Both the crews of Spitfire and Nassau steadfastly maintain details about the opponent ship that do not square with Nassau and Spitfire as being the two ships in question. Nassau’s war log recorded details such as that the destroyer that rammed them ‘had a triangle pointing upwards and a flotilla flag on her mast’ – but made no mention of the very visible ‘41’ painted on Spitfire’s hull.* In fact, a photograph exists of Spitfire’s upward-pointing triangle and her flotilla flag taken at 17:00 earlier that same evening.73 Berger also said that the navigation officer had seen a ‘big British four-funnel destroyer’, but Spitfire was an Acasta-class destroyer, which only had three funnels. So was it Spitfire or was the navigation officer wrong? And when Trelawny saw Nassau looming out of the dark, he swung Spitfire over so that she would not be cut in half. As Nassau loomed up closer and closer, ‘those aft noted that the enemy had three funnels with a red band on each [author’s italics]. On the bridge we were blinded by the flashes of our focsle gun. All I recall is that she had a large crane amidships, and looked big.’ Trelawny was right about the crane, but Nassau had two funnels, not three.†
Crippled, Spitfire limped along at 6 knots and somehow was able to get back to the Tyne thirty-six hours later, at around 16:30 on 2 June. She had suffered six dead and a further three officers and six ratings wounded. She also brought a remarkable battle trophy with
her: 20ft of planking from Nassau. The story goes that Spitfire’s crew were given small mementoes cut up from Nassau’s strake, part of her hull. Trelawny said later that a portion of Nassau’s strake was sent to America as part of a propaganda campaign.74
She had left her own trophy on Nassau: ‘part of her bridge hanging on the torpedo net’.75 Trelawny was out cold on the deck and command was taken over by Bush. When Trelawny came to, he found the six men with whom he had been on the bridge dead or wounded. ‘The coxswain and one other able seaman were later found trapped in the wreckage. To be released, the unfortunate seaman subsequently had to have his leg amputated without any anaesthetic, whilst lying amongst the tangled ruins of the bridge.’76 Bush was steering from the emergency helm aft.
When the ships had apparently disengaged, planking from Nassau was supposedly ripped off and entangled with Spitfire, the latter having lost 60ft of her own hull siding. Later, on inspection, Trelawny wrote that Nassau had to be an older ship, as the paint was ‘3/32nds of an inch’ thick. The 20,000-ton vessel sailed away with a 3.4m (11ft) long gash in her hull, and claimed later that she had rammed and sunk her comparatively small opponent. An unidentified officer on Spitfire recalled:
You can imagine how the 1/8th inch plates of a destroyer would feel under such a blow. I can recollect a fearful crash, then being hurled across the deck, and feeling the Spitfire rolling over to starboard as no sea ever made her roll. As we bumped, the enemy opened fire with their fo’c’sle guns, though luckily they could not depress them to hit us, but the blast literally cleared everything before it. Our foremast came tumbling down, our for’ard searchlight found its way from its platform above the forebridge down to the deck, and the foremost funnel was blown back until it rested neatly between the two foremost ventilation cowls, like the hinged funnel of a penny river steamboat.77
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