The Great War at Sea: 1914-1918

by Richard Hough

  Contrary to the spirit of the great majority of his subordinates, Jellicoe’s policy from the beginning was conditioned by caution and the contradictory needs to preserve his ships and attract the approbation he had enjoyed all his service life. It was a difficult role for him to play for among his commanders there were many fire-eaters lusting for battle.

  Everything that happened at sea in the first weeks of war tended to confirm Jellicoe’s fears and support his policy of caution. A new Battle of Trafalgar which would destroy German sea power as decisively as Nelson had destroyed French and Spanish sea power had been expected throughout the land and by all classes. The power of the Navy had been extolled so loudly and for so long, the sacrifices to pay for it had been so burdensome, that anything less than a quick victory was unthinkable. Disillusion soon set in.

  Almost at once the threat from submarines, which had been greatly underrated, as much by the Germans as the British, and which were to become the dominant class of fighting ship, materialized in a most unpleasant form. Within a week U-boats were operating as far as Scapa Flow and beyond. This was as much of a shock to the British as it was a pleasant surprise to the U-boat commanders who had underestimated their own prowess and capability. It should not have been a shock. It was only necessary to glance at the freely available latest Jane’s Fighting Ships to read that the radius of the new U -boats was 2,000 miles, and any atlas would show the distance from Scapa Flow to the Elbe estuary is a mere 600 miles.

  Genuine sightings of periscopes were few, imaginary sightings frequent and disturbing, to the extent that some cynical wag thought up the name of a new epidemic sweeping through the Fleet: periscopeitis. On 1 September, with the main body of the Grand Fleet’s dreadnoughts at anchor in Scapa Flow, a light cruiser near the north-eastern entrance suddenly opened lire. It was dusk, the evening was misty, the eyes of lookouts strained by long observation. Jellicoe immediately ordered steam to be raised and the Fleet put to sea. Before it could do so, there was another ‘sighting’ and several ships fired at the supposed periscope. There was a great deal of frantic signalling and racing about by escort craft before the twelve dreadnoughts put safely to sea in the last light of the day. There they remained until dawn, with all the effort, use of machinery, and consumption of fuel this entailed. That seal had a lot to answer for!

  It was generally agreed that the ‘First Battle of Scapa Flow’ had been drawn. Five days later the flotilla leader Pathfinder fell victim to the first real U-boat, U-21, with heavy loss of life. Farce had become tragedy. Worse was to follow. On 22 September, three old armoured cruisers manned largely by the reservists who had missed their family summer holidays, were patrolling off the Dutch coast. Ships of this class had been ‘peddling up and clown’, as Battenberg described their activity, since the beginning of the war, ostensibly to keep an eye on German light craft which might make tip-and-run raids on Channel shipping. Officers of the Grand Fleet, who were having their own troubles, clubbed them ‘the live bait squadron’. Five days earlier, Churchill’s attention had been drawn to the vulnerability of the cruiser patrol and in a memorandum he recommended that it should cease. The always outspoken Commodore Roger Keyes, senior naval officer at Harwich, had written an appeal a month earlier to the Director of Operations of the Admiralty War Staff, ‘For Heaven’s sake take those ‘’Bacchantes” [armoured cruisers] away!’

  But even Keyes, who had been Inspecting Captain of Submarines and should have known better, feared only attack by a superior surface force. No one seems to have thought of U-boats; and when the usual destroyer screen had to withdraw owing to the equinoctial weather, the three 10,000-ton sister cruisers, Aboukir, Hogue, and Cressy, continued their patrol nonetheless, at an economical speed of 10 knots and without zig-zagging, their captains comforted in the knowledge that seas a destroyer could not endure were equally impossible for submarines.

  However, the weather moderated on the night of 21-22 September, and at 6.30 a.m. the Aboukir was struck by a torpedo and sank twenty-five minutes later. The Hogue was beginning to do what she could for the survivors, and intermittently firing at a number of real or imaginary periscopes, when she, too, was struck by two torpedoes and went down in ten minutes. The Cressy remained hove to, making a wireless signal to the Admiralty, when her lookout reported the track of a torpedo and a periscope. The time was 7.17, and when she too capsized and sank after two hits, all her boats were away picking up survivors from her sister ships. Her loss of life, especially, was appalling.

  It was a salutory and expensive lesson on how not to conduct a patrol in this new age of the torpedo. The loss of the ships was of little consequence, but some 1,400 men in all went down with them. The attack had been carried out not by several submarines as thought at the time but by a single small and obsolescent U-boat.

  ‘Nothing that had vet occurred had so emphatically proclaimed the change that had come over naval warfare,’ wrote Sir Julian Corbett in his official history, ‘and never perhaps had so great a result been obtained by means so relatively small.’(10)

  .Jellicoe’s fear of the U-boat was intensified by this disaster. Already his preoccupation with undersea weapons had extended to mines. In the second week of the war, he wrote to Batten berg: ‘There is, of course, an element of considerable risk in traversing the North Sea with the Battle Fleet. It does not appear that mines are laid yet, but at any moment they may be, and even with mine-sweepers ahead, which can only be done at 10 knots speed, there is no certainty they will be discovered before a ship hits one. An objection to having the mine-sweepers ahead is that the slow speed this entails on the Battle Fleet makes it an easier prey to submarines.’(11)

  Some modest precautions had been taken before the war, against the threat of enemy minelaying. As for British mines and minelaying, one reason why it was the Cinderella branch was that the Hague Convention of 1907 had outlawed the laying of minefields outside an enemy’s territorial waters and the mine as a weapon was regarded as even more ‘damn un-English’ than the torpedo. As well, the German delegation in particular had expressed the strongest repugnance to the idea of indiscriminate mining on humanitarian grounds. Nevertheless on the first day of the war, a German minelayer planted a field thirty miles off the English cast coast which claimed a brand-new British cruiser two days later. The Germans stepped up their minelaying in total disregard of outraged British and neutral protests, drawing on the considerable store of highly efficient mines accumulated before the war.

  British losses mounted, culminating in the catastrophe Jellicoe had most feared and the Germans had so ardently wished and worked for. The strain and risk of anchoring, especially overnight, in the unprotected base of Scapa Flow, had driven Jellicoe first into the North Sea where his fleet could be screened by its flotillas, and eventually into the Atlantic. As a makeshift while the defences of Scapa were completed, Lough Swilly on the north coast of Ireland became the Grand Fleet’s base. It was a considerable victory, unknown to the Germans, for the submarine branch to have forced the British Fleet out of the North Sea. But that was not the end of it. In mid-October the fast German liner Berlin, now armed and equipped with minelaying gear and a large complement of mines, succeeded in breaking out of the North Sea. ‘By fairy tale chances she achieved the impossible’, according to the official account, and succeeded in laying a large number of mines off the northern Irish coast. It was a lethal location near the entrance to the North Channel which carried most of the shipping into and out of Liverpool.

  Merchantmen and liners steamed out of this area in great numbers, but the Berlin’s first catch was a prize indeed. Early on the morning of 27 October the 2nd Battle Squadron of eight super-dreadnoughts put out from their anchorage for firing practice and was twenty miles off Tory Island, steaming in line ahead, when the Audacious suffered an explosion on the port side which brought her to a standstill. In spite of a prolonged attempt to tow her to safety, witnessed by a number of amazed American tourists on their way from New York in the Wh
ite Star Olympic, she blew up that evening and went down. On this occasion the loss of life was negligible, the loss of this new battleship potentially catastrophic. Due to calls on its strength from other oceans, and mechanical trouble suffered by several of its ships, the Grand Fleet now had an advantage of only three dreadnought battleships over the High Seas Fleet (nineteen to sixteen) and was actually inferior in numbers in battle-cruisers as well as destroyers. In the vital area of home waters, the 60 per cent advantage which bad been regarded as a minimum before the war had been whittled down to under 20 per cent, a totally inadequate figure when the enemy had the choice of time and place. Although these figures were not known to the man in the street, and for a while the Admiralty attempted to hush up the loss of the Audacious (in spite of the clicking of box Brownies at the Olympic’s rails) there was a deep sense of unease at the performance of the Navy so far, within the service, in Whitehall, and in the country at large.

  Certainly audacity appeared to be lacking. Beatty blamed the Admiralty. ‘Our principal and almost overwhelming handicap in the struggle… has been our Administrators… We are only playing at war’, he wrote to his wife despairingly. ‘We are all nervous as cats, afraid of losing lives, losing ships, and running risks. We are ruled by Panic Law, and until we risk something shall never gain anything.’(12) Ten days before the Audacious disaster Beatty wrote to Churchill: ‘At present we feel that we are working up for a catastrophe of a very large character. The feeling is gradually possessing the Fleet that all is not right somewhere. The menace of mines and submarines is proving larger every day, and adequate means to meet or combat them are not forthcoming, and we are gradually being pushed out of the North Sea and off our own particular perch. How does this arise? By the very apparent bet that we have no base where we can with any degree of safety lie for coaling, replenishing, and refitting and repairing. after two and a half months of war. This spells trouble… ‘(13)

  Beatty then told the First Lord how, as he wrote this letter, his flagship, Lion, and the rest of his squadron were in a loch on the Isle of Mull, guarded by picket boats and nets from submarines, low in coal. ‘We have been running hard now since 28th July; small defects are creeping up which we haven’t time to take in hand.’ Still lacking a secure base, ‘the question arises, how long can we go on, for I fear very much, not for long, as the need for small repairs is becoming insistent’.

  Jellicoe was even gloomier and more pessimistic than his subordinate. Churchill did all he could to bolster up the C.-in-C. ‘I am sure you will not be discouraged by Audacious episode’, he wrote. ‘We have been very fortunate to come through three months of war without the loss of a capital ship. I expected three or four by this time… Quite soon the harbours will be made comfortable for you. Mind you ask for all you want.’(14)

  Jellicoe had been doing that from the 4th of August, despatching telegrams and memoranda, sometimes daily, with complaints and requests, especially for more ships of all kinds, and – not unreasonably – a harbour that was secure enough to contain the Grand Fleet. This nagging was not the positive spirit on which Churchill always flourished, and he, too, became frustrated and gloomy. Captain Herbert Richmond, one of the Navy’s ‘brains’ and a founder member of the Naval War Staff, observed Churchill’s decline into pessimism by late October. ‘He was in low spirits,’ Richmond confided to his diary after dining with him, ‘…oppressed with the impossibility of doing anything. The attitude of waiting, threatened all the time by submarines, unable to strike back at their Fleet… and the inability of the Staff to make any suggestions seem to bother him.’(15)

  But it was a lack of the offensive spirit that worried everybody most. ‘If we harried the Germans more, they would be less free to harry us’, wrote Richmond four days later. The future Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, who certainly was never short of the offensive spirit when he was head of the naval forces at the D-Day landings thirty years later, wrote in his diary, ‘I don’t like the feeling of waiting to see what the enemy will do first… we should have a plan ready which will force the Germans to fight under the conditions we desire… ‘(16) Even the Prime Minister confided to Mrs Edwin Montagu on 4 November 1914 that he believed the Germans ‘are so much better than we are at sea’.(17) And on the same day he reported to the King that the Cabinet, after reciting a list of disasters, declared that they were not ‘creditable to the officers of the Navy’.(18)

  Fortunately, and to their undying credit, this state of depression and hopelessness did not extend to the lower decks. Morale remained high among the men, who were both more philosophical and more resilient than their officers. They were also sustained by the outcome of the one action in home waters when they had been allowed to get to grips with the enemy.

  Weeks earlier, when the war was young and ‘the boys would be home for Christmas’, there had been a fleeting but bloody brush with German light forces. Commodore Reginald Tyrwhitt, commander of the Harwich force, and Roger ‘When-are-we-going-to-make-war?’ Keyes were close friends and shared a bullish belligerence which endeared them to their subordinates. With no Battle of Trafalgar in immediate sight, and lacking the means to do more, these two officers concocted a plan to nip the enemy off Heligoland Island. The Germans laid on daily defensive destroyer patrols against British submarines and minelayers. Tyrwhitt with his two light cruisers and two destroyer flotillas, and three of Keyes’s submarines, was to lure these destroyers and any other ships that might come out to support them onto a strong force of more submarines. Two battle-cruisers based at that time on the Humber were to come up in support.

  Churchill and Battenberg were in favour of this show of strength and offensiveness and approved the plan on 24 August. When Jellicoe heard of it he thought it too risky without the support of the whole Grand Fleet. The Admiralty told him, in effect, that it was nothing to do with him but that he could send Beatty as additional support if he wished. When Beatty belatedly heard what Keyes and Tyrwhitt were up to, he successfully pressed Jellicoe to allow him to go and took with him for good measure the First Light Cruiser Squadron. The Admiralty was not told until later. Even when they were told that Beatty was storming south to support the operation, the news never reached Keyes and Tyrwhitt. The signal was sent to Harwich where it lay in someone’s ‘In’ file until the force had returned.

  Before action was joined, the operation had taken on the guise of farce and near-tragedy. No one told anyone anything and confusion of identity led to several hair-raising avoidances. ‘Our battle cruisers were scattered by, & made violent attempts to sink, a squadron of our own submarines’, observed the future Admiral the Hon. Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax. ‘Our light cruisers, sent in to support, were in 2 cases supposed to be enemy by our destroyers sighting them. In 1 case 2 of our light cruisers chased 2 of our torpedo boat destroyers at full speed to the west, each supposing the other to be the enemy. They blocked the air with wireless at the very time when Arethusa & her destroyers were being overwhelmed by superior forces.’(19)

  No one present at this engagement was prepared to give a clear account of just what occurred on that typical North Sea late summer day of uncertain visibility, mist, and funnel-smoke clouds of ever increasing density. Both sides were shocked at how reality differed from peace-time evolutions and gun practice, and how readily you could be confused when you were uncertain where the fire was coming from and from whom – friend or foe?

  All that could be recounted with some sort of certainty was that Tyrwhitt with his new armoured light cruiser Arethusa and the Third Flotilla of thirteen destroyers, closely followed by the First Flotilla and the cruiser Fearless, raced into Heligoland Bight, spotted and pursued their prey and engaged in a running battle until the cliffs of Heligoland Island itself suddenly loomed up out of the mist. The Germans had got wind of the operation, had laid their own trap, luring Tyrwhitt onto a strong force of cruisers which engaged him with rapid and very accurate fire.

  Tyrwhitt was soon in serious troubl
e and called urgently for assistance. When it arrived, in the nick of time, he was amazed at its strength, having no idea that Beatty’s battle-cruisers were participating.

  Beatty himself had hesitated for only a moment at the prospect of entering waters that were certainly mined and probably thick with U-boats. ‘If I lose one of these valuable ships the country will not forgive me’,(20) he remarked to his flag-captain, who encouraged him to take the risk at once. It was what Beatty wanted to hear, and with the Queen Mary and Princess Royal, sped south into the Bight. Soon after midday, the 13.5-inch guns of the battle-cruisers together with the smaller guns of the light cruisers, had accounted for three modern German light cruisers and a destroyer sunk, and another three light cruisers badly damaged. Germans killed, wounded, and taken prisoner numbered 1,200, including the Flotilla Admiral and the Destroyer Commodore. Although the Arethusa had taken a severe battering and had to be towed home, British casualties numbered a total of only seventy-five.

  This operation greatly cheered the Navy, especially the lower deck. But weak, uncoordinated planning, poor communications, and ineptitude ashore and afloat were all revealed and unfortunately were a portent of the future. For all the confusion and misunderstanding that prevailed from first to last, a Naval War Staff might never have been set up by Churchill. The real trouble was that it had been set up too late. Two years was not long enough to correct the bad habits of individualism masking regardlessness, and heroism covering up for blind rashness; to teach the Navy to think things out and organize itself in mutual co-operation; to note and respond rationally to information provided.

  An officer who served in the Operations Division (OD) in the Admiralty at this time made these comments on the War Staff in 1914: ‘Neither the Chief of the War Staff nor the Director of Operations Division seemed to have any particular idea of what the War Staff was supposed to be doing, or how they should make use of it; they had been brought up in the tradition that the conduct of the operations of the fleet was a matter for the admiral alone, and that he needed no assistance in assimilating the whole situation in all its ramifications, and in reaching a decision, probably instantaneously, upon what should be done and what orders should be issued in order to get it done.’(21)