Castles of Steel (120 page)

After sending Hood to join Beatty, Jellicoe received no news for thirty minutes—this was the period of Beatty’s Run to the South. The Commander-in-Chief was given no details of the battle cruiser action and he learned of the loss of
Indefatigable
and
Queen Mary
only the following day. At 4:17 p.m., he asked Evan-Thomas whether the 5th Battle Squadron remained in company with Beatty. The reply was ambiguous: “Yes, I am engaging enemy.” At 4:38 p.m., however, an “URGENT. PRIORITY” message came in from Goodenough in
Southampton:
“Have sighted enemy battle fleet.” Scheer was coming north and, Jellicoe assumed, Beatty would fall back on the Grand Fleet, drawing the enemy after him. At 4:47 p.m., the Commander-in-Chief signaled all ships in the Grand Fleet, “Enemy’s battle fleet is coming north,” and the news ran through the ships like wildfire. On
Hercules,
the Russian naval attaché observed “every face radiant with enthusiasm and delight.” At 4:51 p.m., Jellicoe informed the Admiralty, “Urgent. Fleet action is imminent.” When the message arrived in Whitehall, Admiralty signals flowed out; ports and dockyards were to prepare to receive damaged ships; tugboats were alerted to assist cripples. In Whitehall, even the usually imperturbable First Lord, Arthur Balfour, was “in a state of very great excitement.”

[Balfour’s presence in the Admiralty chart room during the battle did not make things easier for Oliver, the Chief of Staff. The First Lord did not actively participate in command decisions as his predecessor, Churchill, had done during the Scarborough Raid and the Battle of the Dogger Bank; rather, Balfour was an excited spectator. As Oliver described the situation: “Balfour stayed all afternoon and some of the evening . . . with his Naval Assistant and his Private Secretary, and if I went to look at a chart some of them were bound to be in the way and all the talk was distracting. When I could stand it no longer, I went to Balfour and shook his hand and said ‘Good-night, Sir,’ and he said good night and took his supporters away with him. It was nice of him not to be offended.”]

Tyrwhitt with the Harwich flotillas was ordered to fill his bunkers with fuel in order to be ready to supplement or relieve Grand Fleet light cruisers and destroyers that might run low.

Then, for over an hour, the Commander-in-Chief was left in ignorance. The weather was partly responsible. Patchy haze, with visibility in some directions of up to 16,000 yards and down to 2,000 yards in others, hung over the water. Throughout the afternoon, the fleets were steaming at high speed through these shrouded seas, in which not only the enemy but their own forces frequently were hidden. Often, ships appeared only as pale, shadowy silhouettes, impossible to identify, appearing and then vanishing in the murk. In this confusion, heightened by the complexity of formations and maneuvers, scouting arrangements disintegrated and detailed information became impossible to acquire or pass along. The reports, when they did come in, were as apt to be wrong as right, with no way of knowing which was which. And beyond this general problem, which affected all commanders in both fleets, Jellicoe was afflicted by something else: the failure of a subordinate to perform his duty. Beatty’s primary role as a battle cruiser commander was to maintain contact with the enemy battle fleet and keep his own Commander-in-Chief informed of its strength, bearing, course, and speed. In the months before the battle, Jellicoe’s instructions to Beatty had constantly stressed the need for timely information. Yet between 4:45 p.m. and 6:06 p.m., Beatty, immersed in his own battle with Hipper, had neglected or forgotten this duty and sent Jellicoe nothing. Goodenough had signaled three times—at 5:00, 5:40, and 5:50 p.m.—reporting that the enemy battle fleet was coming north, but Goodenough’s descriptions of his own positions were so obviously inaccurate that Jellicoe wondered how much weight to give his information. Under enormous strain, the Commander-in-Chief reacted by attempting to tighten his tactical control of the battle fleet. Small, fidgety messages flashed from her searchlights or were signaled by semaphore. The 22-knot
Royal Oak
was reproved for slewing around astern of the 20-knot
Iron Duke:
“You must steer a steadier course in action or your shooting will be bad,” Jellicoe prompted. “Keep just clear of the wake of next ahead if it helps ships to keep up,” he advised the entire fleet. And to
Thunderer,
he signaled, “Can you pass
Conqueror
? If so, do so.”

Meanwhile, the Grand Fleet’s dark gray columns steamed forward—but toward what? Where was the enemy? Jellicoe assumed that the High Seas Fleet was pursuing Beatty to the north, but still no one was providing him with fresh, reliable information. At 5:55 p.m., he signaled
Marlborough,
leading the dreadnought column on his starboard wing: “What can you see?” Five minutes later,
Marlborough
reported that she could see “our battle cruisers bearing south southwest, steering east,
Lion
leading ship.” So Beatty was nearby and, that being so, Hipper was not far away. But where was Scheer? Jellicoe heard the rumble of heavy guns on
Iron Duke
’s port bow and saw gun flashes on the southeastern horizon; these came from Hood’s assault on
Wiesbaden
and her sister light cruisers. Jellicoe, who was unaware of the nature of this action, wondered whether, somehow, this could be the bearing of Scheer’s battle fleet. “I wish somebody would tell me who is firing and what they are firing at,” he said.

Then, just at 6:00 p.m., Jellicoe and his staff could see
Lion
for themselves; she was off his starboard bow, steaming east through the haze five miles away, driving right across the front of the battle fleet, thundering salvos to the south at an invisible foe. A long trail of smoke was pouring from a hole in her port side, the guns of her X turret were pointed up at a useless angle, and tall gray columns of water thrown up by German shells were rising between her and her sisters. A midshipman in
Benbow
also saw the British battle cruisers “suddenly burst through the mist . . . a wonderful sight, these great ships, tearing down across us, their huge funnels silhouetted against a great bank of red cordite smoke and lit up by sheets of flame as they fired salvo after salvo at the enemy whose flashes could be seen in the distance.” Jellicoe had no time for admiration. Instantly, at 6:01 p.m., he flashed Beatty by searchlight: “Where is enemy’s battle fleet?”

Beatty did not know the answer; he had not seen the German battleships since he had left Evan-Thomas behind in order to give his own battered ships a respite. For five minutes, therefore, as Beatty and his four surviving battle cruisers raced across the front of the British battle fleet,
Lion
did not respond to Jellicoe’s question. Then, at 6:06 p.m., Beatty gave an answer of sorts by searchlight: “Enemy’s battle cruisers bearing southeast.” This was no help to Jellicoe. In desperation, he signaled Beatty again: “Where is enemy’s battle fleet?” Again, Beatty gave no immediate answer. Seven minutes passed while Beatty searched the southern horizon with his binoculars. Then, suddenly, he saw the distinctive massive shapes of
König
and
Grosser Kurfürst.
He now knew the bearing of the enemy battle fleet and, enormously relieved, he signaled Jellicoe, “Enemy battle fleet in sight bearing south. The nearest ship is seven miles.” But his signal provided neither course nor speed.

Standing on the bridge of
Iron Duke,
a small figure in a belted blue raincoat with a white scarf knotted at his neck, Jellicoe stared intently at the hazy line of sea and sky to the south. The British Commander-in-Chief was facing the most critical decision of his life: how and when to deploy the dreadnought battle fleet. The Grand Fleet had been safer from U-boat attack in cruising formation—six columns abeam, with four ships in each column—but it was impossible to fight in this formation. If the fleet was forced to open fire while still in column, only the forward guns of the leading six ships could be used. “Deployment” was the maneuver that would convert the fleet from cruising formation into a single, long battle line of twenty-four dreadnoughts, which would bring to bear all the fleet’s heavy guns on the enemy. To deploy effectively, however, it was essential to know the location, formation, course, and speed of the enemy fleet; this would determine the direction of the British deployment. A battle line deployed without this knowledge—or on the basis of wrong information—might place the British fleet in the position of having its own T crossed.

[The naval maneuver called “crossing the T” places one fleet in a line moving squarely across the leading tip of an approaching enemy fleet. From this vantage, the first fleet can bring all or most of its guns to bear in a massive broadside; the enemy can reply only with the few forward guns of its leading one or two ships. In the days of naval warfare in which the big gun was the primary weapon, to “cross an enemy’s T” was every admiral’s dream.]

Jellicoe, staring intently into the mist ahead, attempting to pierce the haze, knew that his own eyes were not sufficient. The range of heavy naval guns in 1916 exceeded normal North Sea visibility; that was especially true on this day, May 31. Once the order to deploy was given, its execution would require at least twenty minutes. As a result, if the Commander-in-Chief waited to give the command until he himself could see the enemy, he risked having his fleet caught in the act of deployment with many of its turrets masked by his other ships. Nevertheless, Jellicoe delayed until he could be certain, holding on in column formation, considering his next move methodically as if he were working out a mathematical problem. In the next few minutes before the firing began, he must swing his six columns into a single line—east to port, or west to starboard. His decision must be the right one; once started, there was no going back. Should he deploy on the right wing—to starboard and the west? At first, Jellicoe thought so; it would bring his fleet closest to where the enemy probably was and allow him to open fire sooner and at shorter range. But with every moment, deployment on the right seemed less wise. It would bring the two fleets within immediate torpedo range of each other, and nearby German destroyers would be able to deliver a massed torpedo attack on his battleships in the act of turning. If, on the other hand, he deployed to the left, on the port wing column, the Grand Fleet battle line, heading southeast, would be 4,000 yards farther away from the enemy fleet, but would have crossed the German T. Further, he would have achieved the best possible light for gunnery; his ships, except for gun flashes, would be invisible in the eastern mists while the German ships would be silhouetted against a bright, sunset horizon to the west. “I therefore decided to deploy on the port wing,” Jellicoe said later. After the war, the official German naval history endorsed Jellicoe’s choice: “One must agree that . . . [a deployment on the right wing] would have been only too welcome to the German fleet.”

All these calculations passed through and were resolved in Jellicoe’s mind in sixty seconds. He had received Beatty’s signal at 6:14 p.m. Frederic Dreyer, the captain of
Iron Duke,
was standing on his bridge when he saw
Lion
’s searchlight signaling that Scheer’s battleships were to the south:

I heard the signalman calling each word of Beatty’s reply to Jellicoe’s repeated demand. . . . I then heard at once the sharp, distinctive step of the Commander-in-Chief approaching—he had steel strips on his heels. He stepped quickly onto the platform around the compasses and looked in silence at the magnetic compass card for about twenty seconds. I watched his keen, brown, weather-beaten face with tremendous interest, wondering what he would do. . . . I realized as I watched him that he was as cool and unmoved as ever. Then he looked up and broke the silence with the order in his crisp, clear-cut voice to the Fleet Signal Officer: “Hoist equal speed pendant southeast.” This officer said, “Would you make it a point to port, sir, so they will know it is on the port wing column?” Jellicoe replied, “Very well, hoist equal speed pendant southeast by south.” The officer then called over the bridge rail to the signal boatswain. . . . Three flags soared up
Iron Duke
’s halyards. We had not yet sighted any German vessel.

The time was 6:15 p.m.

To speed things up, while some ships were still acknowledging his flag signal, Jellicoe told his Flag Captain, “Dreyer, commence the deployment.” Dreyer immediately blew two short blasts on the ship’s siren—the mariner’s signal for “I am turning to port”—and ordered
Iron Duke
’s helm to be put over. The admirals in adjacent columns, all watching
Iron Duke,
did the same; each blew two short blasts on his flagship’s siren and put over the helm. As the six battleships leading the columns swung to port, those astern followed ship by ship, the entire line falling in line behind the port wing division led by
King George V. Iron Duke
now was the ninth ship in a single line of twenty-seven British dreadnought battleships. Sir Julian Corbett, the official historian of the Royal Navy in the Great War, calls Jellicoe’s deployment decision “the supreme moment of the naval war”; Professor Arthur Marder describes it as “the peak moment of the influence of sea power upon history.” Jellicoe himself was well aware of the significance of what he had just done. If his calculations were correct, his deployment would deliver the High Seas Fleet into his hands. His fleet would be in a compact line six miles long with all gunnery arcs bearing on the enemy. And it began just as he had hoped: as his battleships were turning into line, the van of Scheer’s fleet loomed up to the south, first as shadowy silhouettes, then more clearly. From
Iron Duke,
the admiral himself saw three ships on the starboard beam whose shapes were those of the
König
s. Turning to the man beside him, Jellicoe said, “Dreyer, I think it is time for you to go to your station in the conning tower.”

On either wing of this immense fleet, now transforming itself from one formation into another, the British deployment was distorted by the frantic activity of dozens of small ships: the light cruiser squadrons and destroyer flotillas attempting to reach their proper stations screening the battle fleet. As a result, on the port—the northeastern—wing, there was a mass of small ships, “as thick as the traffic in Piccadilly,” weaving and dodging at full speed across the path of the dreadnoughts turning onto their new course. At the opposite—the southwestern—end of the British battlefront, where the starboard wing column was deploying, the congestion was worse. Beatty’s four battle cruisers were charging across the front of the onrushing Grand Fleet dreadnoughts, while his cruisers and destroyers were forced to pass through the area where the battleships were deploying by darting and slipping between the turning dreadnought columns. Thus, as
Galatea
’s light cruiser squadron dashed between the four battleships of the port wing column,
Galatea
herself passed close under
Agincourt
’s bow just as the dreadnought opened fire.
Agincourt
“fired a salvo over us which fairly lifted us out of the water,” said one of the light cruiser’s officers. “I don’t know how many of her twelve 14-inch guns she fired, but I felt as if my head was blown off.” There were numerous near collisions and some ships had to stop engines to avoid collision. An officer watching from
Malaya
observed “a light cruiser squadron and a destroyer flotilla gathered together in a very small area on which the enemy was concentrating all available fire. Amidst this perfect deluge of shells, the light cruisers and destroyers were twisting and turning, endeavoring to avoid each other and the big ships. . . . It will never cease to be a source of wonder to me that so few ships were hit and there were no collisions. It must have been one of the most wonderful displays of seamanship and clear-headedness that ever existed.” Later, when participants looked back, the place and the moment came to be called the Windy Corner.