Castles of Steel (66 page)

The margin between the British and German fleets in the North Sea was narrower during the last two months of 1914 than at any other time during the war.
Audacious
had been lost. Four of Jellicoe’s battleships were refitting as a result of the strain imposed by constant sea-keeping. Three of Beatty’s battle cruisers had been withdrawn to deal with Spee’s East Asia Squadron. Never again during the whole course of the war was the situation so favorable for a German challenge to the Grand Fleet. The three British admirals most concerned, Fisher, Jellicoe, and Beatty, worried about this margin through November. After the Yarmouth raid, Fisher had a hunch that it was a precursor of things to come. He had always recognized the likelihood of German raids involving fast ships taking advantage of the usually poor visibility in the North Sea. He was certain the Germans would come again once they knew that important capital ships were absent from home waters. In late November, he alerted the navy to the probability of a “flying raid” or an “insult bombardment” against the east coast.

Jellicoe needed no warning. Convinced, like Fisher, that the Germans must know that
Invincible, Inflexible,
and
Princess Royal
were not in the North Sea, he pinpointed December 8 as the optimum day for a raid because the moon and tides would be favorable. Beatty, for his part, was anxious because if Hipper’s battle cruisers came, it would be his responsibility to intercept and engage. The ratio of British to German strength in battle cruisers was far from Beatty’s liking. On November 6, he had received the new battle cruiser
Tiger,
but this increase was more than wiped out by his loss of the three ships sent to hunt down Spee. Beatty now had four battle cruisers to Hipper’s five (including
Blücher
). Even Churchill, by nature an optimist, was wary and on December 11, he warned Jellicoe: “They can never again have such a good opportunity for successful operations as at present and you will no doubt consider how best to prepare your forces.”

The truth was that the Admiralty had more to go on than the First Lord’s intuition. Room 40 had begun to provide useful information. When the German battle cruisers began hit-and-run raiding at Yarmouth on November 4, Room 40 was not yet fully operational, but on the evening of December 14, crucial information was intercepted for the first time. At about seven o’clock that Monday night, Sir Arthur Wilson walked into Winston Churchill’s room at the Admiralty and asked for an immediate meeting with the First Sea Lord and the Chief of Staff. Fisher and Oliver quickly appeared. Wilson explained that Room 40 had pieced together the knowledge that within a few hours, the German battle cruisers and other ships would be putting to sea. There was a strong possibility that the German squadron would be off the English coast at dawn on the sixteenth. But the Room 40 codebreakers did not predict the operation in its entirety. The intercepted signals gave a clear picture of the movements of Hipper’s forces, but damagingly failed to report that Ingenohl would be bringing the High Seas Fleet out as far as the Dogger Bank. Indeed, Wilson, relying on what he had learned from Room 40, told the small group in Churchill’s office that the High Seas Fleet appeared
not
to be involved. Assuming this to be true, the small group in Churchill’s office decided to respond with less than maximum force. British battleships, battle cruisers, cruisers, and destroyers in sufficient number to deal easily with Hipper’s battle cruisers were assigned to act. At 9:30 p.m. on December 14, the Admiralty signaled Jellicoe at Scapa Flow:

Good information just received shows that German First [Battle] Cruiser Squadron with destroyers leave Jade River on Tuesday morning early and return on Wednesday night. It is apparent from information that battleships are very unlikely to come out. The enemy force will have time to reach our coast. Send at once, leaving tonight, the Battle Cruiser Squadron and Light Cruiser Squadron supported by a Battle Squadron, preferably the Second. At daylight on Wednesday they should be at some point where they can make sure of intercepting the enemy during his return. Tyrwhitt, with his light cruisers and destroyers, will try to get into touch with the enemy off the British coast and shadow him, keeping the Admiral informed. From our information, First [German Battle] Cruiser Squadron consists of four battle cruisers and there will probably be three flotillas of destroyers.

Another telegram, sent to Tyrwhitt at Harwich, instructed him to have his light cruisers and destroyers under way off Harwich “before daylight tomorrow.” A third telegram went to Keyes, dispatching eight submarines with their controlling destroyers,
Lurcher
and
Firedrake,
to the island of Terschelling off the Dutch coast to guard against a German move south into the Channel.

Jellicoe obeyed. The 2nd Battle Squadron, commanded by Vice Admiral Sir George Warrender, included the six newest and most powerful ships in the navy, the dreadnoughts
King George V, Ajax, Centurion, Orion, Monarch,
and
Conqueror.
The four fast, modern light cruisers of the 1st Light Cruiser Squadron,
Southampton, Birmingham, Nottingham,
and
Falmouth,
commanded by Commodore William Goodenough, had been bloodied at the Battle of the Bight. From Cromarty came Beatty’s 1st Battle Cruiser Squadron, now reduced to
Lion, Queen Mary, Tiger,
and
New Zealand.
And from Harwich, Tyrwhitt was ordered to put to sea with his light cruisers,
Aurora
and
Undaunted,
and two flotillas with a combined forty-two destroyers.

The force selected was immensely powerful, but Jellicoe was worried and annoyed by this division of his fleet; the Commander-in-Chief wished to take the entire Grand Fleet to sea. Jellicoe knew that all his many battle squadrons would not be required to deal with Hipper alone. But who could tell how reliable the Admiralty’s new intelligence source might be? It was Jellicoe’s permanent conviction that to preserve British naval supremacy the Grand Fleet must always be concentrated. The six dreadnoughts of the 2nd Battle Squadron, points out James Goldrick, “were precisely the sort of [detached] force that the Germans dreamed of being able to isolate and destroy.”

[Normally, there were eight ships in a British dreadnought battle squadron. But the 2nd had been reduced to six, first by the sinking of
Audacious
on October 27, and then by the sending of
Thunderer
on December 8 to Devonport for the retubing of her condensers.]

The Admiralty dispositions—it seemed to Jellicoe—“were giving them that chance.” When Jellicoe protested, the Admiralty made a gesture: still forbidden to bring down the whole Grand Fleet, he was permitted to bring out as insurance Rear Admiral William Pakenham’s 3rd Cruiser Squadron from Rosyth, the four armored cruisers
Antrim, Devonshire, Argyll,
and
Roxburgh.

Ultimately, after events had proved Jellicoe correct about bringing out the entire Grand Fleet, Churchill attempted to defend the Admiralty’s bad decision: “A great deal of cruising had been imposed on the fleet owing to the unprotected state of Scapa and it was desirable to save wear and tear of machinery as much as possible. Moreover, risks of accident, submarine and mine which were incurred every time that immense organization went to sea, imposed a certain deterrent on its use except when clearly necessary. The decision was, in light of subsequent events, much regretted. But it must be remembered that the information on which the Admiralty was acting had never yet been tested, that it seemed highly speculative in character, and that for whatever it was worth, it excluded the presence at sea of the German High Seas Fleet.”

Although the Admiralty determined the strength of the force, Jellicoe remained in operational command and it was he who selected the rendezvous point, twenty-five miles southeast of the Dogger Bank in the middle of the North Sea. With over 300 miles of English coastline exposed, no one could predict where Hipper would strike. Jellicoe therefore selected the position most favorable for intercepting the German battle cruisers on their return. The rendezvous point was about 180 miles west-northwest of Heligoland and 100 miles southeast of Scarborough on the English coast; the British squadrons were to be at this position at 7:30 on the morning of December 16. Unbeknownst to anyone on either side, this spot “was only thirty miles south of the dawn rendezvous point Admiral von Ingenohl had chosen for the High Seas Fleet.”

For the purpose of intercepting Hipper’s returning ships, the rendezvous point was the best that could have been chosen. Churchill, writing later, gives the impression that it was the Admiralty that placed the ships in position to intercept; in fact, it was Jellicoe. The important point, however, is that both the Admiralty and the Commander-in-Chief had coolly decided in advance that they would not attempt to defend English seaside towns; their intention, rather, was to intercept the raiders as they returned home. This meant that the Germans would be able to bombard largely without opposition whatever towns or targets they chose. The Admiralty, applying war’s grim calculus, was prepared to accept this damage in exchange for the destruction of Hipper’s scouting groups. This decision, of course, was unknown to the citizens of Scarborough, Hartlepool, or Whitby and to the British press and general public, which, in the wake of the bombardments, asked, Where was the navy? The secret, whose purpose was to withhold from the Germans the knowledge that their codes had been broken and that Britain had early knowledge of German fleet movements, remained undisclosed until after the war.

Because Jellicoe remained at Scapa Flow with most of the Grand Fleet, command of the intercepting force went to Vice Admiral Sir George Warrender, commander of the 2nd Battle Squadron and second in rank to Jellicoe in the Grand Fleet. It was Warrender who on July 29 had been entrusted to bring the fleet to Scapa Flow, when the Commander-in-Chief, Sir George Callaghan, was summoned to London. An experienced and respected officer, Warrender had made his battle squadron the fleet’s most efficient in gunnery. Nevertheless, given the complexities of modern naval warfare and the rapidity with which decisions had to be made, Warrender should not have been in command. His mind worked gradually and his responses were further slowed by a growing deafness. Goodenough, the light cruiser commodore, praised Warrender as possessing “an imperturbability that no circumstances could ruffle.” But a young lieutenant aboard
Southampton
put Admiral Warrender’s “imperturbability” in a different context when he wrote to his father, a retired admiral, that Warrender “never spoke in peacetime because he was deaf and everyone thought he must be thinking a lot. When war came, everyone said, ‘Good gracious, what was he doing the whole time?’ ”

Warrender’s six battleships and four light cruisers sailed from Scapa Flow at 5:30 on the morning of December 15, a few hours after Hipper left Wilhelmshaven. High winds and heavy seas running against the strong tide of the Pentland Firth obliged Warrender to leave behind at Scapa all of the destroyers normally assigned to his battle squadron. As it was, his ships clearing the Orkneys suffered in the maelstrom of the Pentland Firth. The sea hammered the small light cruisers
Boadicea
and
Blanche
(
Boadicea
’s bridge and several members of her crew were carried overboard) so badly that both ships had to turn back to Scapa for repairs.

Beatty was at Cromarty on Monday night, December 14, when he received Jellicoe’s order to join Warrender’s force at sea the following morning. Soon after midnight,
Lion
’s torpedo nets came in and the boiler rooms began to raise steam. Warrender, having left his own destroyers behind, asked Beatty to bring from Cromarty the eight destroyers attached to the Battle Cruiser Squadron. Of the eight, only seven were ready for sea, but those seven sailed with Beatty at 6:00 a.m. From
Lion
’s deck, an officer watched as the battle cruisers “passed in the dark through the boom defense of Cromarty and out beyond . . . when we encountered a very heavy sea which caused even
Lion
to roll in a disquieting manner. Daylight found us out of sight of land on a south-easterly course in heavy weather.” Beatty met Warrender off Moray Firth at eleven in the morning and, as Beatty had received no details of the operation or of enemy movements, Warrender used visual signals to give him what information he had. “I think raid [objective is] probably Harwich or Humber,” he signaled. He ordered Beatty: “Do not get more than five miles ahead of me. . . . If you get engaged, draw enemy towards battle squadron. If . . . [Tyrwhitt] does not join us, I fear only enemy’s destroyers. . . . First Light Cruiser Squadron . . . [will be] under your command to engage enemy’s light cruisers and head off destroyers. . . . Warn cruisers to beware of mines floating or dropping astern. Have you any suggestions?” During the afternoon of the fifteenth, Jellicoe, concerned about Warrender’s shortage of screening destroyers, asked the Admiralty to send Tyrwhitt and his flotillas to meet Warrender the following morning at the 7:30 a.m. rendezvous. The Admiralty refused, however, and when Tyrwhitt sailed from Harwich at 2:00 p.m. on the fifteenth with four light cruisers and two flotillas of destroyers, his instructions were merely to be off Yarmouth at daylight and await further orders.

Through the night of the fifteenth, Warrender’s force steamed southeast for the rendezvous they were to reach at 7:30 a.m., half an hour after sunrise. The night steaming formation placed the battle cruisers five miles ahead of the battleships, with the four light cruisers five miles to starboard and the four armored cruisers one mile to port. Admiral Beatty’s seven destroyers were ten miles to port of the battleships, with orders to close in at daylight and act as a screen. Worried about the threat of torpedo attack by German destroyers, Warrender—repeating Jellicoe’s request—asked during the night that Tyrwhitt’s destroyer flotillas be ordered to join him in the morning. Again, the Admiralty refused and Tyrwhitt’s instructions remained in place: simply to be off Yarmouth at dawn.