Castles of Steel (146 page)

After very careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that a change is desirable in the post of First Sea Lord. I have not, I can assure you, arrived at this view hastily or without personal regret and reluctance. I have consulted the Prime Minister and with his concurrence, I am asking to see the King to make this recommendation to him.

Jellicoe replied that night:

I have received your letter. You do not assign a reason for your action, but I assume that it is due to a want of confidence in me. Under these conditions you will realise that it is difficult for me to continue my work. I shall therefore be glad to be relieved as soon as possible.

The next morning, Christmas Day, Geddes telephoned Lloyd George and reported that the deed was done. “It’s a good thing,” the prime minister said. Then, addressing Jellicoe as “Dear Sir,” the Welshman wrote him a single sentence: “I have the honor to inform you that His Majesty has been pleased to approve of my recommendation that the dignity of a peerage of the United Kingdom should be conferred on you. Yours faithfully, D. Lloyd George.” Jellicoe pondered and then decided to accept for the sake of the navy and his children. He was made a viscount, “a title usually reserved for a moderately efficient Cabinet Minister on retirement,” said Jellicoe’s friend Admiral Bacon.

Geddes said later that he fired Jellicoe “in the way I thought least likely to offend his feelings,” but the firing occurred at a moment when no newspapers would appear for two days. The Sea Lords—excepting Vice Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wester Wemyss, who had already agreed to succeed Jellicoe as First Sea Lord—were informed on Christmas Day. When Jellicoe told them that “the change was not of my seeking,” the admirals protested to Geddes: “We had full confidence in Sir John Jellicoe’s ability and fitness to perform his responsible duties and were most gravely concerned and disturbed by this sudden removal. . . . We therefore decided to request you . . . to inform us of the reasons which caused this step to be taken.” Geddes agreed to see the Sea Lords two at a time and informed them that, two months earlier, he had spoken to the two previous First Lords, Carson and Balfour, in the presence of Lloyd George, and that both former First Lords had told him that they did not consider Jellicoe the best man to lead the Admiralty. Carson vehemently denied ever having said this; Balfour was vague. Geddes then reversed himself and denied that he had ever quoted Carson against Jellicoe. Carson, now enraged, declared that not only had he never declared that Jellicoe was not the best man for the post, but indeed he had said that Jellicoe “was the only man for First Sea Lord.” Entangled in this briar patch, Geddes turned back on the Sea Lords and huffed, “I would remind you that the appointment and removal of Sea Lords is entirely a matter for His Majesty and His Majesty’s government.” Constitutionally, Geddes was correct. The Sea Lords, who had considered collective resignation, told Jellicoe that as “we have realised that we cannot possibly bring you back and we may do great harm to the country,” they had decided to remain.

News of the dismissal spread quickly. Almost worse than the fact of it was the way it was done. Vice Admiral Sir Stanley Colville, Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth, called it “disgraceful” and “a personal affront to the navy.” Madden, second in command of the Grand Fleet, was “mutinous, explosive and very bitter”; Vice Admiral Sir Cecil Burney, a former Grand Fleet battle squadron commander, called it “scandalous and wicked”; Prince Louis of Battenberg declared, “I cannot find words to express my disgust and indignation”; Goodenough said, “Never a man stood higher in the estimation of his friends, his brother officers and every man and boy in the Service.” Asquith wrote to Jellicoe, “No one knows better—perhaps no one as well as I—what the state and the Allied cause owe to you. When history comes to be written, you have no reason to fear the verdict.” Margot Asquith declared flatly, “I look upon the Government as insane.” Messages of devotion came from around the fleet. “We want you back,” said the men of the 10th Submarine Flotilla. “You are our Idol and one who we would follow to the death. ‘Come back!’ is the message from the Lower Deck to you.”

Jellicoe did not come back. Britain’s senior admiral had been dismissed by a costumed railway man, acting on behalf of a prime minister whose attitude toward the “High Admirals” was “Sack the lot!” The man who had trained the Grand Fleet for battle, who had issued the crucial deployment command at Jutland and sent the German navy fleeing into harbor, whose fleet had enforced the blockade that destroyed Germany’s will to fight, and who, before departing, had broken the back of the U-boat campaign, was gone. Three months later, Sir Edward Carson told the House of Commons what had happened: “The whole time that I was First Lord of the Admiralty, one of the greatest difficulties I had was the constant persecution—for I can call it nothing else—of certain high officials in the Admiralty who could not speak for themselves—constant persecution which, I have no doubt, could have [been] traced to reasons and motives of the most malignant character. Over and over again while I was at the Admiralty, I had the most constant pressure put upon me to remove officials, among them Sir John Jellicoe.”

When Jellicoe left the Grand Fleet, David Beatty succeeded him as Commander-in-Chief. Promoted at forty-five to become the navy’s youngest full admiral, he had boarded
Iron Duke,
whose crew, devoted to Jellicoe, was unhappy to see him; as Beatty arrived, it took a direct order from the ship’s captain to wring a halfhearted welcoming cheer from the men. Nor did the relationship improve. Somehow, the flamboyant hero of the battle cruiser force cut a poor figure on
Iron Duke.
“At sea,” explained one young torpedo man, describing the difference between the two admirals, “a figure in a duffel coat and sometimes wearing a white cap cover would come through the mess decks with an ‘Excuse me’ and that would be Sir John making his way to the bridge. When Beatty came on board it was ‘CLEAR LOWER DECKS!’ and a file of marines wearing short arms with Beatty in the middle. We never liked him.” Beatty felt the antipathy and because, in addition, he wanted a newer, bigger, faster ship, he transferred his flag two months later to
Queen Elizabeth.
“There was,” he wrote, “too much of Jellicoe in
Iron Duke.
”

The new Commander-in-Chief inherited an enormous, complex nautical war machine, trained by Jellicoe over twenty-eight months against the day when it would destroy the German navy. Under Beatty, the mission remained the same. The Grand Fleet, swinging on its moorings at Scapa Flow, commanded the surface of the sea, making possible both the blockade that was crippling Germany, and the effort against the U-boats. Had this massive surface sea power not existed, Germany would have won the war—without needing U-boats. Abruptly and catastrophically, Allied maritime commerce would have been disrupted and then severed by German surface ships; British soldiers and munitions would not have crossed the Channel into France; subsequently, American troops would not have embarked for Europe. Britain would have been forced to choose between starvation and surrender; either way, her participation in the war would have ended. The United States on its own would have confronted a victorious Germany able to draw on the combined resources of Europe. These facts seemed obvious, but not everyone was able to grasp them. “One of my difficulties during 1917,” Jellicoe said later of his tenure as First Sea Lord, “was to make the prime minister realise that the whole of the Allied cause was dependent on the Grand Fleet holding the surface command of the sea.” In any case, now that Jellicoe was gone, David Beatty became “the one man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon.”

Three weeks after taking command, Beatty led the Grand Fleet to sea to test his skill at controlling so large a body. There was a mishap that was not Beatty’s fault: two destroyers collided and sank, with most of their crews. Back in Scapa Flow, Beatty began rewriting the fleet’s tactical Battle Orders. Always critical of Jellicoe’s rigid system, under which the Commander-in-Chief controlled every movement of the fleet, he decentralized authority. Battle squadron and division commanders were encouraged to act independently and even to anticipate the Commander-in-Chief’s wishes. This loosening did not go too far: in action, the fleet was still to be concentrated in a single line of battle. If, however, enemy destroyers threatened a torpedo attack, as they had at Jutland, Beatty declared himself willing to face the risk rather than turn away. “Only by keeping the enemy fleet engaged can the initiative remain with the British fleet and a decision be obtained,” he said. “The torpedo menace will be accepted and the fleet turned toward the retiring enemy.”

Aside from this important change in tactics, Beatty’s overall North Sea strategy became almost more cautious than Jellicoe’s. Maintaining British naval supremacy now was Beatty’s duty. On paper, the task seemed simple enough. Numerically, the British preponderance in dreadnoughts was even more overwhelming than it had been under Jellicoe. Three more 15-inch-gun
Resolution
-class battleships had been added to the fleet, and by March 1917, Beatty commanded thirty-two British dreadnought battleships; Scheer then had twenty-one.

[Beatty’s dreadnought strength declined on the night of July 9, 1917, when the battleship
Vanguard,
lying at anchor at Scapa Flow, suddenly blew up. There were only two survivors of a crew of more than 800. The cause was assigned to a spontaneous explosion of powder in one of the magazines.]

Similarly, British superiority in battle cruisers was comfortable. After losing three of these ships at Jutland, where the Germans lost one, the Grand Fleet had seven battle cruisers to Germany’s four. Then, in August and September 1916, the British added two more:
Renown
and
Repulse,
armed with six 15-inch guns. Not until February 1918 did Hipper received the new battle cruiser
Hindenburg,
sister of
Derfflinger,
with eight 12-inch guns. But numbers, as Jutland had taught, were not everything. Beatty now feared what Jellicoe had feared: that British ships, particularly the battle cruisers, were structurally inferior to German in armor and underwater protection. Equally worrisome to Beatty was the constant draining of Grand Fleet destroyer strength for the antisubmarine campaign. Beatty asked for help; possibly some destroyers could be sent from the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, the Admiralty replied, it was impossible to spare any from anywhere. Worried that his fleet had been left too weak in screening craft to fight a battle, Beatty told an Admiralty conference on January 2, 1918, that “the correct strategy of the Grand Fleet is no longer to endeavour to bring the enemy to action at any cost, but rather to contain him in his bases until the general situation becomes more favourable to us.” The Admiralty and the War Cabinet approved.

It was the Germans who provoked the first surface action during Beatty’s North Sea command. Britain had promised a monthly shipment of 250,000 tons of British coal to Norway, and convoys composed largely of neutral ships were sailing daily, usually escorted by two British destroyers and several armed trawlers. U-boat success against the convoys had been minimal, so Scheer decided to try a surprise surface attack. The distance to the convoy routes from Horns Reef was between 300 and 350 miles; only twelve to fourteen hours’ steaming for a 30-knot vessel. Poor weather in autumn and winter decreased the likelihood of such vessels being observed. Scheer chose the fast new minelaying light cruisers
Brummer
and
Bremse,
each armed with four 6-inch guns and—more important—possessing a speed of 34 knots. On October 17, 1917, a westbound Scandinavian convoy of twelve merchant vessels was under convoy by two British destroyers,
Strongbow
and
Mary Rose,
and two armed trawlers. At dawn, lookouts on
Strongbow
reported two strange vessels on a converging course. The destroyer, taking them for British cruisers, flashed recognition signals. There was no response until suddenly, before the crew could reach action stations,
Strongbow
was smothered by accurate 6-inch gunfire at a range of 3,000 yards.
Mary Rose
hurried up and was dealt similar punishment. Both destroyers sank, and then nine merchant vessels were hunted down and sunk. No British ship was able to send a wireless report and, although at the time of the attack, sixteen British light cruisers were at sea south of the convoy route, the German cruisers returned to port unscathed. Beatty did not learn what had happened until 4:00
p.m.;
“Luck was against us,” he said.

Two months later, on December 12, Scheer attacked again. The assailants this time were four modern German destroyers; the victims, an eastbound Scandinavian convoy of five neutral merchant ships escorted by two British destroyers. The attack took place twenty-five miles off the Norwegian coast in blinding rain squalls and a heavy sea that concealed all but the masts and funnel tops of the destroyers. Again, German gunnery was excellent: within forty-five minutes, all the ships in the convoy and one British destroyer were sunk. This time Beatty sent out battleships, battle cruisers, and twelve light cruisers to intercept, but the German ships escaped through the Skagerrak. “We do have the most cursed luck,” Beatty complained. “I never anticipated that the Hun would use destroyers so far afield.” Daily convoys to Scandinavia were terminated and larger convoys were dispatched every fourth or fifth day, now escorted by dreadnoughts of the Grand Fleet.

This offered Scheer a different, perhaps greater opportunity. Aware that the convoys were being escorted by battleships, he decided on a bold stroke. The German battle cruisers and light cruisers and a flotilla of destroyers of Hipper’s Scouting Groups would attack the convoy and its escort while, with the rest of the High Seas Fleet, Scheer waited sixty miles to the southwest. If all went well and the British took the bait, he might at last be able to achieve what German admirals had sought since the beginning of the war: the destruction of an isolated dreadnought squadron of the Grand Fleet. At 5:00 a.m. on April 23, 1918, the German battle cruisers, three dreadnought battle squadrons, three light cruiser squadrons, and four flotillas of destroyers sailed from Schillig roads. Neither side had much information about the other. Scheer had restricted wireless to an absolute minimum, sharply limiting Room 40’s ability to provide useful information, and a dense fog over the entire North Sea restricted air reconnaissance by zeppelins. Nevertheless, all was going well; Hipper and the attack force were forty miles off the Norwegian coast in the vicinity of Bergen, when, at 5:10 a.m. on the twenty-fourth,
Moltke
suffered a mechanical breakdown. Her starboard inner propeller dropped off and before the turbine could be stopped racing, a gear wheel flew to pieces. Metal shards from the broken wheel tore into an auxiliary condenser, the engine room flooded, and the starboard and center engines ceased to work. Hipper ordered
Moltke
to fall back on the battle fleet.
Moltke
tried to obey, but salt water in her boilers reduced her speed to a crawl. At 6:40 a.m.
,
she broke radio silence and told Scheer that her breakdown was serious and her speed only 4 knots. At 8:45 a.m. she reported that she was “out of control.” At 10:50 a.m. the battleship
Oldenburg
took
Moltke
in tow and the main fleet turned back for home. Scheer meanwhile ordered Hipper to go forward with the operation and the battle cruisers continued steering northwest at 18 knots. Hipper crossed and reconnoitered the convoy route, found nothing, and, at 2:10 p.m.
,
turned back. In fact, there was no convoy; the Naval Staff had miscalculated its sailing date by twenty-four hours. British intelligence had been no better that day. Not until Scheer and Hipper began talking by wireless was the Admiralty even aware that a large German naval force was operating far out in the North Sea. Early that afternoon, the Grand Fleet cleared the Firth of Forth in a thick fog: thirty-one battleships, four battle cruisers, twenty-four light cruisers, and eighty-five destroyers. It was the last time during the war that the full strength of the Grand Fleet was set in motion, but once again Beatty’s luck was out. The High Seas Fleet was 100 miles ahead of him and out of reach. At 6:37 p.m.
,
Scheer reached the swept channels through the minefields and
Moltke
cast off her tow from
Oldenburg.
She was lumbering home when a torpedo from the British submarine
E-42
struck her. Eighteen hundred tons of seawater poured in, but
Moltke
still managed to reach the Jade under her own power. Considering what Scheer had hoped for, he, too, had been unlucky.