Castles of Steel (23 page)

As Beatty’s battle cruisers turned toward home, sailors on board
Lion
rushed up on deck to cheer their admiral. Beatty was not ready to celebrate.
Arethusa,
despite her temporary repairs, was crawling along at 6 knots, protectively surrounded by twenty-three destroyers. Beatty found this speed too slow and, at 9:30 p.m., ordered the old armored cruiser
Hogue
to take
Arethusa
in tow. In this fashion, at the end of a rope, Tyrwhitt’s flagship arrived back at the Nore at 5:00 p.m. on the following day, August 29. From there, she raised enough steam to move up to Chatham under her own power.

While the retreat and towing operations were under way, Beatty remained nearby. Once all British ships were out of danger, he spread Goodenough’s light cruisers before him and swept off to the north, toward Scapa Flow. Two days after the battle, on August 30, the 1st Battle Cruiser Squadron and the 1st Light Cruiser Squadron entered the Flow on a calm summer evening when the sky was streaked with light and cloud. As
Lion
and her sisters steamed down the lines of anchored Grand Fleet battleships, the crews lined the decks and cheered. Beatty was embarrassed. He felt that, given the superiority of his force, his success was unexceptional. Unfortunately, just as
Lion
glided to a halt, her anchor chain jammed in the chocks. She had to go back and make a second approach, which meant coming down the line again. Again, she was cheered. This time, Beatty was seriously annoyed, thinking that his flagship’s second passage would be seen as exhibitionism. He was reassured when another admiral signaled, “It seems your anchor was rammed home as hard as your attack.” A more practical sign of respect for the ships that had fought the battle came from the battleship
Orion,
whose crew volunteered to help the men of
Southampton
with the hard, dirty work of coaling. Twelve hours later, Jellicoe came into the Flow aboard
Iron Duke
and Beatty went on board the flagship to report. Both men were relieved; both knew the risks Beatty had run. As Beatty later told Arthur Balfour, “The end justified the means, but if I had lost a battle cruiser, I should have been hanged, drawn, and quartered. Yet it was necessary to run the risk to save two of our light cruisers and a large force of destroyers which otherwise would most certainly have been lost.”

The action was Britain’s first naval victory of the war. Besides the three German light cruisers, a destroyer,
V-187,
had been sunk;
Frauenlob
had been severely damaged; and two more light cruisers,
Strassburg
and
Stettin,
had also been damaged. German casualties totaled 1,242, including 712 men killed (one of whom was Rear Admiral Maass), and 336 prisoners of war. On the British side, the light cruiser
Arethusa
and three destroyers had been heavily damaged, but all had come home. There were surprisingly few British casualties: 35 men were killed and 40 wounded in all ships.
Arethusa,
the ship most severely punished, suffered 11 killed and 16 wounded.

Overnight, news that British warships had penetrated the Bight to within sight of the red cliffs of Heligoland swept across Britain. “We had a great reception all the way from the Nore to Chatham,” Tyrwhitt reported from
Arethusa.
“Every ship and everybody cheered like mad. When
Arethusa
came past Sheerness to dock at Chatham, crowds gathered from every direction and cheers rose to skies. . . . Winston met us at Sheerness and came up to Chatham and fairly slobbered over me. Offered me any ship I liked and all the rest of it.” The
Daily Express
headlined its story, “We’ve Gone to Heligoland and Back! Please God, We’ll Go Again!”

The public hero was Beatty; Jellicoe commended the vice admiral for taking “the only action which was possible.” If Beatty and Goodenough had not been sent by Jellicoe or had not arrived in time, two British light cruisers and thirty-one British destroyers might have been massacred by the eight German light cruisers. Justifiably pleased with himself, Beatty wrote to Ethel, “It was good work to be able to do it within twenty miles of . . . Heligoland, with the whole of the High Seas Fleet listening to the boom of our guns.” He praised the Germans: “Poor devils, they fought their ships like men and went down with colours flying like seamen against overwhelming odds. . . . Whatever their faults, they are gallant . . . and indeed are worthy foemen.” Beatty was miffed, however, when he received no immediate praise from the Admiralty. “I had thought I should have received an expression of appreciation from Their Lordships,” he wrote to Ethel four days after the battle, “but have been disappointed, or rather not so much disappointed as disgusted, and my real opinion has been confirmed that they would have hung me if there had been a disaster, as there very nearly was, owing to the extraordinary neglect of the most ordinary precautions on their part. However, all’s well that ends well, and they haven’t had the opportunity of hanging me yet and they won’t get it.”

Tyrwhitt also became a hero, and his picture was sold on London streets. “It really was awfully fine and not half so unpleasant as I expected,” he wrote to his wife and sister. “I can only wonder that everyone on the upper deck was not killed. . . . My signal officer was the only man killed on the bridge, such a nice boy. He was talking to me at the time and had just pointed out that we were on fire.”

Not everyone on the British side was pleased. Many officers saw not so much a victory won as a catastrophe narrowly escaped. The Admiralty had failed to inform the Grand Fleet commander what ships were to be present. Until Beatty disclosed his presence, no one knew who was in overall command. British light cruisers had been sighted by British destroyers and reported as enemies to the very ships they had just spotted. British submarines had attacked British surface ships. To the extent that one man was responsible, it was Sturdee. As Chief of Staff, he had taken it upon himself not to inform Jellicoe of the operation until the last minute and then had rejected Jellicoe’s suggestion that he bring out the Grand Fleet in support. If Jellicoe on his own initiative had not sent Beatty and Goodenough to sea, the result might have been a disaster.

Keyes was thoroughly disgusted; instead of victory he saw wasted opportunity. “I think an absurd fuss was made over that small affair,” he wrote to Goodenough on September 5. “It makes me sick . . . to think what a complete success it might have been. . . . We begged for light cruisers to support us and deal with the enemy’s light cruisers which we knew would come out . . . but were told none were available. If you had only known what we were aiming at [and had] had an opportunity of discussing it with Tyrwhitt and me . . . we might have sunk at least six cruisers and had a ‘scoop’ indeed.”

[In the aftermath of the battle, Keyes had another matter to settle with Goodenough. While
Liverpool,
one of Goodenough’s light cruisers, was standing by to pick up survivors of the sinking
Mainz,
Keyes arrived in
Lurcher
and, as the ranking officer, took charge of the rescue operation. “I think it right to tell you,” Goodenough subsequently wrote to Keyes, “that the officer of the
Liverpool
’s cutter was terribly upset at someone on board one of the destroyers calling him . . . a coward—apparently for not coming closer to pick up more. As a matter of fact, I consider that I went beyond my duty in leaving a ship to pick up anyone when the place was sown with mines and submarines and I do not intend to do it again. Please remember me to your wife.”

As Keyes knew very well, Goodenough was aware that the guilty party was Keyes himself. He quickly admitted this to Goodenough: “I ought not to have used the word ‘coward.’ And I much regret it. I only did so under great feeling and after repeated appeals to the officer to close and save life, which he ignored. There were men within 50 yards of him at least 100 yards from
Mainz,
but he would do nothing. . . . When she . . . slowly sank, instead of closing, he pulled away hard . . . probably prompted by excessive prudence . . . and an ignorant fear of suction. In this case there was none. I felt sick and ashamed, and do still, to think that a British officer should have behaved in such a manner.”

Goodenough accepted this explanation and in subsequent letters between “Roger” and “Bill,” they spoke no more about it.]

Jellicoe’s faith in the Admiralty’s judgment was diminished, but he had been Commander-in-Chief for only three weeks and his protest was muted. He was dismayed by poor tactical control during the battle and by the fact that captains had communicated without reporting their own position, course, and speed or that of the enemy.

[Stephen King-Hall, a lieutenant aboard
Southampton,
later pointed out that after two or three days at sea without seeing a landmark or lightship of any sort, a ship had to rely on sights of the sun or stars to fix her position. When the weather was bad, these were often not available. In that case, the captain was forced to rely on dead reckoning—that is to say, on plotting his course and speed since leaving harbor, with estimates of the effect of winds, currents, and tides. In the middle of a battle, with constant changes of course and speed, to fix an exact position by this method was almost impossible.]

Actually, in this first major battle, fought on a typical hazy North Sea day in August, and made worse by the clouds of black smoke pouring from the funnels of many ships, both sides learned much about the difference between peacetime maneuvers and real war. Considering that large numbers of ships were traveling at high speed in restricted waters, that nobody knew who else was present, and that poor visibility made communication difficult, the British record was creditable. Both Tyrwhitt and Blunt retained control over their destroyer flotillas. Goodenough, although two of his cruisers wandered off early in the day, kept his remaining four cruisers together throughout the action. Beatty did best, holding his five battle cruisers in tight formation, refusing to detach a single ship to finish off the crippled
Köln.

The British were lucky.
Arethusa
never should have been at sea. To take her out, as Tyrwhitt did—a new ship with a new crew unfamiliar with the ship, and new guns tested only enough to know that they frequently jammed—was foolhardy. Submarines had little effect, although concern that they might be present had led Beatty to conduct his charge at the highest possible speed. British destroyers fired a large number of torpedoes but scored only a single hit, on the cruiser
Mainz.
After the battle, the Admiralty complained about the expenditure of shells by the battle cruisers and torpedoes, saying that the lavish usage was unjustified in relation to the number of German ships sunk. Unfortunately, in the next North Sea action, off the Dogger Bank, Beatty’s captains adhered to this warning and fired too carefully. Chatfield of
Lion
later complained that with “a greater expenditure of ammunition in the early stages of Dogger Bank, more complete results might have been obtained.”

Despite these failings, disaster had been avoided and victory achieved. “The battle was of immense moral, if of slight material, importance, in its effect upon the two fleets,” said the
New Statesman.
Chatfield declared: “It was no great naval feat, but carried out under the nose of the German Commander-in-Chief, it actually meant a good deal both to Germany and England. We had shown our sea ascendancy.”

If the British were disappointed that their victory was not greater, the Germans were horrified by their material losses and shamed by the blow to their pride. Like the British, the Germans were guilty of poor intelligence and planning. The German naval history declares that it was a fatal error for the Naval Staff to assume that British light forces would attack in German home waters without the support of heavy ships. It was on this assumption that the German light cruisers had emerged one by one and entered the battle piecemeal. Much of the German mishandling of the battle was due to the weather. The hanging morning mists made it difficult for the German destroyer and light cruiser captains to see their enemies and to learn how many and what types of British ships were present. To make the confusion worse, no captain reported the poor visibility to the admirals in Wilhelmshaven—where the weather was absolutely clear. Hearing no bad news, Hipper and Ingenohl assumed that their light cruisers actually had battlefield superiority; it was on this optimistic note that
Mainz
was dispatched from the Ems to attack the retreating British destroyers from the rear. This disastrous German misunderstanding of what was happening was not corrected until 2:35, when
Strassburg
suddenly signaled, “Enemy battle cruiser squadron, course south-west.” Thereafter, it was the tardiness of the German command in sending out its own battle cruisers to support its hard-pressed light cruisers—even once the tide over the Jade bar permitted—that enabled Beatty to get his lame ducks out of the Bight. Had Hipper wished to pursue and engage Beatty, he might have been able to catch up. On Ingenohl’s orders, he did not try.

In addition, there was no tactical coordination of the German light forces. The British commodores at least kept their cruisers and destroyers under a semblance of control; the Germans had none. Their light cruisers came rushing out individually to devour the British destroyers—and were themselves devoured. Even before Beatty appeared, Maass and Hipper had failed to concentrate before going out to attack; on a number of occasions, British destroyers were able to repel the attack of a single German light cruiser. A coordinated attack by a group of German light cruisers would have inflicted far greater damage on the British and might have saved
Mainz
even after Goodenough appeared. Against battle cruisers, though, light cruisers had no hope. There were other lessons. German light cruiser and destroyer armament was proven inferior. British light cruisers armed with 6-inch guns were more than a match for German light cruisers with 4.1-inch guns. The German guns could fire faster, but the impact of a 6-inch shell was far more deadly. A similar comparison favored British destroyers: they were heavier, faster, and better armed than their German counterparts.