Castles of Steel (69 page)

Suddenly, even these two ships began to leave him. With chagrin and dismay, Beatty watched from the bridge of
Lion
as his two remaining light cruisers steered across his bow on their way to join
Southampton.
He did not understand. He believed that
Southampton
and
Birmingham
were engaging a single German light cruiser. Had Goodenough signaled him that other enemy light cruisers and destroyers had appeared, Beatty might have realized that his commodore had encountered Hipper’s screen. He might then have assumed that Hipper’s battle cruisers would logically be following this screen, probably close astern. Given this assumption, David Beatty would almost certainly have turned not only his two remaining light cruisers but also his four battle cruisers in
Southampton
’s direction.

Beatty, however, could make none of these assumptions because Good-enough had reported only the first German ship,
Stralsund.
Therefore, at 11:50 a.m., when Beatty saw
Falmouth
and
Nottingham
leaving him to join
Southampton
and
Birmingham,
the vice admiral considered it a foolish waste of scarce resources. Irritated, he turned to his Flag Lieutenant, Ralph Seymour, and said, “Tell that light cruiser to resume station.” The Flag Lieutenant was uncertain whether “that light cruiser”—now only a shadow in the mist on
Lion
’s beam—was
Nottingham
or
Birmingham;
they were sisters with identical silhouettes. To name the ship wrongly in signaling would cause confusion, so he told the signalman operating the searchlight to address her simply as “light cruiser.” The signal beam was steadied on the cruiser and the signal made: “Light cruiser resume station for lookout duties. Take station ahead five miles.” The signal was aimed directly at
Nottingham
and intended only for her and for
Falmouth.
As the name of the light cruiser was not included, however,
Nottingham
’s captain assumed that the signal was meant for the entire light cruiser squadron and he properly passed it along to Commodore Goodenough.
Birmingham,
astern of
Southampton
and already firing at the enemy, also saw
Lion
’s signal and also passed it along to Goodenough. On receiving it, Goodenough, although in action with the enemy, felt that he must obey. With enormous reluctance, he broke off the battle and turned his ships to return to
Lion.
As the British light cruisers headed west into heavy seas and the German light cruisers turned south into the mists, Goodenough briefly resighted
Stralsund,
by herself. He took her to be still another, as yet unreported German cruiser and signaled Beatty: “Enemy’s cruisers bearing south by east.”

When Beatty received this message, he realized that
Southampton
was returning to
Lion
and had abandoned her fight with the enemy. Beatty was astonished. At 12:12 p.m., he brusquely signaled Goodenough, “What have you done with enemy light cruiser?”

“They disappeared steering south when I received your signal to resume station,” Goodenough replied.

Beatty was stunned that a British naval officer would break off an action. “Engage the enemy,” he signaled bluntly.

Goodenough, hapless, answered, “There is no enemy in sight now.”

Beatty, now enraged, let Goodenough feel the force of his fury: “When and where was the enemy last seen? When you sight enemy, engage him. Signal to resume previous station was made to
Nottingham.
I cannot understand why, under any circumstances, you did not pursue enemy.”

After this sharp public criticism from his superior (Beatty’s signals were visible to other ships of Goodenough’s squadron), Goodenough felt terrible. In the days to come, he was made to feel worse. His excuse that he had obeyed Beatty’s order was never accepted by Beatty, who knew that the idea of calling off
Southampton
and
Birmingham
had never entered his head. The only mitigation Goodenough could find was that when he turned away, the German light forces were steering southeast, heading directly into the path of Admiral Warrender’s battleships and armored cruisers. Contact seemed certain.

Indeed, at 12:15 p.m., Warrender, then fifteen miles southeast of Beatty and steering for the southern edge of the minefield gap, sighted and was seen by the same German light cruisers and destroyers that had just left Good-enough. The Germans, approaching at high speed on an opposite course, saw the British first. When the captain of
Stralsund
saw Warrender’s giant battleships looming up through the mist, he, with great presence of mind, flashed the recognition signal that Commodore Goodenough had made to him half an hour before. This deception earned him one minute. In the driving rain, Warrender himself, on the bridge of
King George V,
did not see the German ships. But only a few hundred yards away, Rear Admiral Sir Robert Arbuthnot in
Orion,
leading the battle squadron’s 2nd Division, had a clear view.
Orion
immediately signaled to
King George V,
“Enemy in sight,” and
Orion
’s captain, Frederic C. Dreyer, a gunnery expert, ordered his main turrets trained on the leading German light cruiser. Eagerly, then frantically, Dreyer begged Arbuthnot’s permission to open fire. Arbuthnot refused. “No, not until the Vice Admiral [Warrender] signals ‘Open fire,’ ” he said. The order never came.
Orion
never fired.

A few minutes later, Warrender himself sighted
Stralsund
and her sisters on the starboard bow of
King George V.
The number of German ships was difficult to tell; they could merely be seen from time to time as they ran out of one rain squall and disappeared into another. In any case, Warrender, like Arbuthnot, did not open fire; instead, he ordered Pakenham to take his four armored cruisers and chase. This pursuit was a futile exercise: the 25-knot German light cruisers and destroyers rapidly pulled away from Pakenham’s 18-knot armored cruisers and disappeared into another rain cloud, never to be seen again. Afterward, Dreyer of
Orion
was desolate, saying later, “Our golden moment had been missed.” Subsequently, he wrote of Arbuthnot: “He never spoke to me about it afterwards, but I am certain from his silence that he was mortified to realize that he had been too punctilious. If we had fired, the other five battleships would have done so.”

Both Beatty and Warrender had now encountered and then lost the enemy light cruisers. And both knew that the German battle cruisers—the real prey they were hunting—were still to the west and coming east. But the British had no idea of Hipper’s position, course, or speed. Beatty’s movements now became particularly frantic. Like a pack of hunting dogs, his ships rushed this way and that, sometimes around in a circle, trying to pick up the scent. Once Goodenough’s light cruisers had resumed position in front of the battle cruisers, Beatty continued to steer west toward the northern end of the gap in the minefield. He expected to arrive around 12:30 p.m., whereupon he meant to turn south and to begin patrolling back and forth. Had he followed this plan, only unimaginably bad weather could have prevented him from sighting the German battle cruisers as they emerged from the gap at around 1:00 p.m. But fate again intervened in the form of a signal sent by Warrender to Beatty at 12:25 p.m.: “Enemy cruisers and destroyers in sight.” Fifteen minutes later, Warrender followed up with another signal: “Enemy’s course east. No battle cruisers seen yet.” From these messages, Beatty correctly inferred that this was the same force Goodenough had engaged at 11:30 a.m. and that it was a lookout screen ahead of the German battle cruisers, which must still be some distance to the west. Beatty worried that Hipper might emerge from the gap near Warrender and, because the German ships were faster, be able to slip past. Accordingly, at 12:30 p.m., Beatty made a fatefully wrong decision. Abandoning his westward course and his intended line of patrol, he reversed course and swung his ships around to the east. His presumption now was that only his squadron was fast enough to intercept Hipper; his purpose was to place his fast ships between Hipper and Germany; in order to cut them off it was important to have sea room east of the enemy now coming out through the gap. Ironically, it was this move that allowed Hipper to escape. Had the British admiral held his westward course and established his patrol line, a battle at close range must have begun around one o’clock. When
Lion, Queen Mary, Tiger,
and
New Zealand
swung around over their own wakes and headed east,
Seydlitz, Moltke, Derfflinger, Von der Tann,
and
Blücher
were only twelve miles away.

Beatty held to his new decision, steaming eastward for forty-five minutes, until it became clear that Hipper had not tried to get away past Warrender to the south. At 1:15 p.m. therefore, Beatty abandoned his easterly course and turned northward, slowing to 15 knots. He continued in this direction for about ten miles, but, finding nothing, at 1:55 p.m. he turned again to the east. Half an hour later, he was headed southeast at 25 knots on a course that converged with the line between the southern exit and Heligoland Bight.

Warrender’s luck was no better. At one o’clock, he reached the southern limit of the minefield and found nothing. Realizing that Hipper was not coming in this direction, Warrender turned north at 1:24 p.m. He was too late: Hipper had turned north at 12:45, and Hipper’s battle cruisers could outrun Warrender’s battleships. Nevertheless, Warrender’s turn to the north brought him close to contact with Hipper;
Kolberg,
heavily damaged by the sea and lagging at only 12 knots behind the German battle cruisers, sighted Warrender’s funnel smoke soon after Hipper had turned northeast. But Warrender did not see
Kolberg
or know that Hipper was there.

As the afternoon progressed, Room 40 passed to the Admiralty a stream of intercepted German signals. From there, it took up to two hours for the information to reach the British commanders at sea. For the next several hours, Beatty and Warrender tried to use these tardy intercepts to predict what the Germans would do. But decoding and transmission took too long. A signal from Hipper had given his position when he turned northeast at 12:45 p.m., but this signal was not sent to Warrender and Beatty until 2:50 p.m., by which time Hipper was far away to the north.

Meanwhile, what appeared to be ominous news was coming in from Room 40. At 1:50 p.m., the Admiralty learned from an intercepted signal from
Friedrich der Grosse
to
Stralsund
that, at 12:30 p.m., the High Seas Fleet was at sea seventy to eighty miles northwest of Heligoland. The truth was that the German fleet had reached this point in its retreat, but to the Admiralty it appeared that the German dreadnoughts were coming out. This news reached the British admirals at sea at 2:25 p.m.; to this information, the Admiralty appended a stern warning to Warrender not to pursue too far. This warning, added to the realization that Hipper had escaped, brought an end to hope for any action that day. The search continued until 3:30 p.m., when it was evident that the German battle cruisers had escaped around the northern flank of the British squadrons. At 3:47 p.m., with dusk beginning to fall, Warrender signaled Beatty: “Relinquish chase. Rejoin me tomorrow.”

Nevertheless, if the High Seas Fleet was at sea, hope remained for the following day. Jellicoe, bringing two additional dreadnought battle squadrons down from Scapa Flow, ordered a concentration of the entire Grand Fleet at daybreak. At dawn on December 17, Jellicoe’s armada assembled and then moved southeast, feeling for the German fleet. But after moving only fifty miles toward the Bight, Jellicoe was informed by the Admiralty that the High Seas Fleet had gone back into harbor. Before returning to its own anchorages, the British fleet spent the day in battle exercises and target practice; it relieved some of the tension and disappointment when the battle cruisers and battleships finally opened fire with their heavy guns.

Hipper had enjoyed extraordinary luck. When he had turned for home from the English coast at 9:30 a.m., the admiral was tired, but not especially uneasy about his return voyage. The minefields presented no hazard; he knew where they were and knew the location of the gap. The weather caused greater concern. Head seas were battering his ships, and the minelaying light cruiser
Kolberg,
lagging behind the battle cruisers, had been badly damaged; her bridge and superstructure had been almost completely swept away by the heavy waves into which she was plunging. Hipper nevertheless meant to carry out the original plan: he would steer east in the wake of his own dismissed light cruisers and destroyers, rendezvous with the High Seas Fleet near the Dogger Bank, and, together with Ingenohl, return to Germany. Hipper, of course, did not then know that Ingenohl had scuttled this plan. The Commander-in-Chief had not told him that he had encountered British destroyers, that he feared that the entire Grand Fleet was out, and that he had turned tail and was running for home. Nor did Hipper know that Beatty’s battle cruisers and Warrender’s battleships were at sea and were blocking his path to Germany.

At 11:30 a.m. Hipper’s ships were steaming east through the middle of the minefield gap, straight toward Beatty’s oncoming force. Then, at 11:39 a.m., Hipper received the message from the light cruiser
Stralsund,
fifty miles ahead, that she had encountered enemy ships, adding, “Am being chased.” This was the first news Hipper had received that British warships were operating in this part of the North Sea. At 11:50 a.m., the admiral, aware by then that Ingenohl and the main German battle fleet were running for home, turned his battle cruisers southeast and went at 23 knots to the aid of his embattled light forces. As he did so,
Stralsund, Strassburg, Graudenz,
and the German destroyers, attempting to shake off
Southampton
and
Birmingham,
were turning sharply to the south. At 12:17 p.m. therefore, Hipper slightly altered course to reach
Stralsund
’s new position. Admiral Beatty was less than thirty miles away.