Castles of Steel (115 page)

Roughly the same sequence had occurred on the German side. In bright morning sunlight, the German fleet had steered west of Heligoland, heading north. Half the gun crews were at their posts; the other half slept in hammocks slung nearby. Georg von Hase, gunnery officer of the battle cruiser
Derfflinger,
rose, shaved, had breakfast in the wardroom, and returned to his cabin to write letters. By midday dinner, excitement was rising. “Nearly everyone agreed that this time there would be an action,” Hase wrote later, “but no one spoke of anything more important than fighting English light cruisers or old armored cruisers. As was always the case when we were on one of our sweeps of the North Sea, no one drank a drop of alcohol. . . . We smoked our cigars, then I went to my cabin, lay down for a siesta and watched the blue rings from my cigar.” At 1:00 p.m. the drums beat the daily signal to clean the guns. Then at 2:28, alarm bells sounded, the drums beat again, and boatswains piped and shouted, “Clear for action!” This was not a drill.

By this time—2:30 p.m.—Scheer and the main body of the High Seas Fleet were well to the northwest of Horns Reef, with Hipper’s battle cruisers fifty miles in advance. Spread ahead of the battle cruisers in fan formation were five light cruisers and numerous destroyers. Captain Madlung of the light cruiser
Elbing,
on the western edge of Hipper’s screen, had seen the Danish freighter’s smoke and sent two destroyers,
B-109
and
B-110,
to investigate. Overtaking the freighter, the destroyers signaled her to stop and each destroyer lowered a boat with a boarding party to check her papers and cargo. While the boats were in the water, the destroyers sighted smoke to the west and, soon afterward, approaching warships. Urgently recalling their boats, the destroyers broke away from the tramp steamer. When
Elbing
and her sister light cruisers hastened to their support, the battle began.

Beatty’s mind was on other things when
Galatea
’s first contact report came in. Anticipating his scheduled rendezvous with Jellicoe, he had just signaled Evan-Thomas, “When we turn north look out for advanced cruisers of the Grand Fleet.” Evan-Thomas had acknowledged the signal and
Barham
and her three sisters had just executed the turn. Nevertheless, Beatty’s reaction to
Galatea
’s report was characteristically quick. At 2:32, he ordered “Action stations,” increased speed to 22 knots, and turned southeast in an effort to get between the enemy ships and Horns Reef. His new course, signaled by flag hoist to his entire force, was not the one that would most rapidly bring the enemy to action; rather it was the one that would compel the Germans to action whether they wished it or not. Nor, before doing this, did Beatty wait until he ascertained the enemy’s strength; remembering his experience of Hipper turning and legging it for home at the Dogger Bank, he simply turned and went at maximum speed. Indeed, he moved so quickly that he told Chatfield to put
Lion
’s helm over without waiting for his signal to be acknowledged by his other ships. The battle cruisers, their captains aware of Beatty’s impetuous style, dutifully followed
Lion
around and sped away to the southeast.

But the battleship
Barham
and her three giant sisters, five miles away on
Lion
’s port bow, did not follow. Five miles was an extended distance to read signal flags between moving ships at sea, even with the aid of binoculars. Moreover, as Beatty’s flagship continued to turn, the heavy black smoke pouring from her funnels shrouded the signal entirely. Inexplicably,
Tiger,
detailed to pass
Lion
’s signals along to
Barham
by searchlight, failed to do so. Evan-Thomas himself saw the battle cruisers turning, and
Barham
’s captain standing next to him urged the admiral to conform but Evan-Thomas had been schooled by Jellicoe strictly to obey orders. Accordingly, he waited for a specific signal from Beatty, and continued north. As Evan-Thomas said later, “The only way I could account for no signal having been received by me was that Beatty was going to signal another course to the 5th Battle Squadron, possibly to get the enemy light cruisers between us. Anyway, if he wished us to turn, the searchlight would have done it in a moment.” This mischance (after the war, the word used became “failure” and Beatty and Evan-Thomas would blame each other) was compounded when
Tiger,
assigned to relay
Lion
’s signals to
Barham
by searchlight, ignored this duty.
Tiger
’s excuse was that the battle cruisers’ turn had placed her in the farthest, not the nearest, position from the 5th Battle Squadron and that, under these conditions, her duty to pass along signals by searchlight must certainly have lapsed. Thus, while Beatty rushed off to the southeast, Evan-Thomas’s superdreadnoughts continued on a course almost exactly the opposite. Seven minutes later Beatty realized that the 5th Battle Squadron was not following and he repeated by searchlight the order to turn to the southeast. By the time this was accomplished, Evan-Thomas was nearly ten miles away. In this manner, Beatty’s impetuous decision, coupled with the delay before
Barham
received his signal and Evan-Thomas’s refusal to act without it, combined to deprive the battle cruisers of the powerful support of forty massive 15-inch guns. When Beatty went into action a few minutes later, the number of his ships had been cut from ten to six and the striking power of his guns had been cut in half. Beatty could have reunited his force by slowing his battle cruisers and letting the battleships catch up, but slowing down was not in David Beatty’s nature. Obeying impulse, he charged, leaving his battleships to make their way behind. In fairness, it should be remembered that Beatty still had seen only German light cruisers; Hipper’s battle cruisers were twenty-five miles away from
Lion,
and neither Beatty nor Hipper was certain of the other’s presence.

In Beatty’s force, the sounding of “Action stations” sent men running. A few were skeptical: in
New Zealand
’s wardroom several officers smiled knowingly and went out on deck to have a look. In many ships, tea was about to be served and those who had been on board any length of time thought first of food. On the light cruiser
Southampton,
Lieutenant Stephen King-Hall, dozing in the smoking room, jumped up and dashed to his cabin to set about his before-action routine: “putting on as many clothes as possible, collecting my camera, notebook, and pencils, and chocolate in case of a prolonged stay at action stations.” In
Barham,
a midshipman cast a wishful glance at the tea laid out immaculately on the gun-room table and wondered when he would get a chance to eat it. On
Malaya,
where the gun-room steward was just laying the table for tea, the midshipmen on hand scuttled etiquette and began downing as much food as possible. A turret officer in
Warspite
dashed into the wardroom, grabbed as much portable food as he could, and rushed off to his station. On
Tiger,
the chaplain, awakened from a nap, went to the wardroom to find out what was happening: “All the cups and plates were on the table but the room was empty. They had evidently been called away in the middle of tea. And suddenly.”

As British bugles sounded “Action stations” and German mess compartments thundered to the roll of drums, ships reverberated with swarming men and slamming hatch covers. Groups mustered at their stations where gas masks, goggles, and life preservers were issued. Damage control parties went through the ship wetting the decks and closing and dogging steel doors. In
Queen Mary,
a gunner’s mate checked to make certain his turret was ready with “urinal buckets, biscuits and corned beef, drinking water and plenty of first aid dressings.” Medical parties in dressing stations laid out surgical instruments, dressings, morphia, syringes, and stretchers. Fire hoses were laid out, glass windscreens on the bridges were removed, Union Jacks soared to the peaks of the mainmasts, and White Ensigns whipped from the yardarms and gaffs. Then came a stillness. Decks were deserted. No sounds came but the throb of the engines, the roar of ventilator fans, and, on deck, the splash of the sea against the hull. Most men were closed up in small steel compartments; in turret gun rooms, magazines, secondary batteries, conning towers, engine rooms, and bunkers. Out in the air on the bridges, admirals and captains, muffled in scarves and greatcoats, squinted through binoculars and walked in and out of the chart houses to study their positions on tactical compass plots. One captain wore irregular dress.
New Zealand
’s John Green had a green stone tiki pendant around his neck, and his waist was wrapped in a black-and-white flax Maori kilt called a
piu-piu,
both gifts presented to the ship by a tribal chief during the battle cruiser’s visit to the Dominion in 1913. Along with the gifts came the chief’s request that they be worn by the captain whenever
New Zealand
went into action; if this ritual was faithfully observed, he promised, the battle cruiser would not be seriously harmed. On this day, the news that the captain was wearing his necklace and his kilt spread reassurance among the crew. And when the Battle of Jutland was over,
New Zealand,
hit only once by a heavy shell, was the only one of Beatty’s six battle cruisers to suffer no significant damage and escape all casualties.

Sixty-five miles to the north, on the bridge of
Iron Duke,
there was a stir as
Galatea
’s first signal came in and positions were marked on the chart. A moment later, the short, brisk figure of the Commander-in-Chief appeared and Jellicoe bent over the chart. Only light cruisers were mentioned in this report. It could mean anything, but with the Admiralty’s assurance that Scheer’s flagship was still at anchor in the Jade, the Germans could only be light forces, and Beatty’s squadrons were more than strong enough to take care of them. Then, at 2:39, came a further signal from
Galatea
: “Have sighted large amount of smoke as though from a fleet, bearing east northeast.”
Iron Duke
immediately hoisted the signal for 17 knots. A few minutes later, another message followed: “Smoke seems to be seven vessels besides cruisers and destroyers. They have turned north.” Seven vessels
besides
cruisers and destroyers suggested battle cruisers. So Hipper was at sea! Jellicoe signaled for 18 knots and then for 19.

Galatea
’s report “Smoke seems to be seven vessels besides cruisers and destroyers” suggested battle cruisers to Beatty, too, and at 2:47 p.m., he ordered
Engadine
to send up a seaplane to find out exactly what lay over the horizon. Already that morning,
Engadine
had advised Beatty of the limitations imposed by that day’s weather on aerial reconnaissance: “Sea suitable for getting off but not for landing. Impossible to distinguish where mist ends and water begins in coming down to sea. Will be all right if horizon clears.” Now, on receiving the admiral’s signal, the carrier came to a halt and a two-seat Short seaplane was pulled from her hangar and hoisted into the sea. At 3:08 p.m., only twenty-one minutes after
Engadine
received Beatty’s command, Flight Lieutenant Frederick Rutland (thereafter known as Rutland of Jutland) was airborne. Low clouds forced him to remain under a thousand feet in order to see anything on the surface, and visibility varied between one and four miles. Ten minutes later, flying northeast at 900 feet, he came to within a mile and a half of the German light cruisers
Elbing, Frankfurt,
and
Pillau.
They fired at him and the seaplane was surrounded by shrapnel, some of it bursting only 200 feet away. At 3:31, Rutland’s observer was able to wireless
Engadine
that he had seen enemy cruisers and several destroyers headed northwest. Then, at 3:30, while he was watching, the German force reversed course and headed southeast. Although the observer had to encode his messages before sending them, he managed to wireless
Engadine
four times over the next fifteen minutes. Three of these messages were received;
Engadine,
observing the ban on ship-to-ship wireless transmission, attempted to pass this news to Beatty and Evan-Thomas by searchlight, but failed. After a thirty-nine-minute flight, a fuel pipe ruptured and Rutland was forced to land. While sitting on the surface waiting to be picked up, the little floatplane was passed by a British light cruiser; from his back seat the observer tried desperately to semaphore the new direction in which the enemy force was steering. Soon,
Engadine
arrived, and at 4:00 p.m. the seaplane was hoisted aboard. This flight was the sum total of the part played by aerial reconnaissance on either side on the first day of Jutland.

[By late morning, the wind along the German coast had moderated sufficiently to allow airships to take off, and five zeppelins had gone up. Once airborne, however, they discovered that misty weather and low cloud cover over the North Sea precluded observation. They spotted neither of the two fleets and late in the afternoon, all zeppelins were recalled.]

The navies of the world’s first and second sea powers were now approaching collision. To the east were Hipper’s battle cruisers, the modern
Lützow, Derfflinger,
and
Seydlitz,
followed by the older
Moltke
and
Von der Tann.
To the west were Beatty’s four giant Cats,
Lion, Princess Royal, Queen Mary,
and
Tiger,
along with the earlier
New Zealand
and
Indefatigable.
Ten miles behind, Evan-Thomas’s
Barham, Valiant, Warspite,
and
Malaya
were straining to catch up. Less than seventy miles to the north, 100 ships of the Grand Fleet accelerated their progress south while, fifty miles to the south, Scheer’s main fleet, slowed by the presence of Mauve’s old predreadnoughts, moved steadily north.

Hipper, aided by the position of the sun, saw his enemy first. With the sun in the west, there, starkly silhouetted against the bright blue horizon, were two columns of large dark gray ships with tripod masts: Beatty’s famous battle cruisers. Meanwhile, his own pale gray ships remained indistinct against the hazy, overcast sky and misty horizon to the east. Calmly smoking his cigar, he immediately but erroneously signaled Scheer that the British battle fleet was in sight. A minute later, he correctly identified his enemy and, noting Beatty’s alteration to the east, understood that the British admiral meant to cut across his wake and block his homeward path. Recalling his light cruisers from the north at 3:28 p.m., Hipper reversed onto a southerly course, slowing to 18 knots to allow the smaller ships to catch up. In fact, Hipper’s intention in swinging around had a larger purpose than simply to prevent himself being cut off from his base. He meant to engage the British battle cruisers in a running fight, all the while drawing them down onto the High Seas Fleet coming up from the south. Thus, at this moment, both admirals keenly sought action: Beatty, who believed that he had caught Hipper alone and that his own six battle cruisers and four fast battleships powerfully outnumbered his enemy, meant at last to destroy this old antagonist. Hipper, believing that Beatty was alone, meant to tempt him into a running engagement, all the while drawing him down into the jaws of the High Seas Fleet coming up from the south. In the interim, as Beatty’s 13.5-inch guns outranged Hipper’s 12-inch and 11-inch, the German admiral knew that he must close the range as quickly as possible. Beatty, charging down at maximum speed with what he was certain was superior strength, seemed happy to oblige and the two lines, both steaming south at full speed, were gradually converging. In most histories of the Battle of Jutland, what happened during the next fifty-five minutes—3:45 to 4:40—is known as the Run to the South.