Castles of Steel (154 page)

Authors: Robert K. Massie

Tags: #Non Fiction, #Military

BOOK: Castles of Steel

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For seven months, the seventy-four interned German warships became a part of the landscape of Scapa Flow. Their crews were demoralized and apathetic. Discipline was loose and unwieldy; even Reuter’s orders had to be countersigned by the Soldiers’ Council. Sailors got up late, did little work, and lounged on deck, smoking in the presence of officers. Cleaning was abandoned and the mess decks were so deep in filth that German officers blushed when British officers came on board. Some destroyers, infested by rats, were left unoccupied. Neither officers nor men were allowed to go ashore. To cope with monotony, sailors fished, wrote letters, played chess, gambled, sang, and danced. Food was adequate—the British insisted that all of it come from Germany and supplies were brought from Wilhelmshaven twice a month—so the catching of fish and seagulls was more for diversion than nourishment. German seamen received 300 cigarettes or seventy-five cigars per month, and a generous allotment of alcohol. There were doctors in the fleet, but no dentist, and the British refused to provide one. Men with decayed teeth or broken dentures had priority in going home. Two German chaplains, a Protestant and a Roman Catholic, served the entire fleet. Out-going mail to Germany was censored; later, incoming also. Only British newspapers were allowed on board and these were delivered four days late. Communication between German ships was by flag or signal light only. No visiting between ships was permitted; it was prohibited even to lower a boat, at the risk of being fired upon.

On Reuter’s flagship,
Friedrich der Grosse,
an especially disorderly group calling itself the Red Guard made a practice of stomping on the steel deck over the admiral’s cabin when he was trying to sleep. At one point, fearing that this mutinous element might try to take over the ship, Reuter asked the British admiral to give him support if this were attempted. Prompt assistance was promised. Even so, the flagship became, in Reuter’s words, a “madhouse” and on March 25, he shifted his flag to the light cruiser
Emden.
When two of the worst-behaved seamen were ordered back to Germany and refused to go, two British destroyers came alongside with crews at action stations to remove them and send them to a British prison.

Over the months, Reuter convinced his former enemies that he was a serious, trustworthy officer, doing his best to carry out the terms of the armistice. Both sides understood that the future of Reuter’s ships would be decided in Paris, where the peace treaty was being negotiated and where the future of the German fleet was only one of many important items on the agenda. The subject provoked disagreement. France, which had built no warships since before the war, wanted at least one-quarter of the German ships; Italy wanted another quarter. Britain, with the largest fleet in the world—a fleet beyond her postwar ability to support—wanted the German fleet destroyed. America, creating a new fleet of modern dreadnoughts, had no interest in rusting German warships.

Neither the Allied Naval Council nor the British Admiralty nor the German government let Reuter know what was happening in Paris. The armistice had specifically forbidden the ships’ destruction and Reuter had stressed to his captains that he would do nothing unless the British attempted to seize them without the German government’s consent. Nevertheless, Reuter and his officers all felt themselves still bound by a standing order of the Imperial Navy that no German warship was to be allowed to fall into enemy hands. Accordingly, on June 17, Reuter drew up and distributed a detailed order for scuttling the ships. German captains were instructed that “all internal watertight doors and hatchway covers, ventilator openings and port holes are to be kept open at all times.” Preparations were to be made to open valves, condenser intakes, and submerged torpedo tubes, admitting the sea. Lifeboats complete with white flags of truce would be prepared for the speedy evacuation of crews. The signal for immediate scuttling would be “Paragraph Eleven. Confirm.” Reuter’s task was made easier when two German supply ships arrived and on June 18 departed, carrying home another 2,700 men of the interned fleet. Now, fewer than 1,800 remained on the warships at Scapa Flow; these were men who could be depended on and whose number would not swamp the lifeboats that could be launched.

Reuter’s first awareness that a crisis was approaching came from a copy of
The Times
of London dated June 17, which reported that the Allies had issued an ultimatum: unless the German government accepted their terms and signed the peace treaty by noon on Saturday, June 21, the armistice would be set aside and hostilities resumed. Reuter did not read this newspaper until the afternoon of June 20. He decided at that moment to scuttle his ships the following morning, June 21. But by the twentieth, its news was no longer accurate. In the interim, the Allies had decided to permit the Germans two additional days to make up their minds; the deadline now was 7:00 p.m. on June 23. Reuter, not having been officially informed of either the original deadline or its extension, now expected the British to attempt to seize his ships at any moment beginning on the morning of the twenty-first. On his own responsibility and without any written order from the German government, he determined to act before British sailors boarded his ships.

The guard ships at Scapa Flow included the five new
Resolution
-class battleships of the 1st Battle Squadron, commanded by Vice Admiral Sir Sydney Fremantle. Fremantle had received no instructions from the Admiralty or from the First Sea Lord, Admiral Wemyss, in Paris, as to the disposition of the interned ships at the termination of the armistice. Expecting that when the peace treaty was signed, the terms would include the surrender of the German vessels and aware that Reuter might try to scuttle them first, the Allied Naval Council on June 20 authorized seizure of the interned ships at the moment the armistice expired: 7:00 p.m. on June 23. Throughout the internment, the British battle squadrons on guard duty at Scapa Flow had been authorized to carry out training exercises at sea from time to time. On the night of June 20, Fremantle decided to take his ships to sea at 9:00 a.m. on June 21 in order to practice the battle squadron’s defense against a massed destroyer attack. He planned to return to the Flow on the afternoon of the twenty-third and to seize the German fleet that night.

Saturday, June 21, 1919, was an idyllic summer day. The sun shone from a blue sky, the air was warm, and a slight swell was running in the Flow. Reuter prepared himself carefully, wearing his dress uniform with all his decorations. Emerging onto
Emden
’s quarterdeck, he watched Fremantle take the 1st Battle Squadron to sea: the five British battleships were accompanied by two light cruisers and nine destroyers. Two British destroyers, seven trawlers, and a number of drifters remained behind in the anchorage. At 10:00 a.m.
,
Reuter sent the preparatory message that all ships be attentive to signals from the flagship. The decisive signal was hoisted at 11:20 a.m.: “Paragraph Eleven. Confirm.” Sent by signal flags, the command was repeated by semaphore and searchlights.

For a while, nothing appeared unusual. The 500-ton tug and water tender
Flying Kestrel
was visiting the interned fleet that morning with an excursion party of 400 children from Orkney schools. As the little vessel passed down the lines of anchored ships, the children saw some German sailors playing mouth organs; other Germans thumbed their noses at the children. Then, as noon approached, a flurry of activity broke out. Brightly colored flags fluttered in the sunlight above
Emden
’s bridge. At the stroke of noon, all ships hoisted the colors of the Imperial Navy. Then those watching saw
Friedrich der Grosse
listing to starboard. As water poured into her hull in solid green jets, the great ship rolled farther until her masts, funnels, turrets, and guns began disappearing under water. The great red hull rose up and then plunged down in two wide whirlpools of hissing foam. The time was 12:16 p.m. Other big ships began listing and heeling at extraordinary angles. A young man on the
Flying Kestrel
remembered steam rushing out of vents “with a dreadful roaring hiss” and the “sullen rumblings . . . as the great hulls slant giddily over and slide with horrible sucking and gurgling noises under the water.” The sinking continued for five hours.
Friedrich der Grosse
was the first ship to go down and
Hindenburg
the last, at 5:00 p.m. In that time, fifteen of sixteen German dreadnoughts in the Flow went to the bottom.
Baden
obstinately refused to sink and was beached in a waterlogged condition. It was possible to tow a few other ships into shallow water before they sank. Four light cruisers,
Emden, Frankfurt, Bremse,
and
Nürnberg,
were beached in this manner; four went down. Of fifty destroyers, thirty-two sank, fourteen were beached, and four remained afloat.

The small British guard ships rushed about doing what they could. Some attempted to tow sinking ships. Others, in an effort to drive German seamen back to their ships to stop them from sinking, opened rifle fire on lifeboats flying white flags; in one of these lifeboats carrying thirteen men, three were killed and four wounded. A young woman on the
Flying Kestrel
saw “a [British] drifter towing two or three lifeboats filled with German sailors. One of them got up with a knife in his hand and tried to cut his boat free of the towrope. A Royal Marine raised his rifle and shot him.” British sailors boarded the battleship
Markgraf
and found the captain supervising the ship’s scuttling. Seeing the British, he waved a white flag. He was shot through the head. At Scapa Flow that day, nine Germans were killed and sixteen wounded by gunfire.

At 12:20
p.m.,
Fremantle had received an urgent signal from one of the guard destroyers: “German battleship sinking.” Rushing back at full speed, the British battleships entered the harbor at 2:30 p.m. It was too late. Everywhere, German vessels, large and small, were in various stages of sinking, belching bubbles of air, explosive waterspouts, and gigantic upsurges of oil. Tied together, the destroyers went down in pairs. By five o’clock, only a few German ships remained afloat, with parts of others rising out of the water. A vast stain of oil spread across the Flow, littered with boats, hammocks, life belts, and chests. Reuter was brought aboard
Revenge
to face Fremantle’s wrath and to learn for the first time that the armistice had been extended by two days. That night, the British battleships sailed for Cromarty Firth with the 1,774 German officers and men on board forced to sleep on steel decks without blankets.

At Invergordon the next morning, Fremantle sent his prisoners ashore, but not before a final confrontation. Speaking to Reuter and his officers lined up on the quarterdeck of
Revenge,
Fremantle told the German admiral that he had “violated common honour and the honourable traditions of seamen of all nations. With an armistice in full operation, you recommenced hostilities without notice. By your conduct, you have added one more to the breaches of faith and honour of which Germany has been guilty in this war. You have proved to the few who doubted it that the word of the New Germany is no more to be trusted than that of the old. I now transfer you as prisoners of war.”

Afterward, the British navy was criticized for having permitted the scuttling. The French were especially angry, having expected to incorporate some of the largest vessels into their navy. Wemyss’s private reaction was good riddance: “I look upon the sinking of the German fleet as a real blessing. It disposes once for all the thorny question of the distribution of these ships.” Scheer, for a different reason, also was pleased. “I rejoice. The stain of surrender has been wiped from the escutcheon of the German Fleet. The sinking of these ships has proved that the spirit of the fleet is not dead. This last act is true to the best traditions of the German navy.”

The German officers and seamen killed and wounded at Scapa Flow were the last casualties of the war, and the survivors sent ashore at Invergordon became the last prisoners of war. On June 28, 1919, a week after the scuttling of the German fleet, the Treaty of Versailles was signed in the same Hall of Mirrors where, forty-eight years before, Otto von Bismarck had proclaimed the creation of the German empire. Now, the empire had melted away. The fleet was at the bottom of the sea. The Great War was over.

Notes

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN NOTES:

FGDN:
Fear God and Dread Nought: Correspondence of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher,
ed. A. J. Marder, 3 vols., London: Jonathan Cape, 1952–59.

L and V:
Hough, Richard.
Louis and Victoria: The Family History of the Mountbattens.
London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1974.

CHAPTER 1: JULY 1914

3 “Ha ha! The mailed fist”: Cowles,
242.

4 “talks with great energy”: Topham, 226.

4 “If he laughs”: Balfour, 138.

4 “We Hohenzollerns”: Ibid., 154.

4 “our old ally”: Ibid., 155.

4 “You have sworn loyalty to Me”: Nichols, 130.

4 “There will be no quarter”: Balfour, 226–27.