CHAPTER 6

The Battle of the Bight

During the first three weeks of war, while the Grand Fleet was constantly at sea and the strain on ships and men was heavy, most vessels of the High Seas Fleet remained tied to their quays in Wilhelmshaven and other naval harbors. The British, unable either to reach their enemies deep inside the Heligoland Bight or tempt them out into the North Sea, were frustrated. “We are still wandering about the face of the ocean . . . entirely in the hands of our friends the Germans as to when they will come out and be whacked,” Beatty wrote to Ethel on August 24. “For thirty years I have been waiting for this day, and have as fine a command as one could wish for and can do nothing. Three weeks of war and haven’t seen the enemy.” The press and the public shared the navy’s frustration. The BEF was retreating in France and the German advance on Paris seemed irresistible, but land war was one thing, naval war another. At sea, Britons expected another Trafalgar the day after war was declared. When this did not happen, the cry arose, “What is the Navy doing?” In response, and in keeping with his own aggressive nature, Winston Churchill constantly demanded “offensive measures” from the Admiralty.

The First Lord’s impatience was shared by two high-spirited second-level naval officers, Commodore Reginald Tyrwhitt of the Harwich destroyer flotillas and Commodore Roger Keyes, who commanded the long-range submarines, also based at Harwich. The two commodores were close friends, and their shared eager belligerence endeared them to their subordinates and to the youthful First Lord, but not often to senior admirals. Tyrwhitt and Keyes believed that it was not enough to patrol outside the Bight, hoping the Germans would come out; they wanted their Harwich forces to go in. “When are we going to make war?” Keyes demanded. The British fleet, he declared, possessed “absolute confidence” that “when the enemy come out we will fall on them and smash them.” What Keyes wanted was to implant this same belief in the Germans: that “when we go out, those damned Englanders will fall on us and smash us.”

Keyes was the British naval officer most familiar with what was happening inside the Heligoland Bight. Since the war’s first hours, his submarines had been patrolling these waters and their captains thus acquired extensive knowledge of the enemy’s movements and habits. They had learned, for example, that every evening German light cruisers escorted destroyers to a point twenty miles northwest of Heligoland; from that point the destroyers fanned out farther north to patrol against British submarines and minelayers. Returning at daylight, the German destroyers were met by light cruisers and escorted home. Keyes believed that this information could be put to use. His plan, which Tyrwhitt enthusiastically endorsed, was described by Churchill as “simple and daring”: as the German destroyers returned to their dawn rendezvous, a superior force of British cruisers and destroyers, coming down in darkness from the north, would sweep in behind them from east to west across the Bight and catch them in a trap. The plan would involve the thirty-one destroyers of Tyrwhitt’s two flotillas and nine of Keyes’s long-range submarines. Three British submarines were to be employed as bait, showing themselves on the surface west of Heligoland, then turning and running before submerging; if they were successful, the pursuing German destroyers would be drawn out to sea, where Tyrwhitt would intercept them. Other British submarines would lie close off Heligoland to attack any German cruisers or capital ships coming out of the Jade to assist their destroyers.

When Keyes first took his plan to the Admiralty, he found the War Staff “too fully occupied with the daily task to give the matter much attention.” Undaunted, the young commodore asked for an interview with the First Lord, who saw him on August 23. *8 The meeting, Keyes said, “gave me an opportunity of bursting into flame . . . which fired the First Lord.” The following morning, Churchill presided over a conference at the Admiralty, attended by Prince Louis, Sturdee, Tyrwhitt, and Keyes. Here Keyes’s plan was approved, with modifications. Instead of reaching the German rendezvous point at dawn and attempting to catch the returning German night destroyer patrols, the operation would begin later, at eight in the morning, when the night patrols were back in port and the German day destroyers were coming out to take station. As in the original plan, these would be lured out to sea by three surfaced British submarines, E-6, E-7, and E-8. And then Tyrwhitt’s destroyers, sweeping between the Germans and their base, would intercept, trap, and devour them. The plan involved risk: it meant exposing almost fifty British warships within a few miles of Germany’s principal naval base. For this reason, the Admiralty insisted that the operation be conducted rapidly and the ships withdrawn before the High Seas Fleet could raise steam, emerge into the Bight, and, in their turn, entrap and destroy the British light forces. To provide insurance, Keyes and Tyrwhitt suggested that the Grand Fleet be brought down from Scapa Flow. And to add strength to the destroyer sweep, they asked that the six modern light cruisers of Commodore William Goodenough’s 1st Light Cruiser Squadron be available as close support. Sturdee vetoed both of these requests; neither Churchill nor Prince Louis chose to overrule the Chief of Staff. In place of the massive support for which Keyes and Tyrwhitt were hoping, Sturdee approved only the positioning of the battle cruisers New Zealand and Invincible forty miles northwest of Heligoland and the stationing of four old Bacchante-class armored cruisers a hundred miles to the west. The operation was scheduled for August 28. Keyes’s submarines were to leave Harwich on the twenty-sixth, and Keyes himself would follow in the destroyer Lurcher to coordinate the operations of his undersea craft. Tyrwhitt’s destroyers would sail at dawn on August 27.

On August 26, the day before he was to leave Harwich, Tyrwhitt had taken possession of a new flagship, the recently commissioned light cruiser Arethusa. For some time, Tyrwhitt had been complaining about his previous flagship, the light cruiser Amethyst, commissioned in 1904. The older ship was “damned slow,” he had grumbled, pointing out that it was impossible to lead and coordinate flotillas of 30-knot destroyers from a flagship with a maximum speed of 18 knots. Now, to his delight, he had transferred “from the oldest and slowest to the newest and fastest light cruiser.” As designed, Arethusa had a speed of 29 knots and two 6-inch and six 4-inch guns; supposedly, she could outrun and outfight any German light cruiser in the High Seas Fleet. In fact, on August 26, 1914, the new ship was scarcely in condition to fight at all. She had been in commission only fifteen days; her new crew was untested; her highest speed in trials had been only 25 knots; her 4-inch guns frequently jammed when fired. Tyrwhitt boarded his new flagship at 9:00 a.m. on August 26 and immediately took her to sea for firing practice. When the 4-inch guns jammed, firing was discontinued. Never-theless, at 5:00 on the morning of the twenty-seventh, Tyrwhitt sailed on Arethusa, leading the 3rd Flotilla of sixteen modern L-class destroyers. His subordinate, Captain Wilfred Blunt, followed in the older light cruiser Fearless, leading the 1st Flotilla of fifteen slightly older destroyers.

The unreadiness of Arethusa was the first of many flaws in the execution of Keyes’s plan. A second, more serious error threatened the entire success of this first British naval offensive of the war. The plan conceived by the two Harwich commodores had been approved by the First Lord, the First Sea Lord, and the Chief of Staff, but not until August 26, two days after the Admiralty conference, did anyone inform the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet. Even then, Jellicoe was told only that “a destroyer sweep of First and Third Flotillas with submarines suitably placed is in orders for Friday from East to West, commencing between Horns Reef and Heligoland, with battle cruisers in support.” Jellicoe was immediately alarmed. He was certain that the force assigned was too weak to operate so close to the enemy’s base—that if the light forces became entangled and were unable to withdraw, and if the High Seas Fleet came out, two British battle cruisers and a quartet of elderly armored cruisers would be unable to deal with the German dreadnoughts. Less than two hours after receiving Sturdee’s signal, Jellicoe responded to the Admiralty: “Propose to cooperate on sweep on Friday moving Grand Fleet cruisers and destroyers to suitable positions with Battle Fleet near. Request I may be given full details of proposed operations by land-wire tonight. I am leaving at 6 a.m. tomorrow.” After he had sent this signal, Jellicoe continued to worry. Why, he wondered, would the Admiralty keep the Commander-in-Chief in ignorance of so large and risky an operation? At 6:00 that evening, he signaled again: “Until I know the plan of operations, I am unable to suggest the best method of cooperation but the breadth of sweep appears to be very great for two flotillas. I could send a third [destroyer] flotilla, holding a fourth in reserve, and can support by light cruisers. What officers will be in command of operations and in what ships so that I can communicate with them? What is the direction of the sweep and [the] northern limits, and what ships will take part?” Sturdee’s reply was brief and surly: “Cooperation by battle fleet not required. Battle cruisers can support if convenient.” Given qualified permission, Jellicoe immediately ordered three of Beatty’s battle cruisers, Lion, Queen Mary, and Princess Royal, to sail from Scapa Flow at 5:00 the following morning, August 27, to join New Zealand and Invincible. He also ordered Goodenough’s six modern light cruisers, Southampton, Birmingham, Nottingham, Lowestoft, Falmouth, and Liverpool, to accompany Beatty from Scapa Flow. Ultimately, it was this action by Jellicoe—adding Beatty’s battle cruisers, plus Goodenough’s light cruisers, to the forces approved by the Admiralty—that saved the day. And once Beatty and Goodenough had sailed, Jellicoe himself followed them to sea with the four battle squadrons of the Grand Fleet. Only when all of his ships and squadrons were at sea did Jellicoe inform the Admiralty of what he had done.

When Beatty left Scapa Flow, he, too, had only a vague idea of the nature of the next day’s operation. At 8:00 a.m., he signaled his battle cruisers and light cruisers, “We are to rendezvous with Invincible and New Zealand at . . . 5:00 a.m. [August 28] to support destroyers and submarines. . . . Operation consisting of a sweep . . . Heligoland to westward. . . . Know very little, shall hope to learn more as we go along.” By noon, the Admiralty had given Beatty the position from which Tyrwhitt’s destroyers would begin their sweep and the course they would follow; he was never supplied with the assigned positions of British submarines. Beatty was asked how he proposed to support the operation. He replied that Goodenough’s light cruisers would follow Tyrwhitt’s destroyers ten miles astern and that he and the battle cruisers would remain thirty miles to the northwest.

Soon, these Admiralty errors were compounded. Just after 1:00 p.m. on the twenty-seventh, a message from the Admiralty informing Keyes and Tyrwhitt that the operation had been reinforced by Beatty and Goodenough was sent to Harwich for transmission to the two commodores, who were already at sea. But the wireless signal and the information it contained never reached Keyes or Tyrwhitt, because when the Admiralty message arrived at Harwich, it was mistakenly placed on a desk to await their return. Accordingly, Tyrwhitt and Keyes began the battle wholly unaware that Beatty’s battle cruisers and Goodenough’s light cruisers were on their way. Ironically, the greatest threat posed by this ignorance was to the British battle cruisers and light cruisers. Before sailing, the captains of Tyrwhitt’s destroyers and Keyes’s submarines had been told that Arethusa and Fearless were the only British ships larger than destroyers that would be present in the Bight. If other big ships appeared, Tyrwhitt’s destroyers and Keyes’s submarines were to assume that they were German, and they were to attempt to torpedo them.

Before dawn on August 28, such an encounter almost occurred. Tyrwhitt’s ships, moving south toward Heligoland, sighted the blurred shapes of three four-funneled light cruisers. Tyrwhitt flashed the designated challenge and to his enormous relief received the proper reply; they were a part of Goodenough’s squadron. Then, perplexed, Tyrwhitt asked, “Are you taking part in the operation?” “Yes,” Goodenough replied. “I know your course and will support you. Beatty is behind us.” Thus, Tyrwhitt knew and could inform his destroyer captains that six additional light cruisers, as well as Beatty’s battle cruisers, might make an appearance. But Keyes, on board Lurcher, and the captains of his submarines, beneath the surface, remained ignorant.

Keyes’s information regarding German defensive arrangements in the Bight was accurate. In these early weeks of the war, the German navy believed that the “heavily superior” British fleet would attack and provoke a battle off Heligoland. Meanwhile, says the German naval history, “our task was to keep the Heligoland Bight and the river mouths clear of British submarines and mines . . . [so as not to find] ourselves blocked in.” The Germans considered using defensive minefields for this purpose, “but senior commanders feared that minefields would hamper too much the movement of our own [surface] forces . . . in the battle they felt sure was coming.” In lieu of minefields, the Germans substituted—as Keyes’s submarine captains had told him—elaborate and extensive patrols by destroyers, light cruisers, and U-boats. “We over-worked our destroyers and light cruisers in this effort,” says the German naval history, “especially the personnel, the boilers and the engines of the destroyers. On patrol duty we had no less than four light cruisers and two destroyer flotillas by day and five light cruisers and three destroyers flotillas at night.” Dawn on August 28 found these arrangements functioning routinely.

At 5:00 a.m. that day, Tyrwhitt in Arethusa was steering for the eight o’clock rendezvous twelve miles northwest of Heligoland. Behind him steamed the sixteen destroyers of the 3rd Flotilla and, two miles behind them, Fearless with her fifteen destroyers. Eight miles astern of Fearless were Commodore Goodenough’s six light cruisers. As the sky began to lighten, the sea was calm and the weather clear, although, toward land, a misty haze hung over the water. Visibility was about 6,000 yards—three miles. At daybreak, Keyes’s submarines, E-6, E-7, and E-8—the designated bait—surfaced and advanced toward Heligoland. As they approached the island, visibility dropped to 5,000 yards, which meant that, in order to be spotted, the submarines would have to go in closer.

First contact between British and German surface ships came at 7:00 a.m., when Arethusa sighted the German destroyer G-194 three miles ahead on her port bow. The German ship immediately turned and ran south for Heligoland, and Tyrwhitt detached four British destroyers to pursue. G-194 radioed, “Attacked by enemy cruisers,” to Rear Admiral Leberecht Maass, commander of High Seas Fleet destroyers, whose flagship was the light cruiser Köln. Maass, in turn, signaled Rear Admiral Franz Hipper, who, besides commanding the High Seas Fleet battle cruisers, was responsible for the defense of the Bight. This morning, the patrolling destroyers had been assigned three German light cruisers, Stettin, Frauenlob, and Ariadne, as support. Stettin, 3,494 tons and capable of 25 knots, was anchored at half steam in the lee of Heligoland; Frauenlob was nearby. Ariadne remained in Jade Bay. These ships, each carrying ten 4.1-inch guns, were strong enough to overpower destroyers, but none would stand a chance against the 6-inch guns of Goodenough’s modern Southamptons. Another German light cruiser, Mainz, lay at a mooring in the river Ems, and Köln, Strassburg, Rostock, and Kolberg were in Wilhelmshaven. Danzig and Münchou lay at Brunsbüttelkoog at the western end of the Kiel Canal. In Wilhemshaven, too, lay Hipper’s battle cruisers, Seydlitz, Moltke, and Von der Tann, although Seydlitz was partially disabled with condensor troubles. But because of the tide, neither the battle cruisers nor the battleships of the High Seas Fleet could steam out into the Bight until noon. Low water in the Jade on August 28 was at 9:33 a.m., when the depth over the bar would be only twenty-five feet, too shallow for German dreadnoughts.

Hipper, receiving news of the first contact, never imagined that his battle cruisers would be needed. Assuming that his destroyers were being attacked only by British destroyers, he ordered the German light cruisers already on station, Stettin and Frauenlob, to “hunt [British] destroyers,” and instructed his light cruisers still in harbor to raise steam. One by one, as they were ready, eight German light cruisers put to sea: Mainz from the Ems River, Strassburg, Köln, Ariadne, Stralsund, and Kolberg at intervals from the Jade; Danzig and München were to move down the Elbe estuary from Brunsbüttelkoog. Long before any of these German light cruisers arrived, however, the German patrol destroyers, hearing reports of British submarines on the surface, were steaming north at 21 knots. Suddenly, the sound of gunfire—the four British destroyers were chasing and firing at the German destroyer G-194—told them that a surface action was under way. Unprepared for this, they started to turn to the south, but before their turns were complete, they saw through the mist the high bow waves of many British destroyers steaming directly toward them. When the British opened fire, the German destroyer V-1, lagging behind, was hit. As the British destroyers were coming within range of the 8-inch guns of the Heligoland shore defense batteries, the German destroyer G-9 signaled urgently for covering fire. But the shore artillerymen, hampered by the thick mist, were unable to identify the ships by nationality and held their fire. A German destroyer-minesweeper, D-8, was struck by a British shell, which hit the bridge, killing her captain. T-33, another destroyer-minesweeper, also was hit. For these small German ships, salvation could come only if the German light cruisers quickly intervened.

Tyrwhitt, meanwhile, had lost sight of his four detached destroyers. Then, hearing the sound of gunfire to the east and worrying that these ships might be under attack by a superior German force, he temporarily abandoned the planned westward sweep and, at 7:26 a.m., swung his whole flotilla east, toward Heligoland, to rescue his missing ships. Before long, he sighted ten German destroyers and settled down to a full-speed chase with Fearless and her flotilla following. The mist was thickening, and although Tyrwhitt could see the enemy destroyers on both his port and starboard bows, he was unable to gain on them. For half an hour this running battle continued, heading straight toward Heligoland, until suddenly, out of the mist, the island’s 200-foot-high red cliffs loomed up over the bows of his ships. He turned away.

At 7:58 a.m., Frauenlob and Stettin arrived to cover their own retreating destroyers. The presence of these two ships reversed the tactical situation: now Tyrwhitt’s destroyers had to deal not simply with German destroyers, but with German light cruisers. Following doctrine, the British destroyers immediately broke off pursuit and fell back on their own light cruisers, Arethusa and Fearless. A light cruiser battle, the first of the day, began and, almost immediately, so many British shells were hitting the sea near Stettin that it looked as if the ship “were in boiling water.” Having achieved her purpose in covering the flight of the German destroyers, Stettin turned back toward Heligoland. Her captain wished to bring his boilers to full steam before returning to the fight.

Meanwhile, Arethusa was left alone with Frauenlob. Nominally superior to the German ship, Arethusa now displayed the effects of her too-recent commissioning. Two of her 4-inch guns were jammed and useless and a third was eliminated by a German shell; only her forward 6-inch gun was behaving reliably. Her wireless and searchlights were inoperable and water was filling her engine room. Frauenlob’s gunnery was excellent; Tyrwhitt later reported fifteen direct hits on the port side alone. Surprisingly, Arethusa lost only eleven men killed and sixteen wounded, although one of the dead was Tyrwhitt’s young signal officer, who had been standing on the bridge next to the commodore. Arethusa fought back and, with the single gun she had in action, managed to hit Frauenlob ten times. One of these shells struck the bridge, killing or wounding thirty-seven men including the captain and forcing Frauenlob to sheer off and head for the protection of the Heligoland batteries. For a while, her survival was uncertain, but she reached Heligoland and then went on to Wilhemshaven. The first phase of the battle was over. Arethusa had been seriously damaged, Frauenlob was out of action, and a German destroyer and two destroyer-minesweepers had been badly hurt.

It was 8:12 a.m. With the Germans withdrawing and Heligoland close at hand, Tyrwhitt signaled his force to re-form and recommence the planned sweep to the west. Almost immediately another skirmish developed. Tyrwhitt’s turn brought his flotillas across the path of another group of six German destroyers of the outer patrol, now returning to Heligoland. In the mist, five of these destroyers escaped around the flanks of Tyrwhitt’s force, but their leader, V-187, was not so lucky. At 6,000 yards, Tyrwhitt’s ships opened fire on this German ship fleeing south. The German destroyer was moving at high speed and seemed likely to get away when, to the astonishment of the British pursuers, she made a high-speed turn and headed straight back toward them. The cause of this unexpected event was that Goodenough, coming down from the northwest, had detached and sent ahead two of his light cruisers, Nottingham and Lowestoft. V-187, fleeing the British destroyers, suddenly and to her horror saw these two British Town-class cruisers ahead in her path. To escape, the German commander risked everything and doubled back. Initially, his unorthodox tactic succeeded: he sped unharmed past the first line of pursuing British destroyers. Then he ran into the second line. Immediately, V-187 was surrounded by eight British destroyers, who circled their crippled opponent, firing point blank at 600 yards. Her flag still flying, V-187 stopped firing. The British destroyers also ceased fire; they stopped their engines and began lowering boats to rescue survivors. Some of the Germans misinterpreted this action. Because their own flag still was flying, they believed that the boats in the water must be carrying boarding parties coming to seize their ship. To make clear that the battle was not over, a German officer aimed and fired a gun at the British destroyer Goshawk 200 yards away, hitting her in the wardroom. The British ships reopened fire. At the same time, scuttling charges exploded in the German destroyer’s hull; at 9:10 a.m., V-187 sank, her colors still flying.

Boats from the five British destroyers were in the water and British seamen had just started pulling German sailors out of the sea when fountains of water from plunging German shells appeared around them. Through the mist, the light-gray hull and three funnels of a German light cruiser appeared. It was Stettin, her boilers now at full power, returning to action. When she opened fire, four of the British destroyers managed to get their boats back alongside, pick up the boat crews, and hurry away. The empty boats were left adrift. One destroyer, Defender, had put in the water two boats that, during the rescue operation, had wandered some distance. When Stettin opened fire, Defender’s captain made a quick decision to save his ship by leaving his boats behind. One British officer and nine seamen along with twenty-eight German prisoners were in the boats. The British sailors, abandoned in the middle of the Bight, believed themselves lost when an apparent miracle occurred. The surface battle had been observed through his periscope by the captain of the British submarine E-4. When Stettin arrived, he fired a torpedo at her, but the cruiser avoided it and attempted to ram. E-4 escaped by diving. Twenty minutes later, when the captain put his periscope back up, there were no ships in sight, but the boats were still there, filled with Germans, some of them wounded, whom the British boat crews were helping as well as they could by tearing up their own clothes to make bandages. Suddenly, to the amazement of everyone in the boats, a submarine rose beside them from out of the sea. E-4 took on board all the British sailors and three Germans—the commodore, a petty officer, and a seaman—“as a sample.” The captain had no room on his small craft for the rest of the Germans, but before submerging, he gave those left behind water, biscuits, a compass, and the course to Heligoland, fourteen miles away.

There followed on the British side a sequence of events that can only be seen as farce. The cause lay in the Admiralty’s failure to inform all British forces involved in the operation that other friendly forces were present. At 8:10 a.m., Goodenough had intercepted Arethusa’s signal that she was in action, and had detached two of his six light cruisers, Lowestoft and Nottingham, to go to Tyrwhitt’s assistance. At 8:30 a.m., Goodenough and his four remaining light cruisers were steaming toward a position twenty miles southwest of Heligoland; from this position they meant to support Tyrwhitt’s westward sweep. Keyes, supervising his submarines from Lurcher, however, had no reason to know or suspect that any four-funneled British light cruisers were in the vicinity. When, therefore, at 8:15 a.m., he made out two four-funneled cruisers (Lowestoft and Nottingham) steaming on the same course as himself, he signaled Invincible that he was in touch with two enemy cruisers. They had not attacked him, Keyes said, and with only his two destroyers, he was too weak to attack them; accordingly, for the moment he would shadow them. Goodenough intercepted Keyes’s signal and, wholly unaware that the ships Keyes was reporting were his own two detached vessels, decided to take his four remaining light cruisers to Keyes’s assistance.

By 8:53 a.m., Goodenough on Southampton had Lurcher in sight. This meeting compounded the confusion. Keyes, still uninformed that any British cruisers were in area, and now seeing four new light cruisers, assumed he was in the presence of four additional German cruisers. Believing himself overwhelmingly outgunned, he steered his two small destroyers toward Invincible and New Zealand, signaling that he was being chased by four hostile cruisers and that he was leading them toward the battle cruisers. This ludicrous but perilous situation was made even worse when Tyrwhitt, hearing Keyes’s message, tried to help his friend by also signaling to Goodenough: “Please chase westward. . . . Commodore (S) [Keyes] is being chased by four light cruisers.” Inadvertently, of course, Tyrwhitt was asking Goodenough for help against Goodenough himself. The episode ended harmlessly when Keyes finally saw and recognized the silhouette of Southampton and signaled, “Cruisers are our cruisers [of] whose presence in this area I was not informed.”

This mystery cleared up, Goodenough turned west to follow Tyrwhitt’s sweep. This led to further danger, because it brought his light cruisers over the line of British submarines of whose presence he was unaware. Nor could Keyes, who now knew that the four cruisers were British, communicate with his submarines beneath the surface. Alarmed, Keyes signaled to Goodenough: “I was not informed you were coming into this area; you run great risk from our submarines. . . . Your unexpected appearance has upset all our plans. There are submarines off Ems.” Goodenough’s reply was tart: “I came under detailed orders. I am astonished that you were not told. I have signaled to Lion that we should withdraw. Nottingham and Lowestoft are somewhere in the vicinity.” In fact, an incident of a British submarine and a British cruiser attacking each other had already occurred. A little before 9:30 a.m., the Southampton had sighted a periscope at 500 yards. It belonged to E-6, which fired two torpedoes at the light cruiser; both missed. Southampton, steaming at high speed, swerved to ram, and the submarine escaped only by crash-diving. Goodenough signaled to Nottingham and Lowestoft to rejoin, but the two separated ships failed to get his signal and wandered off out of action for the rest of the day.

The final misunderstanding caused by British Admiralty blunders occurred at 9:45 a.m., when Tyrwhitt heard Keyes’s signal that Lurcher was being chased by four enemy cruisers. Following his appeal to Goodenough to rescue Keyes, Tyrwhitt bravely turned his own damaged Arethusa back to the east to do what he could to help. Almost at once, he sighted a three-funneled cruiser, this one a genuine enemy, Stettin; with his destroyers, Tyrwhitt pursued her into the mist. Then, at about 10:10 a.m., he encountered the eight destroyers of the Fearless flotilla returning from sinking the German destroyer V-187. Fearing that he was again getting too close to Heligoland, and aware that other German light cruisers would be emerging from the river mouths, Tyrwhitt broke off the chase, reversed course, and once again headed west.

By this time, Arethusa could steam no faster than 10 knots. In the engagement with Frauenlob, her feed tank had been holed, her torpedo tubes demolished, all her guns except the forward 6-inch put out of action. As Tyrwhitt’s two destroyer flotillas were now concentrated around her and no enemy was in sight, it seemed a favorable moment for making repairs. Accordingly, at 10:17 a.m. Tyrwhitt signaled the 1st Flotilla to cover his crippled ship and told Blunt in Fearless to come alongside. For the next twenty minutes, both British light cruisers lay dead in the water, their engines stopped, while the Arethusa’s engine-room crew and repair parties worked frantically. By 10:40 a.m., the hole in the feed line was plugged, the ship was able to resume at 20 knots and all but two of her 4-inch guns were unjammed and ready for action.

It was approaching 11:00 a.m. British forces had been in the inner Bight for four hours and it was certain that a vigorous enemy counterattack would be coming. Indeed, it was on the way. Stettin was prowling about, emerging from and disappearing into the haze, and three more German light cruisers, Köln, Strassburg, and Ariadne, were approaching from Wilhelmshaven. Admiral Maass, commander of High Seas Fleet destroyers, who was on board Köln, did not know whether the battle was continuing, but he hoped at least to be able to pick off some British cripples or stragglers. Meanwhile, Hipper had ordered a fifth light cruiser, Mainz, to attack Tyrwhitt’s destroyers from the rear. Mainz sailed north from the Ems at 10:00 “to cut off the retreat of the hostile ships,” as her executive officer put it. In Wilhelmshaven, the German battle cruisers were raising steam and at 8:50 a.m., Hipper had requested permission from Ingenohl to send out Moltke and Von der Tann at the first opportunity. The Commander-in-Chief had approved, but because of the tide, the heavy ships could not yet cross the Jade bar.

Thus, as Arethusa was restarting her engines, three German light cruisers were about to join Stettin on the scene. Fortunately for Tyrwhitt, Admiral Maass was so eager to fall upon and annihilate the intruding British destroyers that he did not take time to concentrate his force. Maass never imagined that Goodenough and Beatty were anywhere near. One by one, the German cruisers arrived and attacked. Strassburg appeared first and opened fire on Arethusa. “We received a very severe and most accurate fire from this cruiser,” Tyrwhitt wrote in his report. “Salvo after salvo was falling between twenty and thirty yards short, but not a single shell struck. Two torpedoes were also fired at us, being well-aimed, but short.” Outgunned in a crippled ship, Tyrwhitt ordered twelve destroyers to attack Strassburg with torpedoes. One torpedo passed near Strassburg’s bow, another under her stern, and the German ship turned away. Tyrwhitt, ever more anxious to get away to the west, gathered his destroyers to turn again in that direction. But as he did so, Köln, with Admiral Maass on board, appeared from the southeast. The weary British ships turned to engage her and Tyrwhitt, mistaking Köln for a powerful Roon-class armored cruiser, urgently signaled Beatty: “Am attacked by large cruiser. . . . Respectfully request that I may be supported. Am hard pressed.” Beatty responded by ordering Goodenough to send two more of his light cruisers to assist Arethusa. Instead, Goodenough came himself with his entire squadron at high speed. Tyrwhitt, meanwhile, had gained another respite: Köln liked facing the massed torpedo tubes of the Harwich destroyers no more than Strassburg had, and she also retreated into the mist. For a fourth time, Tyrwhitt’s force turned west.

At 11:00 a.m., when Tyrwhitt was entangled in what he described as “a hornet’s nest,” Beatty and his five battle cruisers were still marking time forty miles to the northwest. Around 10:00 a.m., the admiral had broken radio silence to give his position and to tell all British ships that for the time being he would remain where he was. Through the morning, he had been “intercepting various signals [from Tyrwhitt, Keyes, and Goodenough] which contained no information on which I could act.” He had understood that Keyes had mistaken Goodenough’s cruiser squadron for the enemy and subsequently that Tyrwhitt’s force was heavily engaged and in distress. But why was Tyrwhitt still so close to Heligoland? Why had he made so little progress to the west? During the four hours since the fighting began, Tyrwhitt had advanced barely fifteen miles. Now, the British light forces, hotly engaged only twenty miles west of Heligoland, were still within easy reach of Wilhelmshaven. Beatty possessed a copy of the German coastal tide tables and knew that soon after noon, Hipper and Ingenohl would be able to send their dreadnoughts to sea. Already, Beatty had ordered Goodenough’s light cruisers to hurry to Tyrwhitt’s assistance, but he realized that against at least four, and possibly as many as six, German cruisers—including perhaps one large armored cruiser—this might be insufficient. With every minute, the possibility grew that the British light cruisers and destroyers would be overwhelmed.

Beatty, pacing on Lion’s bridge, understood that the responsibility was his. As vice admiral commanding the Battle Cruiser Squadron, he far outranked the three commodores, Goodenough, Tyrwhitt, and Keyes. The decisions he faced were not easy ones. If he went forward, he exposed his ships to enemy mines and submarines—and to British submarines, ignorant of his presence. In addition, there was the strong possibility that within a short time, German battle cruisers and perhaps battleships would be coming out. The mist to the east was thickening and for his battle cruisers to be surprised by the sudden appearance of German dreadnoughts could mean catastrophe. One of these dangers—submarines—Beatty felt he could ignore. The sea was glassy calm, which made periscopes easy to detect, so no submarine could close in without danger of being rammed. Besides, his ships traveling at high speed could rush past a submerged submarine before it reached a position to fire.

Still, for a moment, Beatty hesitated. “What do you think we should do?” he asked Captain Ernle Chatfield of Lion, standing beside him on the battle cruiser’s bridge. “I ought to go forward and support Tyrwhitt, but if I lose one of these valuable ships, the country will not forgive me.” Chatfield, admitting later that he was “unburdened by responsibility and eager for ex-citement,” replied, “Surely we must go.” Beatty nodded, and at 11:35 a.m., counting on high speed and surprise to see him through, he swung Lion, Queen Mary, Princess Royal, Invincible, and New Zealand around to the southeast and steamed in a single line at 26 knots into the Bight. Ten minutes later, he increased speed to 27 knots and signaled to Tyrwhitt and Blunt, “Am proceeding to your support.”

Even at 27 knots, Beatty was still an hour away from the embattled Harwich force. Meanwhile, Tyrwhitt faced another new antagonist, the German light cruiser Mainz, which had sailed independently from the Ems estuary. About 11:30 a.m., British destroyers steaming west six miles ahead of Arethusa sighted Mainz. Both sides opened fire. Mainz had better aim, frequently straddling although not hitting the destroyers. Eleven British destroyers fired torpedoes; all missed. This action continued for twenty minutes when, to the astonishment of the British, their German antagonist abruptly reversed course. This strange behavior was subsequently explained by the fact that Mainz, racing north and battling the destroyers, had suddenly seen “heavy smoke clouds . . . to the northwest and a few minutes later three cruisers of the Town class emerged from them.” These were Goodenough’s light cruisers coming south at full speed to the aid of Arethusa. Southampton and her consorts opened fire at 6,000 yards and Mainz, wrote one of Southampton’s officers, “very wisely fled like a stag.” “Even in the act of turning,” said one of Mainz’s officers, “the enemy’s first salvos were falling close to us and very soon afterwards we were hit in the battery and the waist.” It was an unequal contest: Mainz was under fire from fifteen 6-inch guns to which she could reply only with her two after 4.1-inch guns. The German light cruiser, hit at least twice, disappeared into the mist, hoping to escape. She did not. Fleeing south at 25 knots with Goodenough in pursuit, Mainz suddenly found herself running directly across the bows of Arethusa and the Harwich destroyers. Tyrwhitt, not knowing that the British light cruisers were in hot pursuit, immediately ordered twenty British destroyers to attack Mainz with torpedoes. The destroyers charged at close range, some approaching within 1,000 yards of the German ship. Mainz fought desperately and her fire was remarkably accurate. The destroyer Laurel fired two torpedoes, but was herself hit three times and crippled. Liberty, the destroyer next astern, was hit on the bridge, and her captain was killed. Lysander, the third destroyer in line, was not hit, but Laertes, the fourth, was struck by all four shells of a single German salvo and, temporarily, came to a standstill. Thirty-three British torpedoes had been fired; one observer described the sea as “furrowed” by the tracks of whitened, bubbling water.

But Mainz was receiving as well as dealing blows. Her rudder was jammed to starboard, she was on fire, her port engine was dead, and she was slowly turning in the direction of Goodenough’s arriving cruisers. Worse was to come. Suddenly, a torpedo from the British destroyer Lydiard hit her. “The ship reared,” wrote one of Mainz’s surviving officers, “bent perceptibly from end to end, and continued to pitch for some time. The emergency lights went out. We had to find our way about with electric torches.” Stricken, Mainz turned west, straight into the arms of Goodenough’s four cruisers, now only 6,000 yards away. “We closed down on her,” wrote one of Southampton’s officers, “hitting with every salvo. She was a mass of yellow flame and smoke. . . . Her two after-funnels collapsed. Red glows, indicating internal fires, showed through her gaping wounds in her sides.” One of her guns still fired spasmodically, but within ten minutes she lay a blazing wreck, sinking by the bow. Then, the mainmast slowly leaned forward and, “like a great tree, gradually lay down along the deck.” “Mainz was incredibly brave, immensely gallant,” wrote another British officer. “The last I saw of her [she was] absolutely wrecked . . . her whole midships a fuming inferno. She had one gun forward and one aft still spitting forth fury and defiance like a wild cat mad with wounds.” A surviving German seaman added grim details: “The state of Mainz at this time was indescribable. . . . Gun crews, voice-pipe men, and ammunition supply parties were blown to pieces. The upper deck was a chaos of ruin, flame, scorching heat and corpses, and everything was streaked with the green and yellow residue of the explosives which produced suffocating gases.” At 12:20, the captain ordered, “Sink [that is, scuttle] the ship. All hands [put on] life jackets.” Then he stepped outside the conning tower and was immediately killed by a shell burst. At 12:25 p.m., Goodenough signaled, “Cease Fire,” and at 12:50 p.m. he ordered the light cruiser Liverpool to lower boats and pick up the men swimming in the water.

At this point, Commodore Keyes with Lurcher and Firedrake arrived. Seeing Mainz’s smoking decks littered with men wounded and unable to move, he took Lurcher alongside, the steel plates of the two ships grinding with the movement of the sea. By this action, Keyes was able to evacuate and save 220 men. One man refused. “A young German officer [who] had been very active in directing the transport of the wounded” now stood motionless on the deck of his doomed ship. Keyes, anxious to push off before the cruiser capsized and guessing what was in this young man’s mind, shouted to him that “he had done splendidly, we must clear out, he must come at once, there was nothing more he could do, and I held out my hand to help him jump on board.” But the young man scorned to leave his ship as long as she remained afloat. “He drew himself up stiffly, saluted, and said, ‘Thank you. No.’ ” A few minutes later, Mainz rolled over, lay on her side for ten minutes, then turned bottom up and sank. Happily, the young officer who had refused Keyes’s offer was found in the water and rescued; another survivor was Lieutenant Wolf von Tirpitz, a son of the German Grand Admiral.

Tyrwhitt still was not out of danger. One German light cruiser had been sunk and another damaged, but eight more were converging on his battered force. Stettin and Strassburg were still about; Köln, with Rear Admiral Maass, Stralsund, Kolberg, Ariadne, München, and Danzig were on the way; and still another, Niobe, was hastily coaling at Wilhelmshaven. Meanwhile, Arethusa, Laurel, Laertes, and Liberty were badly damaged and would have to be withdrawn from the Bight in the face of attacks by the German light cruisers. Fortunately for the British, the actions of the German ships remained uncoordinated. All were careening about, looking for smaller British ships to attack, fleeing when confronted by larger British warships. The British, at least, were attempting to exercise tactical control; for the Germans it was a confused barroom brawl. The ability to identify an antagonist depended on factors such as the number of funnels and the shape of the bows, characteristics difficult to make out in that day’s weather.

As shells from Strassburg and then from Köln began to fall near Arethusa, Tyrwhitt began to wonder whether he and his ships would be overwhelmed. “I really was beginning to feel a bit blue,” he wrote after the battle. Then, suddenly, out of the haze to westward, the shadowy form of a large ship loomed up. She was coming at high speed, black smoke was pouring from her funnels, and a huge white wave was rolling back from her bow. Alarm and dismay were followed by relief and joy when the oncoming giant was identified as HMS Lion. One by one, out of the mist astern of the leader, four more huge shapes came into view. “Following in each other’s wake, they emerged . . . and flashed past us like express trains,” said an officer aboard Southampton. “Not a man could be seen on their decks; volumes of smoke poured from their funnels; their turret guns, trained expectantly on the port bow, seemed eager for battle.” A young lieutenant serving on one of Tyrwhitt’s crippled destroyers described the same moment: “There straight ahead of us in lovely procession, like elephants walking through a pack of . . . dogs came Lion, Queen Mary, Princess Royal, Invincible and New Zealand. Great and grim and uncouth as some antediluvian monsters, how solid they looked, how utterly earthquaking. We pointed out our latest aggressor to them . . . and we went west while they went east . . . and just a little later we heard the thunder of their guns.”

For Arethusa and her flock, the battle was over. For Lion and her sisters, it was beginning.

Aboard the British battle cruisers, excitement was at a peak: “As we approached,” said Captain Chatfield of Lion,

everyone was at action stations, the guns loaded, the range-finders manned, the control alert, the signal men’s binoculars and telescopes scouring the misty horizon . . . one could hardly see two miles. Suddenly the report of guns was heard . . . [and] on our port bow, we saw . . . the flash of guns through the mist. Were they friendly or hostile? No shell could be seen falling. Beatty stood on the bridge by the compass, his glasses scanning the scene. At length we made out the hulk of a cruiser—indeed, she was little more than a hulk—[this was Mainz] her funnel had fallen and her foremast had been shot away, a fire raged on her upper deck. She . . . had been engaged by all four ships of Goodenough’s squadron. We swung around ninety degrees to port. “Leave her to them,” said Beatty. “Don’t fire!”

At 12:37 p.m., Lion approached Arethusa and her destroyers, which were under attack by Strassburg and Köln. Strassburg turned and fled. Köln, however, was doomed. As Beatty steered to cut her off from Heligoland, the German light cruiser remained for seven minutes in clear sight on Lion’s bow. “The turrets swung around . . . [and] our guns opened fire, followed by those of the squadron,” said Chatfield. “In a few moments, the German was hit many times by heavy shells; she bravely returned our fire with her little four inch guns aiming at our conning tower. One felt the tiny four-inch shell spatter against the conning tower armor, and the pieces ‘sizz’ over it. In a few minutes, the Köln was . . . a hulk.”

Even so, Rear Admiral Maass’s flagship did not sink; indeed, she received a brief reprieve. Just at that moment, a small, two-funneled German light cruiser appeared, steaming east, directly across Lion’s path. Beatty immediately abandoned the shattered Köln and led his ships in pursuit of this new prey. Although by this time Invincible (which could make no better than 25 knots) and New Zealand (not much faster) were lagging behind the three modern Cats (as the London press had eagerly described the Lion-class battle cruisers), which were traveling at 28 knots, Beatty did not detach either of the two to sink Köln. Aware that he was close to the enemy’s base and that German dreadnoughts could appear at any moment, he wished to keep his squadron concentrated. Chatfield described what happened next: “A small German ship, a mile on [sic] the starboard bow . . . made off at right-angles, zig-zagging. Pointing her out to . . . [the gunnery officer] I told him to cease firing at Köln and to engage . . . [the new enemy ship] be-fore she could torpedo us. He rapidly swung the 13.5-inch turrets round from port to starboard and re-opened fire. Three salvos were enough and the German disappeared from sight; an explosion was seen and a mass of flame.”

The victim was the old light cruiser Ariadne, which had followed Köln from Wilhelmshaven through the mists out onto the battlefield. When Beatty, leaving the crippled Köln, turned his attention to Ariadne, the range was under 6,000 yards. Ariadne had no chance. She ran for it, but, said one of her officers, “the first salvo fell about three hundred and thirty yards short, but the second pitched so close to our boat that the towering columns of water broke over our forecastle and flooded it.” Lion’s third salvo struck home and, as Princess Royal joined the assault, Ariadne staggered away, “completely enveloped in flames,” and helpless. Beatty left her behind. Ariadne, like Köln, remained afloat, but the heat and smoke made it impossible for her crew to remain on board. The men assembled on the forecastle, gave three cheers for the kaiser, sang “Deutschland über Alles,” and awaited rescue. Shortly after two o’clock the German light cruiser Danzig appeared and lowered boats. For a while, the fires on Ariadne were dying down and her captain, hoping to save his ship, asked Stralsund to take her in tow. It was too late: at 3:10 p.m., she rolled over and went to the bottom, her colors still flying.

Despite his success, Beatty was nervous about his proximity to Heligoland and Wilhelmshaven; from one of his ships, an officer could see chimneys along the German coast. He knew that the water over the Jade bar was deepening and that the German dreadnoughts would probably be coming out. And one of his destroyers reported the presence of floating mines. For these reasons and because it was now his primary duty to cover the withdrawal of Tyrwhitt’s damaged ships, it was time to go. At 1:10 p.m., only forty minutes after he arrived on the scene, Beatty turned Lion and her sisters to the northwest and made a general signal to all British forces in the Bight: “Retire.” On this arc of retreat, he sighted, a mile and a half away, the crippled Köln, still afloat, still flying her flag. “The Admiral told me to sink her,” Chatfield said. “We put two salvos from the two foremost turrets into her; she sank beneath the waves stern first.” Beatty ordered his four accompanying destroyers to pick up survivors. They had begun to search when a submarine was reported and they departed. Two days later a German destroyer discovered a single stoker, Adolf Neumann, still alive and “drifting among corpses [held up] in lifejackets.” According to Neumann, “About 250 men” jumped into the sea before Köln went down. “On the next day I saw close around me 60 men apparently still living. One after another, they fell prey to the sea.” The rest of Köln’s company of more than 500 men, along with Rear Admiral Maass, had perished.

Up to this point, four German cruisers—Frauenlob, Mainz, Köln, and Ariadne—had been sunk or damaged, but four more—Stettin, Stralsund, Strassburg, and Danzig—were still prowling in the fog. These four ships were saved by the mist; on a clear day, Beatty’s heavy guns could have reached out and smashed them all. As it was, Strassburg had a close encounter. She sighted the British battle cruisers, then busy dispatching Köln, before they sighted her. Momentarily, the British were confused: Strassburg had four funnels, while most German cruisers had only three. The German captain realized that he might be mistaken for one of the Southamptons and boldly held on course rather than turning and running. The ploy succeeded: by the time the British issued a challenge, Strassburg had vanished into the haze.

Meanwhile, help for the Germans was on the way. Moltke and Von der Tann crossed the Jade bar at 2:10 p.m., and Hipper signaled all German light cruisers to fall back on the two battle cruisers. Ingenohl was cautious. Hipper’s battle cruisers were told “not to engage the [enemy] battle cruiser squadron”; Hipper himself, an hour astern in Seydlitz, did not want to make the same mistake the German light cruisers had made by attacking piecemeal; he refused to risk his two battle cruisers in the absence of his powerful flagship. At 2:25 p.m., Moltke and Von der Tann rendezvoused with the German light cruisers. Hipper himself arrived in Seydlitz at 3:10 p.m., just in time to watch Ariadne sink. The German admiral then began a wary reconnaissance with three light cruisers ahead of his three battle cruisers, searching for the missing light cruisers Mainz and Köln, from whom there had been no word for over three hours. By four o’clock, Hipper was ready to give up and turn his ships in order to be back in the Jade before low water. “At 8:23 p.m.,” says the German naval history, “Seydlitz anchored in Wilhelmshaven roads and Rear Admiral Hipper reported to the fleet commander [Ingenohl] and verbally gave him an account.”

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.” *9

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. *10 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.

Nevertheless, for the German navy there were bright spots. German gunnery had been rapid and accurate. Had the two sides been evenly matched, then, in the conditions of haze, in which ships appeared and suddenly vanished, the Germans should have prevailed. The English admired the way in which the German salvos were bunched even when they did not hit. German ships displayed physical proof of Tirpitz’s long-prescribed adage that a warship’s primary responsibility is to remain afloat; the destroyer V-187 and the three light cruisers absorbed enormous damage before they finally sank. Most of all, the Germans could take pride in the courage of their captains, officers, and men. In reporting the defeat to the kaiser, Ingenohl slathered his officers and men with praise. He spoke of “the long-suppressed battle ardor and the indomitable will of your Majesty’s ships to get at the enemy.” “However heavy the losses,” he said, “this first collision with the enemy gave proof of the eagerness to do battle.” The men’s “confidence in their own ability,” he assured William, “has not been shaken but has grown.” No Briton would argue; after the Battle of the Bight, no British sailor ever belittled German bravery.

Despite these bright spots, depression afflicted the German fleet. Officers and men were humiliated at having allowed more than fifty British warships, including five capital ships, to penetrate so close to the shore of the fatherland. Hipper, particularly, felt the defeat; he privately placed the blame on the division of command in the High Seas Fleet. Hipper had always wanted to keep at least one battle cruiser on patrol in the Bight, but the Commander-in-Chief had refused to expose the battle cruisers in this defensive role. In Hipper’s view, therefore, Ingenohl was ultimately responsible for leaving the German destroyer patrols vulnerable to attack whenever the tide over the Jade bar was low. At Hipper’s request, a change in the defensive arrangements for the Bight was made, and beginning in September extensive defensive minefields were laid. With the end of the need for destroyer and light cruiser patrols, “the larger part of the light surface forces became available for other tasks.” In addition, an important change in tactical doctrine was made: there would be no more piecemeal arrivals by German warships. If the British came back, full squadrons would respond, or nobody would.

In the long run, the most significant result of the battle was its effect on the kaiser. Exhilarated by news of the German army’s constant success on the Western Front, William suddenly was forced to confront the fact that the British fleet had stormed into German home waters and sunk a number of his “darlings.” This bold stroke was confirmation that the near adulation that William had always felt for the Royal Navy was not misplaced; the spirit of Nelson, one of William’s heroes, was still alive. The German fleet, for which Britain’s friendship had been squandered, seemed now at risk from the bold actions of Nelson’s heirs. To preserve his ships, the kaiser determined that the fleet must “hold itself back and avoid actions which can lead to greater losses.” The main body of the High Seas Fleet was ordered not to fight outside the Bight, and not even inside the Bight against superior forces. Admiral Pohl, Chief of the German Naval Staff, wired Ingenohl that “in his anxiety to preserve the fleet [William] . . . wished you to wire for his consent before entering a decisive action.”

Tirpitz was appalled by the kaiser’s decision. It was the beginning of a struggle between the Grand Admiral and the monarch. Tirpitz insisted that the High Seas Fleet should be used for what it was: a weapon of war. Restricting it to a defensive role, he believed, was madness. “August 28 [was] a day fateful both in after-effects and in incidental results for the work of our navy,” Tirpitz wrote after the war. What Tirpitz wanted was that

on the approach of the English, the order . . . [be] instantly given “the whole fleet to sea with every vessel we have.” If there were larger elements of the British fleet in the Bight, there could be nothing better than to come to battle so near to our own ports. . . . But the reverse course was followed. The Emperor did not wish for losses of this sort. . . . Orders [were] issued by the Emperor . . . after an audience with Pohl, to which I as usual was not summoned, to restrict the initiative of the Commander-in-Chief of the North Sea Fleet. The loss of ships was to be avoided; fleet sallies and any greater undertakings must be approved by His Majesty in advance. I took the first opportunity to explain to the Emperor the fundamental error of such a muzzling policy. This step had no success, but on the contrary there sprang up from that day forth an estrangement between the Emperor and myself which steadily increased.

The kaiser prevailed and the High Seas Fleet was tethered. The British, on the other hand, were eager to try again. On September 9, a well-planned repetition of the Bight operation—coordinated by Jellicoe this time—was carried out in the hope of drawing out the German fleet. Beatty with six battle cruisers (Inflexible had joined him from the Mediterranean) supported the light forces, and the whole Grand Fleet lay over the horizon 100 miles north of Heligoland. The Harwich flotillas penetrated to within twelve miles of Heligoland, but saw no German ships. Beatty told Ethel, “They knew we were coming and not a soul was in sight. I fear the rascals will never come out, but will only send out minelayers and submarines. They seem . . . wanting in initiative and dash with their battle cruisers. . . . It looks as if we should go through the war without ever coming to grips with them. Such a thought is more than I can bear.” On September 28, Keyes and Tyrwhitt tried to arrange still another penetration, but reports of vast new German minefields led to cancellation. [We] could not go messing about there any more,” said Tyrwhitt, adding dejectedly, “We, the Navy, are not doing much, but if the Germans won’t come out, what can we do?”

After the war, Churchill gilded this victory, plucked from near catastrophe, with the glow of Destiny: “The Germans knew nothing of our defective staff work and of the risks we had run,” he wrote.

All they saw was that the British did not hesitate to hazard their greatest vessels as well as their light craft in the most daring offensive action and had escaped apparently unscathed. They felt as we should have felt had German destroyers broken into the Solent and their battle cruisers penetrated as far as the Nab. The results of this action were far-reaching. Henceforward, the weight of British naval prestige lay heavy across all German sea enterprise. . . . The German Navy was indeed “muzzled.” Except for furtive movements by individual submarines and minelayers, not a dog stirred from August till November.