CHAPTER 19

The Scarborough Raid: Hipper Escapes

The night was overcast and Beatty’s seven destroyers—Lynx, Ambuscade, Unity, and Hardy, followed some distance behind by Shark, Acasta, and Spitfire—were steaming southeast, ten miles to port of Warrender’s battleships. At 5:15 a.m., Lynx, at the head of the column, became aware of a strange destroyer 500 yards off her port bow. The unknown ship was challenged; when she replied wrongly, and turned away, Lynx and her sisters gave chase. Their prey was the German destroyer V-155, a part of the advance screen of the High Seas Fleet. Both sides opened fire and, in this encounter, German gunnery proved superior. Lynx was hit twice and at 5:41 had to sheer away with a jammed propeller. As she involuntarily turned 180 degrees, the destroyers behind automatically followed and V-155 scored a hit below the waterline on Ambuscade, next astern. At 5:50 a.m., Ambuscade, with five feet of water on her mess deck, dropped out of line.

This skirmish was the beginning of a sporadic, disorderly, close-range battle between a few British destroyers and a far stronger force of German cruisers and destroyers that continued in darkness and heavy weather for the next two hours. At 5:53 a.m., Hardy and Shark, in line behind Lynx, sighted a light cruiser on their port beam at 700 yards. It was Hamburg, which with her two destroyers was also attached to the advance screen of the High Seas Fleet. Hamburg had hurried forward as soon as V-155 reported herself in action. Now, sighting and challenging Hardy, the German cruiser switched on her searchlights and opened fire. Almost every shot struck home. Within six minutes, Hardy’s steering gear was disabled, the ship was on fire, the engine room telegraph was cut, and the captain was commanding the ship from the engine room hatchway. Nevertheless, Hardy managed to hit back, destroying Hamburg’s searchlight platform and then firing a torpedo. Some aboard the British destroyer believed that they saw an upheaval of water alongside the German light cruiser and that the torpedo had scored a hit. In fact, the torpedo had missed, but the fact that it had been launched caused Hamburg to turn away. Of far greater significance, Hamburg reported the torpedo firing to Ingenohl, the German Commander-in-Chief.

The small British destroyer force had been severely mauled. None had been sunk, but three of the original seven had been seriously damaged and were no longer able to fight. Shark’s division, however, was able to keep formation and continued at 25 knots to resume station on Warrender’s battleships at daylight. It was now six o’clock and the first streaks of light were beginning to appear in the east. At 6:03 a.m., Shark sighted five destroyers to the east; although there were now only four British ships, they attacked at full speed and the German destroyers retreated. It was at about this time that destroyer captains on both sides began to sense that they were involved in something larger than a chance skirmish of light forces. To the British, it was now clear that they had run into a screen of light cruisers and destroyers and that behind it was a more serious force. At about the same time, the officers of the German light cruisers and destroyers were making a similar assessment: that the British destroyers were screening a larger force, probably including heavy ships.

The presence of British destroyers on the Dogger Bank had been reported to Admiral von Ingenohl as early as 4:20 a.m., when the German destroyer S-33, unable to find Hipper and returning home alone, saved herself by pretending that she was British. The report worried Ingenohl. Like Warrender, the German admiral feared a destroyer torpedo attack on his battleships, especially a night torpedo attack. An hour later, at 5:23 a.m., when news of the destroyer action reached his flagship, Friedrich der Grosse, the admiral’s apprehension markedly increased. Already, he had stretched his instructions by taking his battleships so far out to sea. And now here he was in the middle of the North Sea in the darkness of a December night, seeing the flashes of guns on the horizon, with British destroyers reported in action, a British torpedo in the water, his screen retreating, the British pursuing—and an hour still remaining before daybreak. Ingenohl was convinced that the British destroyers were part of the massed flotillas that would be screening the entire Grand Fleet. In this state of alarm, the kaiser’s command that the High Seas Fleet not risk action outside Heligoland Bight loomed urgently in his mind, and his courage took leave. At 5:30 a.m., he made a general signal for all squadrons to reverse course and turn southeast. The German admiral, said Sir Julian Corbett, author of the official British naval history, “fairly turned tail and made for home, leaving Hipper’s raiding force in the air.” Lynx and her small sisters little knew that their brisk offensive action had ultimately caused the great German armada to flee.

Even setting aside his abandonment of Hipper, Ingenohl’s decision was wrong. The German fleet had reached the rendezvous point on the eastern edge of the Dogger Bank when V-155’s reports began to come in. At the moment the German Commander-in-Chief decided to retreat, the British battleships and battle cruisers were only ten miles southwest of the port wing of the High Seas Fleet. Had Ingenohl continued on course, then between eight and nine o’clock in that morning’s clear weather, his scouts would have come within sight of the British battle cruisers and battleships coming down from the north. A battle would have been inevitable. A British Naval Staff monograph published later showed no doubt as to what was at stake: “Here at last were the conditions for which the Germans had been striving since the beginning of the war. A few miles away on the port bow of the High Seas Fleet, isolated and several hours’ steaming from home, was the most powerful homogeneous battle squadron of the Grand Fleet, the destruction of which would at one blow have completed the process of attrition and placed the British and German fleets on a precisely even footing as regards numerical strength.” Ingenohl had only to turn west again, and within twenty minutes in fine clear weather, he would have had the British Battle Cruiser Squadron and six prized battleships at his mercy. But by nine o’clock, the opportunity had slipped away. “Never again,” as James Goldrick observes, “would such an opportunity to redress the balance present itself to the Imperial Navy.” Most German admirals already understood this. Said Scheer, who that day commanded the German 2nd Battle Squadron, “Our premature turning onto an east-southeast course had robbed us of the opportunity of meeting certain divisions of the enemy.” Tirpitz went further, proclaiming that this was the one heaven-sent, never-recurring opportunity for a battle with the odds enormously in the Germans’ favor. “On December 16,” he wrote, “Ingenohl had the fate of Germany in the palm of his hand. I boil with inward emotion whenever I think of it.”

Churchill later rejected Tirpitz’s assumption that Ingenohl would have won a crushing victory had he not turned away. Writing after the war, the former First Lord attempted to exonerate himself and the Admiralty from the charge that, by refusing Jellicoe’s request to send the whole Grand Fleet, they were responsible for placing Warrender and Beatty in jeopardy. The British ships, Churchill argued, could easily have run away:

There was . . . no compulsion upon Admirals Warrender and Beatty to fight such an action. . . . In this part of the sea and at this hour the weather was quite clear. They would have known what forces they were in the presence of before they could become seriously engaged. There would not have been any justification for trying to fight the High Seas Fleet of twenty-two battleships with six battleships and four battle cruisers even though these comprised our most powerful vessels. Nor was there any need. The British Second Battle Squadron could steam in company at twenty knots or could escape with forced draft at twenty-one, and only six of Von Ingenohl’s ships could match that speed. As for the battle cruisers, nothing could catch them. The safety of this force, detached from the main British Fleet, was inherent in its speed. Admirals Warrender and Beatty could therefore have refused battle with the German Fleet and it would certainly have been their duty to do so.

Undoubtedly, Churchill was correct as to the sailor’s duty to avoid a much superior foe and as to the higher speed of the British ships. Yet on the heels of Troubridge’s court-martial for avoiding battle and Cradock’s heroic, suicidal charge at Coronel, running away at high speed was not a tactic that British naval officers, particularly David Beatty, were likely to employ. Jellicoe understood this. Churchill did not.

As the German battle squadrons wheeled to port, heading southeast, the armored cruiser Roon and her destroyers, which had been directly ahead of the battleships, found themselves in the rear of the new formation. For forty minutes, the two fleets were steaming on almost parallel courses, the British destroyers south of the Germans, the British battle cruisers and battleships to their southwest. The screens continued to brush against each other. At 6:16 a.m., Roon saw and was seen by Lynx and Unity, and Roon turned away. Her captain recognized the destroyers as British and worried about the risk of torpedo attack. Earlier, Ingenohl had received Hamburg’s report of her encounter with Hardy, including the fact that the British destroyer had launched a torpedo. Now, from Roon, he heard about another destroyer contact. Confirmed in his belief that the sea was swarming with enemies, Ingenohl at 6:20 a.m. signaled a further turn to port and at high speed made directly for Germany.

To the north, with Lynx out of action, command of the small group of British destroyers had passed to Commander Loftus Jones, the captain of Shark. Jones now had four destroyers left, one of which, Hardy, had managed to repair her steering apparatus. At 6:20 a.m., Jones ordered these ships onto a southeast course, hoping to sight either Warrender’s British battleships or more Germans. At 6:50 a.m., Jones saw smoke to the southeast and at 6:59, he discovered five German destroyers. What Jones was seeing was Roon’s group of ships, which had been a part of the advance screen of the High Seas Fleet, but had now become the German rear guard. Along with Roon and a number of destroyers, the group contained the light cruisers Stuttgart and Hamburg.

Unaware of the identity or number of their enemies, the British destroyers attacked at full speed. Visibility was limited in the dawn light and it was several minutes before Jones recognized the shape of a large, four-funneled cruiser looming behind the German destroyers. Jones identified the ship as Roon. Quickly sheering off to the northeast, he signaled Beatty at 6:50 a.m.: “Am keeping in touch with large cruiser Roon and five destroyers steaming east.” Unfortunately, Shark’s effort to report was beset by problems. Initially, she had difficulty sending because of German jamming and, accordingly, the message was held up until 7:25 a.m. In addition, in the darkness and confusion of battle, Jones, Shark’s captain, had lost his true position and his report placed his ships fifteen miles from where they actually were. Warrender in King George V received the message, as did the battle cruiser New Zealand, assigned by Beatty to act as guard ship for transmissions to the battle cruisers by the British destroyers. But for no discernible reason other than incompetence, New Zealand failed to pass this information to Beatty.

Meanwhile, Jones in Shark continued to maintain contact with Roon. At 7:40 a.m., when the British destroyers were still hoping to reach a position from which to launch torpedoes, Jones suddenly discovered that he was confronting not simply Roon, but also Stuttgart and Hamburg. The two German light cruisers turned to pursue and Jones, his small ships in peril, hastily reversed course, increased speed to 30 knots, and signaled Beatty, “I am being chased to westward by light cruisers.” The British destroyers rapidly outdistanced their pursuers, even though the patched-up Hardy could make no better than 26 knots. At 8:02 a.m., Roon signaled Stuttgart and Hamburg to give up their pursuit, reverse course, and head southeast in the wake of the retreating High Seas Fleet. Jones, running away as fast as he could and not realizing that the Germans had broken off the chase, continued to the northwest, where he was now rapidly approaching Beatty. At 8:50 a.m., Jones and his four battered British destroyers reached Goodenough’s four light cruisers, which were serving as Beatty’s screen.

Meanwhile, Warrender was trying to understand what was happening. Since 5:40 a.m., when Lynx had signaled that she was engaging German destroyers, he had known that a German surface force was at sea, but no one had provided him with accurate positions, courses, or speeds. As a result, Warrender decided to continue southeast for the morning rendezvous point. Shark’s signal that she had identified a large armored cruiser (Roon) did not alter his plan; if there was a German cruiser force behind him to the northeast, it would be better to let them get as far behind him as possible before he and his battleships turned north to cut off their retreat. By 7:10 a.m., Warrender could see Goodenough’s light cruisers and, a few minutes later, Beatty’s battle cruisers. Warrender was also expecting to see Tyrwhitt and his destroyer flotillas, but Tyrwhitt was nowhere to be seen. In fact, he was still where he had been told by the Admiralty to be: 100 miles away, inside the minefields off Yarmouth, awaiting orders. Nevertheless, at 7:30 a.m., as the British squadrons maneuvered to take up daylight steaming positions, all portents seemed favorable. Daylight was breaking with a cloud-flecked sky, a calm sea, and all the visibility that a clear winter’s morning could provide. If there were German ships in this part of the North Sea, there seemed no place where they could hide.

Beatty, nevertheless, was restless. He had spent the morning pacing the bridge of Lion with Ernle Chatfield, Lion’s captain. When the British destroyers on Warrender’s flank first signaled that they were in touch with the enemy and under fire from cruisers, Chatfield asked Beatty “if I might lead around to support them, but he refused. Signals came in that one or two of our destroyers were having a bad time. It seemed to me a wonderful opportunity for us to go to their support, but Beatty took the line that Warrender was in command and he had to carry out his orders and proceed to the rendezvous.” This diffidence was not in Beatty’s character. At the Battle of the Bight, as the senior officer present, he had charged in to aid the beleaguered British destroyers; here, as Warrender’s subordinate, he held back.

The signal for “Action” sounded on Lion at seven o’clock. “The fine sunrise and clear sky gave promise,” Chatfield wrote. But matters quickly went amiss. At 7:25 a.m., when Warrender received Shark’s signal about Roon, he assumed that Beatty had also received Shark’s message and that the British battle cruisers were steaming toward the position the destroyer had given. Not until 7:36 a.m. did Warrender suspect that something was wrong and signal Beatty, “Have you received message from Lynx?” Lion had not; nor did she receive this signal from King George V. Subsequently, when Beatty wheeled his battle cruisers into their screening position, thereby turning them directly away from Shark and Roon, Warrender knew that something was terribly wrong. At 7:55 a.m., he urgently signaled Beatty, “Are you going after Roon?”

Beatty was surprised. “Have heard nothing of Roon,” he replied. Warrender immediately forwarded the signals he had received. Just as Lion was reading these, New Zealand, after thirty minutes’ delay, finally also relayed Lynx’s signals. Beatty acted quickly to intercept Roon. He reversed course and dispatched New Zealand, formerly at the rear of his formation and now closest to the position given by Shark, to head for that point at 24 knots. To make it less likely that Roon would escape, Beatty spread Goodenough’s light cruisers two miles apart, ahead of the other three battle cruisers now following New Zealand at 22 knots.

This chase of Roon was continuing and New Zealand, followed by the rest of the British battle cruisers, was slowly closing the gap when a new series of signals began to arrive in Lion’s wireless room. At 8:42 a.m., Lion intercepted a signal from the light cruiser Patrol, leader of the Hartlepool flotilla. Patrol, 150 miles from Lion, was telling the Tyne guard ship Jupiter that she was engaging two enemy battle cruisers. No position was given, but everyone knew that Patrol belonged to the 9th Destroyer Flotilla, patrolling inshore off the Yorkshire coast. For a few minutes, Beatty hesitated. Seriously troubling as the message was, he hated having to abandon the pursuit of Roon. The message was only an intercept; meanwhile, New Zealand was almost within gun range of a significant enemy ship. Ten minutes later, the issue was resolved by a second intercept, this one a message from the Admiralty to Jellicoe at Scapa Flow: “Scarborough being shelled.” At nine o’clock, Beatty made his decision. Pursuit of Roon was abandoned, New Zealand was ordered to rejoin the battle cruiser squadron, and Beatty turned all of his ships directly toward Scarborough.

Warrender had intercepted the same messages and, even before Beatty reversed the battle cruisers, he had turned his battleships to the west. Believing Patrol to be farther south than she actually was, Warrender had first set his course for the Humber. “Scarborough being shelled,” he signaled Beatty. “I am proceeding to Hull.” “Are you?” Beatty replied, in effect. “I am going to Scarborough.” A few minutes later, Warrender reached the conclusion that Beatty was right and also decided to steer for Scarborough. By 9:35 a.m., the British forces were steaming in two main groups: Beatty’s four battle cruisers with Goodenough’s four light cruisers were ten miles ahead and to the northwest of Warrender’s six battleships and Pakenham’s four armored cruisers. All were steering west to cut Hipper’s line of retreat from the English coast.

The morning of December 16 found Winston Churchill, who had slept at the Admiralty, awaiting news. “I was in my bath when the door opened and an officer came hurrying in from the War Room with a naval signal which I grasped with dripping hand: ‘German battle cruisers bombarding Hartlepool.’ I jumped out of the bath. . . . Pulling on clothes over a damp body, I ran downstairs to the War Room. The First Sea Lord [Fisher] had just arrived from his house next door. Oliver, who invariably slept in the War Room and hardly ever left it by day, was marking the positions on the map. Telegrams from all the naval stations on the coast affected by the attack and intercepts from our ships in the vicinity speaking to each other, came pouring in, two or three to the minute.”

From the perspective of naval strategy, this was news for which the Admiralty War Group had hoped: the Germans had fallen into a British trap. “The bombardment of open towns was still new to us at that time,” Churchill continued.

But, after all, what did that matter now? The war map showed the German battle cruisers within gunshot of the Yorkshire coast while a hundred and fifty miles to the eastward, between them and Germany, cutting mathematically their line of retreat, steamed in the exact positions intended, four British battle cruisers, and six of the most powerful battleships in the world. Attended and preceded by their cruiser squadrons and flotillas, this fleet of our newest and fastest ships, all armed with the heaviest guns then afloat, could in fair weather cover and watch effectively a front of nearly a hundred miles. In the positions in which dawn revealed the antagonists, only one thing could enable the Germans to escape annihilation at the hands of an overwhelmingly superior force. And while the great shells crashed into the little houses of Hartlepool and Scarborough, carrying their cruel message of pain and destruction to unsuspecting English homes, only one anxiety dominated the thoughts of the Admiralty War Room. The word “Visibility” assumed a sinister significance. At present it was quite good enough. Both Warrender and Beatty had horizons of nearly ten miles. There was nothing untoward in the weather indications. At 9 a.m. the German bombardment ceased and their ships were soon out of sight of land, no doubt on their homeward voyage. We went on tenter-hooks to breakfast. To have this tremendous prize—the German battle cruiser squadron whose loss would fatally mutilate the whole German Navy and could never be repaired—actually within our claws and to have the event all turn upon a veil of mist, was a racking ordeal.

The day before, Churchill and his Admiralty colleagues had overruled Jellicoe’s request to involve the entire Grand Fleet in the trap being laid for Hipper. Now, suddenly, they decided that Warrender and Beatty must be reinforced. Jellicoe, who already had the Grand Fleet with steam up at Scapa Flow, was ordered to take his ships to sea. Bradford with the 3rd Battle Squadron (the eight predreadnought King Edwards) at Rosyth was told to join Warrender. (Jellicoe, as Commander-in-Chief, modified this Admiralty disposition. He wanted to concentrate the full power of the Grand Fleet; accordingly, he instructed Bradford not to join Warrender but to rendezvous with the Grand Fleet.) Tyrwhitt, still tethered off Yarmouth with his four light cruisers and two destroyer flotillas by Admiralty orders, was released to join Warrender. Tyrwhitt eagerly attempted to obey, but leading his ships out from the shoals off Yarmouth into the open sea, he soon found that his destroyers, plunging into heavy waves and gale winds, were suffering badly and he ordered them back to Yarmouth. Proceeding with his four light cruisers alone, Tyrwhitt ordered a speed of 25 knots; he found that in these seas, the ships could make barely 15. Commodore Keyes was told to move his submarines from their station off Terschelling into the Bight and to try to catch enemy ships returning to port.

The sea floor of the southwest shoal of the Dogger Bank was dangerously shallow for dreadnoughts, British or German. Although the bottom of the sea lay under at least forty-two feet of water, it was strewn with the wrecks of sunken ships, whose rusting masts and superstructures sometimes rose up near the surface. To avoid these submerged navigational hazards, the British squadrons steaming west to intercept Hipper divided. Beatty led his battle cruisers north of the patch; Warrender took his battleships and armored cruisers to the south. By eleven o’clock, Beatty was clear of the patch and had altered course northwest for Scarborough. But now a new obstacle loomed. Two large minefields, each thirty to forty miles long and extending ten miles out to sea, had been laid by the Germans off the Yorkshire coast earlier in the autumn. The British had located the fields and, considering them useful as a protection against raiding, had thickened and improved them by laying additional mines. Between these two minefields there was a north-south gap of clear water fifteen to twenty miles wide, which Hipper had used to approach the coast. Now, Warrender, anxious to find Hipper at any cost, signaled Beatty, “Light cruisers must go in through minefield to locate enemy.” Simultaneously, Warrender asked the Admiralty for permission to take his battleships through the same mined waters.

At this point, Jellicoe, monitoring all messages to and from the Admiralty, intervened. The Commander-in-Chief was acutely aware of the location of the minefields and he believed that Hipper, attempting to escape, would steer due east through the same gap he had used coming in. At 10:04 a.m., Jellicoe signaled Warrender and Beatty the exact location of the Scarborough-Whitby gap, saying, “Enemy will in all probability come out there.” At 10:55, the Admiralty replied to Warrender’s question about taking his ships over the minefields: “Enemy is probably returning towards Heligoland. You should keep outside minefield and steer so as to cut him off.” The British were almost in position to do this: Warrender’s battleships and armored cruisers were headed for the southern end of the gap; Beatty, ten miles to the north, was headed directly for the northern end of the gap with his light cruisers spread out like a fan ahead of his battle cruisers; Trywhitt was moving up from Yarmouth to join Warrender. The trap was closing. “At eleven o’clock,” Churchill wrote, “the four German battle cruisers, with their light cruisers returning independently sixty miles ahead of them, were steaming due east for Heligoland at their highest speed. At the same time all our four squadrons were steaming due west in a broad sweep directly towards them. The distance between the fleets was about a hundred miles and they were approaching each other at an aggregate speed of over forty miles an hour.”

Then the weather intervened. The promise of early dawn—clear weather, good visibility, and calm sea—had been realized during most of the morning. Now, a little after eleven o’clock, with the opposing battle cruiser squadrons only a hundred miles apart and steaming directly toward each other, the weather suddenly changed. As late as 11:05 a.m., when the crew of Southampton was sent below to dinner, they left the deck in brilliant sunshine. Fifteen minutes later, called back to action stations, they found themselves coming up into rain and high wind. The wind blowing from the northwest was pushing the early-morning storm—the same storm that had bedeviled Hipper’s small ships near the English coast—out into the middle of the North Sea. Rain squalls and heavy mists scudded over the water. Visibility plummeted, first to five miles, then to two, sometimes to one. Beatty, heading into the wind, was obliged to reduce speed to 18 knots. Within the next half hour, thick mists and driving rains from the northwest whipped the sea into white foam and sometimes blotted out the light cruisers in the screen ahead of Beatty’s battle cruisers. Then, at 11:25 a.m., Southampton, the wing ship on the southern edge of the light cruiser screen, sighted an enemy—then many enemies—three miles ahead and steaming straight toward her. They were Stralsund and eight destroyers, some of the ships that Hipper had sent back because of heavy seas off the English coast.

Goodenough, commanding Beatty’s light cruisers from Southampton, flashed recognition signals. The unidentified ships failed to reply and he prepared to engage. By this time, spray blowing off the turbulent seas was drenching Southampton’s bridge, where Goodenough stood. Under such conditions, it was practically impossible to fight an enemy to windward; the gun crews would be blinded. Nevertheless, Goodenough signaled Beatty, “Engaged with enemy cruisers.” Stralsund returned Southampton’s fire, then turned away to the south; in the mist and heavy seas, neither cruiser scored hits. Meanwhile, even as Birmingham, Nottingham, and Falmouth were turning to support him, Goodenough perceived two additional German light cruisers, Strassburg and Graudenz, and more destroyers coming up. Wholly involved in what was happening on his spray-swept bridge, Commodore Goodenough failed to report these additions to Beatty, and that failure led to a sequence of other damaging British mistakes.

Beatty, on the bridge of Lion a few miles to the northwest, was aware that Southampton was in action; he had seen the flashes of gunfire lighting up the North Sea murk and heard the deep notes of the cannonade carried on the wind. Confirmation came with Goodenough’s signal: “Engaged with enemy cruisers.” Beatty was willing to have Southampton engaged and also willing that Birmingham leave his screen to join Southampton. But he worried that with this departure of two of the four light cruisers of his screen, his four battle cruisers would become exposed and vulnerable. Beatty’s preoccupation throughout the day was to locate and destroy the German battle cruisers. Up to that moment, he had received no report of their whereabouts other than Patrol’s signal from Hartlepool that she was in action with two of them. Reports from the Admiralty had stated only that “dreadnoughts” were bombarding Scarborough. Eventually, these German battle cruisers had to return home. But to locate and fight them as they raced home, Beatty absolutely required an advance screen, both to give warning and to be ready to repel an attack by enemy destroyers. Warrender already had stripped away Beatty’s destroyers to screen the battleships; now, it appeared to Beatty, Goodenough was taking away his light cruisers to engage an enemy to the south. With Southampton and Birmingham departed, Beatty’s screen was reduced to two ships, Nottingham and Falmouth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was at this moment that luck came down hard on Hipper’s side. The German light cruisers, deflected to the south away from Goodenough and Beatty, sighted Warrender’s battleships. At 12:13 p.m., Stralsund urgently signaled Hipper that she had seen “five enemy battleships.” Hipper immediately realized that these ships were many miles south of those reported earlier and that he now confronted not one blocking force but two. Still, despite knowing that he would have to risk fighting British battleships in order to support his own light cruisers and destroyers, Hipper continued on course for another half hour. Then, at 12:44 p.m., to his immense relief, he received another message from Stralsund: “Enemy is out of sight.” “Are you in danger?” he signaled Stralsund. At five minutes past one, he received the welcome reply, “No.” Now free to shed responsibility for his light forces and to concentrate on getting his battle cruisers home, Hipper turned the big ships sharply to the north to clear the danger area as quickly as possible. With rain squalls and low clouds still hampering visibility, the German battle cruisers made a wide detour around the northern edge of the Dogger Bank. Sometime between 2:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m., the German battle cruisers were observed by two British trawlers twenty-five miles north of the Dogger Bank, steering eastward at high speed. By 7:30 the next morning, December 17, Hipper’s ships were home.

From the perspective of the War Room at the Admiralty, Winston Churchill described this day:

Telegraph and telephone were pouring the distress of Hartlepool and Scarborough to all parts of the kingdom and by half-past ten, when the War Committee of the Cabinet met, news magnified by rumor had produced excitement. I was immdiately asked how such a thing was possible. “What was the Navy doing and what were they going to do?” In reply, I produced the chart which showed the respective positions of the British and German naval forces, and I explained that subject to moderate visibility we hoped that collision would take place about noon. These disclosures fell upon all with a sense of awe and the Committee adjourned until the afternoon.

At 10.30, the Admiralty learned that the enemy was leaving our coasts and apprised Admiral Warrender. . . . But now already ominous telegrams began to arrive. . . . No contact. . . . The weather got steadily worse. It was evident that mist curtains were falling over the North Sea. 3,000 yards visibility, [then] 2,000 yards visibility, were reported by ships speaking to each other. The solemn faces of Fisher and Wilson betrayed no emotion but one felt the fire burning within. I tried to do other work but it was not much good. . . . Then, all of a sudden, we heard . . . Goodenough report that he had opened fire upon a German light cruiser. Hope flared up. The prospect of a confused battle at close range had no terrors for the Admiralty. They had only one fear—lest the enemy should escape. . . .

About half past one, Sir Arthur Wilson said, “They seem to be getting away from us.” But now occurred a new development of a formidable kind. At 1.50 we learned that the High Seas Fleet was at sea. . . . We instantly warned our squadrons. . . .

At 3 o’clock I went over and told the War Committee what was passing; but with what a heavy heart did I cross again that Horse Guards Parade. I returned to the Admiralty. The War Group had re-assembled around the octagonal table in my room. The shades of a winter’s evening had already fallen. Sir Arthur Wilson then said in his most ordinary manner, “Well, there you are, they have got away. They must be about here by now,” and he pointed to a chart on which the Chief of Staff was marking positions every fifteen minutes. It was evident that the Germans had eluded our intercepting force and that even their light cruisers with whom we had been in contact had also escaped in the mists. Said Admiral Warrender in his subsequent report, “They came out of one rainstorm and disappeared into another.”

At this point, in an effort not to let the Germans get away untouched, the frustrated Admiralty War Group launched a flurry of orders. “Twenty destroyers of . . . [the Harwich] Flotillas are waiting off Gorleston [on the Norfolk coast],” they signaled Warrender. “If you think it advisable you may direct Tyrwhitt to take them to vicinity of Heligoland to attack enemy ships returning in dark hours.”

Warrender rejected the idea, replying, “Certainly not advisable as there is a strong northwest wind and nasty sea.” Jellicoe simply signaled Warrender, “It is too late.”

A final means of intercepting the Germans remained. Roger Keyes with ten submarines and two destroyers had been posted off the coast of Holland. At 10:34 a.m., Keyes in Lurcher intercepted the message that the Germans were bombarding Scarborough. Anticipating that he could be useful, he took Lurcher and began to steam up and down to collect his submarines. Even though the submarines were on the surface, it was a difficult task. “I had a most trying day . . . ,” Keyes wrote. “In the visibility prevailing, they had to dive the moment they sighted a vessel if they wished to remain unseen . . . and by dusk I had succeeded in finding only four.” At 2:10 p.m., the Admiralty sent Keyes the order he had been hoping for: “The High Seas Fleet is at sea. . . . They may return after dawn tomorrow so proceed to Heligoland and intercept them. They [will] probably pass five miles west of Heligoland steering for Weser Light.” When this signal arrived, Keyes had found only four of his submarines: three British and the French Archimède. He ordered these four into the Bight, three to the southern side of Heligoland and one to the northern, with instructions to attack whatever enemy ships came within range. Keyes, meanwhile, continued trying to locate his other submarines.

It was too late to intercept Ingenohl. By nine o’clock that night, the High Seas Fleet was back in the mouth of the Elbe, where the squadrons would wait until dawn before going into Jade Bay. Hipper, however, was still at sea. The Admiralty knew that his battle cruisers, racing for home at 23 knots, could reach Heligoland before Keyes’s submarines, which at best could make 14 knots on the surface. But Keyes’s two destroyers, Lurcher and Firedrake, might overtake the Germans, and both were equipped with torpedo tubes. In the Admiralty War Room it was Sir Arthur Wilson who spoke: “There is only one chance now. Keyes with Lurcher and Firedrake . . . could probably make certain of attacking the German battle cruiser squadron as it enters the Bight tonight. He may torpedo one or even two.” To Churchill, it seemed a “forlorn hope to send these two frail destoyers with their brave commodore and faithful crews far from home, close to the enemy’s coast, utterly unsupported, into the jaws of this powerful German force with its protecting vessels and flotillas. There was a long silence. We all knew Keyes well. Then someone said, ‘It is sending him to his death.’ Someone else said, ‘He would be the last man to wish us to consider that.’ There was another long pause. However, Sir Arthur Wilson had already written the following message [to Keyes]: ‘We think Heligoland and Amrun lights will be lit when ships are going in. Your destroyers might get a chance to attack about 2 a.m. or later. . . .’ The First Sea Lord [Fisher] nodded assent. The Chief of Staff [Oliver] took the telegram, got up heavily and quitted the room.”

The Admiralty sent the signal at 8:12 p.m. It should have reached Keyes within an hour. It took five hours. The Admiralty originally had sent the signal out on the wrong wavelength, the D-band, for destroyers, which had a radius of only fifty miles. Keyes had told them to use the S-band, for submarines, which had a greater radius. Not until twenty-three minutes past midnight, when Keyes was 200 miles away from Heligoland, did the Admiralty recognize its mistake and resend the message on the S-band. Through the afternoon, Keyes had considered moving into the Bight on his own responsibility. He had held back because he anticipated that Tyrwhitt might be following the German ships with his light cruisers and destroyers and making a night torpedo attack near Heligoland. If this were so, the uncoordinated appearance of Lurcher and Firedrake could create chaos. Two days later, when Keyes went to see Churchill at the Admiralty, the First Lord said, “We sent you a terrible message the other night. I hardly expected to see you alive.” “It was terrible,” Keyes replied. “I waited three hours in the hope of getting such a message.” Long afterward, Keyes wrote, “Words fail me even now, after more than nineteen years, to express my feelings when I received this belated message.”

One of Keyes’s submarine captains, Martin Naismith of E-11, did get a look at the High Seas Fleet. At dawn on the morning of December 17, as the German fleet was moving from the Weser into the Jade, Naismith observed the dreadnought Posen and fired a torpedo at 400 yards. Because the submarine was rolling heavily, the torpedo ran too deep, passing under Posen’s keel. E-11 prepared to fire at another target, but before she could do so, a third vessel turned to ram. The submarine hurriedly dived and then, having unbalanced her trim, lunged back to the surface. By then, however, the German ships were some distance away headed into the Jade.

The Scarborough Raid was over.

The Scarborough Raid ended in frustration and recrimination in both the British and German navies. When the British fleet returned to port, officers and men read newspaper stories about the devastation of English towns. “The more we heard,” said Lieutenant Filson Young of Lion, “the more bitter was our disappointment. . . . The accounts of the horrible casualties to women and children in the bombarded towns were particularly affecting.” *32 Beatty was nearly overcome by chagrin. Sitting at his desk on Lion, he poured out his feelings to Ethel. On December 20, he wrote again: “The happenings of the last week have left a mark which nothing can eradicate except the total destruction of the enemy’s battle and other cruisers. We were within an ace of accomplishing it the other day. . . . Our advanced ships had sighted them and then !!! I can’t bear to write about it! And I can think of nothing else. . . . If we had got them Wednesday, as we ought to have done, we should have finished the war from a naval point of view.”

In Beatty’s opinion, the officer responsible for the fiasco was Good-enough. Once the ships were back in harbor, the cruiser commodore came on board the Lion and Beatty unleashed his anger at this subordinate for committing the unpardonable sin of letting go of an enemy once action had begun. Afterward, he wrote to Jellicoe:

There never was a more disappointing day. . . . We were within an ace of bringing about the complete destruction of the enemy [battle] cruiser force—and failed. There is no doubt whatever that his [Goodenough’s] failure to keep in touch with and report the presence of the enemy cruisers was entirely reponsible for the failure. . . . Time after time I have impressed upon Goodenough the necessity of using his own initiative and discretion—that my orders are expressions of intentions and they are not to be obeyed too literally. The Man on the Spot is the only one who can judge certain situations. . . . [It] nearly broke my heart; the disappointment was terrific. . . . Truly, the past has been the blackest week in my life.

As a solution, Beatty suggested removing Goodenough from command of the light cruisers and replacing him with Lionel Halsey, the captain of New Zealand. “He knows cruiser work and battle cruiser work and the relation of one with the other,” Beatty said of Halsey. The decision was Jellicoe’s.

In fact, Goodenough’s action had also baffled the Grand Fleet commander. On December 18, he wrote to Fisher, saying how “intensely unhappy” he was about the whole affair. He “couldn’t understand Goodenough’s actions at all, so entirely unlike all he had previously done since the war began.” Jellicoe’s official report to the Admiralty added, “The Commodore gives as his reason for abandoning the chase of the enemy the signal made to him to resume his station. This signal was intended by the Vice Admiral for Nottingham and Falmouth. It was a most unfortunate error. Had the Commodore disobeyed the signal, it is possible that the action between the light cruisers might have resulted in bringing the battle cruisers to action.” A week later, Jellicoe drew a general conclusion for future use: “Should an officer commanding a squadron or a captain of a single vessel, when in actual touch with the enemy, receive an order from a senior officer which it is evident may have been given in ignorance of the conditions of the moment and which, if obeyed, would cause touch with the enemy to be lost, such officers must exercise great discretion as to representing the real facts before obeying the order.” To this admonition, the Admiralty added its own: “To break off an action which has begun against an equal force is a most serious step; and an officer so engaged should, in the absence of previous special instructions, make sure that his superior knows that he is fighting before relinquishing the action.”

Jellicoe hesitated to make so drastic a move as removing Goodenough: “Beatty [is] very severe on Goodenough but forgets that it was his own badly worded signal to the cruisers that led to the German being out of touch,” he noted on the back of an envelope. As time gave opportunity for reflection, naval opinion tended increasingly to take this view and sympathize with, if not wholly exonerate, Goodenough. “Goodenough was so close to Beatty that . . . for all Goodenough knew, Beatty might have some important reason for ordering the light cruisers to get ahead [and re-form the screen],” wrote Captain John Creswell. “I reckon that the fault lay entirely with Beatty and Seymour.”

Naval historians have wondered why, after Scarborough, Beatty continued to have confidence in his flag lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander Ralph Seymour. “The true guilt for the ambiguous signal from Lion points to Beatty’s flag lieutenant whose business it was to translate Beatty’s intentions,” concludes the British historian Richard Hough. “A flag lieutenant’s job was to select the wording and then the suitable flag, wireless signal or Morse message to express it. It was Seymour who ought to have been sacked after the Scarborough Raid fiasco, not Goodenough. Instead, he was retained at immeasurable cost to the navy and the country.” During the Scarborough Raid, again at the Battle of the Dogger Bank, and twice at Jutland, Seymour failed to translate Beatty’s intentions into a plain signal that allowed for no misunderstanding. “He lost three battles for me,” Beatty said glumly after the war.

Fisher, raging, rejected all excuses. “They were all actually in our grasp! . . . In the very jaws of death! . . . All concerned had made a hash of it:—and heads must roll,” he proclaimed. Goodenough, he announced, had been “a fool,” and Fisher wanted the commodore relieved. But Fisher was a minority of one: Jellicoe was tepid about removing Goodenough, Beatty decided that he did not really desire a change, and Churchill was adamant that Goodenough must be saved. Goodenough therefore remained in command. Fisher’s list of heads to be rolled also included Warrender’s and Bradford’s. Even before the raid, he had written to Jellicoe, “I suppose you must have a very high opinion of Warrender and Bradford or you would not cling to them. I have no reason for making this remark beyond that they both seem somewhat stupid! . . . I can’t stand a fool however amiable and I don’t believe that in war that it is anything short of criminal to keep the wrong men in any appointment high or low. ‘Changing horses while crossing the stream’ is an overdone saying! It’s all rot (and much worse) having regard to anyone’s feelings when the safety of our Empire is at stake. OLD WOMEN MUST GO!”

In the end, none of the British naval officers in command that day was relieved. Warrender retired at the end of 1915 because of ill health. Arbuthnot, who had a reputation for aggressiveness and eagerness, remained. He never explained, nor was he ever asked to explain, why he had failed to open fire on the German light cruisers, even without the permission of his senior officer. Beatty escaped all censure and reaped only praise, his failure to intercept being blamed entirely on Goodenough.

This battle cruiser engagement did not take place, but if it had—if Beatty had continued west and encountered Hipper—how might such a contest have turned out? Warrender’s battleships were fifteen miles away and could not have arrived in less than forty-five minutes. It would therefore have been four British ships against five German, including Blücher. Hipper’s four battle cruisers were a match for Lion, Queen Mary, Tiger, and New Zealand. The two opposing groups of huge ships, rushing directly at each other at forty miles an hour through the murk, would have had time to fire only a few salvos before their opponents disappeared. Already, the Germans had proved the accuracy of their gunnery. And, as the British were to learn at Jutland, German ship construction was superior to British. David Beatty had the lion’s heart, but on that day, matched against Hipper, he probably had the inferior force.

Assessing the errors made before and during the raid, Jellicoe always believed that he should not have been overruled in his wish to involve the entire Grand Fleet in the attempt to intercept. Fisher agreed with Jellicoe. “Lord Fisher said that in his opinion a great mistake had been made,” Maurice Hankey, the secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence, wrote to Balfour. “He said that he had been overruled, but that the First Lord [Churchill] had afterwards confessed to him that a mistake had been made in not utilizing the whole of Jellicoe’s fleet.” Thereafter, Beatty never put to sea without the Grand Fleet coming out in support. If the High Seas Fleet came out to fight, it would have to fight Jellicoe.

Overall British naval strategy was unaffected by the raid. The primary base of the Grand Fleet remained at Scapa Flow, where it would keep the cork in the top of the North Sea. In response to public apprehension about the vulnerability of the coastal towns, one change in deployment was made. Through the autumn, when the fleet retreated to Loch Ewe or Loch Swilly, Beatty had fretted that he was too far away; he wanted his battle cruisers at Cromarty or Rosyth, where they would be nearer the Bight. On Decem-ber 20, the Admiralty gave Beatty permission to make Rosyth on the Firth of Forth his permanent base. The next morning, the battle cruisers left Cromarty and that afternoon steamed into the Firth of Forth. Soon after, the battle cruiser Indomitable, which had been refitting in the south after her return from watching the Dardanelles, joined Beatty at Rosyth, bringing his battle cruiser strength to five, even without Princess Royal, Invincible, and Inflexible.

The Admiralty was bitterly disappointed by what had happened. Scarborough, Hartlepool, and Whitby had been sacrificed in order to entrap and destroy Hipper—and Hipper had gotten away. Blame was discussed, apportioned, and set aside. Only Jellicoe mentioned another possibility: “There never was such bad luck,” he said. But, in fact, luck favored both sides that day. Hipper was saved by the chance encounter of his light cruisers, first with Beatty’s screen, then with Warrender’s battleships. Thus warned, he was able to turn north and escape under cover of wind and rain. But if the day was a disappointment to the British commanders, groping for their prey in heavy seas and blinding rain, they were unaware of how narrowly they themselves had escaped destruction. Ingenohl, by pressing forward with more determination and directing the fire of twenty-two battleships against six, could have destroyed or crippled Warrender’s battle squadron. Both sides could complain and, at the same time, be grateful.

Churchill found solace in the knowledge that Room 40 had worked and therefore, presumably, would work again. “Dissatisfaction was widespread,” he admitted. “However, we could not say a word in explanation. We had to bear in silence the censures of our countrymen. We could never admit, for fear of compromising our secret information, where our squadrons were, or how near the German raiding cruisers had been to their destruction. One comfort we had. The indications upon which we had acted had been confirmed by events. The sources of information upon which we relied were evidently trustworthy. Next time we might at least have average visibility. But would there be a next time? The German admiral must have known that he was very near to powerful British ships, but which they were, or where they were, or how near he was, might be a mystery. Would it not also be a mystery how they came to be there?”

Germany celebrated. For the first time in two centuries, England had felt the scourge of war on its own soil. It was “a regular bombardment of fortified places” and “further proof of the gallantry of our navy,” declared the Berlin Neueste Nachrichten. The Berliner Tageblatt expressed regret at the damage done to Whitby Abbey but explained that “the life of a single German soldier is for us a thousand times more important than a monumental building, even when it possesses such great historical value.” The Berliner Borsenzeitung warned that “the bombardment possibly heralds greater events to come.” But while the German people hung flags from their windows, the officer corps of the German navy knew better. A golden opportunity to pare down the British fleet had been lost. Tirpitz, never in any doubt that ship for ship, the fleet he had built was superior, believed that all it needed was a chance to whittle down the greater numbers of the Grand Fleet. Here, the chance had come—and had been thrown away. Scheer, more cautiously, agreed: “It is extremely probable that if we had continued in our original direction, the courses of the two fleets would have crossed within sight of each other during the morning.” Officers of Hipper’s scouting groups were angry, not just because the withdrawal had left their battle cruisers unsupported, but because the potential for larger success had been missed. Captain Magnus von Levetzow of the battle cruiser Moltke wrote scornfully to Admiral von Holtzendorff, the former Commander-in-Chief of the High Seas Fleet, that Ingenohl had retreated “because he was afraid to face eleven British destroyers which could easily have been eliminated. . . . Under the present leadership we will accomplish nothing.”

Although Hipper shared the general chagrin at the premature flight of the German battle fleet, he apparently had no misgivings about killing and wounding hundreds of civilians. He viewed it, said his biographer Captain Hugo von Waldeyer-Hartz, “entirely as a war measure and therefore as a task imposed on him by duty. It is a regrettable but obvious fact that modern war is blind: it involves both combatants and noncombatants, slaying indiscriminately. . . . The first objective is to break a nation’s morale; the collapse of its physical resistance will follow.” As for Ingenohl, he defended his decision to abandon Hipper by insisting that he was obeying the order not to risk the fleet. “The advance of the main fleet by day to a juncture with . . . [Hipper’s force] did not coincide with the commands issued by the All Highest [the kaiser] as to use of the High Seas Fleet,” he said in his report after the battle. On this ground, Scheer exonerated him: “The restrictions enforced on the Commander in Chief brought about the failure of the bold and promising plan.” Ironically, the kaiser, the principal author of the restrictions on the fleet, also criticized Ingenohl’s behavior. This time, the monarch lectured the admiral, Ingenohl had been too careful with the High Seas Fleet and had missed an opportunity to establish its supremacy in the North Sea: “The effort to preserve the fleet must under no circumstances be carried so far that favorable prospects of a success are missed owing to the prospect of possible losses.” Nevertheless, William made no changes. Friedrich von Ingenohl remained Commander-in-Chief. The basic operations order was not canceled, the restrictions were not lifted, and the High Seas Fleet commander continued to be bound by regulations that put him at fault no matter whether he risked or husbanded his ships.