CHAPTER 21

The Battle of the Dogger Bank:
“Kingdom Come or Ten Days’ Leave”

The New Year began and Franz Hipper was restless. This most offensive-minded of the German admirals disliked keeping his men and ships on alert at a high pitch of readiness while at the same time restricting them to port. This self-contradictory policy was sapping morale. Besides, the German defeat in the Bight, his own frustrated aproach to Yarmouth, and his close escape after Scarborough rankled him. One explanation for his lack of success, Hipper believed, was that the British had known in advance about his plans. How they knew, he was uncertain, but he suspected that some of the neutral fishing vessels working on the fringes of the Bight and on the Dogger Bank were actually British spy ships. The Dogger Bank, with its shallow bottom, was a rich fishing ground and thus a natural concourse for commercial trawlers, British and Dutch; it also lay on the shortest route between Heligoland and the coast of England. A message from a trawler on the Dogger Bank, Hipper postulated, would enable Beatty’s battle cruiser force to intercept—if not on the way over, at least on the way back. Repeatedly, Hipper insisted that ruthless action must be taken against these fishing boats, no matter what their nationality. Already, on his instructions, German destroyers had stopped and boarded these small vessels in or near the Bight. When, as was often the case, the papers of neutral trawlers were not in perfect order, they were brought into Cuxhaven and subjected to rigorous examination. To address this worry, Hipper proposed an operation in which his force would clear the Dogger Bank of British fishing vessels and suspicious neutral craft and would also attack any light British warships patrolling the Bank. The active operation would involve only the German battle cruisers and their escorting light cruisers and destroyers, but their withdrawal would be covered by the High Seas Fleet.

Hipper’s proposal, because it was limited in scope, managed to elude the kaiser’s ban on High Seas Fleet activity. On January 10, William, resisting pressure for more energetic action, had reaffirmed his decree that the preservation of the fleet was his paramount consideration. “No offensive is to be carried as far as the enemy coast with the object of fighting a decisive action there,” said Pohl, on behalf of the emperor. The freedom of the battle fleet, therefore, remained as restricted as before. But William again granted Ingenohl permission to make cautious sallies with the battle cruisers for the purpose of cutting off separate British formations. After the war, Admiral Reinhard Scheer explained the fleet’s dilemma: “There was never any reluctance on the part of the German navy to fight. The general aim of our fleet was not to seek decisive battle with the entire English fleet but to test its strength against separate divisions. But the policy of those who controlled it was the perfectly sound one that a fleet action should not be risked until, by mine-laying or submarines, an equalization of the opposing forces in the North Sea had been brought about. But, as action of some kind was necessary for the morale of the men, the prohibition was relaxed as far as the Scouting Forces were concerned.”

Meanwhile, the High Seas Fleet was growing stronger. In the five months since the beginning of the war, four new dreadnought battleships had been added—König, Grosser Kurfürst, Markgraf, and Kronprinz Wilhelm—and one new battle cruiser—Derfflinger. The new battleships were 25,000-ton vessels with ten 12-inch guns and better armor protection than any contemporary British battleship; they were incorporated into the 3rd Battle Squadron commanded by Scheer, the most competent of German battle squadron commanders. In mid-January, Scheer asked Ingenohl’s permission to take his new ships through the Kiel Canal into the Baltic for gunnery practice, but, because of violent storms sweeping over the North Sea, Ingenohl told him to wait. For the same reason, Hipper’s battle cruiser operation on the Dogger Bank was postponed. On January 21, Ingenohl gave Scheer permission to proceed through the Kiel Canal, but on reaching the Elbe, the battleship squadron found itself in a snowstorm so thick that the captains were unable to locate the river’s mouth and were forced to anchor. The following morning, January 22, the weather began to clear and Scheer’s dreadnoughts entered the canal, heading away from the North Sea. In Wilhelmshaven later that day, Hipper and Vice Admiral Richard Eckermann, Chief of Staff of the High Seas Fleet, saw a forecast for clear skies and immediately suggested to Ingenohl: “If the weather tomorrow remains as it was this afternoon and evening, a cruiser and destroyer advance to the Dogger Bank would, in my opinion, be very desirable. Special preparations are unnecessary; an order issued tomorrow morning to . . . [Hipper] would be sufficient. Proceeding during the night, arriving in the forenoon, returning in the evening.”

Ingenohl hesitated. With Scheer’s new dreadnoughts in the Baltic, the dreadnought battleship force of the High Seas Fleet was understrength. Hipper’s Scouting Groups were also depleted. During the bad weather, Ingenohl had sent the battle cruiser Von der Tann into dry dock for a routine twelve-day overhaul; when Hipper and Eckermann urged that the Dogger Bank operation immediately be launched, it was too late for Von der Tann to be refloated. Several light cruisers were also unavailable, and a number of destroyers, damaged by the winter storms, were under repair. Nevertheless, because the operation was to have a limited scope, the Commander-in-Chief gave his consent. At 10:25 the following morning, January 23, he sent a coded wireless signal to Hipper: “Scouting Forces are to reconnoiter Dogger Bank. Leave tonight at twilight; return tomorrow evening at darkness.” During the day, Hipper was summoned on board Friedrich der Grosse to meet and discuss the operation with Ingenohl. Hipper asked that the High Seas Fleet come out to support him, but the Commander-in-Chief, with the kaiser’s latest command fresh in his mind, refused. Because the main fleet would not be out, Hipper promised that if there was the slightest chance of his being cut off from the Bight by a stronger British force, he would turn quickly and run for home. Returning to Seydlitz, Hipper summoned his captains and explained the plan: they were to set out in darkness that evening, reconnoiter the Dogger Bank at daybreak, destroy any enemy light forces discovered there, and be back the following evening. On the way out, no fishing boats would be stopped because Hipper did not want to slow the advance or detach any destroyers for this purpose. On the homeward run, however, all fishing trawlers encountered would be stopped and rigorously examined.

At 5:45 p.m. on January 23, Hipper sailed from the Jade with the battle cruisers Seydlitz, Moltke, and Derfflinger, the large armored cruiser Blücher, the light cruisers Rostock, Stralsund, Kolberg, and Graudenz, and two destroyer flotillas comprising nineteen ships. The mood in the Scouting Groups was confident. Even without Von der Tann, Hipper commanded a powerful force, although the inclusion of the armored cruiser Blücher diminished rather than enhanced its effective strength. Blücher had been designed and built in a period of technological change so rapid that she was obsolete even before she was commissioned. She had been laid down at a time (1907) when Fisher’s revolutionary battle cruiser project was not fully known and understood in Germany. As a result, Tirpitz went ahead and built her at 15,500 tons, with twelve 8.2-inch guns—almost a battle cruiser, but not quite. Blücher would have been successful in dealing with British armored cruisers, but she could not stand up to—or keep up with—real battle cruisers. Speed was essential in Hipper’s Scouting Groups; his battle cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers could all make between 25 and 30 knots. Blücher’s maximum design speed was 24 knots. Ultimately, her presence was to frustrate Hipper’s plan to make a lightning thrust and a high-speed withdrawal. And it would doom Blücher.

The greatest threat to Hipper’s success was the fact that, before his ships left harbor, the British knew he was coming. For days, Room 40 had been decoding German messages. The Admiralty knew about the dry-docking of Von der Tann. It was aware of the dispatch of Scheer’s dreadnoughts to the Baltic. It had read Ingenohl’s coded wireless message, ordering the Dogger Bank raid, listing the squadrons involved, and giving the time the operation would be launched. The result was that as Hipper’s ships departed the Jade, British warships were weighing anchor and heading for the Dogger Bank.

On Saturday, January 23, the Admiralty’s day began quietly. Fisher was in bed with a heavy cold in his apartment at Archway House, adjoining the Admiralty Building. Because the First Sea Lord was too ill to move, Churchill went over to see him and the two men talked for two hours. It was noon when the First Lord returned to his room in the Admiralty. He had just sat down when the door opened and Sir Arthur Wilson walked in. “He looked at me intently and there was a glow in his eye,” Churchill recalled. “Behind him came Oliver with charts and compasses.

“ ‘First Lord, those fellows are coming out again.’

“ ‘When?’

“ ‘Tonight. We have just got time to get Beatty there.’ ”

Wilson explained what he had learned from the intercepted German message. The German battle cruisers were putting to sea that evening, he said, and, although the German signal stated only that there would be a reconnaissance in force as far as the Dogger Bank, another raid on the English coast was possible. Wilson and Oliver immediately began to calculate a rendezvous point for the British squadrons to be deployed. The two admirals drew a line on the chart, which afterward proved to be almost the exact line of the German advance. The charts and the clock showed that there was just enough time for Beatty, coming from the Forth, and Tyrwhitt, coming from Harwich, to join forces at daylight near the Dogger Bank and intercept Hipper, this time before he could strike. The British rendezvous was set for 7:00 the following morning, January 24, at a position 180 miles west of Heligoland and thirty miles north of the Dogger Bank. *35 This discussion lasted an hour; then Churchill asked Wilson and Oliver to carry the decoded message and the marked chart over to Archway House to get Fisher’s approval. The First Sea Lord agreed to everything and soon after 1:00 p.m. telegrams went to Jellicoe at Scapa Flow, Beatty at Rosyth, and Commodore Tyrwhitt at Harwich:

FOUR GERMAN BATTLE CRUISERS, SIX LIGHT CRUISERS AND TWENTY-TWO DESTROYERS WILL SAIL THIS EVENING TO SCOUT ON DOGGER BANK, PROBABLY RETURNING TOMORROW EVENING. ALL AVAILABLE BATTLE CRUISERS, LIGHT CRUISERS AND DESTROYERS FROM ROSYTH SHOULD PROCEED TO RENDEZVOUS, ARRIVING AT 7 A.M. TOMORROW. COMMODORE T [TYRWHITT] IS TO PROCEED WITH ALL AVAILABLE DESTROYERS AND LIGHT CRUISERS FROM HARWICH TO JOIN VICE ADMIRAL LION [BEATTY] AT 7 A.M. AT ABOVE RENDEZVOUS. IF ENEMY IS SIGHTED BY COMMODORE T WHILE CROSSING THEIR LINE OF ADVANCE, THEY SHOULD BE ATTACKED. WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY IS NOT TO BE USED UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.

The Admiralty plan was set: Beatty’s five battle cruisers and Good-enough’s four light cruisers coming down from the north would rendezvous at dawn with Tyrwhitt’s three light cruisers and thirty-five destroyers coming up from the south. The slower ships—Vice Admiral Bradford’s 20-knot predreadnought King Edwards, popularly known as the Wobbly Eight, and Rear Admiral Pakenham’s three armored cruisers—would position themselves forty miles northwest of Beatty to intercept Hipper if he turned north. Jellicoe was to bring the Grand Fleet from Scapa Flow and cruise still farther north, ready to intervene if the High Seas Fleet was discovered coming out. Keyes’s submarines were to take up intercepting positions between and attempt to torpedo any German ships emerging from the Jade. Once these orders were sent, there was nothing the War Group at the Admiralty could do but wait. “Through the long hours of the afternoon and evening . . . we shared our secret with no one,” Churchill wrote. “That evening I attended a dinner the French ambassador was giving. . . . One felt separated from the distinguished company . . . by a film of isolated knowledge and overwhelming inward preoccupation . . . only one thought could reign—battle at dawn! Battle for the first time in history between mighty super-dreadnought ships. And there was added a thrilling sense of a Beast of Prey moving stealthily forward hour by hour towards the Trap.”

On Saturday, January 23, “the morning being fairly fine,” Lieutenant Filson Young persuaded a friend to go ashore and spend the afternoon in Edinburgh, across the Firth of Forth from the anchorage at Rosyth. “The day was not a success,” Young recorded. “I led him up and down Princes Street and we pressed our noses against the shop windows. . . . We climbed to the ramparts of . . . [Edinburgh] Castle where we shivered in the east wind and looked down under a black sky on the celebrated view of the Forth. But all my companion noticed was . . . an undue amount of smoke coming from the funnels of the battle cruisers. . . . There was a frantic commotion at the . . . [quay] where the . . . [ships’] boats were waiting and much panic on the part of individual officers lest their respective boats depart without them. In half an hour, the pier was empty and the boats were being hoisted aboard the battle cruisers. We came on board at half past five. . . . There was an orgy of ciphering and deciphering going on in the Intelligence Office. We were to sail at once.”

As the battle cruisers were raising steam, a problem of protocol was resolved. Prince Louis of Battenberg, the former First Sea Lord, was on board New Zealand, visiting his son Prince George, one of the ship’s officers. In his heart, Prince Louis wanted to sail with the battle cruisers; and both Rear Admiral Sir Archibald Moore, the squadron commander, and New Zealand’s Captain Halsey urged him to stay. Battenberg decided, however, that his remaining might mean protocol trouble later and he went ashore.

At six o’clock in the winter darkness, Beatty’s five battle cruisers and Goodenough’s four light cruisers steamed down the Forth toward the open sea. Bradford’s Wobbly Eight, along with Pakenham’s three armored cruisers, followed at 8:30 p.m. Meanwhile, Tyrwhitt with the light cruisers Arethusa, Aurora, and Dauntless and thirty-five destroyers had begun leaving Harwich at 5:30 p.m. Their departure was hindered by the arrival of dense fog just as Tyrwhitt was leading Arethusa and seven new M-class destroyers out of the harbor. These eight ships made it to sea, but the departure of the other thirty Harwich vessels was delayed. Tyrwhitt, determined to reach the morning rendezvous on time, decided to thrust ahead with the ships he had, leaving the bulk of his force to follow as soon as possible. Finally, at 6:30 p.m., the twenty-two dreadnought battleships of the Grand Fleet cleared Scapa Flow to rendezvous the next morning at 9:30 a.m., 150 miles northwest of Beatty.

Beatty, on Lion, was in high spirits. Hipper was coming and this time there was neither a Warrender from whom he must take orders, nor a group of 20-knot battleships to slow him down. Bradford with the Wobbly Eight was senior in rank, but the Admiralty had specifically told him not to interfere with Beatty’s command. Dining with his staff, Beatty was relaxed and cheerful. He trusted his Flag Captain, Ernle Chatfield, and left to him the task of navigating the squadron through the night. Soon after dinner, Beatty went to bed. Later, Filson Young recalled:

I had the first watch, very quiet as wireless was practically unused while we were at sea on an operation of this kind. . . . As his custom was, the admiral looked in upon his way to his windy sea cabin and we talked over the chart and the possibilities of tomorrow. For some curious reason, we were confident . . . in a way we had never been before. . . . There was an air of suppressed excitement which was very exhilarating. . . . The ship drove on calmly and stiffly through the dark surges. Midnight came and with it the brief commotion incident on changes of the watch; a slight aroma of cocoa was added to the other perfumes below deck, and I departed to turn in. In my cabin I stowed everything moveable and breakable, saw that the door was hooked back, that my . . . [life vest] was on the bed, looked at my watch . . . and fell asleep.

In the darkness, with a gentle northeasterly breeze and a calm sea, Beatty and Tyrwhitt converged on Hipper. In numbers and offensive power, the British had an overwhelming advantage. A significant measure was the weight of the opposing broadsides: if all the British heavy guns fired simultaneously, they would deliver 40,640 pounds of shells. A corresponding broadside by Hipper’s force would deliver only 20,288 pounds. Overall, the design of the battle cruisers on each side reflected the technological convictions of the creators of the opposing fleets. The British battle cruisers embodied Fisher’s belief in high speed and heavy gun power at the cost of armor protection. Their German counterparts had evolved from Tirpitz’s maxim that a ship’s primary mission is to remain afloat. Hipper’s ships, therefore, were more lightly armed and not greatly deficient in speed, but they were shielded by superior armor.

The four big German ships at the Dogger Bank represented a steady evolution. Blücher was the supreme embodiment of the armored cruiser. After Blücher, the Germans, by then aware that Fisher was building Invincibles, themselves built battle cruisers. Von der Tann, the first German ship of this class, was completed in 1910, weighed 19,400 tons, and had eight 11-inch guns, up to 11-inch armor, and a speed of 27 knots. Moltke, commissioned the year after Von der Tann (her sister was Goeben), weighed 22,640 tons, carried ten 11-inch guns and 11-inch armor, and had a speed of 28 knots. Seydlitz, Hipper’s flagship, completed in 1913, weighed 24,640 tons; she too had ten 11-inch guns and 11-inch armor. The additional 2,000 tons had gone into boiler and engine-room machinery that boosted her maximum speed to 29 knots. Derfflinger, Germany’s newest battle cruiser, was 28,000 tons, had eight 12-inch guns and 12-inch armor, and a speed of 28 knots.

The oldest of the British battle cruisers present that day was Indomitable, the third of the original Invincible class. Completed in 1908, she displaced 17,250 tons, only 2,000 tons more than Blücher. She was marginally faster (26 knots), but the significant difference lay in the offensive power of her eight 12-inch guns. On the other hand, Indomitable’s 7-inch armor was scarcely thicker than that of an armored cruiser. New Zealand, completed in 1912, was an improved Invincible-class vessel: 18,800 tons, eight 12-inch guns, slightly thicker armor—8 inches instead of 7—and she could make 27 knots. Beatty’s first two Cats, Lion and Princess Royal, both completed in 1912, commenced a new generation of battle cruisers. They were, at 26,350 tons, far bigger than the Invincibles. The additional 9,000 tons had gone into eight 13.5-inch guns, yet thicker armor—9 inches—and an increase in speed to 28 knots. Tiger, Britain’s newest Cat, completed after the war began, was bigger still at 28,000 tons. She had eight 13.5-inch guns, 9 inches of armor, and 28 knots of speed. Tiger also possessed an improved secondary armament of 6-inch guns instead of the 4-inch of earlier British battle cruisers; this, it was hoped, would enable her to deal more effectively with charging enemy light cruisers and destroyers.

As it was, Beatty, with five battle cruisers, was understrength that day. Queen Mary, one of his four Cats, with 13.5-inch guns, had just sailed for Portsmouth to go into dry dock. This was particularly unlucky for Beatty because Queen Mary was considered the best gunnery ship in the fleet. Tiger, on the other hand, was one of the worst. Commissioned in October 1914, she had joined the battle cruiser force on November 6. Although she was with Beatty on December 16 during the Scarborough Raid, she received only intermittent training in late December and early January. Moreover, her crew included a number of captured deserters, and consequently morale was low. Why this newest and most formidable battle cruiser was assigned such a motley crew was a puzzle even to Beatty. “The same efficiency could not be expected from the Tiger as from the other ships,” he wrote after the battle. “It is not time to complain but to do the best one can with the material available. I was assured that the ship’s company would have been better if it had been possible to make it so.”

At dawn, Beatty appeared on Lion’s bridge with Lieutenant Commander Seymour, his Flag Lieutenant and signal officer. Looking over the stern, he could make out the four darkened battle cruisers steaming in line behind his flagship: Tiger in Lion’s wake, followed by Princess Royal, New Zealand, and Indomitable. Filson Young came on the bridge: “The eastern horizon showed light . . . but it was still dark night about us. . . . At 6:45 signals were beginning to come in from the Harwich flotilla indicating that the rendezvous chosen by the Admiralty had been hit exactly. At ten minutes to seven I went down to breakfast and when I returned fifteen minutes later, the daylight was beginning to spread and the cloud banks to roll away. It promised to be an ideal morning with a light breeze from the north-northeast and a slight swell on the sea. At seven, the bugles sounded ‘Action.’ ”

Just after 7:00 Beatty and Goodenough arrived at the rendezvous point. Ten minutes later, Beatty sighted Arethusa, Tyrwhitt’s flagship, and the seven fast M-class destroyers he had brought from Harwich. The early light of a winter morning was shining on a calm, gently undulating sea. “The day was so clear,” Goodenough remembered, “that only the shape of the earth prevented one from seeing everything on it.” As Tyrwhitt was taking his position three miles ahead of the battle cruisers, Beatty saw gun flashes on the southeastern horizon. Almost immediately (at 7:20 a.m.), a signal from the light cruiser Aurora, leading one of Tyrwhitt’s fog-delayed destroyer flotillas up from Harwich, announced, “Am in action with the High Seas Fleet.” The men on Lion’s bridge smiled at the exaggeration. Beatty told Chatfield to turn in the direction of the gun flashes and the battle cruisers steamed southeast at 22 knots.

Aurora’s actual antagonist was the German light cruiser Kolberg, the port wing ship of Hipper’s cruiser screen. What had happened was this: the light cruisers Aurora and Undaunted and twenty-eight destroyers had spent the night trying to catch up with their commodore. At dawn, when Tyrwhitt met Beatty, they were still twelve miles astern. Arethusa, out in front with Tyrwhitt aboard, had passed ahead of the German force, sighting nothing; Aurora, half an hour behind, was luckier. At 7:05, against the dawn horizon to the east, Aurora sighted a three-funneled cruiser and four destroyers. Her captain, thinking the ship was probably Arethusa, closed to 8,000 yards before giving the prescribed challenge. When he did so, the unknown ship, Kolberg, noted the British code and then opened fire. Aurora was hit three times, suffered minor damage, and began to hit back. The German ship turned away. Aurora sent her “Am in action with the High Seas Fleet” signal to Lion, then continued toward the rendezvous. At about the same time, Goodenough on Southampton, five miles ahead of Beatty, sighted one group of ships to the south and another to the east. Those to the south were Aurora and the Harwich Force; Goodenough then looked harder to the east. Visibility was improving and in the distance he made out two German light cruisers, Stralsund and Graudenz, which were in the van of Hipper’s force. Then, a few minutes later, at 7:30 a.m., Goodenough sighted the German battle cruisers.

Earlier, as streaks of light appeared on the eastern horizon, Hipper’s ships were steaming northwest at a leisurely 15 knots. Their formation was spread across a wide front to facilitate the search for British fishing vessels and, if they were fortunate, light naval patrol forces. The four big ships were in a single line. The light cruisers Stralsund and Graudenz and eleven destoyers were a few miles ahead. Kolberg with four destroyers was ten miles out on the port wing, Rostock with an equal number of destroyers was equally distant on the starboard wing. Hipper, calm and alert, stood on the signal bridge of Seydlitz. During the night, his ships had passed numerous fishing boats, rekindling the admiral’s fears that they might be reporting to the enemy and creating another nasty surprise similar to finding Warrender and Beatty across his line of retreat from Scarborough five weeks before. “I was anxious at all costs to avoid having enemy forces between me and the German Bight at daybreak,” Hipper said later. Another worry was the weather: the coming day was going to be clear with high visibility. If, by mischance, British dreadnoughts were encountered, the Scouting Groups would not be concealed by mist and rain as they had been after bombarding Scarborough, Whitby, and Hartlepool.

When Hipper’s port wing light cruiser, Kolberg, encountered Aurora, Kolberg’s captain reported the incident to Hipper. The Scouting Force commander immediately steered his battle cruisers south toward Kolberg. Here, perhaps, were the British light forces he had come to mop up. But as Hipper approached, Kolberg warned him that she had sighted smoke to the southwest. At almost the same moment, Stralsund reported from the van that she, too, was seeing thick clouds of smoke, but in the northwest. Then Blücher, which had a better view than Seydlitz, reported seeing seven British light cruisers—four Southamptons and three Arethusas—and more than twenty British destroyers to the northwest on a parallel course, out of gun range. These ships, Hipper knew, constituted no mere patrol force; instead, the presence of so many light cruisers and destroyers strongly suggested that more powerful ships were coming up. This ominous suspicion was reinforced when Stralsund signaled again, reporting that she had observed “at least eight large ships” under the smoke clouds to the northwest. Simultaneously, German interceptions of the wireless call signs of British ships appeared to indicate the approach of Warrender’s 2nd Battle Squadron.

Hipper began to worry; if the ships to the northwest were indeed one of the Grand Fleet battleship squadrons, where were Beatty’s battle cruisers? His own force was weaker than either Beatty’s or Warrender’s individually; here, possibly, the two were combining to spring a trap. Hipper knew that he could expect no support from the High Seas Fleet. He had promised to take no risks. He made up his mind quickly. At 7:35 a.m., he signaled his entire force to turn southeast and run for home at 20 knots. If the large ships seen by Stralsund were battleships, this speed was sufficient to maintain the present gap; if necessary, he could increase speed to 23 knots, Blücher’s maximum.

As the German battle cruisers settled onto their new course with Seydlitz still in the van, followed by Moltke, Derfflinger, and Blücher, Hipper sent his outlying light cruisers and destroyers on ahead. All German captains knew that severely damaged ships would be left behind, and Hipper did not want his smaller, weaker ships in the rear where they could be crippled by overwhelming enemy gunfire. Not until 7:50 a.m., after his ships began their run for home, did Hipper himself observe the oncoming shapes beneath the clouds of smoke to the northwest and realize that his opponents were battle cruisers. “The pace at which the enemy was closing in was quite unexpected,” he said later. “The enemy battle cruisers must have been doing twenty-six knots. They were emitting extraordinarily dense clouds of smoke.” Hipper’s first reaction was relief: he now felt confident that he was facing one group of British dreadnoughts, not two. He also was reasonably certain that, as the British battle cruisers were usually the advance guard of the Grand Fleet, no other significant British force was likely to be operating between himself and Heligoland. Nevertheless, there was an ominous factor in identifying Beatty as his pursuer. On paper, the most modern British battle cruisers were only marginally faster than his own battle cruisers. But Hipper’s squadron that day included Blücher, which was at least 2—and perhaps 3 or 4—knots slower than Beatty’s ships.

In Wilhelmshaven, Ingenohl received news of the encounter from Seydlitz soon after 7:50 a.m. and ordered the High Seas Fleet to prepare for sea. There was little urgency in this command and not until 9:30 a.m. was the fleet assembled in Schillig roads. Then, at 10:00 a message from Hipper declared that he was in difficulty and needed support. The German battle fleet sailed at 10:10 a.m. but could not possibly rendezvous with the Scouting Groups before 2:30 in the afternoon. Hipper, therefore, was alone. He was 150 miles from Heligoland and three hours from any real assistance. He had a fourteen-mile head start.

Once Hipper made his dramatic turn to the southeast toward home, Goodenough led his four light cruisers to a position on the port quarter of the German ships from where he could observe and report Hipper’s movements. At 7:47 a.m., when he was 17,000 yards northwest of Blücher, Goodenough was able to count the number of Hipper’s big ships and signaled Beatty: “Enemy sighted are four battle cruisers, speed 24 knots.” Three minutes later, Beatty himself could see the German battle cruisers on his port bow, over ten miles away. Beatty and the officers standing with him on Lion’s bridge were exhilarated. “As day broke,” Chatfield said, “we saw a distant mass of black smoke ahead of us and a report from a cruiser indicated enemy capital ships. . . . They were Hipper’s squadron at least twelve or thirteen miles distant, but it was clear weather and we still might catch them.” Another officer on the bridge recalled: “On the horizon ahead could be seen . . . four dark patches with a mass of smoke overhead. These four patches, each containing more than a thousand men, were our long-destined prey.”

By 8:00 a.m., the chase was on, with the British pursuing on a course parallel to Hipper, not directly astern of him. In part, Beatty chose this tactic because of his concern that the retreating enemy might drop mines in his path. More important, it permitted Beatty to use the wind to his advantage. By being downwind of Hipper in the fresh northeast breeze, Beatty’s battle cruisers could fire unimpeded by smoke from their own guns and funnels. Hipper, on the other hand, would be forced to shoot directly into the smoke created by his funnels and guns. As the pursuit developed, Tyrwhitt’s light cruisers and destroyers joined Goodenough’s light cruisers on Lion’s port bow, five miles northeast of the flagship. From this position, the British light forces had multiple duties: they acted as scouts to report the enemy’s course and speed; they were to intercept and repel enemy torpedo attacks; they had to be ready themselves to launch a torpedo attack if ordered; and they had to do all this without masking their own heavy ships’ fire with their funnel smoke. The uselessness of their guns and torpedoes against the German heavy ships was quickly demonstrated when Tyrwhitt’s seven 30-knot M-class destroyers raced ahead to within 7,000 yards of Blücher. The German armored cruiser altered course slightly to bring more guns to bear, and brought down such a storm of 8.2-inch and 5.9-inch fire on the British destroyers that, although they suffered no hits, they were forced to retreat out of range. Beatty thereafter decided to destroy the enemy by long-range battle cruiser gunfire. He told his light forces simply to stay out of the way.

The action now became a straightforward stern chase in which the key to success was speed. Hipper’s fourteen-mile head start put him four miles—7,000 yards—beyond the effective gun range of the British battle cruisers. “Get us within range of the enemy,” Beatty said to Percy Green, Lion’s chief engineer. “Tell your stokers all depends on them.” “They know that, sir,” Green replied. A midshipman on Indomitable later provided a graphic picture of the effort being made in the engine and stoke rooms of the British battle cruisers:

The furnaces devoured coal as fast as a man could feed them. Black, begrimed and sweating men working in the ship’s side dug the coal out and loaded it into skids which were then dragged along the steel deck and emptied on the floor plates in front of each boiler. . . . If the ship rolled or pitched there was always a risk that a loaded skid might [slide and crush a man]. Looking down from the iron catwalk above, the scene had all the appearance of one from Dante’s Inferno. . . . Watching the pressure gauges for any fall in the steam pressure, the Chief Stoker walked to and fro, encouraging his men. Now and then the telegraph from the engine room would clang and the finger on the dial move round to the section marked “More Steam.” The chief would press the reply gong with an oath, “What do the bastards think we’re doing? Come on boys, shake it up, get going,” and the sweating men would redouble their efforts, throw open the furnace doors and shovel still more coal into the blazing inferno.

The speed of the battle cruisers constantly increased. Beatty’s signals over the next forty-five minutes tell the story:

8:10: “Lion to Battle Cruisers: Speed 24 knots.”

8:16: “Lion to Battle Cruisers: Speed 25 knots.”

8:23: “Lion to Battle Cruisers: Speed 26 knots.”

8:34: “Lion to Battle Cruisers: Speed 27 knots.”

8:43: “Lion to Battle Cruisers: Speed 28 knots.”

8:54: “Lion to Battle Cruisers: Speed 29 knots.”

Beatty’s demands reached the impossible. New Zealand and Indomitable had design speeds of 25 knots, yet at first, even Indomitable, the oldest of his ships, was keeping up and eventually reached a speed above 26 knots. Beatty was grateful and at 8:55 a.m. the flagship signaled: “Well done, Indomitable.” The message was passed quickly to Indomitable’s boiler rooms. Nevertheless, Beatty kept asking for more. He knew that speeds of 27 and 28 knots could be approached only by his three leading ships, Lion, Tiger, and Princess Royal, and that 29 was one knot higher than the design speed of his fastest ship, Tiger. He was also aware that his demand for speeds above 27 knots would stretch out his squadron; already his first three ships, the Cats, were drawing away from the two older battle cruisers, now slowly dropping astern. Before long, a second gap began to open as Indomitable fell behind New Zealand. Beatty was willing to take the risk; if necessary, he intended to overtake and fight Hipper, three ships to four.

As a result of the stokers’ effort, it became apparent to the officers on Lion’s bridge that they were gaining on the Germans. At eight o’clock, the range from Lion to Blücher, Hipper’s rearmost ship, was 25,000 yards, about twelve and a half miles. This was 3,000 yards more than the greatest effective range of Lion’s 13.5-inch guns. Gradually, as Beatty called for ever greater speed, and with Hipper’s squadron limited to 23 knots, the distance decreased. Meanwhile, the officers on the bridges of both flagships could do nothing but wait, staring ahead or watching behind as the distance between them grew smaller.

Beatty took this opportunity to go to breakfast, and when the admiral returned to the bridge, Chatfield went below. Filson Young remained on the bridge. “We were all in high spirits,” he wrote.

As usual when the ship was in action, the decks were deserted and although during action, the navigating staff of the ship as well as the admiral and his staff are supposed to retire to the conning tower, no one had thought of going as yet. . . . Beatty, Chatfield, the Flag Commander, the Secretary, two Flag Lieutenants and myself were all on the compass platform, enjoying the sensation and prospects of the chase in that clear North Sea air. There was immense exhilaration whenever another [flag] hoist indicating a speed signal was hauled down [and we felt] the splendid ship’s jump forward through the sea.

Young had an unimpeded view.

Lion being our leading ship there was nothing before me but the horizon . . . the four black smudges on the port bow that only through binoculars were identifiable as big ships . . . the farther line of our light cruisers on their quarter . . . and at the apex, the smoke from the German light cruisers and destroyers. . . . Once, far ahead, appeared more smudges, a group of trawlers fishing quietly off the Bank which suddenly found themselves enveloped in the thunder of a sea battle. The German battle cruisers passed them to the northeast and we to the southwest, so that our fire was passing over their heads. We must have appeared in the eyes of the astonished Dutch fishermen who saw us thunder past in the primitive herd formation, the bulls or battle cruisers bellowing in the van, followed by the females, light cruisers with the destroyers, like the young, bringing up the rear.

As the minutes passed, the gunnery officer on Lion’s bridge constantly checked his prismatic range finder to acquire the distance to Blücher. At 22,000 yards, the outside limit at which the target might be reached, Chatfield asked this officer, “How soon should we open fire?” At 8:45 a.m., when the range finder provided a distance of 20,600 yards, the gunnery officer turned to the captain and asked, “Should we use armour-piercing or common shell?” “Armour-piercing,” Chatfield replied. Then, he said, “at long last, when the range of their rear ship was reported at twenty thousand yards, I proposed to Beatty that we should open fire. He assented.”

The two turrets on Lion’s bow were trained on Blücher. One 13.5-inch gun of the upper B turret was elevated and at 8:52 a.m. a single ranging shot was fired. As the cordite smoke blew back in their faces, the watchers on the bridge fixed their binoculars on the German ship. “We could see the tiny fountain of water that told us the shot was short,” said Young. Gun elevation was slightly adjusted and two more sighting shells were fired. They fell over. It was sufficient; Blücher had been straddled. At 9:00, Tiger, close on Lion’s heels, fired her own ranging shot at Blücher. At 9:05 a.m., Beatty made a general signal to the squadron: “Open fire and engage the enemy.” The first two British battle cruisers immediately erupted with salvos of armor-piercing shells. Soon, Princess Royal, 1,000 yards astern of the Tiger, came within range and opened fire. To the rear, New Zealand and Indomitable plowed silently ahead, their 12-inch guns not yet able to reach.

Firing at ranges of 20,000 yards was beyond anything imagined before the war. Although the extreme range of the 13.5-inch gun—by 1914, the main armament of ten British dreadnought battleships and four battle cruisers—was 22,000 yards, prewar British gunnery training still assumed a close action at moderate speed. In the spring of 1914, Churchill ordered experimental firing at 14,000 yards, and he said, “to universal astonishment, considerable ac-curacy was obtained.” Beatty, commanding the battle cruisers and suspecting what war would be like with these fast ships and their powerful, long-range guns, went further and asked permission to conduct his own gunnery practice at towed targets 16,000 yards away with his ships steaming at 23 knots. Now, traveling at 27 knots and firing at a range of almost 20,000 yards, the British long-range guns began to score hits. As they did so, Beatty altered course slightly to starboard, placing his battle cruisers in echelon rather than single line ahead, thus enabling each ship to bring its after turrets to bear. Lion first hit Blücher at 9:09 a.m. Ten minutes later, with the range down to 18,000 yards and with both Tiger and Princess Royal also firing at Blücher, Lion shifted her guns to the third German ship in line, the battle cruiser Moltke.

At 9:15 a.m., the Germans began to fire back. From Lion’s bridge, Young observed this happen:

The enemy appeared on the eastern horizon in the form of four separate wedges or triangles of smoke. . . . Suddenly, from the rear-most of those wedges [Blücher], came a stab of white flame. “He’s opened fire,” said Captain Chatfield and we waited for what seemed a long time, probably about twenty-five seconds, until a great column of water and spray rose in the sea at a distance of more than a mile from our port bow. . . . Minute by minute the ranges came down, and during each interval further flashes were observed from the enemy and further fountains of water arose between us, always creeping a little nearer, but still short.

Before long, other German battle cruisers opened fire and the sea around both opposing groups of ships was alive with tall columns of water. From Lion, Young could see British shells hitting German ships. The hits appeared as “a glare amid the smoke. There was no mistaking the difference between the bright sharp stab of white flame that marked the firing of the enemy’s guns and this dull, glowing and fading glare which signified the bursting of one of our own shells.” Blücher, not surprisingly, was the most severely punished. After the battle, prisoners from Blücher said that they had not known which of their enemies was hitting their ship, but that the third salvo had struck on the waterline and reduced her speed and that the fourth had almost carried away the after superstructure and had disabled the two after turrets.

As the guns on both sides continued to lash out, observers on Lion and Southampton saw signs of commotion in the formation of German destroyers ahead of Hipper’s battle cruisers. Concerned that Hipper might order a torpedo attack as a means of relieving pressure on his beleaguered ships, Beatty countered by signaling Tyrwhitt and the Harwich Force: “Destroyers take station ahead and proceed at your utmost speed.” This effort to shield Lion and her sisters failed because of the great speed of the British battle cruisers. At 27 and 28 knots, most of Tyrwhitt’s destroyers could scarcely keep up with Beatty’s big ships. They lacked the additional speed necessary to pull ahead and they continued where they were, on Beatty’s port beam. Only the seven new 30-knot M-Class destroyers were able to respond and gradually to creep out in front of their own onrushing battle cruisers. As it happened, the anticipated German attack did not take place and the long-range artillery duel continued. With Tiger and Princess Royal now pounding Blücher, Lion shifted first to Moltke and then, as they came within range, to Derfflinger and Seydlitz. Meanwhile, Lion herself, leading the British charge, had come under fire. German salvos were straddling the ship and, at 9:28 a.m., one of Blücher’s 8-inch shells struck Lion on her bow A turret, not penetrating the turret’s armor but producing a concussive shock that disabled the left gun.

The German cannonade also broke up the little party of observers standing on Lion’s bridge. “Up to now,” wrote Filson Young,

there had been very little sound but the rush of wind and water, with the occasional roar of our guns, but now the noise of firing was becoming louder and louder; the enemy’s shots were falling on both sides of us quite close so that the spray . . . drenched our decks. The moment had come for an adjournment to the conning tower, that small armored citadel, the mechanical brain of the ship, whence she could be steered and maneuvered and her gunfire controlled by means of a complicated mass of voice pipes, telephones and electric and hydraulic gear. As it was already overcrowded with people indispensable for all these purposes, the Admiral’s staff divided.

Young and another junior officer were dispatched to a “windy eyrie in the foretop”—the small observation platform high up the mainmast, sixty feet above the deck, eighty feet above the sea. For Young, the climb to the foretop was the most dangerous and frightening part of the battle:

As we were climbing . . . a terrific blow and a shake proclaimed that Lion had been hit [this was Blücher’s 9:28 a.m. hit on A turret]. The climb had been bad enough in ordinary circumstances. It was perfectly horrible now. We were already pretty cold from standing in the wind, we were encumbered with thick clothing, life jackets, and oilskins and the wind on the mast . . . was terrific. It shook and tore at us until I really wondered whether my hands would be able to keep their grip on the steel rungs. . . . I felt sure that the end had come when, having dragged myself up step by step to where the floor of the foretop overshadowed us, I found the steel covering of the manhole, giving entrance to it, was shut. . . . It would be impossible to make the man inside it hear and my companion immediately below me on the ladder was hailing me vehemently to hurry up as he could not hold on much longer. Fortunately, the Navigating Commander, who was just leaving the bridge, [looked up and] saw our dilemma and hailed the foretop with the result that the manhole was opened just in time.

Meanwhile, said Captain Chatfield,

to the conning tower [the action station of the captain] I had to go. In it were the Chief Quartermaster, the Navigator, the two telegraph able seamen, and a signalman. It was situated immediately behind B turret, noisy and wet from spray and from steaming at high speed through the vast columns of water which somehow incredibly forced its way through the lens threads of my Ross binoculars. . . . Gradually, we had been closing the enemy who were now all engaged. The salvos fired from their guns looked like the switching on momentarily of large red searchlights; one got into the habit of allowing for the forty seconds before the salvo fell. If it fell over the ship, it was unseen and unnoticed. The Lion being the leading ship, received almost as good a measure of the concentration of the enemy’s fire as had their rear ship, Blücher, the early concentration of our own.

From his perch in the foretop, Young observed the rest of the battle:

It was impossible to endure the wind standing up in this square box, so we knelt on the steel floor and could just rest our elbows on the rim and keep our eyes and [field] glasses over the edge. . . .

The Admiral and his staff did not remain long in the conning tower. The only view from that protected place is through a very narrow slit at eye level, which, although it gives a view of a kind of three quarters of the horizon, was of little use to the Admiral. He was thoroughly enjoying himself and did not like to waste his day in the cramped and crowded security of the conning tower and he and the Flag Lieutenant, the Flag Commander and Secretary were soon up on the compass platform again where the view was perfect although the danger from splinters was considerable. They were flying about us all the time in the foretop. During a lull between salvos, Beatty hailed us in the foretop to ask how we were enjoying ourselves. . . . Very soon after . . . [and following another tremendous blow that shook Lion], I put my head out to look down and see what happened. There was a great drift of cordite smoke all round the compass platform and to my horror, instead of the four figures I had last seen standing there, there were only four tumbled smudges of blue on the deck. After the smoke cleared away, I saw that they were greatcoats and presently to my inexpressible relief, my four friends reappeared eating sandwiches. . . . Being very hot in the conning tower, they had taken their greatcoats off when they came up, and there being at the moment an unusual lot of splinters flying about, the Admiral, much against his will, had been persuaded to return to the conning tower. After five minutes, he broke out again, and came on the compass platform, which he occupied for the rest of the action.

By 9:35 a.m., New Zealand had come within range of Blücher and had opened fire; now only Indomitable remained out of action. Having four ships within range of Hipper’s four, Beatty decided to give structure to the battle and signaled his squadron, “Engage the corresponding ship in the enemy’s line.” His intention was a ship-for-ship distribution of fire: Lion should take on Seydlitz, leading the German line; his second ship, Tiger, should fire at Hipper’s second ship, Moltke; the third British ship, Princess Royal, would engage Derfflinger; and New Zealand would continue to hammer Blücher. In sending this signal, Beatty assumed that all of his captains understood that Indomitable still was not within range and therefore was not included in this command. Unfortunately, Captain Henry Pelly of Tiger misunderstood the intended alignment. Believing that Indomitable was already engaging Blücher, Pelly, in his calculations, moved every British ship one vessel forward against the German line. Therefore, as Pelly saw it, with Indomitable firing at Blücher, New Zealand would take on Derfflinger, and Princess Royal would engage Moltke. This left the first two British ships, Lion and his own Tiger, to concentrate on Hipper’s flagship, Seydlitz. Pelly thought this made good sense, especially in light of a Grand Fleet Battle Order that decreed that where there were more British than enemy ships, the two leading British ships were to attempt to incapacitate and destroy the first German. The other British captains, however, knew that Indomitable was excluded; they had correctly understood the intended assignments, and carried out Beatty’s order. But, with both Tiger and Lion firing at Seydlitz, nobody engaged Moltke. To leave an excellent gunnery ship like this German battle cruiser undisturbed was to invite disaster. Already, most of the German squadron was aiming at Beatty’s flagship and now, says Arthur Marder, “the unmolested Moltke was able to make excellent target practice on Lion.” Pelly’s mistake was compounded by the fact that his inexperienced gunnery and turret officers were aiming poorly and that Tiger’s shells were falling 3,000 yards beyond Seydlitz. They did not recognize this because they took Lion’s shells, which were straddling the German flagship, to be their own. When Commodore Goodenough, observing the battle from the bridge of Southampton, signaled “Salvos of three, apparently from Tiger, falling consistently over,” Tiger did not receive the message.

By the time Hipper had correctly identified his pursuers as battle cruisers, Beatty had closed the range to 28,000 yards (fourteen miles) and it was too late for Hipper to avoid battle. “At nine a.m.,” Scheer wrote in his history of the naval war, “our battle cruisers were on a southeasterly course so that all the ships could open fire from the starboard on the English battle cruisers. Our light cruisers and both the destroyer flotillas were ahead of our battle cruisers, slightly on the starboard side.” At 9:08 a.m., the German battle cruisers opened fire at 20,000 yards. Aiming was difficult, even with the excellent German stereoscopic range finders, because “the view . . . from the fire control was very much hampered and partially blinded as the result of dense smoke.” Despite this handicap, Hipper was pleased by the conduct of his ships and captains: “The action signals were coming through perfectly and the movements were carried through as though at maneuvers. In spite of the high speed at which the action was being fought, the formation was keeping distance [between ships] very accurately.” Hipper rarely signaled during this part of the chase. Unable to push his ships to higher speeds, he simply steered a course southeast for Heligoland. “The chances of support from our own forces were greater there,” he explained, “and the farther we could succeed in drawing the enemy into the Bight, the greater prospect there would be of setting destroyers on him during the ensuing night.” A melee in the Heligoland Bight, at which point Beatty would have outrun his supporting units, might find the tables turned with the British forced to flee while their wounded and stragglers were picked off one by one. Meanwhile, Hipper worried about Blücher, the weakest and slowest of his big ships, now steaming at the rear of his force and being battered by British gunfire. But it was not Blücher that would suffer the first near-catastrophic blow. It was Hipper’s flagship, Seydlitz.

By 9:43 a.m., Lion was straddling Seydlitz at 17,000 yards. Then, at 9:45 a.m., a 13.5-inch armor-piercing shell from Lion struck the after deck of Seydlitz and pierced the armor of the aftermost turret. The powder charges being brought up were ignited by the explosion and flash fires shot upward into the turret—setting fire to the charges being delivered to the gun—and downward into the magazine. The magazine crew, seared by the flames, tried to flee forward by opening the steel doors leading to the compartments of the adjacent turret. As a result the fire spread forward, setting alight the charges there, spreading to the adjacent magazine and upward to C turret. In this way, two turrets were destroyed by a single hit and the entire crews of both turrets died almost instantly. Filson Young, staring through binoculars from Lion’s foretop, saw “a great glowing mass of fire appear . . . on the after part of Seydlitz. Well do I remember seeing those flames and wondering what kind of horrors they signified.” Chatfield, witnessing the same catastrophe, had a laconic, professional reaction: “A shell struck Seydlitz on the after turret and a sheet of flame and smoke went up about two hundred feet in the air. I hoped she was out of action.”

Seydlitz now faced the danger of a final, annihilating explosion that would detonate all of the magazines and cause the ship to disintegrate. Three men saved her: Lieutenant Commander Hagedom, Chief Artificer Hering, and Gunner’s Mate Müller. Making their way through searing heat to the valves for flooding the magazines, they spun the handles and drowned the threat of explosion by permitting 600 tons of seawater to flow into the magazines. Remarkably, although 165 men had been killed and two of her five turrets destroyed, Seydlitz not only survived but continued in action and maintained her speed. It was an extraordinary demonstration of the excellence of German warship design and the extensive watertight subdivision of her hull.

During this crisis, Admiral Hipper stood, silently chain-smoking, on the bridge. Damage reports from different parts of the ship came to the captain standing nearby: no reply could be heard from the steering room; the two rear heavy turrets were out of action; 600 tons of water had been flooded into the magazines. Hipper seemed unaffected, almost detached. After the war, he remembered looking back and seeing “the two after turrets . . . spouting huge volumes of flame. This lasted about two minutes, then ceased for a time, to leap up afresh about a minute later. It was a strange sight to see the after part of the ship fiercely ablaze, while the three forward turrets were still firing vigorously.” Hipper realized that the damage to the Seydlitz dramatically altered the balance in favor of the British. Beatty had five battle cruisers; Hipper had three, one of which was heavily damaged. His reaction was to send an urgent signal to Ingenohl at 9:55: “Need assistance badly.” The Commander-in-Chief received the signal at 10:00 a.m., and within ten minutes the order was given to sail. But Ingenohl could not possibly be in a position to support Hipper until 2:30 p.m. As a ploy to scare off the British until he could come closer, Ingenohl replied to Hipper at 10:03 in a clear, uncoded signal: “Main fleet and flotillas will come.” In code, he appended the grim reality: “. . . as soon as possible.”

When Hipper appealed for help, Seydlitz was not the only German ship in difficulty; Blücher, battered by one British battle cruiser after another, her steering gear damaged, was dropping behind Hipper’s formation and yawing away to the north. This course brought her within range of Goodenough’s light cruisers, keeping their lookout station to the north of the British battle cruisers. Despite the pounding she had taken, Blücher’s fighting capacity still remained formidable and she opened an accurate fire with her 8.2-inch and 5.9-inch guns, forcing Goodenough to keep away. Nevertheless, the punishment of Blücher by New Zealand continued. At 10:30 a.m., a 12-inch hit put Blücher’s bow turret out of action. Soon after, a serious fire broke out amidships, her speed dropped to 17 knots, and the gap between the armored cruiser and the three German battle cruisers continued to grow.

Implacably, the British were overtaking their enemies. Lion had been hit, but appeared to have shrugged off these blows. Beatty’s principal concern became the straggling out of his squadron and, to rectify this, at 9:53 a.m. he slowed to 24 knots. In consequence, the range to the German squadron, which had been decreasing for an hour, temporarily remained constant. For young officers in the British fleet, the morning was providing vivid images. “It was wonderful to see our battle cruisers steaming at top speed with spits of flame and brown smoke issuing every minute or so from their bows and sides—and in the far distance the enemy’s guns flashing in reply,” wrote an officer on Aurora, one of Tyrwhitt’s Harwich light cruisers. From Indomitable, struggling to catch up, a young turret officer observed “the Lion, Tiger, Princess Royal and New Zealand on our starboard bow, cleaving the water at full speed. . . . We slowly gained on . . . [the Germans] . . . [then] through the navy phone came, ‘A turret open fire.’ . . . At 10.31 the enemy altered to port and so did we and this brought my turret [Q turret, amidships] into action against Blücher. In and out recoiled the guns as we pounded the enemy. ‘Left gun ready,’ shouts someone and another 850 pounds of explosive goes hurtling towards the enemy.” Not every young officer had as good a view. Inside a turret on New Zealand, Prince George of Battenberg grumbled, “My range finder was useless. I was soaked through to the skin by spray coming in through the slit in my hood, hitting me in the face and then trickling down outside and inside my clothes and I was frozen by the wind which came in with the spray. My eyes were extremely sore and I was blinking all the time.”

The best view belonged to Filson Young, kneeling in the foretop of Lion.

Many . . . details registered . . . the smell and taste of cordite smoke as the wind drove it back from the mouths of our guns . . . the silences; lulls that came at the very heat of battle when sometimes for five or ten seconds there would be no sound but the soft brushing of the wind and its harp-like harmonies in the rigging, until a salvo from our guns would split the heavens again and, like its echo, the hollow growl of the enemy’s guns. . . . One could see clearly the flashes of salvos from Seyd-litz and Moltke, both of which were firing at Lion and, timing their flight with a stopwatch, know to a second when their arrival would be signaled either by an explosion . . . or by the uprising of a group of lovely and enormous fountain blossoms, where the water slowly rose in columns two hundred feet high that mushroomed out at the top, stood for five or ten seconds, and then as gracefully subsided, deluging our decks with tons of water. . . . It was strange to think, observing those flashes and the little black second hand ticking around the dial of the watch, “I have perhaps twenty-three seconds to live; when the little hand reaches that mark, then—oblivion.” . . . Sometimes from the foretop one could see the shell coming, a black speck in smoky atmosphere, growing larger. . . . I remember observing in the Admiral [Beatty] and the Flag Captain [Chatfield]—who enjoyed this performance more than I have ever seen anything enjoyed by anyone—a child-like blandness of demeanour which I had at no other time observed in either of them, but which had nothing of insanity in it. And . . . the officer in charge of the fore-transmitting station, who, after the explosion of a shell . . . followed by an outbreak of screams and cries, was heard to observe: “That means either Kingdom Come or ten days’ leave”—the inference being that the damage was so serious that it would mean the explosion of a magazine [and the instant destruction of the ship] or a long refit.

At this stage of the action, Lion, the principal target of German guns, was, said Young, “very nearly smothered with fire.” At 10:01 a.m., an 11-inch shell from Seydlitz pierced her side armor at the waterline. Water flooded in and spread to the main switchboard compartment, where it short-circuited two of the ship’s dynamos and shut down the circuits for the secondary armament and the after fire control. The ship began to list to port, but still maintained a speed of 24 knots.

Then, at 10:18 a.m., Lion was staggered by a massive blow, “so violent,” said Young, “that we thought she had been torpedoed, and the mast to which the foretop was secured, rocked and waved like a tree in a storm. . . . [He and his companions in the foretop] looked at one another and prepared to alight from our small cage into whatever part of the sea destiny might send us, but nothing happened.” The shock was so great that Chatfield, the captain, also believed that “we must have been struck by torpedoes.” In fact, his ship had been hit almost simultaneously on the port side below the waterline by two heavy shells from Seydlitz or Derfflinger. One of these pierced the 6-inch main belt armor on the waterline and exploded behind it. Very quickly, all the adjacent compartments were flooded up to the main deck. In addition, a shell splinter slashed a pipe leading to a feed tank containing fresh water for the port boiler condenser, allowing salt water to pass into the system. Soon, this contamination would clog the boiler pipes and close down the port engine. The second shell exploded below the waterline against the main armored belt, not penetrating it but driving in several heavy armor plates 9 inches thick and 15 feet long. The plates were forced back two feet and more seawater entered.

Lion could not keep up her speed and the admiral knew that she could not long continue to function as squadron flagship. Beatty was deeply chagrined. His guns had been firing for an hour and a half, but no decisive result had been achieved. It was true that the wounded Blücher was falling behind and that spectacular flames had been observed rising above the stern of Seydlitz. But Hipper’s flagship churned steadily ahead, not losing speed. Heligoland and the Bight were always closer and there was no knowledge as to the whereabouts of the High Seas Fleet. It was imperative, Beatty believed, to force the pursuit, to close in, to bring all of his heavy guns to bear. Accordingly, at 10:35 a.m., he signaled an 11-degree turn toward the enemy. At 10:45 a.m., he ordered another 11 degrees. At 10:47, increasingly anxious, he signaled, “Close the enemy as rapidly as possible consistent with keeping all guns bearing.”

Meanwhile, the German battle cruisers were concentrating on disabling the British flagship and Lion was under constant, heavy fire from Seydlitz and Moltke. At 10:35, she was hit, then, a minute later, hit again. At 10:41, a shell bursting against the armor of A turret caused a small fire in A turret lobby and a message was sent to the bridge that the fire had spread. “We thought our last moment had come when we got a message up the voice pipe saying that A turret magazine was on fire,” said Filson Young. “We sat waiting for the last gorgeous explosion and the eternal silence that would follow it, but it did not come and after four minutes of suspense, our sentence of death was reprieved in a welcome message that the fire was out.” By 10:52 a.m., the ship had received fourteen hits. Three thousand tons of water, now flooding the lower compartments, caused a 10 degree list to port. Rising water short-circuited her last remaining dynamo and deprived the ship of all electric power. Lion was left with no electric lights and no wireless radio. A few minutes later, the port engine failed and the ship’s speed immediately sagged to 15 knots. The flagship was losing her position at the head of the squadron.

But not before a command from Beatty had sealed Blücher’s doom. Blücher’s position at the rear of the German line made her fate inevitable. Every overtaking British battle cruiser fired at her before shifting to the larger German ships farther up the line. The armored cruiser’s forward 8.2-inch turret was out of action, although she continued to fire briskly from her other guns. At 10:35 a.m., two shells pierced her armored deck amidships and penetrated down through two decks to explode in an ammunition room. The inferno spread to her two port-side 8.2-inch-gun wing turrets. Both were destroyed and every man inside was killed. The concussion also damaged her engines and jammed her steering gear. Blücher’s speed dropped to 17 knots and she began to fall out of the German line and sheer away to port. Beatty, seeing the armored cruiser burning and listing, leaving Hipper’s squadron and erratically circling off to the north, understood what was happening. At 10:48 a.m., he ordered his rearmost battle cruiser, Indomitable, now finally coming into action, “Attack the enemy breaking away to northward.” If he scored no other success that day, at least this crippled ship would be destroyed.

As Lion began to drop astern, Tiger, next astern, drew abreast and began to pass her. And now Tiger became the primary German target. She was hit on the roof of Q turret, in the intelligence office—where eight men, including Beatty’s fleet engineer, were killed—and in the boat stowage area between the two after funnels. The ship’s boats were set on fire and the blaze produced plumes of flame that rose above the tops of the funnels. Seen from other ships in the squadron, Tiger looked like a roaring, open furnace. Farther away, officers on Moltke believed that the blaze signified Tiger’s final immolation and, on returning to Wilhelmshaven, they reported that she had been sunk. In fact, within fifteen minutes the fire had consumed everything that would burn and the ship’s damage control parties had the flames under control. The fighting qualities of the battle cruiser remained unaffected.

Until this moment, Beatty had conducted the battle almost without error; the only serious flaw had been Pelly’s failure to understand that Moltke, not Seydlitz, was his designated target. Now, however, at the moment when Tiger, Princess Royal, and New Zealand were sweeping past the crippled flagship, there occurred a series of British mistakes that were to determine the outcome of the battle. It began with an error in observation and judgment made by Beatty. “At 10.54 a.m., submarines were reported on Lion’s starboard bow,” Beatty reported to the Admiralty after the battle, “and I personally observed the wash of a periscope . . . on our starboard bow.” To avoid this danger, he ordered a 90-degree turn to port, heading his ships almost north and cutting at a right angle across the wake of the fleeing Germans. What made Beatty’s signal confusing and harmful was that Lion hoisted the “Alter Course” flag without the “Submarine Warning” flag; the proper sequence, which would have made the situation clear, would have been the submarine warning first, then the turn signal. The explanation is that all but two of Lion’s signal halyards had been shot away, so that the attempt to hoist complete, coherent signals was severely hampered. At any rate, the Battle Cruiser Squadron promptly obeyed the admiral and turned sharply to port, but Beatty’s captains did not understand why. Afterward, Captain Pelly of Tiger wrote: “Lion hoisted the signal, ‘Alter course 8 points [approximately 90 degrees] to port.’ Whilst this signal was still flying I observed the flagship developing a big list. She was evidently badly damaged. She began to drop back and from then on took no further part in the action. Tiger steered to pass between her and the enemy, and the Germans’ fire was concentrated on her. For nearly five minutes this ‘Alter course’ signal remained flying and giving us all plenty of time to comment on it. I remember asking my navigating officer if he could explain the meaning of it for to my mind it seemed to be breaking off the action. He replied, ‘I have no idea, unless Lion has better knowledge of minefields about than we have.’ ”

In fact, Beatty was the only officer on Lion’s bridge who saw a periscope, and he ordered the turn without giving any explanation. Chatfield, Lion’s captain, standing at Beatty’s elbow, saw nothing. Plunkett, the Flag Commander, astonished by the order, turned to the admiral and said, “Good heavens, Sir, you’re not going to break off the engagement?” Beatty was aware that the new course, north by east—almost at right angles to Hipper’s—meant losing ground before the chase could be resumed, but he believed that he had no choice. He had seen something that looked like a periscope and he worried that he might be leading his ships into a submarine trap, set not by one submarine but by several. He knew that the laying of this kind of trap was one of the tactics by which the German Naval Command hoped to whittle down the numerical superiority of the Grand Fleet. Jellicoe had emphasized the danger of being drawn over submarines in his letter to the Admiralty of October 30, 1914, and Beatty, although less worried than the Commander-in-Chief, was familiar with these fears.

Beatty was also concerned about mines. He knew that some German destroyers and light cruisers were equipped to lay mines from rails on their sterns and he feared that, even at such high speeds, these ships might roll mines off into the path of his pursuing ships. Striking a mine, as the Audacious had proved, could be as catastrophic as being hit by a torpedo. He was determined, therefore, to avoid steaming directly in the wakes of the German light ships. Once clear of the track of the German destroyers, his ships could turn back to a course parallel with Hipper. Indeed, almost immediately the admiral realized that his turn had been unnecessarily wide; four minutes later, he modified it by signaling, “Course North East.” This new course converged with Hipper’s.

After the battle and for many years, questions were asked about whether Beatty’s turn to port was necessary. Following the action, Fisher disgustedly declared that there were no German submarines within sixty miles. Later, it was suggested that the “periscope” Beatty had seen might have been a German destroyer’s torpedo surfacing after its run. (The destroyer V-5 had fired a torpedo at 10:40 a.m., which should have finished its run and come to the surface at about 10:54 a.m.) Beatty also was criticized because, even if there had been a U-boat where he thought he saw one, the submarine could not possibly have endangered his other battle cruisers, already two miles ahead of the flagship. Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon believed that “had he [Beatty] turned and steered straight for the supposed periscope and done nothing more than warn the [destroyer] flotilla commander to send one or more destroyers to search for the submarine, then our battle cruisers would have continued the chase and we should have sunk at least two of the enemy battle cruisers and probably more.” Jellicoe shared this opinion: “The best course was to turn direct at the submarine not eight points [approximately 90 degrees] away. . . . I should say that Beatty himself broke off the action by his unfortunate signal to alter course to port.”

In making the turn, Beatty, of course, had no intention of breaking off the action. His plan at that moment was that Indomitable would intercept and destroy the crippled Blücher while Tiger, Princess Royal, and New Zealand would overtake and annihilate the damaged Seydlitz and, if possible, Moltke and Derfflinger. Nothing of this kind occurred because Beatty—in Churchill’s words, “the whole spirit and direction of the battle”—was about to be stripped of effective command of the battle cruisers. To make matters worse, the final signal that the admiral managed to send was mishandled by his signal staff and consequently misinterpreted by the other ships. The cause was the heavy damage inflicted on Lion and the consequent breakdown of the system of communication between ships. From the beginning of the battle, Beatty’s ships had operated under wireless silence and had communicated first by flashing light and then, when daylight was sufficient, by signal flags. Up to this point, there had been no difficulty: for several hours, Lion had snapped out crisp flag signals every few minutes. But now the flagship was severely wounded. She had been struck by fifteen heavy shells, she was listing to port, and her port engines were stopped. All three of her dynamos were gone. She had no electricity and thus no electric lights, no searchlights, and no wireless. She could communicate only by flag hoist and—of critical importance—all but two of her signal halyards had been shot away. Visual signaling by flag hoist was in the ancient tradition of the Royal Navy; in the days of sailing ships, it was the primary—in daylight, the only—means of communication. But here warships steaming at up to 28 knots were placing new, previously unimagined strains on the signalmen working on the bridge. There was, in the first place, the wind. Filson Young wrote that “it was impossible to endure the wind standing up” in the foretop of the Lion, yet a few feet beneath him, the flagship’s signalmen were working under these same conditions. Smoke was another problem. Lion’s funnels were pouring out thick clouds of oily, black smoke, which obscured her signal halyards from other ships. In addition, cordite fumes from the guns of the forward main turrets swept back over the signal bridge. And this exposed area was continually drenched by spray and riddled by splinters from bursting shells. Not surprisingly, the signalmen working there made mistakes.

Beatty’s frustration, as he watched Hipper’s three battle cruisers drawing steadily away to the southeast even as his own flagship was losing speed, was extreme. As Lion dropped astern, the admiral did his best to impose his will on the deteriorating situation and make clear his intentions. Ironically, this attempt did further damage. At 11:02 a.m., Beatty had ordered “Course North East” in order to countermand his previous 90-degree turn and substitute a 45-degree turn, which would bring his battle cruisers more quickly back on Hipper’s trail. For Beatty, however, a simple course correction was not enough; his nature required exhortation. Thus, while the “Course North East” flags were still flying from one halyard, he ordered Seymour to hoist “Attack the rear of the enemy” on the other remaining halyard, which happened to be adjacent. Herein lay the source of the confusion that followed. The Lion was now simultaneously flying two separate signals that Beatty did not intend to be connected. The other battle cruisers did not understand this. As they read the arrangement of the flags, Beatty was sending one signal, not two. The admiral, they believed, was ordering them to “attack the rear of the enemy course northeast.” Lucklessly, the two signals were hauled down together and the damage was done. *36 Blücher at that moment bore less than 8,000 yards to the northeast. Within minutes, all four British battle cruisers obediently swung away from the pursuit of Hipper’s big ships and steered for the single, battered, isolated ship.

Beatty, watching what was happening and lacking electric power to operate searchlights or wireless, was beside himself. Trying one last time to restore order and make his intentions clear, he asked his Flag Commander, Reginald Plunkett, to suggest a suitable signal. “What we need now is Nelson’s signal: ‘Engage the enemy more closely,’ ” said Plunkett. “Yes, certainly. Hoist it!” Beatty replied. Flag Lieutenant Ralph Seymour looked through his signal book and, to his dismay, discovered that the signal, in use since Trafalgar, had been removed from the book. The only modern alternative he could find was “Keep nearer to the enemy.” With Beatty’s permission, he hoisted this signal, but it was too late. Lion had dropped so far astern and the halyard was so obscured by smoke that none of the other battle cruisers saw the signal.

With Beatty unable to communicate and therefore no longer in control of his squadron, command passed automatically to Rear Admiral Moore in New Zealand, now the third ship in line. There was no precise moment at which Moore succeeded Beatty; indeed Beatty, now rendered mute by circumstance, never formally transferred authority to his second in command. There was a period of confusion when neither admiral seemed to be directing the actions of the fleet. It was amid this confusion that victory slipped away.

Sir Archibald Moore, who had been Third Sea Lord during much of Churchill’s tenure at the Admiralty, had begged for a sea command and been given the 2nd Battle Cruiser Squadron. Now, with little experience, he faced a supreme challenge: command of the British battle cruiser force in action against Franz Hipper. Moore was hampered by the fact that, at first, he was not certain that he had succeeded Beatty, of whom he was in awe. And, given his deference to Beatty, he was unusually reluctant to assume control. Eventually, it was impossible for him not to know that the command had descended upon him; twenty minutes after the turn to port, Lion was out of sight. Moore wished to carry out Beatty’s orders. But what were they? Neither Moore nor any of Beatty’s captains was certain. The squadron had just turned sharply away from Hipper’s course and the range was opening fast. Moore, of course, had not sighted a periscope and was unaware of the reason that had prompted Beatty to order an abrupt turn to the north across the rear of a fleeing enemy. When he saw the two signals “Course North East” and “Attack the rear of the enemy” flown and hauled down together, he may have wondered at Beatty’s reasons, but to question and countermand what he believed to be Beatty’s orders was not in the nature of Sir Archibald Moore.

The problem was the Beatty legend. Already, after only six months of war, this most famous and flamboyant of British admirals, in command of the celebrated battle cruisers for over three years, had a reputation for infallible judgment as well as courage. Moore reasoned that Beatty must have had good reasons for his signals, and Moore was ready to obey. But what did Beatty mean? Where was “the rear of the enemy”? Was it Blücher? On what compass bearing was Blücher to be found? Northeast. The signal read, “Attack the rear of the enemy bearing northeast.” True, it was unlike Beatty to give up pursuit of the primary prey when there was still an opportunity of catching it, but how else should the admiral’s signals be interpreted? Moore now concluded that he had no choice. He was under direct orders from Beatty to attack Blücher and he issued no fresh orders modifying or countermanding Beatty’s last signal. At 11:09 a.m., therefore, Tiger, Princess Royal, and New Zealand ceased firing at the fleeing German battle cruisers and swung around to join Indomitable in the final destruction of the already doomed armored cruiser Blücher.

Beatty’s turn away from the supposed periscope and Moore’s continuation of this turn in the direction of Blücher saved a number of German destroyers from destruction. For some time before the British battle cruisers turned away from him and toward Blücher, Hipper had been considering possible methods of assisting this lagging and beleaguered armored cruiser. The most effective help he could give—rushing back with his own battle cruisers—would mean bringing on the all-out, general engagement he was doing his utmost to avoid. But there was the alternative of ordering a destroyer attack; possibly, as the British vessels maneuvered to escape his destroyers’ torpedoes, Blücher might escape.

Up to that point in the battle, the German destroyers accompanying Hipper had been a liability. As the chase began, he had placed them ahead of his own battle cruisers, as far away as possible from the guns of the British battle cruisers, where he hoped they would be out of harm’s way. Even so, some of the small ships were having trouble maintaining speed. Now, sending these frail vessels to attack the onrushing British force would bring the certainty of heavy losses. To have a chance of scoring hits, the destroyers needed to get within 3,000 or 4,000 yards of their targets; to do this in daylight, charging into the concentrated gunfire of a number of British battle cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers, would be something close to suicide. Nevertheless, to save Blücher, Hipper decided to try it—and even to support the destroyer attack by closing the range with his battle cruisers. At 10:58 a.m., he made a preliminary move by ordering his big ships to turn southwest into the path of the British battle cruisers. At 11:00 he signaled, “[Destroyer] flotillas stand by to attack.”

It was coincidence that the decisions of the opposing commanders during this quarter of an hour so closely affected each other. Thus, just as Hipper decided to succor the lagging Blücher, Beatty thought he saw a periscope and gave his order to turn away. Hipper, almost simultaneously, was signaling his battle cruisers to turn toward the British battle cruisers and his destroyers to attack. Then, seeing the entire British squadron turn sharply away (because of the “periscope”), the German admiral assumed that Beatty was reacting to evade the threat of the German destroyers. In response, at 11:07 a.m., he canceled the German destroyer attack.

Even so, Hipper felt that he must do something to aid Blücher. His staff was watching him closely on Seydlitz’s bridge. “Only when he realized the full tragedy of Blücher did his human sympathy break through,” said Captain von Waldeyer-Hartz. “There had always been a close bond of friendship and confidence between him and his captains. He was especially fond of Captain Erdmann . . . of Blücher. He was therefore strongly tempted to go to his friend’s aid.” Hipper’s officers unanimously opposed this move. Captain Moritz von Egidy of Seydlitz declared flatly that his ship could not continue to fight. Two of the flagship’s five turrets were out of action, there was 600 tons of water in her stern, and only 200 11-inch shells remained for the main battery guns. Derfflinger had also been hard hit and the relatively unscathed Moltke could not singlehandedly engage the four British battle cruisers that remained in action. Listening, Hipper realized that in attempting to save one ship, he might lose all. “I dismissed any further thought of supporting the Blücher . . . now that no intervention of our main fleet was to be counted on,” he said.

Few in the German navy criticized Hipper’s decision to abandon Blücher. “If Hipper’s leadership at this short moment betrayed possibly a trace of indecision, it was because Hipper the man got the better of Hipper the tactician,” said Waldeyer-Hartz. “The moment . . . Captain von Egidy reported that . . . the ammunition for the heavy guns was as good as used up, Hipper forced himself—it could be seen in his eyes—to look the facts squarely in the face. There can be no doubt that, had the High Seas Fleet been advancing, he would, in spite of everything, have made an attempt to rescue the Blücher or at least save the ship’s company from death or captivity. The decision to refrain he found extraordinarily difficult. His face clouded; an expression of injured pride, grief for his comrades who had to be abandoned, was to be read in his eyes. Then suddenly, a sharp, jerky movement—a curt order with the accustomed assurance—and the squadron turned back to a southeasterly course.”

This course toward Germany soon put the German ships beyond the reach of Admiral Moore. The remainder of Hipper’s return went without incident, although two of his three battle cruisers were burning, encumbered with wreckage, and crowded with dead and wounded men. Moltke was mostly unharmed, although her captain reported that “in stern turret D, seven men of the gun crew were so exhausted that they could [no] longer carry on . . . the ventilation gear was put out of action by the vibration of the turret and this resulted in suffocation of the men.”

Retreating across the North Sea, Hipper considered sending his destroyers back for a night torpedo attack, but decided against it because their fuel was low and their crews exhausted. On the voyage home, Hipper’s sadness at the loss of Blücher was balanced by reports that the British had lost the battle cruiser Tiger. One report came from Moltke, which had observed the large fire amidships on Tiger and assumed that the ship could not survive. This assessment was buttressed by a signal from the captain of the zeppelin L-5, cruising above the battle, who declared that he could see only four British battle cruisers. In fact, the zeppelin had arrived too late to witness the departure of Lion, wounded and far behind, but still afloat.

At 3:30 p.m., Hipper’s battle cruisers rendezvoused with the High Seas Fleet and that night anchored in the Jade River. The following morning, Seydlitz, Derfflinger, and Kolberg, all heavily damaged, limped into Wilhelmshaven. In order to reduce her draft sufficiently to go through the locks, Seydlitz had to pump out the 600 tons of water in her stern. In the late afternoon of January 25, Hipper’s flagship finally entered the inner harbor and went into dry dock.