THE Briton looking back on the Battle of Jutland still asks, as the more intelligent Briton asked then: ‘Was this the spirit of Nelson?’ It may well be—and the writer of these lines is of that view—that the Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet at Jutland needed more of the spirit of Nelson. Yet the problem is not simple. Should the weaker fleet be almost certain to run for it on meeting greatly superior strength, then the stronger fleet must hasten and take risks if it is to bring on a decisive battle. The risks of 1916 were of a kind unknown to Nelson: torpedoes fired from destroyers and submarines, minefields, loose mines thrown into the water in retreat. These were the means by which Admiral Scheer, the commander of the weaker fleet, hoped to bring the opposing forces to equality or near it. They were formidable, and much more so to the stronger fleet during a running engagement in pursuit than in a pitched battle. In this case the commander of the stronger fleet, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, deeply conscious of its importance to his country, was beset by anxiety lest he should lose half of it to under-water weapons ‘before the guns opened fire at all’.1 Once we know what was in the minds of the Admirals events become more rational.
It has been shown that Scheer’s intention was to entice the British into a trap. With this aim he carried out two sorties, one on 6 March, the other on 24 and 25 April. In the second he bombarded East Anglian towns, Lowestoft heavily. No contact between the main forces occurred, but they did not miss each other by much.
Scheer was eager to try again, but waited for the repair of the Seydlitz, which had limped home from the last sortie holed by a British mine. He believed, rightly, that while he was scheming to trap Jellicoe the British Commander-in-Chief had plans for trapping him. Scheer’s bait was Hipper, despatched with the battle cruisers, a light cruiser squadron, and destroyers to show himself off the Norwegian coast, while Scheer followed with the main fleet, keeping out of sight of the Danish shore. Hipper was to reach his destination—so as to be reported from Norway—before nightfall on 31 May. He did not get there. The Germans used their radio imprudently and the British Admiralty, in possession of their code, warned Jellicoe in good time. The British fleets from Scapa, Cromarty, and Rosyth put to sea between 9.30 and 10.15 p.m. on 30 May with the precision acquired by long experience, sailing on a course converging upon that of the enemy.
British superiority in strength had vastly increased since the Battle of the Dogger Bank. Of the opposing reconnaissance forces, Beatty’s fleet included six battle cruisers and a battle squadron of four magnificent ‘super-dreadnoughts’ against Hipper’s five battle cruisers. In all the British had twenty-eight dreadnoughts and nine battle cruisers against sixteen German dreadnoughts and five battle cruisers. In cruisers the disparity was still greater. Only in torpedo strength were the opposing fleets nearly equal.
Midnight 30/31 May marks a memorable point in naval annals. On the day then beginning the only great naval battle of the war was to be fought. Nothing approaching the power of the opposing fleets had ever before been involved in a clash. Not only was the Battle of Jutland—die Schlacht vor dem Skagerrak, as the Germans call it—without a successor in that war; it has never had a successor in European waters, and, if any prophecy about warfare is safe, we may say that it never will. It was the last great naval battle in which air forces virtually did not count. Curiously enough, no submarines took part in the battle either, though they did take part in the operations, and the British might have suffered loss from those sent out by the Germans to waylay their fleets near their harbours. Omitting submarines, therefore, it is estimated that 250 vessels were present, 64 mounting guns of from 11-in. to 15-in. and that 25 admirals flew their flags. The two fleets sailing through the misty night to their encounter constituted at that moment ‘the culminating manifestation of naval force in the history of the world’.1