In the aftermath of Jutland and Scheer’s abortive foray in August 1916, a calm descended upon the central area of the North Sea. In one way this may have seemed curious as this was the very fulcrum of the naval war, yet in others it was entirely reasonable. Jellicoe, for example, was not only aware of technical shortcomings in some of the Grand Fleet’s ships, notably the battle cruisers, but was also wary of potential traps posed by the enemy’s mines and U-boats. He therefore decided that his ships would not proceed further south than 55° 30’. For his part, Scheer knew that he dared not risk the High Seas Fleet in another general action. The result was that, for the first time in the war, both sides possessed numerous destroyers that had previously been tied down escorting the capital ships.
There were only two exits to the Atlantic from the North Sea. One, in the north, lay between Scotland and Norway and was not only patrolled incessantly but was also adjacent to the Grand Fleet’s anchorage at Scapa Flow. The second, in the south, was the Straits of Dover. Control of this was absolutely vital because of the constant passage of troops and supplies across the English Channel from southern English ports to France. Two naval forces had been established in the war’s early days to provide security. The larger of the two was Commodore Reginald Tyrwhitt’s Harwich Force, which in 1916 consisted of the 5th Cruiser Squadron’s five ships, plus the 9th and 10th Destroyer Flotillas with 36 destroyers and four flotilla leaders or light cruisers. As we have seen, the Harwich Force frequently had responsibilities in the North Sea, and was usually unable to detach more than one flotilla for operations in the Straits. The principal burden of responsibility for the Straits rested with the Dover Patrol, commanded by Vice Admiral Sir Francis Bacon. This consisted of two light cruisers or flotilla leaders, 24 destroyers, eight patrol vessels and 14 big-gun monitors. In addition, further patrolling was undertaken by a collection of armed drifter, trawlers and requisitioned yachts. Ships detached from the Harwich Force and the Dover Patrol formed a third force, based on Dunkirk, that patrolled the far side of the Channel.
Across the water, the advancing German armies had overrun much of the Belgian coast in 1914. A destroyer and U-boat base had been established at Bruges, inland, with canal exits to the sea at Zeebrugge and Ostend. Through these, U-boats managed to slip past or over the Channel nets and minefields which, it had been hoped, would deny them access to the open sea. With typical thoroughness, the Germans had protected their investment with numerous coastal defence batteries. As can be imagined, this was a very warm corner of the war at sea, with reciprocal bombardments, attacks by float planes, mining and small ship actions.
The tempo of activity increased after Jutland. With the High Seas Fleet now rusting quietly in its anchorages, there was little for its many escorting destroyers to do. However, it was essential for Scheer to give the impression that active operations were still undertaken. On 23 October he despatched no less than 24 destroyers to Zeebrugge under the flotillas’ commodore, Captain Michelsen.
Admiral Bacon knew of their presence, but during the inky darkness of the night of 26/27 October, they slipped out of harbour. Michelsen’s 3rd Flotilla surprised the drifters guarding the net between the Goodwin Sands and the Outer Ruytingen Banks, sinking seven and setting an eighth on fire. When a single British destroyer, Flirt, attempted to intervene, she too was sent to the bottom. The German 9th Flotilla entered the Straits where it sank the empty transport Queen, permitting her crew to escape in the boats. Returning to Zeebrugge, the flotilla became involved in a running fight with three British destroyers, blowing the bows off Nubian and scoring hits on Amazon and Mohawk. Michelsen could congratulate himself on carrying out a successful operation without loss. Nubian was towed into port safely and subsequently married to the bows of another Tribal Class destroyer, Zulu, the stern of which had been blown off by a mine. In this form the composite destroyer returned to the fray as HMS Zubian.
Coming on top of the Jutland casualties and the death of Field Marshal Lord Kitchener aboard the cruiser Hampshire when she was mined off the north coast of Scotland, this episode produced a wave of public dissatisfaction at the way the war at sea was being conducted. Arthur Balfour, the First Lord of the Admiralty, issued a politician’s typically bland statement to the effect that if the raid was repeated ‘it would be severely dealt with.’ It was repeated on a smaller scale during the evening of 23 November, but the Germans retreated unharmed as soon as opposition was encountered. The press tartly reminded Balfour of his promise, echoing the public view that there seemed to be a sad lack of aggression in the upper echelons of the Navy.
There was certainly no lack of it further down the chain of command. As luck would have it two U-boats, U-20 and U-30, ran aground in the fog off the west coast of Jutland. Scheer despatched a half-flotilla of destroyers to rescue them, covered by no less than four dreadnoughts and the battle cruiser Moltke. Only U-30 could be recovered and, while returning to base on 5 November, the German ships ran close to the patrolling British submarine J-1, commanded by Commander Noel Lawrence, a veteran of the successful British submarine campaign in the Baltic. Lawrence spotted them through his periscope at a range of 4,000 yards. Although a heavy swell was running, it was decided to attack. At one point J-1’ s bows broke the surface, fortunately without attracting the attention of the enemy lookouts. Lawrence dived, running his motors hard, and at that moment the four German battleships entered his sights. Doing a rapid calculation, he fired his four bow tubes with a spread of five degrees, then took J-1 down to rest on the sea bed. There was silence in the control room while the range was counted off. There was a distant boom, then another, followed by cheering throughout the boat. One torpedo had hit the Kronprinz Wilhelm and another had found a home in the Grosser Kurfurst, both of which would spend months in dock. To have torpedoed one battleship during a patrol was a considerable achievement, but to have torpedoed two was almost beyond belief. Lawrence later commented that he wished he had fired at a single ship and sent her to the bottom, but had been reasonably certain that he could account for two. The Kaiser flew into one of his rages and gave Scheer the benefit of his wide experience: ‘To risk a squadron, and by so doing nearly risk the loss of two armoured ships in order to save two U-boats, is disproportionate and must not be attempted again!’
Ostensibly, 1917 began well for the Allies. Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare, having calculated that this would probably bring the United States into the war on the side of the Allies, without being able to contribute anything significant in either the military or naval spheres for the next two years, a calculation that proved to be flawed. On 13 March American merchantmen bound for the war zones were defensively armed, and on 6 April America declared war on Germany. Against this, Russia collapsed into revolution and civil war, enabling the Central Powers to transfer large numbers of troops from the Eastern to the Western Fronts, while the French Army was beginning to show signs of exhaustion.
By now, Jellicoe had reached the top of his profession and become First Sea Lord. Beatty took over as commander of the Grand Fleet, an appointment welcomed by many who believed that he was more of a fighter than his predecessor and would bring on the decisive battle everyone had hoped for. In fact the only decisive battle being fought at sea was being won by the U-boats. Even Scheer had now been converted to the view that the High Seas Fleet existed solely to safeguard the U-boats’ return to base. The recently appointed German Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff, calculated that if 600,000 tons of Allied shipping could be sunk every month and 40% of neutral shipping persuaded not to enter British ports, then Britain would be forced out of the war within five months. Jellicoe reached a similar conclusion, predicting that unless the U-boat menace could be brought under control, the United Kingdom’s supplies of food and vital raw materials would run out by July. Yet, he stubbornly refused to alter the official Admiralty view that as long as the main trade routes were patrolled, only troop and coal convoys required escorts. With monthly losses actually exceeding those considered necessary for a British defeat by Holtzendorff, the situation became desperate. Under intense pressure from Prime Minister Lloyd George, Beatty and the Americans, the Admiralty finally gave way. The effect was magical. U-boats began to find difficulty in making their attacks and Allied losses dropped dramatically. Suddenly, U-boats encountered much strengthened defences in the Straits of Dover and were unable to make their usual night passage save at terrible risk. They therefore had to burn valuable fuel making the passage round the north of Scotland, which clearly reduced the amount of time they could spend on patrol. They also had to face the depth charge, a new and very dangerous weapon they were not aware of until May 1917, although it had been used in small quantities for ten months. British destroyers which had been used to idling their time away with the Grand Fleet now found themselves back in the war and being reinforced by American warships.
Although the battle against the U-boats took place mainly in the outer reaches of the Channel and the Western Approaches to the United Kingdom, there was still fighting in the North Sea. Having received intelligence that more German destroyers were being despatched to Zeebrugge during the evening of 22 January, the Admiralty ordered Tyrwhitt to intercept them. Leaving Harwich at 17:30 with six light cruisers, two flotilla leaders and 16 destroyers, by midnight he had deployed his force across all the likely approach routes. The German force, consisting of one flotilla leader and ten destroyers, was led by Commander Max Schultz. At 02:45 they ran into some of Tyrwhitt’s cruisers, which promptly opened fire. V69, Schutlz’s flotilla leader, struck by a shell that temporarily jammed her steering, smashed into another destroyer, G41. The remainder headed directly for Zeebrugge, concealed by a dense smoke screen.
At 03:40 V69 ran into several more British cruisers and received such a battering that his opponents thought she had sunk, although she managed to limp off in the direction of the Dutch coast. Despite the rip in her side, G41 managed to get into Zeebrugge. A third destroyer, S50, had become separated and was straggling towards the base when she ran into several British destroyers with whom she engaged in a spirited gunnery duel. Finally, after slamming a torpedo into the destroyer Simoom, she escaped and made her way back to Germany. By dawn, the action had clearly ended and, after sinking the crippled Simoom, Tyrwhitt’s force returned home, less than satisfied by the night’s work.
At last light on 25/26 February, Commander Tillesen left Zeebrugge with six destroyers to attack Dover while a further five under Commander Albrecht headed for the Downs anchorage, hoping to create mayhem among the merchantmen waiting to enter the Thames. Neither group managed to complete its mission. At 22:30, the destroyer Laverock, commanded by Lieutenant Binmore, was patrolling above the central portion of the anti-submarine mine barrage when Tillesen’s ships came into view. Laverock was hit several times, but by manoeuvring cleverly and opening fire from different positions, Binmore managed to convince Tillesen that he was dealing with three ships and he turned for home in the belief that heavy British reinforcements were on their way. Albrecht did very little better, managing only to bang a few shells into Margate, Westgate and the North Foreland radio station before shearing off.
It was unfortunate that the poor results of this raid induced a sense of complacency both at Dover and in the Admiralty. In March, Bacon was warned that another raid was in the offing, he did not think it necessary to strengthen the mid-Channel patrol, which consisted of just four destroyers and relied on reinforcements that would be despatched from Dover or Deal. Tillesen left Zeebrugge during the evening of 17 March with two flotillas. The 6th, with seven destroyers, would cross the central area of the barrage while five vessels of Z Flotilla, under Albrecht, crossed some way to the east. At this point the remaining four destroyers of Z Flotilla, under Lieutenant Commander Zandler, was to attack shipping in the Downs.
A little before 23:00 Tillesen’s flotilla encountered the small pre-war destroyer Paragon. Taken completely by surprise and hopelessly outnumbered, she was quickly battered into a burning wreck by concentrated gunfire and given her coup de grace by a torpedo. At this point the flames reached her depth charges. The resulting explosion tore the ship in half. Two more British destroyers, Llewellyn and Laferey, closed in to investigate the firing, but in the intense darkness neither saw their opponents. Llewellyn was quickly crippled by a torpedo and then the Germans, still unseen, returned to base. A search for Paragon’s survivors succeeded in rescuing just ten of her 75-strong crew.
Meanwhile, following the torpedoing of Llewellyn, Admiral Bacon was informed that U-boats were apparently active in the area. He recalled the Dover destroyers, which had just put to sea, but no sooner had they dropped anchor than the German destroyers had sunk a drifter near the Downs and shelled both Broadstairs and Ramsgate. These were Zandler’s ships, and by the time the Deal destroyers had been scrambled to drive them off they had gone.
On the night of 20 April the Germans attempted to repeat their success with their 3rd Destroyer Flotilla. As usual, four British destroyers were patrolling the barrage but in addition to destroyer leaders, Swift and Broke, had been sent to cover the area south-west of the Goodwin Sands. Unexpectedly, they came into contact with six German destroyers, on their way to bombard Dover. A fierce melee ensued, involving one of the most remarkable incidents in British naval history. Swift and Broke, commanded respectively by Commmander A.M. Peck and Commander E.R.G. Evans, the latter a survivor of Captain Robert Scott’s tragic expedition to the South Pole, charged straight in among the Germans, guns blazing. Swift sustained some damage but, undeterred, Peck tried to ram an enemy destroyer. His night vision destroyed by gun flashes, he missed but passed clean through the enemy line, simultaneously causing a major explosion aboard one of the German vessels with a direct hit from one of his torpedoes.
Evans rammed Broke into the enemy’s G-42, driving his bows deep into his opponent by running his engines at full power. Germans tried to scramble over Broke’s bows. Following a shout of ‘Repel boarders!’ (not heard aboard a British warship for many a long year) a midshipman raced forward with a party of seamen armed with cutlasses, rifles and bayonets, iron bars and even meat cleavers. Leading Seaman Ingleson distinguished himself with his rifle and bayonet, but another burley seaman took the matter so seriously that, when confronted by a German petty officer scrambling aboard, he transferred his cutlass from right hand to left and landed a tremendous punch between the man’s eyes, sending him tumbling back onto his own ship. Broke’s guns were also firing into G-42 at point-blank range as she drove the German onto her beam ends.
The retreating enemy survivors opened fire on both ships impartially, aggravating a fire that had broken out aboard Broke. With a shriek of tearing metal, Evans reversed her out of his victim and tried to join Swift, which was chasing the enemy, but both British destroyers were now so severely damaged that they lacked the necessary speed. While limping back to Dover, Evans passed the sinking G-42 and then came across G-48, the destroyer torpedoed by Swift early in the action. The German was sinking and on fire but surrender was not on her captain’s mind as she fired a single shell, hitting Broke’s bridge. At this point Broke’s engines stopped and she began to drift down towards her burning opponent. For a while there was a real danger that the enemy’s magazine would explode as the flames spread, destroying both ships in the explosion, but in the nick of time the engine room staff managed to produce sufficient power to move her out of immediate danger and G-48 sank. Help arrived in due course, enabling Broke to be towed into harbour by another destroyer, but Swift managed to get in under her own steam. Some 40 of Broke’s crew had been killed or wounded, while Swift lost a further five. In an era of grim, industrial slaughter, this was just the sort of victory over odds to raise spirits. Understandably, Evans became a national hero overnight.
The incident provided a sharp lesson for the senior German naval officers based at Zeebrugge. A few shells lobbed into a sleeping coastal town were hardly worth the loss of two destroyers. Attacks into the Channel and Downs areas ceased, although a raid on Dunkirk sank a French destroyer. Nevertheless, Admiral Bacon decided that Zeebrugge had become a nest of snakes that had to be cleaned out. On 12 May no less than 41 warships of various types sailed from Dover and Harwich to deliver an 85-minute bombardment. The stars of the show were three monitors with 15-inch guns that were to shell the lock gates from a distance of 13 miles. Their shooting was remarkably good, for although the gates themselves were undamaged, no less than 19 shells landed within 15 yards of them.
Next, Ostend was bombarded on 4 June. Only two monitors were involved, landing 20 shells in the dockyard area, damaging several destroyers and sinking some smaller craft. Elements of the Harwich Force became involved with two German destroyers, one of which, S-20, was sunk while the other was chased back into Zeebrugge. Subsequently, a monitor and covering force were allocated to bombard Zeebrugge and Ostend whenever wind and tidal conditions permitted. At one stage the War Cabinet approved a plan for the Army in Flanders to capture the Belgian coast in conjunction with a an amphibious operation that would put no less than 24,000 men ashore, but this remained still-born when priority was given to Field Marshal Haig’s Passchendaele offensive.
A further offensive move was the blocking of a loophole in the British blockade of Germany. German merchant ships were hugging their own coast and that of neutral Holland to collect cargos from the port of Rotterdam. On 17 July destroyers of the Harwich Force put a stop to this trade by sinking two enemy merchant vessels and capturing four more during their coastal passage.
A second foray, known as the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight in Germany but rarely mentioned in British histories, produced less satisfactory results. On 17 November a force consisting of the battle cruisers Tiger, Renown, Repulse, Courageous and Glorious, the cruisers Calypso and Caledon, plus escorting destroyers, entered the Bight. In command was Admiral Sir Charles Napier, whose intention was to disrupt the activities of German minesweepers attempting to clear existing British minefields. Apart from the enemy’s minesweepers and a patrol craft, the Kedingen, which was hastily abandoned by her crew and captured, the Admiral Ludwig von Reuter’s covering force consisted of two battleships, Kaiser and Kaiserin, plus a cruiser and destroyers. During a brief exchange of fire, Kaiserin scored a direct hit on Calypso’s bridge, killing everyone present, and Repulse hit the cruiser Konigsberg, starting a fire. The Germans then retired behind their own minefields, ending the action.
In his memoirs, Admiral Scheer expresses great interest in the two British cruisers, which had only recently entered service. His admired their great speed, which he estimated at 33 knots although 30 knots was the official figure. He believed that one of them was responsible for hitting the Konigsberg, commenting that during its descent the British shell ‘passed through all three funnels of the ship, went through the upper deck into a coal bunker against the inner wall of which it burst, causing a fire. The fragments of this shell were picked up and its calibre determined. This proved to us that the English had built a new class of cruiser armed with a 38 cm gun.’ In fact the main armament of this class of cruiser was 5 × 6-inch guns, while that of the Repulse was 6 × 15-inch (i.e. 38 cm) guns. As his memoirs were written some years after the event and probably compiled from notes written at the time, this probably explains why the Admiral allowed the mistake to stand.
Meanwhile, the German Naval Command had become aware that British convoys between Lerwick and Bergen in neutral Norway were only lightly escorted. These convoys were extremely important as they exported manufactured goods and imported vital iron ore from Sweden and timber pit props from all over Scandinavia. Two light cruisers, the Bremse and the Brummer, were considered ideal for the task of disrupting them. Originally laid down in the Vulcan Yard in Stettin for service as fast minelayers with the Imperial Russian Navy, they were taken into German service on completion in 1916. They could be coal or oil fired and were capable of a maximum speed of 28 knots. Their main armament consisted of 4 × 5.9-inch guns and they possessed the capacity to carry 400 mines as deck cargo.
Shortly before dawn on 17 October they had encountered a convoy of twelve merchantmen escorted by two destroyers and two armed trawlers. One destroyer, Strongbow, attacked at once but was sunk within minutes, as was the second, Mary Rose, when she attacked. The cruisers then set about the merchantmen at will, only three of them and the two trawlers being able to make their escape. As many of the ships were neutrals, the incident naturally provoked protests. Scheer’s memoirs contain the universal German reaction to these. ‘If England wanted to demand the right to enjoy undisturbed supplies, thanks to the compliance of the neutrals, or the pressure brought to bear on them, no one could expect us to look on with folded hands until English sea power had completed its work of destroying our nation by starvation. The counter-measures which this necessitated must recoil upon England as the originator of this form of warfare.’
On 12 December a half-flotilla of German destroyers under Commander Heinecke attacked shipping in the swept channel off the Northumbrian coast, sinking one merchant vessel of 5,000 tons and two smaller craft. On the same day a second half-flotilla, consisting of four destroyers under Lieutenant Commander Hans Holbe, steamed due north in heavy weather and encountered a British convoy, consisting of six merchant ships escorted by two destroyers and four armed trawlers, off Bergen. One of the British destroyers, Partridge, fought until her guns were out of action and she had been immobilised. In a final act of defiance before she went down, she launched a torpedo that struck the German V-100 but did not explode. With the exception of the damaged destroyer Pellew, which escaped into a rain squall, the entire convoy and the rest of its escort were sunk.
Nothing was more certain than that the Germans would try to repeat these comparatively minor successes. As they had taken place within the Grand Fleet’s area of responsibility, Beatty was forced to react. In future, a squadron of battleships would accompany each convoy, a provision that became easier with the arrival of an American battleship squadron under Admiral Sims, and the sailing dates of convoys became irregular.
The year 1917 therefore ended without either side achieving a clear-cut major success at sea. Within the Admiralty, too, there had been conflict of a different kind. Vice Admiral Bacon was a difficult man who ignored advice and paid brief attention to instructions. He shared a mutual antipathy with Rear Admiral Roger Keyes, the Director of the Admiralty Plans Division. He might claim, with some justice, that during his three years of command some 88,000 vessels had passed safely through the Channel, while only six had been lost to enemy action, but the fact was that U-boats had made free use of it and the Straits until the recent defensive measures had been imposed. He was supported by his old friend Jellicoe, but the latter had lost favour because of Napier’s lack of success in the Heligoland Bight and the loss of the two Scandinavian convoys. The general opinion, shared by Prime Minister Lloyd George, was that Jellicoe and Bacon were too cautious to be effective. During the last week of December, Jellicoe was sent into retirement, being replaced by Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss, while Rear Admiral Roger Keyes replaced Bacon at Dover.