The Battle of Jutland was seen as a failure by the civilian population, who had been hoping for another Trafalgar. The Royal Navy lost more ships and many more men than the Germans did. But after the battle, the German High Seas Fleet did not emerge from their base at Wilhelmshaven, to brave engaging again with the British Grand Fleet on open water. As the war drew to a close, Jutland was viewed in a new, more positive light.
Under the terms of the Armistice of 11 November 1918, the German High Seas Fleet was disarmed. At 8 a.m. on 21 November, this convoy of six mighty battlecruisers, ten battleships, eight light cruisers and fifty destroyers, or torpedo boats, seventy-four ships in total, was met at a rendezvous point off the Isle of May. The British Grand Fleet, comprising over two hundred and fifty Royal Navy ships, went out in two lines. When they met the German Fleet, the British ships turned about one hundred and eighty degrees and escorted their surrendered enemy into the Firth of Forth.
On HMS Benbow, the crew were allowed up on deck one at a time from their action stations. Leo watched the ships cover the Forth, before and aft, as far as the eye could see, miles of them upon the grey waters. This was the fleet they had met two and a half years earlier, whose guns had killed his friends and comrades. Now they were brought into captivity.
That night the German flags were hauled down. Over the following days the ships were taken north, in units, and passed through the Pentland Skerries and the triple boom defences, into Scapa Flow. There they were moored in pairs to large buoys, the big ships in the west of the Flow, around Cava Island, destroyers south, in Gutter Sound. British boats were moored at strategic points. A battle squadron that included HMS Benbow was moored on the east side of the Flow.
The Germans were not permitted to go ashore, nor to visit each other’s ships. All their food and other supplies were sent from Germany. These were unloaded to the Seydlitz, largest of their battlecruisers. A single rating was taken from each German ship by a British drifter to the Seydlitz to draw rations.
The twenty thousand men who had brought the fleet from Wilhelmshaven were gradually reduced to fewer than five thousand, the remainder sent back to Germany on the empty supply ships. The battleships and their skeleton crews remained interned, while the terms of a peace treaty were being negotiated at Versailles.
Fraternisation was forbidden. But when Leo’s turn for guard duty came, on one of the armed trawlers, he discovered that there was much contact between the internees and the crews of the Royal Navy drifters that ferried the German doctors, pursers and chaplains to and fro. A black market arose supplying the German sailors with tobacco, soap and meat, in return for medals and items of uniform and small fittings off the ships themselves.
He discovered how monotonous the Germans’ diet was. Their home country, from where it was sent, was under blockade. Their food consisted mainly of turnips. So the German sailors fished. Unlike their British counterparts they did so mainly at night, using lamps to lure swarms of small fish which they scooped out in makeshift nets. Many of the men had bad teeth but there was no dentist. The worst sufferers were put on the steam ship home. Scurvy became widespread, as in a navy from an earlier age.
In the mornings, the German sailors maintained and cleaned their ships, with generally poor discipline. Leo learned that engine maintenance was rarely carried out properly. The water for the boilers turned salty. In the afternoons, Sailors’ Councils on some ships arranged lessons, in languages, geography and history, mathematics. As the weather improved, they whiled away the hours on deck. They could be heard playing music or singing. Alcohol somehow remained in plentiful supply. Leo sometimes saw men chasing each other round the funnels and masts. It was hard to tell from a distance whether they were involved in violence, or passion, or simply playing a game of tag.
‘I don’t know who to feel more sorry for,’ Victor Harris said. ‘Them Huns, or us here keeping an eye on them.’
Leo had been diving from a small pinnace, Victor held his breathing tube and rope line. Leo pulled off his diving suit. ‘What are you complaining about?’ he demanded. ‘You’ve less than a month left.’
His friend grinned. ‘You can picture me, can you, pulling pints behind the bar?’
Leo gestured towards the great ships across the Flow. ‘I feel sorry for their commander,’ he said.
‘They’ll be gone within the month too, one way or another.’
‘I’ve heard Sir Sydney don’t afford him the courtesy of official visits. His mail is censored. The Admiralty’s decent enough to give him a copy of The Times only four days out a date.’
Victor shrugged. ‘I shouldn’t reckon anyone up here gets a newspaper quicker than that.’
Leo ignored the Welshman. ‘He must know the peace terms have been delivered,’ he said. ‘If his government accepts them, we’ll take his ships.’
‘I don’t know, I reckon the Frogs’ll bag a few.’
‘And if they don’t accept, we’ll take the ships anyway, and if the unarmed sailors resist, we’ll shoot them. Either way, he’s going to be handin over his fleet in the next day or two.’
Victor Harris coiled the rope and placed it in a canvas bag. ‘That’s war, Lofty. We won, they lost.’
Leo shook his head. ‘With the sense of honour they Germans have, I wouldn’t be surprised if he kills himself before he ever hands over his fleet.’