HMS Warspite Warships of the Royal Navy Iain Ballantyne

H.M.S. Warspite - Iain Ballantyne

Jutland 1916: Clash of Titans

In this edited extract from his book

WARSPITE

Iain Ballantyne provides a taste of combat action in the super-dreadnought battleship during the opening moves of the Battle of Jutland.

AFTER the monkish existence of barren Scapa Flow, the sailors of the 5th Battle Squadron turned a hungry gaze on the Firth of Forth, as their vessels sailed into their new temporary home on 22 May 1916. In place of the bleak, seemingly uninhabited Orkney landscape here was civilization and all the, often dubious, diversions a sailor could desire.

The Scottish capital of Edinburgh was just minutes away.The crews of the warships made excellent use of this playground - cinemas and pubs for the junior officers and ordinary ranks, hotels for discreet philandering by senior officers. Those who preferred to keep body and mind pristine for battle took bracing country walks along the banks of the wide river, pursued games of golf on nearby links or tested themselves against each other in robust sports.

Midshipman Richard Fairthorne joined Warspite on the day of her arrival at Rosyth, finding the battleship at anchor on the Forth an inspiring sight, which sent his spirits soaring. He had just come from the dull routine of serving aboard the ancient cruiser Leviathan on the boring West Indies Station. Midshipman Fairthorne was delighted there was no prospect of the 'indescribable tedium' of coaling.

Nearly sixty years later Fairthorne wrote that, on boarding the Warspite '...one sensed at once that she was a happy and efficient unit.' The Warspite was an immaculate vessel, all spick and span, with the brass polished to blinding perfection, the paintwork pristine and wooden decks unblemished.

Another new arrival aboard the Warspite was Surgeon Lieutenant Gordon Ellis. On 30 May Surgeon Lieutenant Ellis went ashore for a walk in the early evening, returning to Hawes Pier for a boat back to the battleship at around 7.30 p.m. While waiting for his ride he saw a light cruiser flotilla leader anchored off South Queensferry hoisting 'a long string of flags, which appeared to be a steaming signal.'

In fact shore patrols had also been sent into Edinburgh to recall people and a football match organised by the Warspite was abandoned, its participants hurrying back to the ship.

Radio intercepts that morning had revealed the High Sea Fleet was raising steam to come out. Possibly another raid on the east coast of England was in the offing, but the level of activity at the main German base of Wilhelmshaven suggested something bigger brewing. Accordingly, shortly before 6p.m. on 30 May, while Surgeon Lieutenant Ellis was still on his walk, the Admiralty sent instructions to Jellicoe and Beatty to take their full forces to sea and converge in the North Sea, east of the Long Forties.

Beatty's flagship, the battlecruiser HMS Lion, had sent a familiar message to the warships at anchor on the Forth: 'Raise steam for twenty-two knots and report when ready to proceed.' This was followed by: 'Proceed out of harbour 9.30pm.' All visible lights darkened, the menacing shapes of the ten battleships and battlecruisers slowly slid out under the Forth Bridge.

HMS Lion led the Battle Cruiser Fleet, with Princess Royal, Tiger, Queen Mary, New Zealand and Indefatigable following on. In the 5th Battle Squadron Warspite was third in line behind Barham and Valiant, with Malaya last. The Queen Elizabeth was in a Rosyth dry dock for an extensive refit following bombardment duties in the Dardanelles.

As soon as the Forth Bridge was cleared, the 5th Battle Squadron increased to twenty knots, keeping that speed up throughout the night and heading more or less due east. Aboard the Warspite there was no feeling among the crew of going to meet a date with destiny, rather one of dull routine. Midshipman Fairthorne - new to all this and therefore excited - was amazed at how calmly the crew of Warspite went about their business. His new shipmates explained they found it hard to believe this would be anything other than another wild goose chase. One of Warspite's gunners enjoyed the freedom of the sea: 'We sailed along through the night zig-zagging to avoid submarines. Eventually dawn broke and it was a wonderful sight - all these ships twisting and turning, with the battlecruisers ahead and we astern of them.'

THE Germans were trying to spring a trap. Their battlecruiser force, under Vice Admiral Franz von Hipper, was making speed parallel to the Norwegian coast, with the express purpose of luring Beatty's force out to play.

The main High Sea Fleet, under Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer, would then appear as Hipper's ships turned the British south. The Germans hoped to have a substantial part of the Royal Navy at their mercy, obliterated by their overwhelming force of sixteen dreadnoughts, six battle-cruisers and seven pre-dreadnoughts. What the Germans were most anxious to avoid was any intervention by the immensely powerful Grand Fleet. Strange then, that they allowed themselves to walk right into its arms.

By the afternoon of 31 May 1916, Warspite and her sister ships of the 5th Battle Squadron were trailing behind Beatty's impatient battlecruisers. At around 2.30p.m., the cruiser HMS Galatea, far out in front of the fleet, sent a general signal: 'Cruiser in sight bearing N.E., probably hostile.' Not long after, a signal from Galatea to Beatty's flagship, HMS Lion, reported five plumes of heavy smoke on the horizon. A copy of this signal was brought to the Spite's bridge where it was realized they could only be German capital ships.

'It was pretty plain there was something serious doing,' Warspite's Executive Officer, Commander Humphrey Walwyn later recalled of this moment.

The Warspite’s Commanding Officer, Captain Phillpotts, decided Warspite should go immediately to Action Stations. Having ensured the Actions Stations order had been passed - that all watertight doors were closed, fragile objects and potentially fatal loose items secured or stowed away, the wooden weather-decks dampened to decrease the likelihood of fire - Commander Walwyn made his way back to the bridge to report to the Captain. As he climbed up he looked for signs of the enemy, but could only see the Valiant and Barham ahead and Malaya behind.

The Battle Cruiser Fleet was well beyond reach of the protection afforded by the squadron's 15-inch guns. The gap had earlier increased to ten miles, because a signal from HMS Lion instructing the 5th Battle Squadron to turn south-east towards the enemy cruiser sighting had been missed, due to funnel smoke obscuring the flags. As a result the four battleships had proceeded east for another ten minutes before realizing the Battle Cruiser Fleet had made off in another direction. They then followed with all haste. Had the gap between battlecruisers and battleships not been so wide, thousands of British sailors might not have lost their lives.

Commander Walwyn decided it was time to go to B turret. On his way down he went to his sea cabin and put on his custom-made Gieves and Hawkes life jacket, his flash hood and protective gloves. It would be the last time he ever saw his cabin, for a German shell would soon blow it to pieces.

Inside B turret Commander Walwyn found everyone in excellent spirits. Their good cheer was provoked by the prospect of some action after so many frustrating sweeps into the North Sea with nothing to show for them. They wanted to load the guns immediately. Commander Walwyn told them to calm down and await 'the usual routine orders'.

UNFORTUNATELY for the British battlecruisers, unwisely leaving their heavyweight fast battleship protectors trailing ten miles behind, Winston Churchill's description of a battle 'between egg shells striking each other with hammers' would prove tragically accurate.

At 3.58p.m. the five German battle-cruisers - von der Tann, Moltke, Seydlitz, Derfflinger and Lutzow - opened fire, answered instantly by the British battlecruisers. The May haze was soon thickened by gun smoke mixed with dirty clouds belching from the funnels of warships at full speed.

Aboard Warspite, Signal Boy John Chessman, high up in the crow's nest on the foremast could hear the thunder of guns but could see nothing of the fight. He later wrote: 'Although out in the open sea there was maximum visibility and a bright sun shone down warmly on a sea smooth as a pond, the eastern horizon was shrouded in a sea mist, and, even with the aid of a telescope, no movement was discernible.'

Calamity on an epic scale was to descend with terrifying speed on the rearmost British battlecruiser - HMS Indefatigable - which rolled over and blew up after being hammered by the von der Tann, leaving two survivors from her 800 crew. When the 5th Battle Squadron later carved through her remains, sailors aboard the four fast battleships cheered, believing a German vessel had gone. The idea that a British capital ship had succumbed so easily was unthinkable. Twenty minutes after battle was joined, the 5th Battle Squadron battleships could at last weigh into the fray. Their initial targets were to be three German scouting cruisers - Frankfurt, Pillau and Elbing, which had fallen behind the battlecruisers.

The first sighting of the Queen Elizabeths caused a mixture of fear and professional fascination in the German warships - back in their base ports the Kaiser's officers had speculated endlessly about the Warspite and her sisters, somewhat in awe of the eight 15-inch guns. Now they were about to find out what it felt like to be on the receiving end of Mr Churchill's and Admiral Fisher's monsters. In their official history of the battle, the Germans lamented the British fleet appeared to be 'as many headed as the hydra'. They had blown apart HMS Indefatigable only to see her replaced by four more powerful super dreadnoughts.

With their fire controlled by the directors high up on masts, most of the sailors in Warspite's turrets followed instructions unable to see what their guns were aimed at. In B turret, Commander Walwyn was at least able to see something, if not very much, through the observation hood: 'I made out five columns of smoke in the mist, and that was all I could see, no masts or anything else.'

The Spite's gunners strained at the leash but were still not allowed to fire: 'Eventually the order to load had been passed. That meant that the shells and the cartridges had to come up from the bottom of the ship where there were shell rooms and magazines. It was all mechanical - the shell came up first, then the rammer operator pushed the shell into the gun followed by four quarter charges of cordite. We stayed in this position until the order to bring the guns to the ready was passed.'

The experience of being inside the huge metal box that was a 15-inch turret was a peculiar mixture of invulnerability and claustrophobia, as the Warspite’s gunner related:

'There are three ways out of getting out - one is out through a manhole at the top of the turret, another exit is through a manhole at the bottom. It is also possible to leave the turret by going down through the trunking down to the magazines and shell rooms. While you are in these turrets you are naturally cut off from anything going on outside except you are in telephone communication with the bridge and the gunnery control towers. It is a feeling of being fastened in a big box. The atmosphere is good and the crew numbers some sixteen people. Everyone has their individual jobs which they attend to and work as a team. At Jutland the guns being loaded, the next order passed was "Guns to the Ready". When the guns are brought to the ready you simply wait for the bang - when it happens the gun comes back three feet and then it goes out again. With a good turret crew you can actually fire about one round per minute.’

The initial range was extreme and, as Commander Walwyn observed, most shots appeared to miss: 'Opened fire on light cruisers, range about 21,000 yards. Could see the fall of shot well but could not see at all what we were firing at. Fired a few rounds by director and saw Barham and Valiant were firing too; light cruisers were getting clearer, now. Suddenly saw the number two column of smoke break into a bright flame; this dropped astern and at first I thought she was hit but later I thought it was a smoke box, as it looked like an enormous calcium life buoy, bright flame and huge white smoke cloud drifting astern.'

Down below decks at his post in the Forward Aid Distributing Station Surgeon Lieuenant Ellis could 'feel the shock to the ship with full charges for each salvo.'

Warspite made a fast turn to starboard and now Commander Walwyn caught his first glimpse of the five German battlecruisers: 'They were steaming the same way as we were and going very hard. A mass of black smoke, and I could only see their masts and the tops of their funnels above the horizon....'

He also saw the mountainous stern wave kicked up by their propellers 'showing up white and very high.'

On sighting the 5th Battle Squadron, Derfflinger's Gunnery Officer, Georg von Hase knew a testing time was ahead for his battlecruiser:

'There had been much talk in our fleet of these ships. They were ships of the line with the colossal armament of eight 15-inch guns.' He added, perhaps recalling his foreboding at the time: 'They fired a shell more than twice as heavy as ours.'

The 5th Battle Squadron switched fire to the German battlecruisers at 23,000 yards, with maximum elevation on the guns. Barham and the Valiant concentrated on the Moltke while Warspite and Malaya's guns were initially laid on the von der Tann, the rear-most German battle-cruiser. Their shells fell short. Commander Walwyn was disappointed: '...I could not make out what was the matter.' But he had to turn away in some pain from the observation hood when the blast from Warspite's A turret blew salt water and dust into his eyes. German shells were also creating their fair share of turbulence, falling short, but tight together, and ricocheting spectacularly right over the Warspite. They passed a few feet from Sub Lieutenant P.E. Vaux, a gunnery officer in the foretop.

Another new member of the crew, Vaux had served aboard Beatty's flagship HMS Lion at the battles of Heligoland Bight and Dogger Bank and was meant to have gone to the destroyer Ardent. However, he somehow missed his berth on her and was sent to Warspite instead. It was a stroke of good luck, which he would come to appreciate after Jutland, as Ardent was destroyed during the battle.

'We had a rather thrilling time in Warspite,' he later remarked in a letter to his brother. 'To start with it was extremely nice, with the odds in our favour and a very interesting spectacle to boot.'