The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
The WAR AT SEA
Lt Cdr Roderick Stewart, chairman of the Unicorn Preservation Society, considers the legacy of 1916’s Battle of Jutland and its effects on naval warfare in 1917
The war at sea throughout 1917 was dominated by the effects of the Battle of Jutland the previous year. The Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet retained command of the seas while the defeated and demoralised German High Seas Fleet lingered in harbour. The Kaiser was then persuaded to unleash his U-Boats and the USA entered the war.
The Germans, relieved but thoroughly unnerved by their narrow escape from annihilation at Jutland, abandoned any hope of challenging British naval supremacy, while men of the Grand Fleet felt cheated by the German evasion and also a measure of guilt at the terrible casualties their comrades on land suffered.
The 60,000 British casualties on the first day of the Somme offensive completely eclipsed the 7,000 of Jutland the month before.
It is often said that the German fleet never again put to sea after Jutland but it did make several tentative forays and there is a related Courier Country story. Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, commander-in-chief of the Grand Fleet and victor of the Battle of Jutland, was married to Gwen Cayzer, daughter of shipping magnate Sir Charles Cayzer.
After the strain of battle and of long, weary hours standing on his bridge at sea, Jellicoe went to recuperate at one of the Cayzer family’s homes, Kinpurnie Castle by Newtyle, and the Newtyle Post Office was manned by naval personnel to maintain secure communication.
A cruiser, HMS Royalist, was also kept standing by in Dundee should Jellicoe need to rejoin the Grand Fleet at sea, which did happen during one of the German forays. This whole episode was, of course, kept very secret.
The real strategic consequence of Jutland was that Germany was driven to a fateful decision. The Kaiser’s High Seas Fleet had lost the surface war at sea and the war on land was locked in stalemate but it was calculated that Britain could be starved into surrender within five months if U-Boats were allowed to sink merchant vessels indiscriminately.
Germany therefore declared unrestricted U-Boat warfare in January 1917 and the effect on shipping imports to Britain was immediate.
By April, Britain was losing ships at the terrifying rate of 25% of inward-bound shipping each month. Starvation was a stark possibility for Britain but the consequence to Germany was that it would arouse the USA as an enemy.
Convoying merchant ships was considered but initially rejected as there were no effective anti-submarine weapons nor enough escort vessels.
Besides, the Royal Navy favoured what it saw as the more aggressive tactic of attempting to protect entire shipping lanes. This proved unworkable but when, on May 24 1917, convoys were tested for ocean shipping there was an immediate and dramatic reduction in sinkings and they became standard practice thereafter.
Winston Churchill later explained: “The size of the sea is so vast that the difference between the size of a convoy and the size of a single ship shrinks in comparison almost to insignificance. There was very
nearly as good a chance of a convoy of 40 ships in close order slipping unperceived between the patrolling U-Boats as there was for a single ship; and each time this happened, 40 ships escaped instead of one.”
Karl Doenitz, the First World War U-Boat commander who rose to command the German U-Boat arm in the Second World War, noted: “The oceans at once became bare and empty.”
One inventive countermeasure to the U-Boat threat was to convert Q Ships. These were armed warships disguised as merchant vessels which would innocently lure a predatory U-Boat within range then drop their disguise and open fire. The idea could have come straight out of a boys’ comic and quickly caught the public imagination.
The Q Ships made a great story but in reality they made little impact on the threat.
The unrestricted U-Boat campaign immediately renewed outrage among neutral nations including the allimportant United States. The sinking of SS Laconia on February 25 1917 with US citizens onboard combined with the notorious Zimmermann Telegram in March 1917 to inflame American public opinion. On April 6 1917, President Woodrow Wilson brought the USA into the war. Wilson had, ironically, been re-elected the previous year on the strength of the slogan “He kept us out of the war”.
The story of Sir Alfred Ewing, the Dundonian heading the Admiralty’s “Room 40” codebreaking unit, and the Zimmermann Telegram are relatively well known (see pages 14 and 15).
It is less well-known that Ewing had previously played an arguably even more important part in history by decoding the signals which warned the Grand Fleet and allowed Jellicoe to stage his ambush at Jutland. Without the German defeat at Jutland there might have been no U-Boat campaign and the USA might not have entered the war...
As soon as the USA had declared war, the American naval envoy Rear Admiral William Sims visited Admiral Jellicoe on April 10 1917 and was appalled to discover how near the German U-Boat campaign had come to success. He immediately recognised that the best way to help was to send escort vessels and the first US naval contribution of six modern destroyers arrived at Queenstown on May 4 1917. Just four days later they were at sea escorting convoys to Britain, and further escorts followed.
The US took longer to send battleships, being guided by the doctrine of the great naval theorist Captain Mahan that battlefleets should never be divided, and it was not until early December that US battleships finally reached Scapa Flow.
US Battleship Division Nine, consisting of USS New York, Wyoming, Florida and Delaware, was chosen as they were older coal- burning ships and Britain’s stocks of fuel oil were low. Following a dramatic Atlantic gale which partly flooded the New York and even threatened her foundering, these battleships under Rear Admiral Hugh Rodman were met by the cruiser HMS Caroline and welcomed to Scapa by the tumultuous cheers of the Grand Fleet.
Contemporary accounts describe the Americans’ delight at being able to drink alcohol onboard RN ships, while the RN were greatly appreciative of American tinned peaches.
HMS Caroline later became the RNVR Drill Ship in Belfast, the equivalent of Dundee’s HMS Unicorn, and is now preserved as a museum ship, as is the Unicorn.
In a “scandalous and wicked” twist on Christmas Eve 1917, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, the architect of much of this successful strategy, was summarily dismissed from his post as First Sea Lord.
The Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, well known for his “sack the lot” attitude to the admirals, had, in the words of King George V, “had his knife into” Jellicoe for some time and had appointed the ruthless railway baron Sir Eric Geddes as First Lord of the Admiralty.
Geddes was later to enter the nation’s vocabulary as the instigator of the infamous “Geddes Axe” and it was clear from the start that he and Jellicoe were incompatible, but the manner of Jellicoe’s firing was cruel and calculating.
The letter announcing his dismissal was delivered late on Christmas Eve when Parliament would not be sitting for some days and it was expected, correctly, that there could be a minimum of intervention until it was too late.
Thus, by the last days of 1917, the strategic naval chess pieces were set for decisive victory in 1918, yet the three great architects of British naval supremacy were all cast out of office. Churchill and Fisher had already been victims of the Gallipoli campaign.
Now Jellicoe, having trained and led the Grand Fleet to its victory at Jutland and having defeated the U-Boat threat, was sacked by Lloyd George.