The War at Sea

T H E WA R AT S E A

Baby Killers

he situation didn’t last. Ten

days before Christmas 1914,

the Kaiser allowed his Commander

in Chief Admiral Hipper to take

the German scouting fleet to sea.

The next morning, 16th December,

Hipper ordered his ships to open

fire on the town of Scarborough.

Whitby and Hartlepool were next.

For the first time in almost two and

a half centuries, British men and

women had been killed, on British

soil,by enemy warships.

The final death toll was 137.

Winston Churchill called the

Germans “baby killers”. The Royal

Navy had left these northern towns

undefended. Jellicoe’s fleet was 300

miles to the north in Orkney.Fifteen

hours away.

Something had to be done. So

five days before Christmas 1914 the

still incomplete dockyard at Rosyth

became the base for some of the

Royal Navy’s newest and fastest

ships – five battlecruisers under

the command of 43-year old Vice

Admiral David Richard Beatty.

What went wrong at Dogger Bank

Signals no longer fit for purpose

Beatty’s battlecruisers missed the chance of victory on 24th January 1915 at

Dogger Bank. Both fleets were equipped with wireless, but were still working out the

best way to employ this new technology. By the end of 1914 Britain and Russia had

captured three German code books. As a result they could decode German signals, and

so knew when the Germans were likely to come out of harbour.

Wireless intelligence enabled Beatty

to intercept Hipper’s ships, but his own

determination to observe radio silence

proved his undoing. He relied on flag signals

to communicate to his ships, but in the wind

and smoke his signals were misunderstood. A

signal went out which appeared to order the

battlecruisers to stop pursuing the fleeing

enemy – which wasn’t what Beatty intended at

all and he blamed everybody he could possibly

incriminate for the missed opportunity.

Beatty and Jellicoe did not fully consider

the problems of using the same signal flag

technology that Admiral Nelson had used on

HMS Victory at Trafalgar – 110 years before.

It was too slow for the speed of modern ships

and unlike Nelson’s ships, which were used to

fighting in sight of each other, in 1915 modern

ships engaged at long ranges and sometimes

over the horizon.

A VERY DIFFERENT ADMIRAL

Beatty was a very different character from the modest and imperturbable Jellicoe,

who was known in the Fleet as‘Silent Jack’.Promoted to Captain at the early age

of 29,and Rear-Admiral at 38,Beatty was dashing,impetuous and inspirational.

His uniform jacket,in defiance of regulations,had six buttons instead of eight,and

he always wore his cap tilted to the left.Married to the fabulously wealthy Ethel

Tree, an American heiress, he was financially independent.Though regarded by

many in the Navy as a‘show-off’, he was a natural leader who inspired devotion

in those who worked with him.

NOTE OF INTEREST

part 1 – above the waves

SINKING

German ship

sinking after

being attacked

at Dogger Bank