Adrian Morgan
CRAFTSMANSHIP
A
re you a Beatty or a Jellicoe kind of skipper?
Do you weigh the consequences and plan your
passage with forensic care, although this would
not normally include ‘crossing the T’ of a German
High Seas battle fleet? Or do you throw caution to
the winds, pile on the speed and trust in your innate
ability to act at a moment’s notice to extricate yourself
from trouble (albeit we are not talking about laying
down a smokescreen)?
My grandfather was, I suspect, a Jellicoe man. Most
of the Naval officers who served in the First World War
and who trained in the dying days of Victoria’s reign,
would instinctively have sided with Admiral of the Fleet
John Rushworth Jellicoe, the only man on either side
who could, in Churchill’s opinion, have lost the war in
an afternoon. And that day in May 1916, 100 years ago,
of course, was Jutland.
Up in Scapa Flow on his flagship HMS Iron Duke
Jellicoe had prepared for the inevitable clash between
the British Grand and the German High Seas fleets
with typical thoroughness. Much depended on whether
the man commanding the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron
on the Firth of Forth, Rear-Admiral David Beatty,
could manage to tease out the German fleet into the
jaws of Jellicoe’s battleships which would come
steaming down from Orkney.
Trouble was, when Beatty did make contact, he
kind of forgot to let Jellicoe know as much as he ought
to have done about what was happening. Trusting in
his fast, well armed but lightly armoured battlecruisers,
Beatty, let’s face it, probably just wanted have a crack
at the Germans before Jellicoe turned up.
Alas, within 30 minutes two of his ships had been
hit by German shells, and exploded. The rear admiral’s
flagship Lion would have followed, had it not been for
the foresight of his chief gunnery officer who had
insisted that fire doors were reinserted between the
magazines and the turrets, removed on all the other
ships on Beatty’s orders to quicken their rate of fire.
Who won? The British lost more ships, but the
Germans scuttled home. For Jellicoe, job done; and for
years afterwards the battle was refought in mess rooms
and drawing rooms up and down the land: the Beatty/
Jellicoe battle. The dash and verve of the man who
wore a non-regulation three not four buttons on his
uniform and his hat at a decidedly un-Naval angle,
versus the calculated approach of his superior,
arguably the man who, despite his subordinate’s
cavalier behaviour on the day, did manage to win it,
and with it ensure an Allied victory.
Both men would have sailed dinghies at Dartmouth.
They might, like my grandfather, also have served
before the mast to familiarise themselves with the wayof a ship on the sea, whether festooned with futtock
shrouds and halyards or the fire control apparatus and
wireless aerials of a modern warship.
I suspect Beatty would have been the kind of skipper
to have set out without listening overly much to the
forecast. Jellicoe would have surrounded himself with
almanacs and pilot books (and a radio if he’d had one,
which would have been tuned to the BBC shipping
bulletin for days beforehand). He would have checked
the expiry date on his flares too. Those early years in
small craft would have established both men’s characters
in a way that would be crucial when the firepower of
Germany’s navy met Britain’s on the North Sea.
We have all sailed with Beattys and Jellicoes: the
former SAS officer who reckoned the quickest course
between Poole and Yarmouth was a straight line; and
put my father on the Shingles Bank, hard aground.
Rounding Start Point he did it again. I have sailed with
two brothers in turn, one of whom glues his eyes to the
sounder and plotter, the other glances occasionally at an
App on his iPhone. Another acquaintance once navigated
round Shetland using a linen tea towel, or so the story
goes. Now he was neither a Beatty nor a Jellicoe; just a
justifiably confident seaman. You have to be to rely on a
chart that is simply printed “Present from Lerwick”.Echoes of a battle
100 years on, Jutland’s two great characters resonate still
“A friend
once
navigated
round
Shetland
using a
linen tea
towel”CHARLOTTE WATTERS