Battle of Jutland (1916): The Great Naval Clash of World War I

The Battle of Jutland was the largest naval battle of the First World War and the only full-scale clash between the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet. Fought in the North Sea off Denmark on 31 May and 1 June 1916, it involved around 250 warships and cost more than 8,600 lives. Although Britain lost more ships and men, Germany failed to break British control of the seas.

Background: the naval race and the blockade

Before 1914 Britain and Germany had competed to build ever larger fleets of dreadnought battleships. When war came, Britain’s larger Grand Fleet, based at Scapa Flow in Orkney, imposed a distant blockade that cut Germany off from overseas trade.

Dreadnoughts, named after HMS Dreadnought of 1906, were battleships armed with a uniform battery of big guns and driven by turbines. Battlecruisers carried similar guns and were faster, but had much lighter armour. Both sides also relied on fleets of cruisers and destroyers to scout and to attack with torpedoes.

The German High Seas Fleet was too small to seek a straightforward battle. Its strategy was to lure part of the British fleet into a trap and destroy it, evening the odds. In early 1916 the new German commander, Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer, adopted a more aggressive approach.

The fleets and the plan

Scheer planned to send Vice Admiral Franz Hipper’s battlecruisers north towards the Skagerrak to draw out Vice Admiral Sir David Beatty’s Battlecruiser Fleet, with the German battleships following out of sight. British code-breakers in the Admiralty’s Room 40 detected that the Germans were preparing to sail, and Admiral Sir John Jellicoe took the whole Grand Fleet to sea on the evening of 30 May, even before the Germans left port.

The British had about 151 ships, including 28 dreadnought battleships and 9 battlecruisers; the Germans had about 99, including 16 dreadnoughts, 6 older pre-dreadnoughts and 5 battlecruisers.

The battlecruiser action: the run to the south

The battlecruisers met in the afternoon of 31 May. As Hipper turned south to lead Beatty towards Scheer’s battleships, the two lines exchanged fire. German gunnery was accurate, and within half an hour HMS Indefatigable and HMS Queen Mary blew up, with the loss of almost all their crews.

Beatty is reported to have remarked that there seemed to be something wrong with “our bloody ships” that day. When the German battle fleet appeared on the horizon, Beatty turned north, leading the Germans towards Jellicoe in what became known as the “run to the north”.

The clash of the battle fleets

Around 6.15 p.m. Jellicoe deployed his battleships into a single line across the path of the German fleet, a manoeuvre known as “crossing the T” that allowed all his guns to fire while the Germans could reply only with their leading ships. Shortly afterwards HMS Invincible, flagship of Rear Admiral Horace Hood, exploded, leaving only six survivors.

Facing overwhelming fire, Scheer ordered his whole fleet to turn about together, a well-practised manoeuvre, and disappeared into the mist. He then turned back, perhaps hoping to slip past the British, and again ran into the Grand Fleet. To escape, he sent his battlecruisers and destroyers forward in a desperate attack. Jellicoe turned his battleships away from the German torpedoes, a cautious decision that was later heavily criticised.

The night action and German escape

During the night of 31 May to 1 June, the German fleet forced its way through the light forces at the rear of the British fleet in a series of confused, close-range actions. The armoured cruiser HMS Black Prince and several destroyers were sunk, and the German pre-dreadnought Pommern was torpedoed and blew up with all hands.

Poor signalling meant Jellicoe did not learn where the Germans were going. Several British ships saw German vessels crossing astern during the night but did not report them, and intercepted German signals revealing Scheer’s route were not passed on effectively by the Admiralty. By dawn on 1 June the High Seas Fleet was safely past Horns Reef and heading home. The badly damaged Lützow had been abandoned and scuttled during the night.

Key people

• Sir John Jellicoe (1859–1935), commander of the Grand Fleet. Winston Churchill later called him the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon.
• Sir David Beatty (1871–1936), commander of the British battlecruisers, who succeeded Jellicoe in command of the Grand Fleet in late 1916.
• Reinhard Scheer (1863–1928), commander of the German High Seas Fleet.
• Franz Hipper (1863–1932), commander of the German battlecruisers.

Losses

Timeline

• 1916, 30 May: The Grand Fleet sails after Room 40 detects German preparations.
• 1916, 31 May, early morning: The High Seas Fleet leaves the Jade estuary.
• 1916, 31 May, about 3.48 p.m.: The battlecruisers open fire.
• 1916, 31 May, about 4.26 p.m.: HMS Queen Mary explodes.
• 1916, 31 May, about 6.30 p.m.: HMS Invincible explodes as the battle fleets meet.
• 1916, 31 May–1 June, night: The German fleet breaks through behind the British.
• 1916, 1 June, morning: The High Seas Fleet reaches safety near Horns Reef.

Consequences

Germany announced the battle as a victory, and in purely numerical terms it inflicted greater losses. But the High Seas Fleet had narrowly avoided destruction, and Scheer advised the Kaiser that the war could not be won at sea by surface battle. The German fleet made only a few further sorties, and Germany turned increasingly to submarines, leading to the unrestricted submarine warfare of 1917, which helped draw the United States into the war.

The British blockade continued to tighten. Idle and short of food, German sailors mutinied at Kiel in late 1918, an event that helped bring about the armistice of November 1918. The interned German fleet was scuttled by its own crews at Scapa Flow on 21 June 1919.

Legacy

In Britain, disappointment that Jutland was not a second Trafalgar fuelled a bitter, decades-long controversy between supporters of Jellicoe and Beatty. The battle also produced one of the war’s most famous British heroes. Jack Cornwell, a 16-year-old boy seaman on the light cruiser HMS Chester, remained at his exposed gun after the rest of its crew had been killed or wounded. He died of his injuries on 2 June 1916 and received a posthumous Victoria Cross, and his story was widely used to inspire schoolchildren.

Debate centred on whether Jellicoe had been too cautious in turning away from the torpedo attack and in avoiding a night battle, and whether Beatty had been reckless and poorly served by his signal officers. The Royal Navy studied the battle closely, improving shells, signalling and the handling of propellant. Wrecks on the seabed are protected as war graves, and the centenary in 2016 was marked by commemorations in Orkney and in Germany.

Why it matters

Jutland was the last great battle between fleets of battleships fighting mainly with guns. Its outcome confirmed British command of the sea, which kept the blockade of Germany in place and shaped the rest of the war. It also exposed the weaknesses of the battlecruiser, a type of ship whose speed had won the Battle of the Falkland Islands in 1914 but whose light armour proved fatal against equal opponents.