Taken from “Warships and Sea Battles of World War I” (Bernard
Fitzsimons, Ed. London: BPC Publishing Ltd. 1973. ISBN 0-517-130912).

Edward Wittenberg
ewitten507@aol.com

Misunderstanding or tragedy?

But if this victory appeared decisive to the British press, it was
not so obvious to the professional critics. Beatty was unanimously
praised for his part and Fisher’s only quibble with him was that the
battle-cruisers had carried enough fuel for 3,000 miles instead of the
probable 500 miles, and therefore reduced their speed by a knot or two.
The actions of the other officers, however, were not so well received,
and with some reason. Keyes was later to admit that ‘the spectacle of
Moore and Co. yapping around the poor tortured Blucher, with beaten
ships in sight to be sunk, is one of the most distressing episodes of the
war’. Like everyone else, he saw the lucky escape of the German
battle-cruisers, due to a simple misunderstanding, as a tragedy for the
Royal Navy.

Fisher criticised Moore’s decision to give up the chase, calling it
‘despicable’ and ‘absolutely incomprehensible’. While sympathising with
Moore’s confusion and bewilderment at Beatty’s signals from the crippled
Lion, one is forced to conclude that he did not show any of the
initiative necessary in such tense encounters. Before the Lion was
knocked out of the battle, Beatty had clearly shown that his primary
concern was to catch the main body of Hipper’s force and not just to
finish off the already doomed Blucher. With the advantage in numbers,
armament and speed the British had a unique chance to destroy all of
the German battle-cruisers, but Moore had let the opportunity slip.
Churchill and Fisher shortly sent him away to command a cruiser
squadron in the Canary Islands region.

Moore’s attitude was symptomatic of the rigid adherence to orders
which characterized the Royal Navy’s outlook at that time. Initiative and
independent judgement were not encouraged. Fisher might fume that ‘in
war the first principle is to disobey orders. Any fool can obey orders!’,
but he was hardly renowned for his tolerance when subordinates
ventured to cross his opinions and commands.

There was also a failure on board the Lion to communicate
Beatty’s wishes exactly. The order to engage the enemy’s rear was both
unnecessary and confusing, and wag in any case mixed up with the
flags of his previous direction. Without this ambiguous signal Moore
would have continued to fire away at the Seydlitz and Derfflinger, and
perhaps this was the reason why Beatty was not very eager to chastise
his Second-in-Command afterwards. But it is worth remembering that
Seymour, Beatty’s Flag Lieutenant, had had no specialist training in
signals, and had sent unclear messages during the Scarborough Raid
action.

Probably Captain Pelly of the Tiger was the person who came in
for most criticism, especially from Fisher, who thought that his failure
to engage the Moltke was ‘inexcusable’, and that he was a ‘poltroon’ for
not charging after the enemy when the Lion sheered out of line. The
first point is worth examining. The official naval historian is to some
extent correct in following Fisher and pointing out that ‘the master
principle was that no ship should be left unfired upon’, but there is
another side to the matter. Pelly’s information regarding the position of
the Indomitable was in fact incorrect but his tactics were right. After
all, the leading three German battle-cruisers continued to concentrate
upon the Lion (though the Tiger was also engaged and suffered six
hits) and achieved great effect. Crippling the enemy’s leading had been,
and still remained, a major stepping-stone on the path to winning the
battle, and the official historian was forced to admit that the German
firing policy ‘was all that the advocates of concentration on the van
could wish’.

Finally, and perhaps more important still, the fuss over Pelly’s
decision tended to obscure the much more vital fact that the British
standards of shooting were rather poor. Here indeed could the Tiger
feel somewhat ashamed, for despite being the only British battle-cruiser
equipped with a director fire-control system she had not registered a
single hit. The Southampton, as mentioned earlier, had seen her shots
regularly land some 3,000 yards over the German ships. The Tiger was
in fact a special case, with a gunnery lieutenant who was ‘villainously
bad’ (Fisher) and a large number of recovered deserters among the
crew. Moreover, being a relatively new ship, she had not fired at a
moving target!

Nevertheless she serves as a symbol for the gunnery standards of
the British battle-cruisers, which, even allowing for the vast clouds of
smoke often obscuring the view, was very poor when compared with that
of their opponents. Apart from the Blucher and the Kolberg, which
suffered at the hands of Aurora in the first encounter, the only hits
made upon the German ships during the entire battle were the two on
Seydlitz and the one on the Derfflinger. In contrast the Lion received
16 hits while the Tiger was hit six times. Had the German shells been
more effective, the battle of the Dogger Bank might have had a different
ending, the British also lacked a really good armour-piercing shell.