Castles of Steel

  Despite this assessment, Jellicoe soon realized that a far greater danger than German destroyers menaced his fleet when it lay at anchor: German submarines. Before the war, no one had imagined that such a thing was possible. Because British submarines had never been able to remain at sea long enough to reach Heligoland from Scapa Flow, the Admiralty had been convinced that Scapa was beyond the range of U-boats from Germany. This belief was short-lived: the ramming of U-15 by Birmingham off Fair Island in the first week of the war gave Jellicoe early evidence that German submarines were already operating in the northern North Sea. Even so, the Admiralty at first did not believe the submarines were coming from Germany; instead, it imagined that the Germans must have a secret base somewhere on the coast of Norway.

  Distance was expected to provide an outer shield for Scapa Flow, but the main defense of the anchorage was believed to have been generously provided by other elements of nature. There were simply too many natural obstacles—tides, currents, rocks—to permit navigation by a submerged submarine. The approaches to Hoxa Sound, the only wide and deep entrance, lay through the Pentland Firth, a race of fiercely turbulent tidal streams flowing around the northern tip of Scotland at a rate of 8 to 10 knots. Churchill accepted the conventional belief that these factors made the Flow impenetrable: “No one, we believed, could take a submarine submerged through the intricate and swirling channels.” Jellicoe, on the other hand, believed that a submarine “could master the currents by proceeding on the surface at night, or submerged with a periscope showing by day,” especially if the effort was made at slack water. Experienced British submarine offi-cers shared Jellicoe’s opinion and believed that passage through the lesser channels would be difficult, but that the main Hoxa Channel, if otherwise undefended, could be penetrated by a determined submarine commander.

  On Monday, September 1, Jellicoe’s fears appeared to have been realized: a submarine was reported inside Scapa Flow. The episode, which came to be known as the First Battle of Scapa Flow, began on a quiet evening when the anchorage was shrouded in rain showers and driving mist. Twelve dreadnoughts, armored and light cruisers, and the 4th Destroyer Flotilla were anchored off Scapa pier engaged in coaling, taking on stores and ammunition, and cleaning boilers. Those battleships equipped with antitorpedo nets had spread them out. About 6:00 p.m., as dusk was deepening, the light cruiser Falmouth, anchored near the northeastern entrance to the Flow, suddenly opened fire on what she reported as a submarine periscope. Other “sightings” followed: the dreadnought Vanguard fired on an object reported as a periscope; a destroyer on patrol near the Hoxa entrance opened fire; the armored cruiser Drake signaled that she had sighted a submarine. Who knew what had been seen? The sky was darkening in rain and mist and the eyes of the lookouts were reddened by strain. Jellicoe, taking no chances, ordered the fleet to raise steam and “prepare for torpedo attack.” The light cruisers and destroyers weighed anchor and began signaling and racing about. More guns boomed as ships fired at new “sightings,” and shells landed and exploded on farms and fields on the surrounding islands. Picket boats, trawlers, and other small craft cruised up and down the lines of big ships to confuse the “submarine,” to force it to keep its periscope down, and, if it was sighted, to ram it. Searchlights played back and forth across the water. Colliers and store ships were ordered alongside battleships lacking antitorpedo nets to take the blows of attacking torpedoes. By 9:30 p.m., with black funnel smoke adding to the thickening murk, the dreadnoughts began to feel their way out to the Pentland Firth. It required seamanship, with no navigational lights and visibility dropping at times to less than a hundred yards. Nevertheless, by 11:00 p.m. the fleet had cleared not only the Flow but the Pentland Firth, and the admiral could breathe more easily. By midnight, the vast anchorage was empty except for Cyclops with her vital telephone line and the destroyers left behind thrashing the Flow in search of a U-boat.

  Later, Jellicoe reported of this “battle”: “No trace of a submarine was discovered and subsequent investigation showed that the alarm may have been false, the evidence not being conclusive either way.” The Commander-in-Chief maintained, however, that the only possible action when such an alarm was raised was to take the fleet to sea despite the dangers of haste, fog, or stormy weather. The incident also convinced Jellicoe that “the fleet could not remain at a base that was so open to this form of attack as Scapa Flow.” From that moment on, the insecurity of his naval bases haunted Jellicoe; on any night, he feared, submarines might come into the anchorage and send his fleet to the bottom. Feeding his nightmare was the torpedoing of Pathfinder on September 5 off the entrance to the Firth of Forth, and the dramatic loss of the three Bacchantes on September 22. “I long for a submarine defense at Scapa,” he wrote to Churchill on September 30. “It would give such a feeling of confidence. I can’t sleep half so well inside as when outside, mainly because I feel we are risking such a mass of valuable ships in a place where, if a submarine did get in, she practically has the British dreadnought fleet at her mercy up to the number of her torpedoes.”

  There were other episodes when U-boats were believed to be inside British anchorages. Jellicoe’s “First Battle of Scapa” was followed in mid-October by Beatty’s “Battle of Jemimaville.” As Beatty’s battle cruisers steamed slowly into Cromarty Firth, the bow wave of a destroyer was misidentified as the wake of a U-boat periscope. A 4-inch gun opened fire, causing damage to a roof and chimney in the nearby village of Jemimaville. A baby lying in a cradle was slightly injured; the parents were soothed when a fleet doctor told them that at least two submarines had been sunk. Then, on October 16, one day after the cruiser Hawke was sunk with a loss of 500 lives, Jellicoe again was told that a U-boat was inside Scapa Flow. Once more the waters of the Flow were churned by propellers as the fleet put to sea. Although Jellicoe reported the next day that he believed the report was false, he also told the Admiralty that he could not continue using Scapa Flow until an effective submarine defense was in place. He took the fleet and retreated west to the remote bases of Loch-na-Keal, on the Isle of Mull in western Scotland, and Lough Swilly, on the north coast of Ireland. He did not return to Scapa Flow until November 9. Even then, when Admiral Sir Percy Scott, the Royal Navy’s premier gunnery expert, spent a night on board Iron Duke at Scapa Flow, Scott asked before retiring, “Shall we be here in the morning?” “I wonder,” Jellicoe replied.

  The Commander-in-Chief was not the only British admiral alarmed by the vulnerability of the Grand Fleet’s bases. On October 17, Beatty took the unorthodox step of writing directly to the First Lord, sending his letter by hand with an officer going to London. Beatty had been the First Lord’s naval secretary, knew Churchill well, and thus emboldened, skipped the official chain of command—including Jellicoe.

  “I think it is right that you should know how things generally affect the fleet,” he told the First Lord.

  At present we feel that we are working up for a catastrophe of a very large character. The feeling is gradually possessing the fleet that all is not right somewhere. The menace of mines and submarines is proving larger every day and adequate means to meet or combat them are not forthcoming and we are gradually being pushed out of the North Sea and off our own particular perch. How does this arise? By the very apparent fact that we have no base where we can with any degree of safety lie for coaling, replenishing, refitting and repairing, after two and a half months of war. . . .

  As it is, we have no place to lay our heads. We are at Loch-na-Keal, Isle of Mull. My picket boats are at the entrance, the nets are out and the men are at the guns, waiting for coal which has run low, but ready to move at a moment’s notice. Other squadrons are in the same plight. We have been running now hard since 28th July; small defects are creeping up which we haven’t time to take in hand. Forty-eight hours is our spell in harbor with steam ready to move at four hours’ notice, coaling on an average of 1,400 tons a time; night defence stations. The men can stand it, but the machine can’t and we must have a place whe
re we can stop for from four or five days every now and then to give the engineers a chance. Such a place does not exist, so the questions arises, how long can we go on? . . . The remedy is to fix upon a base and make it impervious to submarine attack. . . .

  I think you know me well enough to know that I do not shout without cause. . . . I would not write thus if I did not know that you with your quick grasp of detail and imagination would make something out of it.

  Beatty’s letter helped to galvanize Churchill. On October 23, the First Lord wrote to Jellicoe, “Every effort will be made to secure you rest and safety in Scapa and adjacent anchorages. Net defence hastened utmost and strengthened. . . . I wish to make absolute sanctuary for you there. . . . Ask for anything you want in men, money, or material. You must have a safe resting place; tell me how I can help you.” On November 2, two days after Fisher returned as First Sea Lord, specific reinforcements were ordered: forty-eight armed trawlers were to go to Scapa Flow; rafts and barges were to be fitted with antisubmarine nets and sent north; twelve additional destroyers would join the Grand Fleet immediately; another light cruiser squadron was to be formed for North Sea patrol work; heavy booms and electrically operated mines for the anchorages were to be supplied without delay.

  When the war had been won and the answers mattered less, questions finally were asked: Why did the Grand Fleet begin the war without a North Sea base? Why had it taken so long to choose among the various alternative sites? Why, in varying degrees, had they been left undefended? Who was responsible? Jellicoe, the man who had been most immediately affected by the lack of a protected base, pointed no finger at any individual. In his book The Grand Fleet, published in 1919, he employed his usual measured language: “In pre-war days, though it had been decided that the use of northern bases would be necessary in the event of a war with Germany, the bases had not been prepared to meet the new situation. . . . In fact, the situation was that, whilst we had shifted our fleet to the north, all the conveniences for the maintenance of that fleet were still in the Channel ports.” Specifically, as to Scapa Flow, he continued, the question of providing shore-based defenses had been discussed “on more than one occasion,” but nothing had been done because of lack of funds.

  Churchill took some passages in Jellicoe’s book as criticism of himself. When the former First Lord’s own five-volume work about the war, The World Crisis, began to appear in 1923, he defended himself by placing responsibility in part on Jellicoe. In 1923, as in 1914, Churchill believed that Jellicoe’s anxiety concerning submarines had been excessive:

  No one seriously contemplated hostile submarines in time of war entering the war harbors of either side and attacking the ships at anchor. To achieve this the submarine would have to face all the immense difficulties of making its way up an estuary or inlet amid shoal water and intricate navigation, submerged all the time and with only an occasional glimpse through the periscope; secondly, while doing this, avoiding all the patrolling craft which for many miles kept watch . . . thirdly, to brave the unknown and unknowable terrors of mines and obstructions of all sorts, with which it must be assumed the channels would become increasingly infested. It was thought these deterrents would prove effectual. Looking back, we can see now that this assumption was correct. There is no recorded instance of a German submarine having penetrated into any British war harbor.

  Nevertheless, Churchill continued, “all of a sudden, the Grand Fleet began to see submarines in Scapa Flow. . . . Guns were fired, destroyers thrashed the waters, and the whole gigantic armada put to sea in haste and dudgeon. . . . Of course, there never was a submarine in Scapa Flow. None during the whole war achieved the terrors of the passage . . . none ever pene-trated the lair of the Grand Fleet.”

  Then the former First Lord turned to defend himself:

  Reproach has been levelled at the Admiralty for not having accurately measured this danger before the war and taken proper precautions against it. It would have been a matter of enormous expense to create a vast system of booms with deep nets and other obstructions for the defense of all our northern harbors. I should have had the very greatest difficulty in coming to the Cabinet and Parliament with such a demand during 1913 and 1914. Not only was every penny of naval expenditure challenged, but this particular expenditure would have been clearly of a most alarmist character. . . . Still, if the Sea Lords and the Naval Staff had recommended solidly and as a matter of prime importance the provision of these great obstructive works at the Forth, at Cromarty, and at Scapa, it would have been my duty to go forward. But no such recommendation was made to me in the years preceding the war. . . . It certainly does not lie with anyone who was a member of the then Board of Admiralty to level such reproaches. [Jellicoe then had been Second Sea Lord.] Sir John Jellicoe’s book, although no doubt not intended for such a purpose, has been made a foundation for several reflections upon our pre-war arrangements. . . . He recounts the dangers to which his fleet was subjected; but had he, either as Controller or Second Sea Lord, foreseen these dangers, he would of course have warned his colleagues and his chief. It is clear therefore that if the Admiralty is to be criticized in this respect, it would be unfair to cite him as an authority.

  Churchill’s defense was well constructed. When he says that as First Lord he acted (or failed to act) in accordance with the professional advice he received, his position appears reasonable. But, elsewhere in The World Crisis, we read Winston Churchill’s description of his own role in the administration of the Admiralty: “I interpreted my duty in the following way: I accepted full responsibility for bringing about successful results and in that spirit I exercised a close general supervision over everything that was done or proposed. Further, I claimed and exercised an unlimited power of suggestion and initiative over the whole field, subject only to the approval and agreement of the First Sea Lord on operational matters. Right or wrong, that is what I did, and it is on that basis that I wish to be judged.”

  Once Churchill concentrated his mind on Jellicoe’s needs, the work was accelerated. By the end of October, the defenses of Rosyth were completed and the entrance to Cromarty was secure. By the end of November, the land defense of Scapa Flow had been reinforced by heavy guns. The ancient battleship Hannibal, carrying four 12-inch guns, had been anchored to cover the Hoy entrance while her sister Magnificent guarded the Hoxa entrance. More 6-inch and 4-inch guns, manned by Orkney Territorials and Royal Marine reservists, were mounted in shore batteries. Antisubmarine obstructions multiplied. The first of these were simply buoys moored across the channels with herring nets strung between them. As autumn turned to winter, the weather and tides tore them to pieces. Stronger steel nets were laid, and double lines of drifters moored to nets were stationed in strings across Hoxa, Switha, and Hoy Sounds. Fifty trawlers, fitted with guns and explosive sweeps that could be detonated from the towing ship, patrolled the entrances. Electric contact mines were laid and booms constructed of miscellaneous rafts and barges carried torpedo nets. These obstructions were maintained by trawlers moored in positions in which they were exposed to the whole fury of winter gales; in many cases they were within a few yards of a rocky coast with heavy seas breaking over them and bringing on board tons of water. The trawler captains knew that, for the safety of the fleet, they had to remain where they were and maintain the barriers.

  Also during November, the first block ships, elderly but still serviceable merchant ships, were sunk across the eastern channels. These sacrifices were only partly successful. The block ships were brought up to the Flow light, with no cement ballast. Ideally, they were to be sunk quickly by blowing their bottoms out, but it was difficult to make them go down in just the right spot with 8- and 9-knot tides pushing against their hulls. It could be done only during the brief intervals of slack water when the tide was turning. And, once in position, there was danger of winter gales shifting them or even breaking them up. Still, they were better than nothing. By the end of 1914, sunken ships had been placed across all of the narrower channels
. In time, these rusting, reddish-brown hulls and superstructures would become part of the Orkneys scenery. Particularly conspicuous for many years in Kirk Sound was the rusty but still graceful Thames, with her three masts, two funnels, and clipper bow with its bowsprit rising above the surface. This left the three main entrances of Hoxa, Switha, and Hoy sounds to be closed by buoys and drifters with steel nets and booms with “gates” to permit the entry and exit of friendly ships.

  Scapa Flow was so large that high winds and bad weather created dangerous conditions even inside the harbor. At the end of October 1914, the exposed nature of Scapa Bay and its pier on the northern side of the harbor dictated removal of the fleet anchorage and base across the Flow to the southwestern side. The dreadnought battle squadrons now lay north of Flotta Island, and the destroyer flotillas, fleet auxiliaries, and base ships for administration, communications, repairs, ship maintenance, ordnance, hospital ships, and supply ships were placed in rows up and down Longhope, Gutter, and Weddell Sounds, and along the Hoy shore. Even so, conditions worsened in winter. Darkness set in at 3:30 p.m. The wind howled continuously and winter gales sometimes reached a hundred miles an hour. Even inside the Flow, heavy seas damaged large ships, immobilized destroyers, and made it impossible to lower boats. The first of these winter storms came on November 11 when most of the Grand Fleet was present. All work on harbor defense stopped and all ships kept up steam for sea. Again, at the beginning of December, Scapa Flow was struck by a three-day gale. Every ship had two anchors down, yet several battleships still dragged their anchors and four seamen were washed overboard and drowned.