The best books about the Battle of Jutland

This is the history I wish I’d learned at school. History has always been an interest of mine, but far too often history books focus on what is possibly best described as the winner’s reason for going to war, or how one ‘nation’ did all these wonderful things… That’s how it is taught at school, and for most of us, that’s all we ever learn.

I count myself fortunate to have had teachers in this subject, like Professor Clark, who taught us to look at the ‘little’ people involved, and especially at how ‘history’ is almost never a single isolated event, but more like a domino tumble. This book is the perfect example of that view.

Clark's examination of the lead up to the First World War is a masterpiece. It describes in detail the political dramas, the rivalries, the ambitions, and the complex web of formal and informal agreements and more important, how they developed. The assassination of the Archduke was merely the first domino, and even then the train of the tumble could have been broken, but, as it gathered pace, key players, with their own agendas, intervened to keep it going.

Clark sets it all out for the reader, the desire to contain Germany by the British, the desire to avenge 1871 by the French, Serbia’s ambition to create its own ‘little’ Empire in the Balkans, Japanese desire to protect its interests in the Far East and negate German influence… And then there were the newspapers and their role in whipping up public opinion in each of the ‘great’ nations.

The book sets out each nation’s political ambitions, and points to the crucial points at which things could have been stopped and contained had the politicians taken an objective look at what they were unleashing. This is history as it should be studied.

The Battle of Jutland has fascinated many people down the years. Who won? Some say it was a ‘draw’, others that in terms of ships lost, the Germans ‘won’, but in truth, though the British lost more ships, they ‘won’ a strategic victory in that the High Seas Fleet never again challenged the Royal Navy on the High Seas. As Churchill said, Admiral Jellico was the one man who could have lost the war in an afternoon.

Ever since the ‘inconclusive’ Battle of Jutland there has been a controversy over how it was fought and the outcome. The British media expected a new Trafalgar, or a new Glorious First of June, with the German High Seas Fleet annihilated in a great clash of arms in which ship matched ship and slugged it out. When that didn’t happen, they turned on the Royal Navy and the Commander in Chief of the Grand Fleet, Sir John Jellicoe.

There are a number of books on the subject, drawing on ‘official’ sources with a sprinkling of ‘unofficial’ opinion. Most fall into one of two categories, either giving a considered analysis of the battle, or venturing into a speculation on what might have happened if Beatty had been in charge. This book draws on Jellicoe’s own personal journals, his reports, and his letters as well as the logbooks, charts, and signal logs from the battle. The author has the advantage of being the grandson of Admiral Jellicoe, and his analysis of the battle draws on the Admiralty’s own analysis and discussions. It is well written and a compelling read, especially if one is familiar with the other treatises on the battle.

The Admiral rose to his position due to his technical and professional ability. His deputy, Beatty, rose largely through patronage — Churchill promoted him over the heads of other, possibly more competent, Flag Officers. Like Churchill, Beatty came from a titled and landed family, Jellicoe did not. His grandfather was a Director of a merchant shipping company and Sir John himself wasn’t a politician, or one to court political favour.

After the battle, which he’d conducted using plans of engagement the Admiralty had approved, applying precautions against torpedo attacks the Admiralty had stipulated, some in the admiralty began to brief the idea that had Beatty been in charge, the fleet would have behaved like a heavy cavalry unit and ‘charged’ at the German Fleet to start a melee. More level headed analysts have since worked out that any attempt to do so would have led to huge losses, mainly on the British side.

Nicholas Jellicoe’s book analyses all the arguments, and while it is certainly biased (who wouldn’t be) he presents a coherent and compelling defence of his grandfather and the Royal Navy. Jutland was the ‘unfinished battle’ but the repercussions, the arguments, and the legacy have had a lasting influence. 

This book makes fascinating reading as it examines the German Battlecruisers (the Germans actually referred to them as Panzerkreuzers—Armoured Cruisers) and they carried smaller calibre main guns than their British counterparts, sacrificing gun power for better protection with heavier armour. They took an enormous amount of punishment at Jutland, but only one was lost to battle damage, the others survived to fight again another day—and they did, though not in the North Sea, but against the Russians in the Baltic.

Anyone who has read anything at all about the Battle of Jutland will have realised that the British and German ‘Battlecruisers’ did most of the fighting, and suffered the heaviest losses. This book gives details of the German ships involved, their design, evolution, build and most interesting, the actual log accounts of the engagement make for even more fascinating study.

Of the many books available on the Battle of Jutland, this one is a very professional look at what went wrong.

It acknowledges the key issue that no one in either fleet had any experience of handling fleets of this size and type, or fighting a battle at the ranges their guns were capable of reaching. Admirals Harper and Bacon remain thoroughly professional in their analysis of the failings on the British side, identifying such things as poor communication of orders by signal, poor signal security—Beatty’s flagship signalled by lamp a request for the night’s challenge and reply and received them from Princess Royal. So did at least one of the German ships which later used the challenge to confuse a British cruiser…

A key finding was that many of the British admirals had no ‘staff’ trained to process information, draft orders in a sensible manner, and transmit them. Key information was thus lost or simply not transmitted. One example being the ambiguity of some of Beatty’s early signals, the classic being “Enemy bears xx miles south east of me.” To which Jellico responded, “Where are you?” since the Battlecruiser were then out of sight of the Grand Fleet.

It was left to a scouting cruiser to report that they had the Battlecruisers in sight, and Jellico was able to deploy his ships and ‘Cross Scheer’s T’. They criticise the Admiralty as well, pointing to the fact information received by the Admiralty, or deciphered by Room 40, was not passed to Jellico timeously if it was passed on at all.

The admiral's appraisal was written after World War 2, and sparked some controversy since Beattie was, and still is, regarded as one of Britain’s ‘great’ Admirals, an opinion not shared by many who have studied his handling of the battlecruisers and his tactics. His supporters in Westminster and Whitehall, however lost no time in painting Jellico as lacking decisiveness, being too cautious, and throwing away the chance to annihilate the High Seas Fleet—a canard Harper and Bacon refute.

This is the ‘Appreciation’ that Admirals Harper and Bacon responded to. It was never published or edited for publication at the time it was written by Captains A C and G B Dewar in 1920-21.

Both were firmly in the Beatty “charge the guns and slug it out ship to ship” faction and even Admirals Chatham and Keys, both Beatty supporters found it far, far too one-sided and likely to divide the RN into factions (Jutland still does). Though it was never published, copies did circulate and Churchill obviously had a copy since he quotes it in his own book “The World Crisis”. Eventually, in 1928, orders were given that all copies were to be collected and destroyed…some survived.

This book is remarkable in that it is the work of two historians who reproduce the original text with explanatory notes, annotations, and additional material. Reading it soon leads the reader to understanding why it was deemed too damaging to publish. The Dewar brothers, both in Admiralty posts at the time of the battle, defend Beatty throughout and assert that Jellico was neither bold enough nor simply not up to leading the Fleet at such a moment. It must be said that neither of them had experienced leading a Fleet, and there does appear to be an element of covering up the failures of the Admiralty staff to it as well.

It is a compulsive, if difficult read, and it goes a long, long way in explaining how and why the Service became split over Beatty and Jellico to the point even Churchill recognised how divisive the debate had become. It was he who insisted that the ships that became HMS Anson and HMS Howe could not be named as proposed HMS Beatty and HMS Jellico.