"Our Bloody Ships" or "Our Bloody System"?

Jutland and the Loss of the Battle Cruisers,

1916
Author(s): Nicholas A. Lambert
Source: The Journal of Military History, Vol. 62, No. 1 (Jan., 1998), pp. 29-55
Published by: Society for Military History
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 "Our Bloody Ships" or "Our Bloody
System"? Jutland and the Loss of
the Battle Cruisers, 1916*

Nicholas A. Lambert

Beatty came into the Lion's chart-house. Tired and depressed, he

sat down on the settee, and settling himself in a corner he closed
his eyes. Unable to hide his disappointment at the result of the bat-
tle, he repeated in a weary voice, "There is something wrong with
our ships," then opening his eyes and looking at the writer, he
added, "And something wrong with our system." Having thus
unburdened himself he fell asleep.
-Rear AdmiralW. S. Chalmers'

ON the afternoon of 31 May 1916, a force of six British battle cruis-

ers and four fast battleships led by Vice Admiral Sir David Beatty
encountered five German battle cruisers of the First Scouting Group
commanded by Rear Admiral Franz Hipper, closely supported by the
main body of the High Sea Fleet. In a running engagement lasting over
two and a half hours, Beatty succeeded in luring the German fleet north-
ward into contact with a much stronger British battle fleet advancing
behind the flag of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe. But at a high price. Beatty
lost two of his battle cruisers while inflicting only light damage on his

* I thank Lt.-Cmdr.Jock Gardner RN (ret.), Cmdr. James Goldrick, RAN,Cap-

tain Jeremy Read RN (ret.), Jenny Wraight (Admiralty Librarian), D. K. Brown,
George Malcolmson, Dr. Andrew Gordon, Professor Ronald Spector, and ProfessorJon
Sumida for their assistance, helpful comments, and patience (over the last six years)
in awaiting the completion of this essay.
1. RearAdmiralW. S. Chalmers, The Life and Letters of David, Earl Beatty (Lon-
don: Hodder and Stoughton, 1951), 262.

The Journal of Military History 62 (January 1998): 29-56 0 Society for Military History * 29
 NICHOLAS A. LAMBERT

pursuers. It was the loss of the second ship, HMS Queen Mary, that first
prompted Beatty into famously remarking: "There seems to be some-
thing wrong with our bloody ships today!"2 In the ensuing fleet action,
during which Jellicoe's ships scored numerous hits on the German fleet,
the British lost a third battle cruiser, HMS Invincible, flagship of Rear
Admiral Horace Hood (Third Battle Cruiser Squadron). Although none of
the three big ships had been subject to heavy punishment-suffering few
hits-all were lost as the result of sudden catastrophic internal explo-
sions that destroyed the ships in a matter of seconds.
Much has been written about the loss of HM ships Invincible, Inde-
fatigable, and Queen Mary at the Battle of Jutland. The cause or causes
of the explosions has been the subject of considerable informed and
uninformed speculation. About the only point on which nearly all
authorities are agreed is the inadequacy of the armour protection given
to British battle cruisers. The standard explanation is that in each case
a single German shell plunged through the thin deck armour to burst
inside one of the main magazines.4 Alternatively, splinters from a direct
hit on one of the (again thinly armoured) turrets penetrated the gun-
house or ammunition supply trunk, igniting the waiting propellant to
produce a flash fire that spread down the ammunition hoists to detonate
the main cordite store. There are several different explanations for why
a fire inside a turret could have exploded the magazines. According to
one theory, the British had left open the doors connecting the handling
room at the base of the turret with the magazines. Another hypothesis
suggests the passage of flame was facilitated by the prior removal of all
antiflash doors inside the turrets. Alternatively, the antiflash doors were
in place but they were either defective or inadequate.5
Another more recent study has pointed out that German antiflash
precautions were far more primitive than those employed by the British,
and that during the Battle of Jutland the British also scored hits on Ger-
man turrets that ignited waiting propellant to produce flash fires, yet the
German ships did not explode. The author thus blames the loss of the
British battle cruisers on the volatility of their propellant. Whereas Ger-
man nitrocellulose charges burnt relatively slowly when ignited, by con-
trast British charges made with Cordite MD tended to explode. (Or more

2. Ibid., 234.
3. Arthur Marder,From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, 5 vols. (Oxford:Claren-
don Press, 1961-70), 3: 208-14; Commander H. H. Frost, The Battle of Jutland
(Annapolis, Md.:Naval Institute Press, 1936), 213.
4. Julian Corbett, History of the Great War-Naval Operations, 5 vols. (London:
Longmans, 1920), 3: 336.
5. Admiral Reginald Bacon, The Jutland Scandal (London: Hutchinson and Co.,
1925), 34.

30 * THE JOURNAL OF
 "Our Bloody Ships" or "OurBloody System"?

accurately, the cordite burned furiously when under pressure or in a

confined space such as a turret.) He concluded that "if the British ships
had had German charges it is very unlikely that they would have blown
up": conversely, "if British propellant charges had been used in the Ger-
man ship" they would have been the ones to lose three and possibly a
fourth battle cruiser.6 This might have been true, but it was hardly an
option for the Royal Navy in 1916.
Much of the reason for all this speculation is the failure by the Royal
Navy to agree after Jutland, even tentatively, on the most probable cause
of the explosions. Many historians, indeed, have assumed that the British
naval administration, the Board of Admiralty, did not bother to conduct
a proper enquiry, either because the explanation was so obvious or due
to a lack of conclusive evidence. This is not correct. Immediately after
the battle, the Third Sea Lord's department (responsible for naval
materiel) launched an investigation into "the causes of explosion in
British warships when hit by heavy shell" After reviewing all the avail-
able evidence and interviewing the few survivors, the Third Sea Lord
(Rear Admiral Frederick Tudor), the Director of Naval Ordnance (Rear
Admiral Morgan Singer), and the Director of Naval Construction (Ten-
nyson d'Eyncourt) swiftly agreed that the explosions were due to the gun
crews having ignored cordite safety regulations in an effort to speed up
their rate of gunfire. They found ample evidence to indicate that in addi-
tion to the charges normally in transit from the magazines to the guns
there were large numbers of unprotected cartridges inside the turrets
stacked for "ready use." Under these conditions, they concluded, each
turret became its own magazine in which case a single hit on any turret
would have produced an enormous explosion and consequently the loss
of the ship. In effect, the officers and men of the lost battle cruisers were
largely responsible for their own deaths. The senior officers who had
condoned the dangerous practices, moreover, were guilty of complicity.
Sufficient evidence was presented to Admiral Henry Jackson, the
First Sea Lord, to persuade him that Admiral Tudor and his subordinates
were probably correct. In November 1916, the senior fleet commanders
were notified of the Admiralty's verdict. It would be an understatement
of some magnitude to say that Tudor's opinion was not well received by
fleet officers. Before the senior flag officers had time to forward their
protests, however, Henry Jackson was replaced as First Sea Lord at
Whitehall by former fleet commander John Jellicoe. He in turn was suc-
ceeded as Commander-in-Chief by David Beatty, the Admiral command-
ing the Battle Cruiser Force. Jellicoe, deeply disturbed by Tudor's
findings and anxious not to damage the morale of the fleet any further,

6. John Campbell, The Fighting at Jutland (London: Conway, 1986), 220-25,

369, 371-72, 374, 380-81.

MILITARY HISTORY -* 31
 NICHOLAS A. LAMBERT

promptly suppressed the various reports on the subject and declared the
matter closed. Henceforth, Jellicoe directed, the loss of the battle cruis-
ers would be officially attributed to the thinness of their armour-for
which no-one was really responsible. In addition, he instructed the Third
Sea Lord to send Beatty a letter of apology for his implied criticisms of
the Battle Cruiser Force personnel. Shortly thereafter Tudor was
appointed out of the Admiralty. But instead of receiving an appointment
to the Grand Fleet, as was his due, Tudor was sent to command the
handful of dilapidated cruisers guarding British commercial interests in
China.
The absence of any conclusive physical evidence and the disappear-
ance over the past eighty years of so many official papers makes it
impossible to provide a definitive explanation for the cause of the explo-
sions resulting in the loss of the three battle cruisers. And no attempt to
do so will be made here; besides, there are already more than enough
theories and opinions on the subject. This paper, therefore, is more con-
cerned with examining specifically the thoughts of the Board of Admi-
ralty on the loss of the battle cruisers. As far as can be determined, the
official opinion of the British naval administration has never been previ-
ously reported.7
This essay will examine the available evidence on which the senior
members of the administration, Tudor and Jackson, reached their
remarkable verdict. It will also seek answers to questions such as: did
these Whitehall officers truly believe what they wrote or where they sim-
ply trying to shift the blame from those in the naval administration
responsible for designing the ships on to those in the fleet who operated
them? Were the turrets of the battle cruisers really packed to capacity
with loose cordite? If so, why was this done? What evidence is there?
How widespread was the practice? And why were the officers responsi-
ble not aware of the possible consequences?

On 20 July 1913, the Commander-in-Chief, Home Fleets, Admiral

Sir George Callaghan, requested the Admiralty to authorise the outfit of
projectiles carried by all capital ships to be substantially increased.8 He
maintained that "the allowance of 80 rounds per gun is no longer a suf-

7. ArthurMardersaw edited copies of the relevant Admiralty files provided to the

U.S. Navy in 1917, but he never examined the original dockets and referred to their
contents only in passing; Marder,From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, 3: 212.
8. Callaghan to Admiralty, 20 July 1913, G6683/13, "Outfit of Ammunition for
Turret Guns in Battleships and Battle Cruisers," RM10, Priddy's Hard Archive, Win-
chester Record Office, England (hereafter cited as PH).

32 * THE JOURNAL OF
 "OurBloody Ships" or "OurBloody System"?

ficient margin for safety." Callaghan offered four good reasons for carry-
ing more ammunition.
* To make ships less dependent upon ammunition supply ships.
* To relieve officers of anxiety or doubt as to the expenditure of
ammunition previous to a general action.
* To enable rapid fire to be employed when circumstances are
favourable to its use, without fear of subsequent shortage.
* To permit fire to be opened at long ranges without fear of the sup-
ply subsequently running short.
It was an article of faith in the Royal Navy that victory in a gunnery
duel would invariably go to the ship that hit its opponent first:9 "IlIT
FIRST, hit hard, and keep on hitting," was Admiral Sir John Fisher's
watchword in gunnery (and other) matters. That being said, however, in
1913 the Royal Navy was not sure of "the range at which we can fire with
good prospect of hitting."'0 From about 1906, the Royal Navy suspended
its "quest for reach" in naval gunnery and instead sought to attain pin-
point accuracy at medium ranges. The majority of British gunnery and
tactical experts agreed that future sea battles would be fought at ranges
of approximately 9,000 to 10,000 yards, and thenceforward until the eve
of the First World War, British gun crews were drilled to shoot at this
range. But in about 1912, after the introduction of new more capable
fire-control gear, this consensus started to break down. A group of senior
naval officers began pressing for the resumption of long-range gunnery
trials. Towards the end of that year, HMS Colossus, flagship of Vice
Admiral Sir John Jellicoe commanding the second division of the Home
Fleets, conducted practice at 14,000 yards with encouraging results. In
June 1913, the Commander-in-Chief, Sir George Callaghan, allowed the
battle cruiser squadron to shoot at ranges up to 12,000 yards and at high
speed. Six months later he authorised a practice at 16,000 yards against
the old battleship Empress of India. Unfortunately the target ship was
sunk prematurely by the concentrated fire from a battle squadron shoot-
ing at half this distance (8,500 yards) and thus the experiment in long-
range fire never took place."

9. For unanimous consent on this principle, see Minute by Tudor (Director of

Naval Ordnance), 16 January 1914, on Gunnery Branch precis of "Firings Carried
Out at Empress of India," G.01303, 179, Important Questions dealt with by the
Director of Naval Ordnance, volume 2, 1913 (hereafter cited as IQDNO), Naval
Library,Ministry of Defence, London, England.
10. Callaghan to Tudor, 8 December 1913, cited by Jon Sumida, "The Quest for
Reach: the Development of Long-Range Gunnery in the Royal Navy, 1901-1912," in
Toolingfor War:Military Transformation in the Industrial Age, ed. Stephen D. Chi-
abopti (Chicago: Imprint Publications, 1996), note 197.
11. Sumida, "Quest for Reach"; idem, In Defence of Naval Supremacy: Finance,
Technology, and British Naval Policy, 1889-1914 (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989;
paperback ed., London: Routledge, 1992), especially 203-6, 249-52.

MILITARY HISTORY * 33
 NICHOLAS A. LAMBERT

In October 1913, Captain Frederick Tudor, then Director of the

Naval Ordnance Department at the Admiralty and one of the Royal
Navy's leading gunnery experts, endorsed the Commander-in-Chiefs
request for more ammunition. "In view of torpedo development and of
the experience of the Russo-Japanese war," he noted in his report to the
Admiralty, warships could be expected to commence shooting at much
greater ranges than the then anticipated "decisive battle range," which
inevitably would result in the expenditure of a considerable quantity of
ammunition "before any decisive results are reached."1'2Tudor could see

12. Minute by Tudor, 19 November 1913, on G6683/13, in "Outfitof Ammunition

for Turret Guns in Battleships and Battle Cruisers," RM10, PH.

Plan of Working Chamber in Typical British turret

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MILITARYITE HISTORY I 35@ I LI a

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MILITARY~~~~AI
HISTOR G 35
 NICHOLAS A. LAMBERT

no problem with providing capital ships with additional projectiles.

There was plenty more stowage in the shell rooms under each turret.
When ships were ordered to "action imminent," moreover, it was normal
operating procedure for all the shell bays in the turret working chambers
and gun houses to be filled. There was space inside each rotating struc-
ture for sixteen rounds per gun.13 After all cages, hoists and waiting trays
had been loaded, therefore, there would be some forty-six projectiles (or
twenty-three rounds per gun) within the ammunition supply chain
between the shell rooms and the guns.14
The provision of extra propellant appeared to present more difficul-
ties. Quite simply there was no free space in the magazines and the car-
tridges could not safely or conveniently be stored anywhere else. Tudor
advised that the only solution was to provide additional cordite charges
in flash-proof boxes known as "clarkson cases" to be stowed on the floor
of the magazine gangways. 15It was an imperfect arrangement but never-
theless practicable. In a subsequent minute, Tudor assured doubters
within the Admiralty that it was perfectly feasible for cordite cases to be
"stowed endways in the gangways between the existing stowage bays."
There was enough space. In reply to suggestions that such an arrange-
ment would produce congestion in the magazines, Tudor explained that
"when these cases were emptied [of cordite] they could be taken out and
put in handling rooms or empty shell bays or other spaces, thus uncov-
ering the cases they were originally blocking."176 Where exactly the
cordite would be placed in the meantime, however, Tudor did not say.
The Board of Admiralty evidently approved the new arrangements
because in early 1914 the official outfit for all capital ships was
increased. Previously all big-gun ships had carried eighty rounds per gun.
Thereafter, battleships were provided with one hundred rounds and bat-
tle cruisers with one hundred and ten. Generally speaking, British bat-
tleships mounted ten guns in five turrets and battle-cruisers eight guns
in four. In fact, the quantities of ammunition actually carried were yet
higher. All large armoured vessels habitually carried eight practice
rounds in addition to their war outfit. At the outbreak of war these were
replaced by "live" projectiles. Also, from about the end of 1913, each
capital ship was provided with six shrapnel rounds per gun designed to
be used as a last ditch defence against enemy torpedo craft. These were
kept outside the main shell-rooms in the ready use bays (or bins) inside
the gun-house at the top of the turret. By the beginning of the First World

13. Addenda to Hydraulic Manual, 13.5-inch mounting, Mk II**, 1914, 18 and

plate 19, ADM186/192, Admiralty Archives, Public Record Office, Kew, England.
14. Minutes by Tudor, 1 October and 19 November 1913, RM10, PH.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.

36 * THE JOURNAL OF
 "OurBloody Ships" or "OurBloody System"?

War, in other words, each British battle cruiser had been provided with
an extra 40 shells or a total of 120 rounds per gun. For each of these 40
additional projectiles, more importantly, they were also provided with
four cordite cartridges (representing one "full" charge) that were stored
in two clarkson cases. Stacked on the floor of each of the four main mag-
azines inside the battle cruisers, therefore, were some 160 cordite boxes.
Incidentally, each full box weighed 230 pounds (for 12-inch ammuni-
tion) or 270 pounds (for 13.5-inch charges).17 In 1916, eight-gun battle
cruisers thus carried a total of 960 shells and 290,000 pounds of propel-
lant-or 50 percent more ammunition than they had been designed to
carry.
The significance of the decision to carry more ammunition lies not
in the additional quantity of propellant in the magazines but in the
method by which it was stowed. Tudor's memorandum suggests that the
number of cases involved resulted in considerable congestion inside the
magazines. It is likely that the obstruction of the gangways would have
hampered the efforts of the crew to serve the guns with cordite at the
beginning of any action. As Tudor's memorandum explained, cartridges
had to be taken first from the boxes-and removing cordite charges from
heavy clarkson cases was a tedious and time-consuming business. A
series of exercises in rapid shooting conducted during the spring of 1914
by Admiral Sir Berkeley Milne (commanding the Mediterranean battle
cruiser squadron) reported that "the rate of supply [to the guns] depends
on the work inside the magazines of removing cartridges from cases."'8
It was found that the easiest way of preventing delay was to remove a
proportion of cordite from its protective cases well before action com-
menced and place it close to the magazine door.
Before 1914, the Royal Navy did not regard the stacking of naked
cordite charges as a particularly dangerous or unusual practice. Since
cordite had replaced the highly inflammable black-powder as the main
propellant for big guns at the end of the nineteenth century, handling
regulations in the fleet had become steadily more relaxed. Generally
speaking, cordite was much less feared. By the beginning of the war,
senior naval officers not only tolerated the stockpiling of unprotected
charges for ready use, the majority actively encouraged the practice. Of
this there is no doubt. On the eve of war, the Royal Navy became deeply
concerned about the vulnerability of its expensive capital ships to attack

17. Admiralty, "13.5-inch and 12-inch: Statement showing weight if 20 rounds of

ammunition," in "Outfit of Ammunition for Turret Guns in Battleships and Battle
Cruisers," RM1O,PH.
18. Minute by Admiral Berkeley Milne, 9 April 1914, on G.14774/14, DEY 36,
Tennyson d'Eyncourt manuscripts, National MaritimeMuseum, Greenwich, England.

MILITARY HISTORY * 37
 NICHOLAS A. LAMBERT

by torpedo craft.19To defend themselves, battleships carried a battery of

medium calibre (4-inch to 6-inch) Quick Fire guns positioned to throw
out a "hail of fire" at any attacker. Any competent crew could aim and
shoot ten rounds a minute. The record for a six-inch gun, held by a crew
belonging to HMSKing Alfred, was fifteen aimed rounds a minute. Exer-
cises conducted in 1913 under more realistic combat conditions, how-
ever, indicated that the Quick Fire guns could not possibly be fired at
anything like this rate because of the impossibility of feeding them
ammunition so quickly. In April 1914, the Admiralty surveyed all flag
officers and senior captains on the subject. With very few exceptions, all
replied that the need to sustain a high rate of gunfire was paramount and
that the only way this could be achieved was by keeping an ample sup-
ply of ammunition on deck and close to the guns. The Admirals under-
stood the risks involved.
For instance, Vice Admiral Stanley Colville (commanding First Bat-
tle Squadron) insisted that: "A rapid and sustained fire delivered at the
moment the Torpedo craft are sighted is essential. The danger of the
charges being ignited by the fire of enemy's heavy ships may be disre-
garded." Vice Admiral George Warrender (of the Second Battle
Squadron) similarly argued that: "It is considered more important to
have the ammunition provided and ready for immediate use and to risk
the chance of a cordite fire, rather than to guard against a fire, and [thus]
to have the ship unprepared for an attack." While Rear Admiral Charles
Madden (who would serve during the war as Jellicoe's chief of staff)
argued: "It should be laid down in the Gunnery Manual that the risk of
the explosion of stacked ammunition is secondary to maintaining a rapid
fire which should afford the best protection to the stacked ammunition."
Even the Royal Navy's leading gunnery expert, Captain Frederick
Dreyer, considered it "more important to provide ammunition for the
gun to fire at the enemy, and accept the remote chance of a local cordite
fire, than to guard against such a fire by having little or no ammunition
at the gun." Despite some personal misgivings, the D.N.O., Tudor,
endorsed the recommendation with the observation that "it is generally
accepted that the risk of local cordite fires must be taken in order that a
ship may be ready to instantly develop her maximum power of gun
fire."20While it is true that all these minutes relate to the handling of

19. Admiralty, "Anti torpedo-boat armament of Big Ships for Immediate and
Rapidfire," [1913] G.0152/13, f.124, IQDNO, vol. 2, 1913, and also: "As to Armament
of Capital ships for Defence against Torpedocraft during both Day and Night,"28 Jan-
uary 1914, G.0937/13, f.152-156, IQDNO, vol. 3, 1914.
20. Minutes by Colville, 15 April 1914; by Warrender,12 April 1914; by Madden,
10 April 1914; by Tudor, 11 May 1914 (but also note minute by Tudor, 4 June 1913,
on G.16264/13); all on G.15134, in "Extracts from Various papers Dealing with the

38 * THE JOURNAL OF
 Bloody Ships" or "OurBloody System"?
"(:Our

cordite for medium-calibre (4- or 6-inch) gun armament, they are rele-
vant insofar as they accurately reflect the prevailing attitude towards
cordite within the Royal Navy at this time.

War and the Stakes Are Raised

At the Battle of the Falklands (December 1914), the armoured
cruiser HMS Kent was nearly lost after a fire on the gun deck spread
down an ammunition hoist to a stock of naked cordite charges stacked
just outside the main magazine. Disaster was averted only by the prompt
action of a crewman in dousing the cartridges. As a direct result of this
experience, in February 1915, the Admiralty issued a memorandum to
the fleet drawing attention to "the great danger of allowing cordite to
accumulate in gun positions and causing severe fires." Henceforth,
Whitehall advised, "this accumulation should therefore on no account be
allowed."21 This order, however, was ignored by most ships in the Home
Fleets. Most officers still felt that "it is better to accept some risk rather
than reduce the rate of supply."22As a consequence, in 1916 it was still
standard practice in the Battle Cruiser Force for at least fourteen charges
to be kept readily available and close to each Quick Fire antitorpedo
boat gun. The actual quantities varied between ships. The battle cruiser
lTger, for instance, went into action on 31 May 1916 with stockpiles of
no less than twenty rounds next to each gun. As we shall see, similar
conditions prevailed inside the turrets housing the big guns.
In early 1915, the Royal Navy became convinced that it must learn
to shoot more quickly. Experience gained at the Battle of the Falklands,
and during the battle cruiser action off the Dogger Bank in January 1915,
suggested to many British naval officers that the rapidity of fire from
their big guns was at least as important as accuracy. According to Admi-
ral Jellicoe, the fleet Commander-in-Chief, during these actions British
ships had been inhibited from developing their maximum rates of fire by
an Admiralty order promulgated at the beginning of the war directing

Question of Accumulation of Cordite at Gun Stations," DEY36, d'Eyncourt MSS. This

document appears to belong to Admiralty report S.01146, for which see: minute (7
October 1916) by d'Eyncourt on "Causes of Explosion in British Warships, when Hit
by Heavy Shell," ADM1/8463/176; a summary of the original submissions can be
found in Admiralty,"ReadySupply of Cartridgesat Guns," G.15134/13, 23 May 1914,
f.346-350, IQDNO, vol. 3, 1914.
21. Admiralty, Gunnery Orders G.042/15, 1 February 1915, DEY36, d'Eyncourt
MSS.
22. Campbell, Jutland, 375, citing Admirals Robert Arbuthnot and Doveton
Sturdee, 1915.

MILITARY HISTORY * 39
 A. LAMBERT
NICHOLAS

them to conserve ammunition as much as possible.23 In a letter request-

ing the Admiralty to rescind their order and thus allow gun crews to
shoot more quickly, Jellicoe drew attention to reports "that it was much
easier to fire at a slow firing than a quick firing ship: a slow rate of fire
obviously causes the ship fired at less interference from spray, noise, and
mental disturbance, and also facilitates observation of fire, as the firing
ship is less obscured by cordite smoke."24 "It being evident that serious
results might accrue in a fleet action unless our fire was quickened," Jel-
licoe went on to explain to the Board, "I deemed it necessary to issue
instructions on this point."25
From March 1915, Jellicoe revealed, British "[capital] ships have
been worked up to fire with great rapidity when it is certain that the
enemy is "straddled." Such tactics, he warned, "must unquestionably
result in a great expenditure of ammunition" but "this cannot be avoided
if victory is to rest with us." According to the revised Grand Fleet Orders
prepared by Jellicoe in conjunction with his chief gunnery officer Cap-
tain Frederick Dreyer, a normal rate of fire for a ship armed with 13.5-
inch guns firing 1,400-lb projectiles was deemed to be one salvo every
forty seconds. "Rapid fire" meant shooting salvoes at intervals of thirty
seconds or less.26 At one shoot conducted before the war, H.M.S. Orion
is recorded as having fired seven consecutive salvoes at an average inter-
val of 24.3 seconds.27 The ammunition hoists in the 13.5-inch gun tur-
rets had been specially designed to facilitate rapid loading.28Ships armed
with 12-inch guns (850-lb projectiles) could fire even faster-astonish-
ingly, one salvo every twenty seconds or less.29
In a second paper on this subject, issued to the fleet at about the
same time, Jellicoe emphasised that "rapidity of fire is essential both to

23. Jellicoe to Admiralty, 26 April 1915, G01679, (citing Admiralty order

G.0800/14 of 3 September 1914) in "Expenditure of Ammunition and Torpedoes;
stocks remaining and anticipated deliveries," RM13, PH;this claim is corroboratedby
letter: Chatfield to Beatty, 2 February 1915, enclosing notes on gunnery, paragraphs
8-12, cited in The Beatty Papers, vol. 1, ed. Brian Ranft (London: Navy Records Soci-
ety, 1989), 232-34.
24. Jellicoe, "Grand Fleet Orders," 1915, section A, paragraph 67, enclosed in
Jellicoe to Admiralty, 26 April 1915, RM13, PH.
25. Jellicoe to Admiralty,26 April 1915, ibid.; see also, Jellicoe to Beatty, 6 March
1915, BTY13/21/10, Beatty Papers, National Maritime Museum.
26. Grand Fleet Battle Orders, Gunnery Addendum: section 1, printed March
1915, RM13, PH.
27. HMSOrion, "Reporton Firings at HMSEmpress of India carried out by First
Fleet on 4 November 1913," 12-13, print 1039, enclosed in "MiscellaneousGunnery
Experiments, 1900-13," JaO10,NLMD.
28. Admiralty to C-in-C (Callaghan), April 1913, on G.14343/13, "Monarch-
problems with hoist motors," f.321, IQDNO, 1913, volume 2.
29. Dreadnought firing trials of 1907, cited in Sumida, "Quest for Reach," 47.

40 * THE JOURNAL OF
 "OurBloody Ships" or "OurBloody System"?

disable the enemy quickly and to reduce the accuracy of his fire."30The
basis of his reasoning was: "At all ranges, action will be decided by rate
of hitting, but at short and medium ranges, when hitting may be
expected to commence almost at once, a ship which is slow in opening
fire may be smothered by her opponent in the first minute of two, and
unable to recover herself."'31 In a third document, dated 20 March 1915,
an addendum to the Grand Fleet Battle Orders, Jellicoe provided the
fleet gunnery officers with more precise instructions. "When the visibil-
ity is less than 10,000 yards, ships must be prepared to open rapid fire
from the outset in order to make initial superiority," he wrote. To
achieve "rapid fire" ships must either shoot "rapid salvoes" or to allow
turrets to fire "independently." The term "rapid salvoes" was defined as
"the firing of salvoes at such an interval that one follows another before
the first is corrected for." In other words, warships were supposed to
shoot their second salvoes before their first had landed. "It must be
clearly understood," the memorandum directed in unambiguous terms,
"that under no circumstances is fire to be withheld for the purpose of
obtaining a 'plot'; it should not even be delayed for rangefinder ranges if
there is the smallest possibility of disadvantage resulting from the
delay."32All these orders were still in force on 31 May 1916.33
The officers of the Battle Cruiser Force, who regarded their squadron
as the Royal Navy's elite formation, at once embraced the idea of rapid
fire and their ships quickly established new records for rapidity of gun-
fire. The rationale was simple. As Ernie Chatfield, flag-captain of the Bat-
tle Cruiser Force, explained to an old colleague on distant service,
"whoever gets the biggest volume of fire, short or hitting, will gain the
ascendancy and keep it as the other fellow can't see to reply."34 Yet
although the battle cruisers were undoubtedly the fastest gunnery ships
in the fleet, at same time they also possessed the worst record for gun-
nery accuracy.35 At the end of 1915, Admiral Jellicoe wrote to Beatty

30. GFO, 1915, A80, paragraph 7, enclosed in Jellicoe to Admiralty, 26 April

1915, RM13, PH.
31. GFO, 1915, A.109, "Fire Control in Action," ibid.
32. GFBO, Gunnery Addendum (revised March 1915), 1. "Opening Fire," ibid.
33. Jellicoe, "Grand Fleet Battle Orders in force at Jutland," dated 22 October
1916, NB. section "Gunnery Instructions-Opening Fire," [printed December 1915]
f.35, Add MSS 49011, Jellicoe Papers, British Library,London.
34. Chatfield to Phillimore, 24 February 1915, cited in Andrew Gordon, The
Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command (London: John MurrayLtd.,
1996; Annapolis, Md.:Naval Institute Press, 1997), 47 n. 43.
35. James Goldrick, The King's Ships Wereat Sea (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Insti-
tute Press, 1984), 302, 308.

MILITARY HISTORY * 41
 NICHOLASA. LAMBERT

expressing his concern at the poor showing of his battle cruisers at a

recent live-firing battle practice.36 Beatty conceded his ships were not
shooting well. The main cause, the two Admirals agreed, was simply lack
of practice by the fire-control personnel, especially the rangefinder oper-
ators. Beatty's ships, stationed at Rosyth on the Firth of Forth some two
hundred miles south of the main practice ranges at Scapa Flow, had
fewer opportunities to practice live firing than the battleships of the
Grand Fleet. Loading practice, however, could be conducted anywhere,
hence the ability of the battle cruisers to retain their title as the fastest
gunnery ships of the fleet. It is impossible to say to what extent the offi-
cers of the Battle Cruiser Force encouraged their crews to shoot as
rapidly as was possible in order to compensate for their inability to hit
the target regularly. But there are indications this was the case.
On 18 November 1915, Jellicoe expressed concern to Beatty that
"the rapidity idea was [being] carried to excess" in the Battle Cruiser
Force.37 This mild censure sparked a quarrel between the Commander-
in-Chief and the Admiral commanding. Three days later, Beatty wrote to
his chief and requested an interview "on the subject of rapidity of fire,"
adding that "I feel very strongly on this subject and think we should
endeavour to quicken up our firing. We can always slow it down but we
can't quicken it up unless we practice it."38 Jellicoe, in a conciliatory
tone, replied by return: "I am all for rapidity of fire, but my only fear is
that ships may break into rapid fire too soon as Queen Mary I think did.
It's all right even if not hitting if short, but no use if over."39 Jellicoe's
words of caution had no discernible impact upon the Battle Cruiser
Force. On 15 December, Beatty reported that rather than try to improve
accuracy to facilitate better concentration of fire, he wished to use the
next live firing practice to develop a yet "greater rapidity" so "we could
pulverise him [the enemy] early." He went on to insist that "as I said
before, concentration is a luxury-whereas rapidity is the life and death
matter."40There is no record of the subsequent conversations between
Beatty and Jellicoe. Yet it is perhaps suggestive that on 7 May 1916, just
three weeks before Jutland, Beatty handed Jellicoe another set of disap-

36. Jellicoe to Beatty, 18 November 1915, BTY13/21/24, Beatty Papers. My

thanks to Andrew Gordon for rechecking the exact wording of this document for me.
37. Ibid.
38. Beatty to Jellicoe, 21 November 1915, f.67-69, Add MSS 49008, Jellicoe
Papers (an edited version of this letter is cited in The Jellicoe Papers, vol. 1
(1893-1916), ed. A. Temple Patterson, (London: Naval Records Society, 1966), 188.
39. Jellicoe to Beatty, 23 November 1915, ibid., 1: 189.
40. Beatty to Jellicoe, 15 December 1915, f.78, Add MSS 49008, Jellicoe Papers.

42 * THE JOURNAL OF
 "OurBloody Ships" or "OurBloody System"?

pointing gunnery battle practice scores. Tiger's accuracy was so poor,

again, that her Captain was censured.41
There is no doubt that the combination of wanting to increase rates
of fire, a desire to reduce congestion in the magazines, and a wish to
anticipate possible delays in the supply of ammunition to the guns,
encouraged gun crews on going into action to open the clarkson cases
stowed in the magazine gangways, and stack naked cordite charges in
the handling room at the base of the turrets, and in some cases also in
the working chamber directly under the gunhouse. The best docu-
mented evidence of this dangerous procedure is recorded by Warrant
Officer (later Captain) Alexander Grant, who in June 1915 was posted as
Chief Gunner to the battle cruiser HMS Lion, Beatty's flagship. In his
memoirs, he claimed that the day he joined he was perplexed to find the
magazines in a "chaotic state."
The cordite for the turret guns was supplied in cylindrical cases,
each case containing two quarter charges. There were three mark-
ings on the case, one on the case, and one on each of the two lids,
thereforethe two cartridgesand the three markingsshould all coin-
cide. I found however that a largepercentageof the cases in all four
magazinespossessed five differentlot numbers to each case. I spent
the whole day in these magazines and in the end was rather per-
turbed by it. To put matters right would mean clearing the maga-
zines.
After enquiring from the crews how affairs became so disorganized,
Grant was horrified to learn that earlier in the year, in anticipation of
imminent action,
the magazinecrew full of enthusiasmand determinedthat their guns
should not have to wait for cordite, had removedpracticallyevery lid
fromall the cases, piling up the handlingroom with charges.In addi-
tion they filled the narrowpassagesin all four magazineswith more
charges.
"I can picture the crews," Grant recalled, "having made all these
preparations, sitting down contentedly saying to each other, "now let
them all come-we will let them know how to have it good and hearty."
(Presumably putting the cordite charges back into their proper boxes
was considered to be too much trouble.) "Little did the crews realise,"
Grant observed, "the extreme danger they were placing the ship in by
their preparations." Further investigation by the Chief Gunner revealed
that the "turret captains"-usually a junior lieutenant or senior mid-
shipman-were not only aware of these dangerous practices but actually
condoned them. Indeed, Grant was allowed to introduce a safer regime
only after demonstrating to Lion's senior gunnery officer-a Lieutenant-

41. Beatty to Jellicoe, 7 May 1916, Beatty Papers, 1: 307-8.

MILITARY HISTORY * 43
NICHOLASA. LAMBERT

Commander-that the *a l l
magazine crews were
quite capable of feeding
the big guns with an
adequate supply of car-
tridges without risking i .

disaster by stockpiling a ..

naked cordite cartndges -l

inside the turrets.42 ;. .

AlthoughGrantsuc
cessfuily tightened the ;
safety regulations on 4
board Lion before the i
Battle of Jutland, he had ;
no authority over the :
procedures employed in . ....
other ships and his
warningswent unheeded
by the rest of the
squadron. Shortly after
the battle, the surviving
gunnery officer of HMS
Invincible, Commander
Hubert Dannreuther,
admitted to the Third
Sea Lord, amongst oth- Shows the full cordite charges for 12-inch,
ers, that his crews had 13.5-inch, and 15-inch guns. The seaman is a
employed similarlydan- ratingfrom the gunnery school, HMSExcellent
gerous ammunition (PhotocourtesyGeorgeMalcolmsonCollection.)
handling techniques.43
Other evidence suggests that in fact the majority of ships in the Battle
Cruiser Force at Jutland were equally "careless."So too were some of
battleships in Jellicoe's Grand Fleet. Constructor Lieutenant Victor
Shepheard (who served as Director of Naval Constructionfrom 1951 to
1958), and who by chance happened to be present at the Battle of Jut-
land, observed similarscenes on board the HMSAgincourt, which man-
aged to shoot 144 projectiles during the brief battleship engagement.
During the action, Shepheard roamed the ship as a supernumeraryto

42. Alexander Grant, "Through the Hawse Pipe" (draft memoirs), (January
1947), chapter 14, 105-11, ref: IWM66/28311, Imperial WarMuseum, London. I am
indebted to Professor Ronald Spector for bringing this document to my attention.
43. Tudor (3SL) to Jeliicoe (1SL), 16 December 1916, "Cause of Explosion in
British Warships, when Hit by Heavy Shell," ADM1/8463/176.

44 * THE JOURNAL OF
 .__.... =.== ._ _= . _= ------. . . .......-- = - - --- ---------e

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~...
,.ii';
...................................'.i'I'

Thegunhouse of a 15-inch turretmanned by RoyalMarines. (Photocour-

tesy George Malcolmson Collection.)

Damaged caused to HMSNew Zealand on 31 May 1916 by the Germnan

shell hit on her aft turret. (Photo courtesy George Malcolmson Collection.)

: ::i. ! . _ }j .: > 0 ^~~~~~~~~~~....

.. ... s } }... - };. ;; ; i; i ' 9 |

......... i.'
. ..t-
m

MILITARY HISTORY * 45
 NICHOLASA. LAMBERT

the damage control party. He is reported as having been alarmed at the

large number of charges lying around in turret working spaces, out of
their cases, and unprotected. Interestingly some turrets were worse than
others. Shepheard noted the turret manned by the Royal Marines was
especially bad."
Parenthetically, it is interesting to note that of the three battle cruis-
ers that blew up at the Battle of Jutland after hits on their turrets, two,
the Invincible and Queen Mary, were acknowledged to have been the
best (fastest) gunnery ships in the Royal Navy.45 Even the Germans,
indeed, were impressed by the Queen Mary's ability to shoot her salvoes
with "Fabulous rapidity"46-though "they were almost always over or
short-only twice did the [German battle cruiser] Derfflinger come
under this infernal hail, and each time only one heavy shell hit her."47
There is no question that Beatty encouraged his ships to shoot quickly
at the Battle of Jutland. Seven minutes after the battle cruiser action
commenced (at extreme range), Beatty signalled a general order for all
ships to increase their rates of fire.48 The battle cruiser HMS New
Zealand evidently took this order quite literally. Despite being handi-
capped with shorter range 12-inch guns (thus unable to shoot at the
enemy for long periods during the action) and fitted with outdated and
unreliable fire-control gear,49and also being restricted to firing from only
three of her four turrets at once (owing to her being designed with two
"wing" turrets positioned off the centre-line), the New Zealand managed
to fire a total of 422 shells during the battle.50 No other ship present
approached anything like this rate of fire. The ship immediately in front
of her in the line, liger, equipped with longer-reaching 13.5-inch guns
and which could shoot from all four turrets simultaneously, fired no
more than 303 projectiles. The ship behind her, Indefatigable, the only
other 12-inch gun ship in Beatty's force, was the first to blow up. The
only result of the furious volume of fire from New Zealand, however, was
an astounding rate of missing. Out of the 422 shells fired at the enemy,
no more than two (possibly three) found their mark (representing a hit
rate of 0.7 percent at best). It is perhaps fortunate that in return the New
Zealand received only one hit.

44. Letter from Royal Navy Constructor David K. Brown (ret.) to the author, 18
January-7 February 1996.
45. Gordon, Rules of the Game, 120 n. 69; Filson Young, With the Battle-Cruis-
ers (London: Cassel, 1921), 206.
46. Corbett, History of the Great War,3: 337.
47. Georg von Hase, (gunnery officer of Derfflinger) cited in Gordon, Rules of the
Game, 118.
48. Campbell, Fighting at Jutland, 40.
49. Sumida, In Defence, 300-301.
50. Battle Cruiser Force, "Expenditureof Ammunition," ADM 137/2027.

46 * THE JOURNAL OF
 "OurBloody Ships" or "OurBloody System"?

The Aftermath of Battde

The day after the Grand Fleet returned to the anchorage at Scapa
Flow, Jellicoe appointed Rear Admiral Arthur Leveson of the Second Bat-
tle Squadron to oversee the committees of Grand Fleet officers charged
with writing the after action reports.51 An immediate report was
demanded of the group detailed to investigate the causes of the explo-
sions resulting in the loss of the battle cruisers. At Rosyth, where the
Battle Cruiser Force was based, Beatty took similar steps. He appointed
Chatfield, his flag-Captain, to chair a joint committee of officers drawn
from the Battle Cruiser Force and the Fifth (fast) Battle Squadron to
study "the gunnery lessons learnt from the action of 31 May" and to con-
sider suggestions that the flash arrangements inside the turrets were
"ineffective when turret armour is penetrated."52 Meanwhile, Rear Admi-
ral William Pakenham was asked to lead a study into possible modifica-
tions to existing and future ships in light of the gunnery committee's
findings.
Suggestively, the first reaction of the Battle Cruiser Force was to
tighten up on the regulations governing the handling of cordite. After
interviewing the surviving gunnery officer of H.M.S. Invincible, Com-
mander Hubert Dannreuther, Beatty acknowledged that some of the
ships under his command were employing dangerous practices in their
magazines. On 3 June, he despatched a letter to the Admiralty revealing
that some of his battle cruisers (notably Invincible) had throughout the
action left open the doors to their magazines, and suggesting this should
henceforth be prohibited. The same day Beatty sent Jellicoe a cryptic
telegram marked "urgent," drawing attention to the dangers of "open
magazine doors in turrets," and further warning it was "imperative to
maintain small stock cordite in handling room for magazine [and] doors
being kept closed with one clip and opened only for replenishment of
handling room." Beatty advised no more than "four or five" full charges
ought to be kept in the handling room during action.53 The officers at the
Admiralty, however, who had already begun their own investigation and
had also interviewed Danareuther, determined that Beatty's suggestions
for improving safety did not go nearly far enough. On 5 June, the Board
addressed a memorandum to all flag officers directing that henceforth no
more than four charges should be allowed outside the magazine at any
one time (not counting two chambered in the guns), and, more explic-
itly, decreed that "no accumulation of charges in the handling room"

51. Leveson to Jellicoe, 6 June 1916, f.9-12, ADM137/2027.

52. Copy of Beatty to Jellicoe, 3 June 1916, telegram, f.15, ADM137/2027.
53. Beatty to Admiralty, "Magazine Doors in Turrets," 3 June 1916, cited in
Beatty Papers, 1: 318, copy of Beatty to Jellicoe, 3 June 1916, telegram, f.15,
ADM137/2027.

MILITARY HISTORY * 47
 NICHOLASA. LAMBERT

whatsoever should be permitted.54 The Battle Cruiser Force duly com-

plied and a circular was distributed to all ships.55
As the month of June progressed, opinions expressed on the cause of
the loss of the battle cruisers began to change. Officers in the fleet from
the Commander-in-Chief down began to insist that "the heavy casualties
amongst the battle cruisers [were] due to inadequate protection," rather
than dangerous cordite handling practice.56 Some believed the shell
plunged through the thin horizontal armour and penetrated the maga-
zines; others thought that shell must have penetrated the side armour
into the magazines. This was Jellicoe's position.57 "The German battle
cruisers," the Commander-in-Chief noted in a private letter to the First
Sea Lord, "are battleships in protection whereas ours are armoured
cruisers. That is the whole story and the public ought to know it for the
sake of the reputations of your officers and men."58Parenthetically, read-
ers might note that Jellicoe claimed in his memoirs that before the war
he had been pressing the Admiralty to improve the armour protection
given to capital ships. Contemporary documents show, in fact, he had
thought concerns expressed over the thinness of armour, on turrets in
particular, to have been "rather exaggerated."59 By the third week of
June 1916, the idea that personnel in the Battle Cruiser Force had been
employing unsafe ammunition handling practices had been all but for-
gotten by officers in the fleet-at least officially. At a meeting of Admi-
ralty officials and senior flag officers held on 25 June to discuss the loss
of the battle cruisers, both Jellicoe and Beatty emphasised defects in pro-
tection ahead of those in procedure.60
The fleet commanders, Beatty in particular, justified this change of
stance by pointing to the findings of the two fleet investigation commit-
tees. In their reports, neither committee had written one word about the

54. Admiralty to Jellicoe, 5 June 1916, "ConfidentialMemorandum,"box 122B,

Hamilton Papers, National Maritime Museum.
55. Beatty, "Memorandum,"2 July 1916, f.499-500, ADM137/2134.
56. Jellicoe to Jackson, 5 June 1916, Jackson MSS, Naval Library, Ministry of
Defence, London, England.
57. Jellicoe to Fisher, 15 June 1916, cited in ArthurMarder,Fear God and Dread
Nought: The Correspondence of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher of Kilverstone, 3
vols. (London: Cape, 1952-59), 3: 356.
58. Jellicoe to Jackson, 5 and 9 June 1916, Jackson MSS.
59. Minute by Jellicoe, 23 September 1913, on S.0132/14, "ComparativeArmour
Protection of German and British Battleships and Battlecruisers." This document is
the "missing"appendix from Admiralty file S.01146 [ADM1/8463/176]. It is included
in a copy of the file retained by Constructor S. V. Goodall. (Private collection; copy
in author's possession.)
60. Extract from G.F. submission: No.1483, of 29 June 1916, f.29-30,
ADM137/2028.

48 * THE JOURNAL OF
 "OurBloody Ships" or "OurBloody System"?

laxity of cordite handling arrangements inside the turrets.61 In fact, these

committees of fleet officers brushed aside all evidence that reflected
badly against British crews.62 Leveson's committee, for instance, was not
convinced that flash was the principal cause of the magazine explosions.
While he acknowledged in his first report that "the danger of flash does
exist," and admitted that antiflash shutters "have been removed in some
ships for speeding up [ammunition] supply,"63Leveson speculated that
the battle cruisers were lost rather to shells penetrating the thin hori-
zontal deck armour and detonating inside the main magazines. Although
several days later Leveson seemed less sure about this, he nevertheless
pressed Jellicoe to demand that the Admiralty authorise the fitting of
thicker turret roof plates and the laying of an extra "mosaic" of armour
over the existing horizontal deck armour protecting the magazines.64
Chatfield, in his preliminary report dated 22 June, adamantly attributed
the loss of the three battle cruisers to defects in their design. The failure
of the antiflash arrangements to prevent fires in the turrets passing down
the ammunition trunks and into the main magazines, he and his com-
mittee complained, was the chief cause of the explosions.65 This, of
course, was not the fault of the gun crews. To remedy this defect, Chat-
field recommended a number of improvements to antiflash arrange-
ments, emphasizing in particular the need to replace all doors between
turrets and magazines with air-tight handling scuttles.
Beatty set out his "official" view on the loss of the battle cruisers in
a letter to Jellicoe dated 14 July 1916. In this document he made no
mention of his earlier concerns about unsafe ammunition handling pro-
cedures. Instead, he laid the blame for the disasters squarely at the door
to the Controller's department at Whitehall. It is possible that Beatty
may have been encouraged to adopt this distinctly aggressive posture
after being stung by Admiralty criticism at the handling of his force on
31 May and the poor showing of his battle cruisers. In any case, Beatty's
letter insisted that "either our methods of ship construction are seri-
ously at fault or that the nature of the ammunition we use is not suffi-
ciently stable to ensure safety. The catastrophes which occurred on May
31st must be due to one or both of these causes. From the behaviour of

61. Chatfield to Beatty, "Gunnery Lessons Learnt," 22 June 1916, f.369-373,

ADM137/2134.
62. Sumida, In Defence, 308-9.
63. Leveson, first report, 6 June 1916, f.11, ADM137/2027.
64. Leveson, second report, 9 June 1916, f.9-19, ADM137/2027; Jellicoe to Admi-
ralty, 16 June 1916, G.02765/16. f.51, Ships Covers 367 (HMSHood).
65. Chatfield, "Gunnery Lessons Learnt from action of 31st May," par. 7 (c) I,
f.369-373, ADM137/2134.

MILITARY HISTORY * 49
 NICHOLAS
A. LAMBERT

German ships, these are proved not to be insuperable." Beatty closed his
report by urging his superiors to consult "the best brains in the country"
in order to rectify the weaknesses of existing ships and improve the
designs of all new vessels.66
Beatty's report, which reached Whitehall on 20 July, was immedi-
ately rejected by the departmental experts. They were in no doubt that
ammunition handling lay at the root of the matter. In the opinion of the
Director of Naval Ordnance (Rear Admiral Morgan Singer), "the blowing
up of our ships in that action was caused not so much by the greater
infallibility of our propellant as by the system of supply which we unfor-
tunately practised."67Flash fires were unavoidable when turrets were hit:
but such fires should not result in the loss of the ship. The Director of
Naval Construction (Tennyson d'Eyncourt), broadly agreed with this
view. "As the outcome of years of battle practice firing," he explained in
a long memorandum written during the first week of October 1916,
it was the general and accepted opinion that a good supply of ammu-
nition near the guns, also in the ammunitionpassages, etc. was most
essential, and that the risk of cordite fires must be accepted, [and]
althoughafter the engagementon the Coronel coast and at the Falk-
lands, this opinion was correctedby GunneryOrderG.043/15 dated
Feb. 1st 1915, there is little doubt that accumulationsdid exist in the
turretsand gun batteries duringthe battle.68
In short, the DNC concluded, "the fault lay in the method adopted in
the transportation of charges to the guns." As a consequence, "the num-
ber of charges that were usually in the handling room, revolving trunk,
working chamber and gun-house, gave a direct train from the turret to
the magazine."69 In a second paper on the subject, d'Eyncourt persua-
sively refuted allegations that the recent action had demonstrated the
horizontal armour over the magazines was too thin. He pointed out that
same thickness (or thinness) of armour protected the boiler rooms and
engine rooms. Furthermore, these machinery spaces occupied "a much
larger proportion of the ship than the magazines." Yet not one shell had
penetrated an engine or boiler room in any ship engaged. Was it plausi-
ble that plunging shells from German warships struck British battle
cruisers only above their magazines-always missing the much larger

66. Beatty to Admiralty, 14 July 1916, f.245-247, ADM137/2027.

67. Minute by Singer, 3 August 1916, S.01146, ADM1/8463/176.
68. Minute by d'Eyncourt, 7 October 1916, S.01146, ibid.
69. Minute by d'Eyncourt, 7 October 1916, M05781, "Action of 31 May-1 June
1916; reports from flag and commanding officers who took part," ADM116/1464.

50 * THE JOURNAL OF
 "OurBloody Ships" or "OurBloody System"?

machinery spaces? d'Eyncourt thought it unlikely7Oas did the Third Sea

Lord, Rear Admiral Frederick Tudor.7'
Tudor was equally offended by Beatty's "somewhat severe criticism
of our ship construction."72 Such accusations, he advised his senior col-
leagues on the Board of Admiralty, were not supported by the evidence.
Instead, the Third Sea Lord explained:
There is little doubt in my mind that in the great anxiety to attain a
rapid rate of fire, the ordinaryprecautions for the safety of cordite
charges have been graduallyrelaxed, until at last the test of the
enemy's shells has proved the dangerof what was being done.... it
seems desirable that a reply should be carefully draftedembodying
the gist of the DNO'sand DNC'sremarks,and laying great stress on
the undoubtedimproperexposure of cordite duringthis action.73
"There can be no doubt," Tudor reaffirmed two weeks later, "that the
amount of exposed cordite about the ships was enormous."74
The First Sea Lord (Admiral Sir Henry Jackson) was persuaded.75
Accordingly, on 4 November 1916, the Secretary of the Admiralty dis-
patched a rather brusque letter to Beatty informing him that the Admi-
ralty believed the three battle cruisers had been lost as the result of "the
precautions essential to the safety of cordite charges [being] to a certain
extent subordinated to the great desire necessarily felt to achieve a rapid
rate of fire."'76Beatty was outraged. The Admiralty's letter, he protested
to Jellicoe, was tantamount to an accusation of negligence and there was
no evidence to support such an accusation. Nor, he added, "is there any
proof of irregularities in the then prescribed drill for cordite supply."77
On 24 November, Jellicoe routinely passed Beatty's letter on to the
Admiralty with his endorsement-knowing full well that before the end
of the month he would be installed as First Sea Lord and thus be in bet-
ter position to field the complaint."78 Sure enough, on 28 November

70. Minute by d'Eyncourt, 7 October 1916, M05781; further papers on this sub-
ject can be found in: Admiralty,"Designof Battle cruisers with increased protection,"
S.01376/16, 31 August 1916, ADM1/9209; Admiralty, "Hood class: arrangement of
armour and deck protection," S.01898/16, 7 November 1916, ADM1/9210.
71. Minute by Tudor, 16 November 1916, on M05781, ADM116/1464; see also
minute (2 September 1916) by Tudor,on G.02765/16, f.64, Ships Covers 367 (HMS
Hood), National MaritimeMuseum, Brass Foundry Depot.
72. Minute by Tudor,26 October 1916, on S.01146, ADM1/8463/176.
73. Ibid.
74. Minute by Tudor, 16 November 1916, on M.05781, ADM116/1464.
75. Minute by Jackson, 27 October 1916, S.01146, ADM1/8463/176.
76. Admiralty to Beatty, 4 November 1916, ADM137/2134.
77. Beatty to Jellicoe, 17 November 1916, enclosed in Jellicoe to Admiralty, 24
November 1916, S.01146, ADM1/8463/176.
78. Jellicoe to Admiralty, 24 November 1916, S.01146, ibid.

MILITARY HISTORY * 51
 A. LAMBERT
NICHOLAS

1916, Jellicoe left for London and was succeeded as Commander-in-

Chief by David Beatty.
Jellicoe, owing to a bout of influenza, did not take his seat on the
Board till midway through the first week of December 1916.79 But once
established in Whitehall, he moved quickly to quash all further discus-
sion on the loss of the battle cruisers. On 16 December, Jellicoe directed
Tudor to retract the implied criticism of fleet officers in the letter to
Beatty dated 4 November.80Five days later he deleted the DNC's memo-
randa on the loss of the battle cruisers from the printed dispatches on
the battle of Jutland, refusing to allow them to be circulated even among
senior officers. "The memorandum should certainly not be issued-it
does not at all represent the views of officers at sea and I do not agree
with it," Jellicoe minuted on 22 December.8' Finally, the new First Sea
Lord overruled the Third Sea Lord's objections to delaying the comple-
tion of the four Howe class battle cruisers under construction, in order
to provide them with an additional three thousand tons of armour
plate.82 Ultimately only one of the four, the ill-fated HMSHood, was ever
completed. Finally, in early 1917, Tudor was shipped off to command the
China Squadron.

Conclusions
Attempts to blame the loss of the battle cruisers upon the failure of
their designers to provide them with sufficient armour protection are
altogether too simplistic. By 1914, the tactics, operations, and gunnery
procedures employed by the Royal Navy had changed considerably since
the ships had been designed. In other words, the battle cruisers had not
been designed for the tactical scenarios in which they found themselves
employed during the war. Most importantly, before 1914 there had been
a school of thought within the British navy (and others) which believed
that heavy armour had been made redundant by the development of
capped armour-piercing shells.83 Given the anticipated battle ranges of

79. Jellicoe to Fisher, 1 December 1916, cited in Jellicoe Papers vol. 2, ed.
A Temple Patterson (London: Navy Records Society, 1969), 107.
80. Minute by Jellicoe, 17 December 1916, on Tudor to Jellicoe, 16 December
1916, in S.01146; Admiralty to Beatty, 23 December 1916, f.264, ADM137/2027.
81. Minute by Jellicoe, 22 December 1916, on M. Tudor to Jellicoe, and minutes
by Jackson, 17 November 1916; Nicholson, 20 November 1916; and d'Eyncourt, 19
December 1916; all on M.05781, ADM116/1464.
82. Minutes by Jellicoe, 7 November 1916 and 14 December 1914, and by Tudor,
12 December 1916, on S.01898/16, "Hood Class-arrangements of armour and deck
protection," ADM1/9210.
83. This argument is set out in Sumida, In Defence, 51-61.

52 * THE JOURNAL OF
 "OurBloody Ships" or "OurBloody System"?

no more than 10,000 yards, it was impracticable to mount armour in suf-

ficient thickness to keep out the new shells. Future warships, they there-
fore argued, required armour of sufficient thickness only to keep out
high explosive shells. For such a purpose, six to eight inches of plate
would be adequate. Among the adherents to this theory was Admiral Sir
John Fisher, the service chief of the Royal Navy from 1904 till 1910, and
the officer who established and chaired the 1905 "Committee on
Designs" which drew up the specifications for the very first battle
cruiser, HMS Invincible as well as the original HMS Dreadnought.84 It
should not be thought, however, that this was an exclusively Fisheresque
theory. Admiral Reginald Custance, one of Fisher's fiercest critics, also
subscribed to this theory.85
In April 1912, more than two years after the Admiral's retirement,
the then First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, informed Fisher
that his principal advisors now also believed that advances in the design
of heavy capped armour piercing shells rendered heavy armour ineffec-
tive. "The turrets which used to be designed to keep shells out,"
Churchill reported, "can now only make certain of keeping at any rate
one shell in, becoming in a certain sense mere transversals or casements
to localise explosion."86 "It is just astounding," Fisher replied, "how all
the arguments you use are precisely identical with those employed by
me with the support of Lord Kelvin in the verbal and informal discus-
sions that took place on the ever memorable meetings" of the Commit-
tee on Designs back in 1905.87 Although in 1913, Admiralty opinion
reversed itself and new British capital ships were provided with thicker
armour, the following year the trend was again reversed.88 The battleship
Agincourt projected under the prewar 1915/16 building programme (but
canceled on the outbreak of war) would have been a 28-knot version of
the Queen Elizabeth class battleships and would have mounted only ten-
inch rather than twelve-inch armour.
Once the war began in August 1914, it rapidly became apparent that
warship engagements would be fought at much longer ranges than had
been supposed. Generally speaking, the significance of this realization

84. The report of the Committee on Designs is available in Peter Kemp, ed., The
Fisher Papers, vol. 1 (London: Navy Records Society, 1960), 199-297.
85. Remarks by Admiral Custance on Alan Burgoyne, M.P., "Recent Develop-
ments in Battleship Type,"March 1913, 14, part 1, 1913, Transactions of the Institute
of Naval Architects.
86. Churchill to Fisher, 12 April 1912, FP568, FISR1/11, Fisher Papers, Churchill
College, Cambridge University.
87. Fisher to Churchill, 22 April 1912, FP570, FISRl/Il; see also Sumida, In
Defence, 56-57.
88. Sumida, In Defence, 259-60, 262-63.

MILITARY HISTORY * 53
 NICHOLASA. LAMBERT

was that whereas a typical 12-inch shell could perforate a battleship's

twelve-inch thick armour plate at 10,000 yards, where fired at a range of
16,000 yards it could not. Unfortunately, the same calibre projectile
could still penetrate the six to nine inch plates protecting the sides of the
battle cruisers. As it was impossible to add armour to capital ships with-
out substantially rebuilding them during hostilities it was thus impracti-
cable for the Royal Navy to respond.
It was no more practicable for the Royal Navy to adopt a safer pro-
pellant once the war had started, even if the volatility of cordite had been
fully appreciated. What was feasible, however, was to improve antiflash
arrangements inside turrets. Whether such measures were strictly nec-
essary to prevent a magazine explosion, had cordite regulations been
strictly obeyed, is debatable. One recent historian has asserted that
before 1916 "the precautions for preventing flash of ignited propellant
reaching a magazine" were definitely insufficient. Further, that even if
British crews had kept no more than eight charges in the turret at any
one time, the number which the antiflash system had been designed to
cope with, the simultaneous ignition of these eight charges would have
been sufficient to rupture the magazine bulkheads and thus detonate the
cordite store.89 But evaluating these claims is complicated by the
author's failure to provide footnotes on his sources. Besides, there are
documents relating to various experiments conducted by the Royal Navy
in 1917 and 1918 using the pre-dreadnought battleships Vengeance and
Prince of Wales, that seem to contradict this opinion.90 Moreover, a
paper written shortly after the war by the Naval Staff claimed that these
experiments "showed that the anti-flash arrangements which had
already been fitted in seagoing ships were efficient, though in some cases
they were capable of improvement." What was admitted by the Staff, it
is interesting to note, was "the Battle of Jutland revealed the fact that the
situation in our turrets as regards flash tightness was very dangerous,
because it was necessary to keep the turret magazine doors open for
rapid loading."9'
More fundamentally, however, whether or not British antiflash pre-
cautions in force before 1916 were inadequate seems of limited signifi-
cance considering the overwhelming evidence that the battle cruisers

89. Campbell,Fighting at Jutland, 369-71, 378. But note contradiction, 371-72.

90. Admiralty, "VengeanceFlash Trials, 1917-1918, CB1451, ADM186/229; orig-
inal report, "Summary of the Flash Trials Carried out by HMS Excellent in HMS
Vengeance between the dates 8 August 1917 and 3 January 1918," and "Flash trials
carried out on board HMSPrince of Wales, 1918," both files preserved at Gunnery
School, Whale Island, HMSExcellent, Portsmouth, England.
91. Admiralty Staff, "Storage and Handling of Explosives in Warships,"October
1919, 4-10, "Technicalflistory 24" [NLMD].

54 * THE JOURNAL OF
 "OurBloody Ships" or "OurBloody System"?

kept far more than the regulation eight charges inside their turrets. Well
before the war, and prior to the deliberate training of crews to shoot
rapidly, it was already standard procedure throughout the British fleet to
keep loaded not only the primary ammunition supply system, but also
the auxiliary hoists and waiting positions. This meant there must have
been a minimum of twelve charges inside each turret. The Indefatigable
certainly carried even more cordite in her turrets as she had been pro-
vided with ready use cordite lockers in the working chamber.92 To this
total need to be added any "unauthorised" stocks of cordite inside the
turrets. According to Alexander Grant, it will be recalled, the crews lifted
practically every lid from the cordite cases, and piled the handling room
with charges. There could easily have been, therefore, as many as
twenty-five, thirty, or even forty charges exposed to flash. The ignition of
(say) twenty-five charges (just under three tons of propellant) would
have produced more than a flash-fire; probably the result would be an
explosion sufficient to sink the ship.
The lack of physical evidence, the suppressing of important evidence
of what actually happened at Jutland, and the tainted nature of the sur-
viving documents notwithstanding, there remains a strong circumstan-
tial case against the gunnery personnel of the Battle Cruiser Force.
Anyone reading the documents cannot fail to notice the importance-
not to say urgency-attached to rapid shooting before 1916. There is
also evidence that in most battle cruisers this resulted in a dangerous
tendency to accumulate cordite in working spaces inside turrets. The
evidence is not conclusive enough to make a final judgement on the
question of what caused the loss of the three battle cruisers at Jutland.
But historians should be aware that it was sufficient in 1916 to convince
the Board of Admiralty led by Admiral Sir Henry Jackson.

92. Jellicoe, "Paperprepared by DNO for successor," July 1907, 14 [NLMD].

MILITARY HISTORY * 55