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Updated: June 8, 2025
We saw a German transport torpedoed by the B-1; we saw two submarines sunk by rapid-fire guns of the destroyers; we saw a battle-cruiser crippled by the glancing blow of a torpedo; and we saw the K-1 blown to pieces by bombs from the air-ships.
It was the ill-fated Queen Mary, our latest and finest battle-cruiser. At an almost incredible speed she overtook us and passed up our lines with her crew manning the decks and her band playing "The Maple Leaf." From then on we always could see the smoke of heavier battleships in the offing, and knew we were getting close to somewhere.
Once that German battle-cruiser squadron had slipped across the North Sea and, under cover of the mist which has ever been the friend of the pirate, bombarded the women and children of Scarborough and the Hartle-pools with shells meant to be fired at hardened adult males sheltered behind armour; and then, thanks to the mist, they had slipped back to Heligoland with cheering news to the women and children of Germany.
It was on the misty afternoon of Wednesday, May 31, that Admiral David Beatty, in command of Britain's battle-cruiser squadron, sighted the vanguard of the German high-seas fleet steaming "on an enterprise to the north" from its long-accustomed anchorages in the placid waters of the Kiel Canal and under the guns of Helgoland.
Rear-Admiral Horace Hood, second in command of the battle-cruiser fleet, went down with the Invincible. Rear-Admiral Arbuthnot went down with the Defense. The great naval battle, which may go down in history as the battle of the Skager Rack, was fought in the eastern waters of the North Sea, off the coast of Denmark.
Four gold letters, spelling the word Lion, awakened the imagination to the actual fact of the Bluecher turning her bottom skyward before she sank off the Dogger Bank under the fire of the guns of the Lion and the Tiger astern of her, and the Princess Royal and the New Zealand, of the latest fashion in battle-cruiser squadrons which are known as the "cat" squadron.
After describing the battle itself, the officer reverted to incidents preceding it, saying: "I shall never forget the thrill which passed through the men on the ships of the grand fleet when that inspiring message was received from the battle-cruiser squadron many leagues away: 'I am engaged with heavy forces of the enemy. One looked on the faces of his fellows and saw that the effect was electrical.
To take aim from such an altitude is impossible, especially at a rapidly moving target such as a battle-cruiser. The fact must not be forgotten that Count Zeppelin himself has expressed the opinion, the result of careful and prolonged experiments, that his craft is practically useless at a height exceeding 5,000 feet. Another point must not be overlooked.
This time when they came out they encountered a British battle-cruiser squadron of superior speed and power, and they had to fight as they ran for home. Now, the place of an admiral is in his conning tower after he has made his deployments and the firing has begun. He, too, is a part of the machine; his position defined, no less than the plugman's and the gun-layer's.
It must have struck a veritable hornets' nest of submarines, as by skillful maneuvering it avoided three of these before it was finally hit. "Early in the engagement, according to Admiral Beatty's report, a German battle-cruiser, after being hotly engaged, blew up and broke in two.
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