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Updated: May 31, 2025
It was plain to those who had glasses turned on the damaged ships that they were drawing far too much water to be brought into the Hamoaze and over the sill of the dry dock at Devonport, so that no one felt surprise when the battle-cruisers were seen to pull out of the deep fairway and make towards the shore. The purpose was plain to read.
There is also the statement that Admiral Beatty passed with his battle-cruisers through a flotilla of enemy submersibles without being touched. Submersibles cannot attack their target in definite formations as do surface vessels, and therefore they cannot operate in numbers with the same effectiveness as do the latter. They must maneuver more or less singly, and at random.
"Quite," said Froissart. "The spies and their boat must be caught red-handed, but not till after the false news of the mining of the battle-cruisers has been carried to Holland. But how shall we make certain that the sleepless English Navy will not butt in and catch the boat at sea before it gets across to Holland. The Narrow Seas swarm with fast patrols." "I will provide for that.
Germany has twenty dreadnoughts of from 20,000 to 30,000 tons to our ten. She has four battle-cruisers, while we have none. She has a hundred destroyers to our twenty-five." "I understand that these figures refer to the fleets that are actually going into battle?" "Yes. Germany's entire naval strength is a third more than that. I have accurate information. You see, our fleet is outclassed."
Besides the three battle-cruisers we lost three armoured cruisers, Defence, Black Prince, and Warrior of 13,000 or more tons apiece, and eight destroyers, while the super-Dreadnought Marlborough was badly holed and the Warspite was put out of action. The German looses in destroyers may have been equal or greater, but in cruisers they were considerably less.
Though a strict teetotaller, he passed hours at public houses, especially in the evenings, listening to the talk of the port. It was all about the disaster in the South Seas, the heavy casualties suffered by the Three Towns, and the rotten ill-luck of the avenging battle-cruisers running upon the German mines.
The guns were also ranged for elevation up to 30 deg., whereas the British elevation was only 15 or 20; and the difference was fatal to some of our battle-cruisers.
Clearly, for instance, if the German battle-fleet could engage the British battle-cruisers without itself being engaged by the British battle-fleet, the event might justify moderate expectations. On the morning of 31 May the German High Seas Fleet set out on its "northern enterprise." What the German Government meant by that phrase has never been revealed.
While the First Lord was assuming that sorely damaged battle-cruisers, or vessels which could be passed off in place of them, needed but his summons to spring from the deeps, Jacquetot had pressed a bell and ordered a messenger to request the immediate presence of the Fourth Sea Lord, within whose province was the whole art and mystery of ship construction.
The British battleship fleet was far away to the northwest, but the wireless promptly flashed the signal, "Enemy in sight," and as the battle-cruisers raced to close quarters with the tardy foe, and sacrificed themselves in the effort to hold him in the open sea, down from the north rushed the leviathans of the Mistress of the Seas, that were counted on to crush the enemy when the opportunity came.
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