Castles of Steel by Robert K. Massie
The navy at Hartlepool was not specifically warned; in wartime, the navy was supposed always to be ready. Besides, standing Admiralty orders instructed that all coastal patrol vessels were to be at sea before dawn. But on the two previous days, the weather had been so poor that Rear Admiral G. A. Ballard, commanding all coastal defense vessels along the British east coast, had modified this instruction, instructing his captains to put to sea only when individually ordered to do so. Consequently, on December 16, Captain Alan C. Bruce, of the light cruiser Patrol, who was also the senior naval officer in Hartlepool, had dispatched only his four small, elderly destroyers to sea, holding his two light cruisers and his submarine in port. Hartlepool was a tidal harbor with a narrow channel; the tide was so low that morning, and the swell outside so high, that he judged an attempt to cross the bar with the cruisers and submarine to be unnecessarily hazardous.
At 7:45 a.m., Doon, Test, Waveny, and Moy were steaming on routine patrol five miles northeast of Hartlepool when men on the bridge of the division leader, Doon, became aware of three large vessels approaching from the southeast. The mist was too thick for Doon’s captain to make out the nature or nationality of the vessels, so he signaled his ships to increase speed and investigate. Five minutes later, the strange ships suddenly opened fire; simultaneously, two were recognized as German battle cruisers. Salvos began to straddle the destroyers and, as the German shells burst on contact with the water, the British ships were showered with splinters. Destroyers could harm big ships only with torpedoes and, as the British ships were beyond effective torpedo range, all but Doon turned away. Doon continued to advance; at 5,000 yards she launched a single torpedo, which missed; then she retreated with one man dead and eleven wounded.
The bombardment of the Hartlepools, beginning at 8:10 a.m., came as a shock even to the forewarned shore artillerymen. When the unfamiliar ships first appeared offshore, the waiting British gunners watched them with admiration; they seemed so large, so close, and so powerful that they could not possibly be anything but British. A group of men belonging to the Durham Light Infantry was standing together near the Heugh Battery, treating the affair as if it were a holiday display, when a shell exploded in their midst, killing seven men and wounding fourteen. Both guns of the Heugh Battery immediately fired at the leading ship. The lighthouse gun engaged the third ship in line, which was smaller than the first two. The three enemy ships were firing 11-inch, 8.2-inch, and 5.9-inch shells at the British batteries. That the batteries were not annihilated was due to a fluke: the ships were firing at such short—almost point-blank—range that there was insufficient time to permit the operation of their delayed-action fuses. Also, many of the shells were passing over the battery and hitting houses or falling onto the docks and the town behind. Other shells landing near the British guns ricocheted, bouncing along intact, before exploding.
Meanwhile, inside the harbor, Captain Bruce was trying to get Patrol out to sea. The light cruiser proceeded past the breakwater, but by the time she reached the channel to the open sea, the water around her was boiling with shell bursts. Captain Bruce ordered full speed to make a dash for it, but as Patrol came into clear view of the nearest enemy ship, now identified as an armored cruiser, two 8.2-inch shells smashed into her, killing four men, wounding seven, and forcing Bruce to steer her aground. There she remained. The other British light cruiser, Forward, spent the entire engagement in the harbor trying to raise steam. By the time she emerged, the Germans had vanished.
The submarine C-9 followed Patrol in her dash toward the sea, and the salvos that damaged Patrol splashed all around C-9. To save herself, C-9 submerged although it was near low tide and only eighteen feet of water covered the bar. She instantly grounded and took so long to pull herself out of the mud that by the time she was clear, the enemy was gone. After the raid, Roger Keyes, the Commodore of Submarine, found it “deplorable” that C-9, “which was stationed in Hartlepool solely to meet the situation which arose,” had not been out on morning patrol. With the attacking battle cruisers steaming slowly back and forth and with the armored cruiser having come to a complete halt in the middle of Tees Bay, the German ships would have made ideal targets for a submerged submarine.
The Royal Navy had failed at Hartlepool, but the British shore batteries continued their duel with the enemy ships. Poor visibility caused by mist and swirling dust from the collapse of houses immediately behind them hampered the British gunners, but they managed to track the two battle cruisers, now about 1,000 yards apart, steaming slowly northward. The two guns of the Heugh Battery aimed at the leading ship, concentrating their fire on the masts and superstructure because their 6-inch shells were exploding without much effect against the armored sides and turrets. About 8:25 a.m., both Heugh guns switched to the second ship. A few hundred yards away, the lighthouse gun was firing at and hitting the armored cruiser. Unfortunately, as the cruiser moved north, the lighthouse gun was forced to cease firing because it could no longer shoot without hitting the lighthouse. At 8:52 a.m., when the last round had been fired and the bombarding ships turned out to sea, none of the three British shore guns had been silenced.
The German naval history records that “1,150 shells of heavy, medium and light caliber had been fired at the batteries and other points of military importance in the city.” The damage was severe. The attack had begun as families were having breakfast, leaving for work, getting ready for school. When flashes of light were followed by claps of what everyone took to be thunder, a guest having breakfast in one of the hotels said with a smile, “The Germans have come.” The waiter serving him laughed. Shipyard workers who had picked up their tools at 7:30 a.m. were working at Grey’s shipyard when there was an enormous crash and a column of black water rose inside the breakwater. Seven men in the shipyard were killed and two ships under construction collapsed on the building ways. The mate of a ship in the harbor was hit in the spine by a splinter and died.
When the two battle cruisers shifted their fire from the docks and shipyards to the center of West Hartlepool, they aimed at the steelworks, the gasworks, and the railway cargo and passenger stations. A large gas tank collapsed in flames. Two other gas tanks standing close together were struck and a large volume of gas escaped; that night, with no gas for illumination, West Hartlepool was lit by candlelight. Shell bursts and fires damaged seven churches, ten public buildings, five hotels, and more than 300 houses. In East Hartlepool, three churches and the Carnegie Library were hit. Victoria Place, just behind the lighthouse, suffered worst of all; scarcely a house remained standing. Roads and pavements were covered with broken glass and shattered masonry and the air stank acridly of explosives.
As at Scarborough, people had tried to flee to the train station or to the open country. A family named Dixon was running down a street when a shell burst over them. Fourteen-year-old George, eight-year-old Margaret, and seven-year-old Albert died; Mrs. Dixon, covered with blood, was left alive holding her baby, John, who was unhurt. One shell entered a house and killed a father, a mother, and six children, leaving only an infant alive. A boy had his foot blown off. A body lay in the middle of a street surrounded by hats which been blown out the window of a hat store. Seven-year-old Sarah Wilkinson insisted on going to school, saying, “I must get that medal, mother.” She was blown to pieces in Crimdon Street. Next day, in front of a shattered house in Turnbull Street, a six-year-old boy cried out, “Look, there’s my teddy bear up there. I’m sure mother’s up there, too.”
Eighty-six civilians died in the Hartlepools and 424 were wounded. Including the casualties at Scarborough and Whitby, the German navy had killed 105 men, women, and children and wounded 525. Eight German sailors had been killed in the operation and twelve wounded.
The news that German battle cruisers had bombarded North Sea towns shocked and outraged Britain. For the first time in 247 years, English blood had been spilled on English soil by foreign naval guns.
[On June 8, 1667, a Dutch fleet of sixty warships and troop t
The raiding ships were branded the “assassin squadron” and “the Scarborough bandits.” Winston Churchill publicly assured the mayor of Scarborough that “the stigma of the baby-killers of Scarborough will brand its officers and men while sailors sail the seas.” Sir Walter Runciman, the MP for Hartlepool, wrote to his constituents describing the attack “as a colossal act of murder by ingrained scoundrels with results that will stamp them for all time as heinous polecats.” The fact that two of the three towns were undefended drew particular fury. “The bombardment . . . was an infamous crime against humanity and against international law,” declared the Daily Chronicle of London. The law in question was the Convention on Bombardments by Naval Forces, signed at The Hague on August 17, 1907, by forty-four nations including Great Britain and Germany. Article I of the convention stated: “The attack or bombardment by naval forces of ports, towns, villages, habitations or buildings which are not defended, is prohibited.” The Chronicle drew a distinction between the different towns attacked: “So far as the Hartlepools are concerned, no complaint can be made of the enemy’s action. The bombardment of entirely undefended watering-places like Whitby and Scarborough is another matter. Such action has never in history been taken by a civilized power before the present war.”
The Germans were the primary objects of public anger, but the Royal Navy did not escape. Why had the navy failed to prevent the raid? After spending millions on dreadnoughts to ensure sea supremacy, why had English civilians died from German naval gunfire? The Admiralty, meeting the criticism, admitted that it could not provide absolute security against occasional raids and tried to put the matter into perspective. “Demonstrations of this character against unfortified towns or commercial ports, though not difficult to accomplish provided a certain amount of risk is accepted, are devoid of military significance,” the Admiralty announced. “They may cause some loss of life among the civil population and some damage to private property which is much to be regretted; but they must not in any circumstances be allowed to modify the general naval policy which is being pursued.” The British fleet, in short, would remain concentrated in the north.
Most newspapers stood by the Admiralty, pointing out that the raid had been of no military importance and that one of its purposes was to create public pressure to force the Admiralty to split the British fleet into defensive positions along the east coast. “The best police force,” remarked The Observer, “can firmly preserve general order, but cannot prevent some cases of murder, arson and burglary.” A Times editorial declared: “It would no doubt be very comforting to each cluster of dwellers on the East Coast to see a British dreadnought anchored before their front doors . . . but protection of these shores is not the primary object of the Royal Navy in War.” “The purpose of the Royal Navy,” The Times explained, “is to engage and destroy the ships of the enemy.” The press in the north of England accepted this premise, but not without qualification. “We hope that the authorities will not forget that although the shelling of a town may be insignificant from a military point of view, it is significant enough to the people who live in the town,” said the Northern Daily Mail. “No doubt the larger questions of naval strategy must take precedence over the defence of particular localities, but at the same time, we may be permitted to hope that we are not to be made a target for German ships even in the interest of higher strategy.”
British justice has age-old procedures, immune to modification even in times of war. Here, British subjects had died and jury inquests in the bombarded towns attempted to describe the causes of death and identify the perpetrators. “There has been no attack on an English town by an alien enemy for hundreds of years,” the Hartlepool coroner informed his jury. “Therefore I have no precedent for the guidance of the jury.” In Scarborough, the jury foreman asked, “Cannot we use the word ‘murder’?” The coroner replied that if the jury returned a verdict of murder, he “would have to go through the formality of binding the police over to prosecute someone.” The persons responsible, he pointed out, were the officers of the German ships, and, as the jury was bound to recognize, these persons were unavailable. Frustrated, the prosecutors terminated the proceedings.
Through the autumn, Franz Hipper had been eager to take his battle cruisers to sea and had constantly proposed new operational plans. On November 8, only five days after returning from his abortive raid on Yarmouth, the commander of the 1st Scouting Group had suggested a sortie against British merchant trade in the Skagerrak. The British, he argued, would have been forced by his approach to Yarmouth to bring their battle cruisers south to strengthen their east coast defenses; therefore, a raid to the north might catch them off guard. And if he began sinking British merchantmen in northern waters, the Grand Fleet, or part of it, was bound to rush to their aid. Whereupon, as Hipper planned it, the British warships would fall prey to the waiting U-boats he proposed to station off the Firth of Forth, Cromarty, and the entrances to Scapa Flow.
Ingenohl rejected Hipper’s proposal, but the High Seas Fleet commander recognized that something must be done. Since the Battle of the Bight, his fleet had been fretting at the inaction imposed upon it. Morale was deteriorating. The kaiser had given the Commander-in-Chief a command to hold back the fleet in order to preserve control of the Baltic and permit the release of coast defense troops to alleviate the manpower demands of the army. But William had left a loophole: “This does not, however, prevent favorable opportunities being used to damage the enemy. . . . There is nothing to be said against an attempt of the battle cruisers in the North Sea to damage the enemy.” In the language of this memorandum, Ingenohl recognized that the kaiser, eager for victories but abhorring risk, was willing to settle for smaller, even hit-and-run successes. Specifically, he was willing to expose Hipper’s battle cruisers, but not the dreadnought battleships. Accordingly, on November 16, Ingenohl asked permission to send Hipper alone back to England’s east coast, and on the nineteenth William consented. A submarine, U-27, was dispatched on the twenty-first to reconnoiter the coastal waters and locate the minefields between Scarborough and Hartlepool. The mission was secret, so much so that none of the crew were aware of its purpose; when the submarine returned, her captain reported that the shore defenses were weak, that the commercial coastal traffic was heavy, and that an area reaching out as far as twelve miles off the Yorkshire coast appeared free of mines. Planning for the operation continued. The Naval Staff insisted that all four of Hipper’s battle cruisers participate and, because Von der Tann was in dry dock for boiler repairs, Hipper’s sortie was postponed until mid-December.
The sudden annihilation of Spee’s squadron at the Battle of the Falklands was another spur to the east coast raid. The Falklands defeat had depressed the German fleet and the German people and Ingenohl believed that Hipper’s sortie might provide a tonic. Practically speaking, too, it was clear that British battle cruisers had been stripped from the Grand Fleet and dispatched to the South Atlantic. Ingenohl did not know which British ships had gone, but he was confident that Beatty’s force was now depleted by at least two. (The Germans never learned of the absence of Princess Royal.) An opportunity to attack a weakened enemy should not be ignored; Hipper must strike before these ships returned to the North Sea.
The German plan took shape: Hipper would take four battle cruisers and an armored cruiser (the British Admiralty always classified Blücher as a battle cruiser; the Germans, more accurately, listed he
At 3:00 a.m. on December 15, Hipper’s flagship, Seydlitz, sailed from the Jade, followed by Moltke, Von der Tann, the newly completed Derfflinger, Blücher, four light cruisers, and eighteen destroyers. One of the light cruisers, Kolberg, carried a hundred mines. That afternoon, Ingenohl and the main body of the High Seas Fleet followed Hipper into the North Sea. The armada under Ingenohl’s command that day—eighty-five surface warships—was the most powerful German naval force ever to put to sea. And this did not count the twenty-seven ships that had gone ahead with Hipper. Ingenohl’s destination was the eastern edge of the Dogger Bank, where he intended to arrive at daybreak the following morning. This position would not be far enough to the west to provide effective support if Hipper got into early trouble, but it marked the extreme limit of Ingenohl’s courage.