All language subtitles for BBC.Scotlands.War.at.Sea.1of2.The.Dreadnoughts.of.Scapa.Flow.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org

Eight miles north of the Scottish
mainland lies the island of Hoy.

The south east corner of the
Orkney Islands.

Five days before Britain
declared war,

this remote community
was already on red alert.

In the early hours
of July 30th 1914,

ten soldiers from the Orkney
Garrison were dispatched here,

the tiny village of Rackwick.

Orkney was to be placed under
direct military rule.

These ten soldiers were on a mission
of national importance.

They were to take immediate control
of the telegraph station.

The one vital link
between the Admiralty in London

and Orkney's great natural harbour.

Scapa Flow.

Scapa was to become the base

of the most powerful fighting
force in all history.

The British Grand Fleet.

Already, the great ships, the mighty
dreadnoughts of the Royal Navy,

had left Portsmouth
en route to Orkney.

Their role was crucial,
protecting vital British cargos,

and protecting Britain
from invasion.

Command of the sea was something
Britain just could not lose.

Lose command of the sea,
we've had it.

What was to follow was a naval war
of industrialised superpowers,

a war of terrifying technologies.

Between two sides separated by
one savage body of water.

The North Sea.

For the Royal Navy, this would be
a war like none before.

Fighting a new enemy,
with new weaponry,

from a new, Scottish base.

VOICES OVER RADIO

The Northern Hemisphere's greatest
natural harbour. Scapa Flow.

You've got 120 miles of water
ringed by beautiful islands.

For centuries, ships had come here,

seeking shelter from the
vicious waters

where the Atlantic meets the
North Sea.

To a harbour said to be big
enough for all the ships

of all the navies of all the world.

To a place forever linked to the
great ships of the Great War.

On the last day of July 1914,
in broad daylight,

the entire fleet sailed
through that narrow channel -

and into Scapa Flow.

This was a fighting force of
more than 40,000 men.

In charge of that force was
Admiral George Callaghan.

But he would not remain so for long.

Two days after the fleet arrived
at Scapa Flow, Callaghan's friend

and second in command, Admiral
John Jellicoe, arrived from London.

And 48 hours later, on the very day
Britain declared war,

Jellicoe opened a letter from
First Lord of the Admiralty,
Winston Churchill.

A letter that appointed Jellicoe
commander in chief.

He was due to succeed
Sir George Callaghan

in two and a half months anyway.

So it was only bringing it ahead by
a matter of weeks, you might say.

And Callaghan was aware of this?

No, it came as a bit of a shock.

You have to think of this
in the context of a new Trafalgar

was expected daily,
right at the beginning.

And Callaghan kind of assumes that
he would be leading

the fleet that he had
trained into the new Trafalgar.

Jellicoe, what was his leadership
style?

I would say the only Nelsonic aspect
to Jellicoe's character

was the rapport he had with his men.
He was very good at names and faces.

He knew every job on board.

If you were painting a bulkhead,
he would come along and talk to you

about it and say,
this is a better way to do it,

and he would probably know your name.

He was very nervous of his command,

because he now commanded,
in the Grand Fleet,

pretty much the whole of the
Royal Navy's fleet capability

and Jellicoe, as Churchill said,
cleverly,

was the only man who could lose
the war in an afternoon.

That burdened Jellicoe - he didn't
carry his responsibility lightly.

Jellicoe had been promoted to
a position

of immense national responsibility.

The Royal Navy had long been
the figurehead

of Britain's imperial might.

But in the first
years of the 20th century,

this was a fighting
force on the cusp of change.

Coming to terms with
a new balance of world power.

You could say that the navy was in
the process of shifting its gaze.

Before the 20th century,
the traditional enemies

were across the channel -
France and also Spain,

but by the First World War, the navy
was looking at a new threat -

the gathering naval power of Germany
across the North Sea

in Wilhelmshaven and Kiel, so you
have bases becoming more important

in Dover, in Harwich, in Rosyth,
in Cromarty in Scotland,

and in Scapa Flow
in the Orkney Islands.

So in a sense, this was an
institution,

the Royal Navy, in transition? Yes.

Going from low-tech to high-tech.
How did they cope with that?

It was a very complex time.

The Royal Navy in the First World
War - you still have sailors mopping

the decks, you still have
a daily issue of rum,

you still have men sleeping
in hammocks,

but at the same time, it's at the
forefront of a whole host

of technologies - long range
gunnery, torpedoes,

aircraft, submarines.

We have the institution,
the Royal Navy, now based in Scapa,
we have the men -

do we have the ships to win the war?

Well, Britain was the pre-eminent
naval power of the period

so if Britain didn't have the ships,
no-one did.

In 1906 HMS Dreadnought was
launched,

which was the first of a new series
of all big gun battleships

and because Britain also had the
industrial might,

it was possible to drive these
into production with great speed

so that the British had more ships
than the Germans

at the start of the war
and continued to outbuild them
during it.

Before and during the Great War,
Britain built 35 dreadnoughts.

But to see one today,
I've had to come to the USA.

This is the only world's only
remaining dreadnought-type
battleship - the USS Texas.

Now a museum piece, she was built in
Virginia to a very British design.

I grew up around ships,
I've made films about them,

but this is the most deadly and
awe-inspiring ship I've ever
experienced.

It's something cooked up in the
imagination of HG Wells.

Even the name says it.
She's a dreadnought.

And the sight of one of these coming
over the horizon towards you

must have sent a shiver of fear
down the spine of every seaman.

And in her day, she was quite simply
the most powerful weapon of war

ever conceived and built by man.

Well, the dreadnought was a
great leap forward,

it was the space shuttle of
its time.

All big guns,

they had the main calibre
main battery

which made gunfire so much easier.

They unleashed devastation.

You would launch a ton,
half a ton,

projectile, ten, 15 miles.

When it hit its target, it left a
hole the size of a tennis court,

so times ten, it's just
unfathomable,

the amount of destructive force
these ships could unleash on
a target.

They were also heavily armoured
and faster,

so the HMS Dreadnought,
when it was launched

had a turbine engine which
was a lot faster

than the previous engines and it was
a technological leap forward,

and made these ships like the
dreadnought, to their namesake -

they feared nothing, they dread not.

That power came at a price.

Each dreadnought cost the British
treasury around £2 million.

In today's terms,

Admiral Jellicoe's 1914 Dreadnought
Fleet cost over £4 billion.

Yet the dreadnoughts were
considered essential

to maintaining the supremacy of
Britain and her Empire.

The purpose of dreadnoughts
was to find an answer,

a technical answer, to Britain's
increasing numerical threat,

by other industrialising nations.
France, Russia, Germany, America.

Britannia was still supreme but no
longer head and shoulders supreme.

So dreadnought was this fantastic
technical ploy

to trump Britain's competitors.

That day at Scapa Flow, when Admiral
Jellicoe opened the envelope

that promoted him to commander of
the British Grand Fleet,

he had 21 dreadnought battleships.

His opposite number, the
German Admiral Ingenohl, had 13.

But as he took command,
Jellicoe's first concern wasn't

how to sink those German ships.
It was how to protect his own.

A new danger had emerged from
under the waves.

The German Navy's fleet of
ocean-going U-boats.

And in the seas off Scotland's
south east coast,

just one month into the war, the
U-boats claimed a famous victory.

17 years before he would
write Brave New World,

the 20-year-old Aldous Huxley

was on holiday in the village
of St Abbs, just north of Berwick.

He stayed with family here
at Northfield House.

On the afternoon of
the 5th of September 1914,

he heard a tremendous noise...

LOUD ECHOING BANG

..the sound of a torpedo
exploding in the magazine

of the British light cruiser
HMS Pathfinder.

The torpedo had been
fired by the U-boat U-21,

which had, that moment,
become the first German submarine

to sink a British warship.

250 British sailors were killed.

In a letter to his father
dated nine days later,

Huxley described the scene.

He called the explosion...

"A great white cloud
with its foot in the sea.

"The St Abbs lifeboat came in

"with the most appalling account
of the scene.

"They brought in a sailor's cap
with half a man's head inside."

At Scapa Flow, Admiral Jellicoe
was shocked to discover

that his new base was
wide open to submarine attack.

A solution had to be found
that would allow the fleet

to move freely whilst keeping
the U-boats out.

In 1914, German submarines
could carry and fire six torpedoes.

A single U-boat could potentially
devastate Jellicoe's fleet.

Well, that essentially
was Jellicoe's worst nightmare.

when he arrived here

and found that he'd brought

his surface fleet to a place

that had no defences to speak of

against a submarine
or anything else.

And that's why he took
his Grand Fleet on a tour

round the Western Isles
and Northern Ireland... Absolutely.

He spent the first months -

in fact, the first year -
of the war

virtually steaming up and down
the west coast of Scotland,

down to Northern Ireland
and back again,

until they were able
to get the main fleet base

into some defensive order.

In November 1914,
the Royal Navy began to close off

the narrow channels leading from
the open sea into Scapa Flow...

..with deliberately scuttled ships -

blockships.

The schooner Reginald
was built in Govan in 1878...

..and sacrificed in 1914.

So, they got these blockships
on this side of the flow

within the first few months
of the war.

By the end of 1914,
we had 17 of these in position

and another six at the north end.

They were strung together

so that they weren't
just isolated hulks.

There would be a net between them

that would stretch right across,
from shore to shore,

so that they were actually...
It's like a big chain.

So even if there were little gaps
between the sunken ships,

they were netted to make sure...

They were netted to make sure.

They did a report on them

within a year of dropping them
in the first place,

in September 1915,

and they described this one
as "likely to last".

THEY CHUCKLE

Well, they were proven right.

All aboard the Reginald.

It's great. Touching
a 100-year-old wreck -

a ship that was built in 1878
in Glasgow...

..and now it's a rusting hulk.

And you can actually peel
layers of the iron off...

All the rolled iron
is just splitting.

At least she went down with
no hands on board, eh? Absolutely.

The blockships were
the perfect way

to keep U-boats out of
Scapa Flow's narrow inlets.

But the main southern entrance,
Hoxa Sound,

was a mile and a half wide.

It was the Grand Fleet's
main entry and exit point.

It called for an altogether
different solution.

Hoxa Sound was the key
to the security of Scapa Flow.

It is the most vital waterway
in this whole system.

This is a coast battery.

It's one of 13 coast batteries
that were built in Orkney,

and its job is to act
as the shore defences.

There were guns emplaced here
to cover the anti-submarine booms,

which are like big net curtains

that are strung across
these channels.

The booms had gates which
would be opened for friendly ships,

and the gates were operated
by small boats that would sit,

that would just be on station
all the time.

The booms and batteries
were in place by early 1915.

With the blockships closing access
to smaller channels,

Jellicoe could end
his Hebridean cruises

and safely anchor his warships.

His growing fleet of dreadnoughts,

his high-speed battlecruisers,

the hunter-killers...

and his smaller ships - the nimble
destroyers and long-range cruisers.

Like this - HMS Caroline.

Docked in Belfast,

she's the only ship
from Jellicoe's fleet still afloat.

And deep inside, it's still possible
to get a sense of life on board

during the Great War.

You know, it's quite amazing...

We're in the engine room.

There are two massive
steam turbines here

and two in the forward chamber

with a great steam condenser
in the middle.

If you can just imagine
being down here

as one of the men who worked
in the engine room -

the noise, the vibration, the heat.

They must have been continually
pouring with sweat.

There's one place on HMS Caroline

that must have been
particularly terrifying.

In battle, the emergency steering
compartment would be used

to manoeuvre the ship...

when everything else
had been blown apart.

Eight to ten men would be
down in this chamber,

with the hatch locked, following
orders that came down from above.

You can imagine
the sheer, SHEER power needed

to turn these gigantic wheels
in this massive ship.

Being trapped down here
in the heat of battle,

rocking and rolling,

and the blasts from shells,
torpedoes...

It wouldn't be
a pleasant place to be,

and then suddenly,
you could be sinking to the bottom,

trapped in a cage of steel.

The men on board these ships

had come from Britain's
bustling naval towns -

Portsmouth, Plymouth and Chatham.

Some as young as 14.

Most had signed up for 12 years.

Over 40,000 of them.

They came to a remote, windswept
place of farmers and fishermen...

and outnumbered the local population
by almost two to one.

It took the island and turned it
upside down and shook it.

It must have done.
So, how did the locals react?

Was it a positive reaction?

Well, you have to remember,
I suppose,

that society was very
different in those days,

and if you were helping the fleet,

then you were doing your part
for the country, you know?

There was that kind of patriotism,

which you might not necessarily
get these days.

But...I have to say, though,

it was lucrative.

Farming was in decline
on the run up to World War I,

and then, suddenly,
there's, like, a small city

floating in the middle
of the islands...

and needing to be fed.
And they need to be fed and watered.

For Orkney's tenant farmers,

selling produce directly to the navy

was a new and welcome
form of income.

This was the first opportunity
they had

to have real money in their pockets,

that they could spend

on whatever they wished.

That's quite a dramatic difference,
isn't it?

Oh, it was very liberating.

What about the social exchange
between people?

Did much of that go on?

Recreation was provided on shore
for a lot of the fleet,

and there was dances and concerts,

and land was requisitioned
for turning into football pitches.

The fleet's main recreation centre
was on the tiny island of Flotta,

now dominated by an oil terminal.

A hundred years ago,

King George faced Admiral Jellicoe
on Flotta's improvised golf course.

But not all activities
were quite so distinguished.

The navy catered to all tastes.

They organised boxing matches...

And, I mean,
these things were massive.

They were fleet boxing matches,

so you were fighting
for the honour of your ship.

And there is a photograph of it...

and it's just... I mean, there are...
I've seen it. Yeah.

It looks like 100,000 people.

Yeah, watching this boxing match
going on in the middle of it.

The men on board
made the best of things,

but for the young sailors,

Orkney lacked the attractions
of southern harbours.

They'd complain that Scapa was
too cold, too windy, too far away.

But for now, it was home.

And from here, the most powerful
navy in the world

would square up to the second
most powerful navy in the world

for control of the North Sea.

The Imperial German Navy was
based in the harbour towns of Kiel

and Wilhelmshaven.

And German warships
patrolling near Wilhelmshaven were

the target for the first British
naval attack of the war.

At first light on the morning
of the 28th of August 1914,

a British force of eight light
cruisers and a destroyer escort

sailed into German waters
just a few miles north of here.

Alerted to the intruders,
Admiral Franz Hipper, in charge

of German defences, dispatched
ten of his light cruisers.

By lunchtime, only seven remained...

..as first the Mainz,
then the Ariadne and Kohl were sunk.

The short-lived Battle of
Heligoland Bight was Britain's first

naval success of the war.

Crowds gathered to cheer
the ships home.

But the effects of the attack were
much more profound in Germany,

and in particular with the German
leader, Kaiser Wilhelm.

Well, the Kaiser was rather
horrified. That was his toy.

The Navy was his toy.

This should not have happened.

And he decided that no German ships
were to sail out into the North Sea

to seek out the Royal Navy

unless they had express
permission from him personally.

So, all these wonderful ships
are essentially cooped up here

in Wilhelmshaven or in Kiel.

The great irony was that Germany's
leader was an honorary admiral...

of the Royal Navy.

His grandmother,
Britain's Queen Victoria,

had given him the title in 1889.

A quarter of a century later,
Germany's idiosyncratic leader

seemed to be running scared
of the Royal Navy.

A situation that suited
the British perfectly.

"We don't actually have to fight you

"because if you don't want to
fight us, we still run the world.

"That's OK.
If we catch you, watch out -

"you're going to get
the drubbing of your lives."

For four months, the German ships
were ordered to remain in harbour.

But ten days before Christmas, 1914,
the Kaiser allowed Admiral Hipper

to take his battle cruiser fleet
to sea.

The next morning,
the 16th of December,

Hipper ordered his ships to open
fire on the town of Scarborough.

Whitby and Hartlepool were next.

For the first time in almost two
and a half centuries, British men

and women had been killed,
on British soil, by enemy warships.

The final death toll was 137.

Jellicoe's boss, the First Lord of
the Admiralty, Winston Churchill,

called the Germans "baby killers".

The Royal Navy had left
Scarborough undefended.

Jellicoe's fleet was 300 miles
to the north, 15 hours away.

Something had to be done.

So, five days before
Christmas, 1914,

the still incomplete Rosyth Dockyard
became the base

for the Royal Navy's newest
and fastest ships -

the battle cruisers.

The Navy's ferocious hunter-killers.

The best possible
protection against further attacks

by Hipper's German battle cruisers.

These five glamorous ships were
placed under the command

of a glamorous 43-year-old
Vice Admiral - David Richard Beatty.

Beatty was careless, he was dashing,

he bore his command
responsibilities lightly.

As a junior officer, he hadn't
bothered much with his exams.

It was as if either he didn't care
much about his naval career or

he assumed that circumstance would
just enable him to rise to the top.

He sounds a very different
character from Jellicoe.

Very different
character from Jellicoe.

Jellicoe was an absolute
by the rule book, honourable,

completely honest...

Everything, in a way,
that Beatty wasn't.

Seven miles east of Rosyth,

Beatty rented a house in the village
of Aberdour.

He lived there with his wife,

a fabulously wealthy American
divorcee, Ethel Field.

Both husband and wife were
notoriously promiscuous.

Beatty was a frequent visitor
to Edinburgh

and to this one fashionable hotel.

As an individual,
some people say that the word "cad",

he's a perfect definition
of the word "cad".

He was almost a rakish,
raffish individual.

He visited this building,
the North British Hotel in Edinburgh,

on many occasions,
not just to drink coffee as well,

but to visit his mistress.

So he was a very...
dynamic individual,

but in the rather discreet
days of Edwardian Britain,

he could carry out his liaison
without too much publicity.

Can you describe
the difference to me -

there must be quite a marked
difference from being based up

at Scapa Flow and based in Rosyth...
Yeah. ..close to Edinburgh?

Well, I think that's right.

Scapa Flow was a rather remote
location. Not many... No big urban

areas with entertainment facilities
close at hand, so I think the

officers had a much more pleasant
time when they were based at Rosyth.

They were very close to a number
of landed estates, at Dalmeny...

Hopetoun House - the gardens
of Hopetoun House on this side

of the Forth were made available
to them, and lots of opportunities

for walking and other activities.
Beatty himself...

And walking being the least of
them, I'd imagine!

Walking maybe being the least of
Beatty's favourite activities.

The Belfast-born war artist,
Sir John Lavery,

depicted these sailors returning
to their ships on the Forth.

The area offered
a host of distractions,

but there remained serious
work to be done.

And just weeks into the
New Year, Beatty's battle cruiser

fleet would be called to action.

Just before 6pm, on the afternoon
of the 23rd of January 1915,

Admiral Hipper again
lead his battle cruiser fleet

out of Wilhelmshaven.

British naval intelligence alerted
Vice Admiral Beatty,

who brought his battle cruiser
fleet out of the Forth.

The next morning, at 7am,

at Dogger Bank in the middle
of the North Sea...

..the two came together,

and the German Admiral had no idea
who he was up against.

Hipper feared that he had stumbled
upon Jellicoe's Grand Fleet.

He ordered his ships to turn
180 degrees and head for home.

14 miles behind, Beatty -
on board HMS Lion - began the chase.

They started a pursuit
action at the Dogger Bank.

And this was a classic thing that
battle cruisers were meant for.

Beatty's ships were faster
than their German equivalents.

Just before 9am,
the rearmost German ship

came into range of HMS Lion.

At a distance of 20,600 yards,
almost 12 miles,

Beatty gave the order to open fire.

In the battle that followed,
Hipper's flagship, Seydlitz,

lost two of its five guns.

Beatty's flagship, Lion...

..lost both port engines
and half her speed.

On board, the journalist,
Filson Young,

timed the trajectory of the
German shells approaching his ship.

When he saw the flash from the
German guns, he started his watch.

"It is strange to think that
I have perhaps 23 seconds to live.

"When the little hand reaches that
mark, then, oblivion."

Young survived,

but HMS Lion was critically injured.

Meanwhile, the rearmost German ship,
the Blucher,

began to slip astern
and was pounded by the British.

Now, just minutes before 11am,
both sides were one ship down.

Beatty still had
the balance of power,

four ships to three.

But at that crucial moment
at 10.54am, Beatty blinked.

Without warning,
Beatty ordered a major course change,

because he thought
he saw a submarine.

There weren't any submarines there.

Minutes later, using flag signals,
Beatty issued a second order.

It read,
"Attack the rear of the enemy."

So all the other British
battle cruisers then teamed up,

ganged up on Blucher, pounded her,
torpedoed her, sank her.

As Admiral Hipper's three remaining
battle cruisers made their escape,

Beatty's ships dispatched
the crippled Blucher

and over 700 of her crew.

They didn't need three battle
cruisers to do that.

It needed a few destroyers
to do that.

In effect, they were almost
finding an excuse

not to chase after the Germans.

As the Blucher disappeared,
British destroyers moved in

and attempted to pull German
sailors from the water.

But the British ships were
themselves

attacked by a German airship
and forced to withdraw,

leaving the German sailors
to their fate.

The British newspapers would portray
the Battle of Dogger Bank as

a great victory - revenge on Hipper
and the baby killers of Scarborough.

But for Beatty's many critics,
it was never that.

For them, the cavalier Vice Admiral
had missed his chance.

But really what went wrong
at Dogger Bank was the signalling

mistake which appeared to order
the battle cruisers to stop

pursuing the fleeing enemy - that
wasn't what he intended at all.

And he blamed everybody else
he could possible incriminate.

Vice Admiral Beatty was using
the same signal flag technology

that Admiral Nelson had used on
HMS Victory at Trafalgar...

110 years before.

Messages had to be communicated,
and we're talking about an age where

radio and, at the time, wireless
telegraphy, was in its infancy.

So you had to use visual
signalling methods - flags,

semaphore, and flashing lights.

So, was radio that imperfect
at the time of the Great War?

Yes, it was for naval use.

It has to be coded, it has to
go down to the wireless office,

be transmitted. You have to hope
that allowing for

the primitive equipment it is
received by the

ship at the other end.

It all eats into time, and in a
battle, tactical communications

is very time sensitive. With
flags you can go, "TURN TO PORT NOW,"

and it is almost as quick as going,
"Turn to port now."

Duncan, give me a simple explanation
of how flag communication

physically works.

Every letter in the alphabet
has a flag,

every numeral has a flag. Say
you

want to turn all your ships at the
same time 90 degrees to port.

You hoist a flag to indicate that it
was going to be a turn

and all of the other ships would
acknowledge that they had received

and understood the signal.

The moment you pull them down

all of the ships will turn 90 degrees
to the left together.

Such was the system.

It had served
the Royal Navy for centuries.

110 years before,
Nelson's flags at Trafalgar

had famously expected,
"Every man to do his duty."

But by 1915

the limitations of this venerable
system were becoming clear.

Admirals were used to being able
to fight with all of their ships

in sight of each other.
That was the system that

flag signalling particularly
suited.

But you have parts of the battle now
that are going on over the horizon.

Perhaps the biggest shortcoming
in the Royal Navy's command

and control system in the

First World War were the brains
behind it,

not necessarily the means
of articulating the orders.

For Vice Admiral Beatty,
the Battle of Dogger Bank

had been a signal failure.

But the new year would bring
another opportunity...

..and the chance to defeat
the entire German navy.

By the early summer of 1916,

the Naval Base at Rosyth had
been completed

and Vice Admiral Beatty's fleet had
almost doubled in size.

He had been given
command of the five

Queen Elizabeth-class battleships...

..called the super-dreadnaughts,
the pride of the fleet.

The strategic importance of the
Forth had increased substantially.

And so, in turn, had its defences.

Rosyth, the dockyard at the heart of
the base was enormous,

and it took from 1903 to the middle
of the

First World War to actually
complete it.

But the fleets based here were
so enormous that first of all

they started being
berthed on the west side,

upriver from the railway bridge,
but very soon the number of ships

berthed here meant that the ships
were berthed downriver as well,

below the bridge. And there were huge
defences in place to protect

this fleet from submarines
and from surface ships.

And where is it we are actually
heading towards?

We are heading to the island of
Inchgarvie, and the central

pier of the rail bridge sits on one
end of the island and that was

the centre of the innermost
line of defence of the naval base.

And by the middle of the war was
mounting four 4-inch guns to

protect the base from fast moving
motor torpedo boats.

And why are you taking me
to Inchgarvie? Every other island,

virtually every other battery was
re-armed in the Second World War,

and changed. Inchgarvie is
virtually

unchanged from when they walked
away from it in the early 1920s.

Not many people get onto it
so there's very little damage or

vandalism, its pretty well in perfect
condition.

Every day tens of thousands of
people pass above the island.

But only a handful ever get to
visit.

You can see the magazines are under
there.

From this wonderful vantage point,
can you point out to me the

strength of the outward defences
from the bridge eastward?

From where we are standing there were
anti-submarine nets under

the railway bridge and guns on
Inchgarvie

where we are standing.
There were batteries on

the shore to the north and south of
the island.

The middle defences, almost four
miles downriver from here,

ran from a battery at Braefoot
on the north shore

out to Inchcolm and Inchmickery and
the southern shore at Cramond Island.

These guns also covered the
anti-submarine boom that

blocked the river from shore to
shore.

All these batteries had powerful
search lights to illuminate

targets at night.

Some of these were movable.

Others shone a fixed beam and the
guns were ranged on these in advance.

And then way out in the distance
you can see

Inchkeith, the big island,
the headquarters of

the defences of the Forth.

All the defences were linked by
telephone to Inchkeith

and the observers there would be
able to assess what

sort of attack was coming.

What was the worst case
scenario, what were

we defending ourselves against?

The defences are designed to tackle
a whole range of

levels of attack.

From the heavy guns out on the outer
defences to where

we are on the inner defences,
quick-firing guns which were

intended to tackle fast-moving motor
torpedo boats and destroyers

coming in very quickly

to raid, fire off torpedoes into a
very densely packed anchorage where

it would have been very difficult to
miss a target, turn and run for it.

Four miles downriver the defences
on the island

of Inchmickerry shape a rather
familiar profile.

From a distance it looks
remarkably like a battleship.

Well, the story is it was
designed to look like that

but I think that is people trying to
explain it in retrospect.

Particularly before the

Second World War battery control
tower was built,

I don't think it looked
particularly ship-like.

There is the story that a German
airplane dropped a torpedo at it

because they thought it was a ship,
but I can't find any evidence

that that is anything other than
an apocryphal story.

Here on the Forth, on the afternoon
of the 30th of May 1916,

Admiral Beatty received
an intelligence report.

It indicated that the pugnacious
new commander-in-chief of the

German High Seas Fleet,

Admiral Scheer, was taking his
ships to sea.

Immediately Beatty and Jellicoe were
to set out and hunt him down.

Jutland, the biggest sea battle of
the war, was now just hours away.

Overnight, the two British fleets
sailed

towards their rendezvous point.

Jellicoe's force of 70

warships included 24 dreadnoughts
and three battlecruisers.

Beatty's force of 50 warships
included six battle cruisers

and four Queen Elizabeths.

On Beatty's port side
was the light cruiser Galatea.

At 2:15pm,

she received a signal from Beatty
to turn to the north.

Just seconds before that signal,

the lookout saw a shape on the
horizon.

The captain disregarded the order
and pressed on.

Straining through his binoculars
he saw a neutral Danish steamer.

And just behind that two German
cruisers slowly came into view.

At 2:28pm,

HMS Galatea fired the first shots
of the Battle of Jutland.

The two battlecruiser fleets,

commanded by Beatty and Hipper,
had come together again.

Hipper had five battlecruisers.

Beatty had six,
plus his four Queen Elizabeths.

At 3:28pm Hipper turned his ships
through

180 degrees attempting to lure
Beatty's ships towards the south.

Lying in wait,
50 miles to the south,

was Admiral Scheer's
High Seas Fleet.

This remarkable photograph,
taken that very day from

a German airship, shows one
section of his 16 dreadnoughts.

Unaware of their position,

Beatty signalled for his ships to
follow Hipper's ships.

But once again,
his signals didn't work

and the Queen Elizabeths
were left behind.

The battleships stationed

five miles northwest of Beatty,
for various reasons...

did not understand

the signal being too far away and not
specifically addressed to them.

Finally when they turn
round to the southeast

they are actually ten miles apart
instead of five miles apart.

Beatty had lost touch
with four of his ten ships.

But as he closed on Hipper,
he maintained a one-ship advantage.

At 3:45, at a range of nine miles,
Chatfield,

the captain of Beatty's flagship,
HMS Lion, gave the order to fire.

Beatty's ships start losing a gunnery

duel with Hipper's battle cruisers.

Beatty's ships were
short on gunnery practice,

the German ships were
better at gunnery.

The rearmost
ship in Beatty's line,

the battlecruiser Indefatigable,
was hit and blown apart.

She sank in minutes.

For Beatty, five battlecruisers
remained.

Then four as the Queen Mary
imploded.

The Queen Mary disappeared
in a very few seconds.

She folded inwards.

People noticed bizarre things
like a blizzard of paperwork coming

out of the quarterdeck hatch.

It took a minute and then it was
gone, just gone.

Beatty turned to Chatfield,
the captain of the Lion

and gave voice to the most famous
words of the battle,

"There seems to be something wrong
with our bloody ships today."

This is Beatty just being
a stiff upper lip about

watching his friends being
killed in huge numbers.

Already over 2,000 British sailors
were dead or dying.

At 4:38 Beatty
received a priority radio

signal from his light cruiser
squadron, alerting him to the

presence
of Scheer's Highs Seas Fleet.

Immediately, Beatty
ordered an about turn.

Hipper followed,

unaware that Jellicoe's dreadnoughts
lay just 40 miles to the north.

Jellicoe was
coming down from the north

as fast as he possibly could.

He had received signals
from Beatty and the light cruisers.

Beatty's great achievement was to
bring the German High Seas Fleet

to Jellicoe in spite of the losses
he suffered on the run to the south.

Jellicoe's plan was
to deploy his ships

side-on to the oncoming German
dreadnoughts.

A technique called
crossing the enemy "T",

that would bring his 200 heavy
guns into action.

His job was to

get his fleet from cruising formation
which is six columns of four ships

into a single battle line
so that the enemy

comes in such a fashion at them
that the enemy has his "T" crossed.

So the head of the enemy line gets
beaten in by the whole

panoply of the British 25 ships.

And he did it very well.

Beatty assembled his fleet into a
single arced line, six miles long.

The official historian of the

Royal Navy, Sir Julian Corbett,
would

describe this as, "The supreme
moment of the naval war".

And just moments later,

the German dreadnoughts came into
the range of Jellicoe's guns.

At 6:17, at a range
of seven and a half miles,

his dreadnoughts opened fire
on the German High Seas Fleet.

When the German admiral gets
the fright of his life

and finds the Grand Fleet spread out
across an 80 degree arc in front

of him, the German admiral reverses
course and sends in his destroyers.

Now Jellicoe has only one response
to a destroyer attack

and that's to turn away.

Probably what Jellico should have
done is to turn towards

and combed the torpedo tracks.
By getting all ships

to turn towards together,

he might have lost two or three ships
but the payoff might have been

the annihilation of the
German High Seas Fleet.

He wasn't prepared to take
that chance.

He could lose the war in an
afternoon.

He wasn't going to do that. Maybe we
should be grateful that he doesn't.

But the idea has rankled ever since,

that had Beatty been in command
of the battle fleet,

Beatty would have known, as Nelson
said, to leave something to chance.

Beatty might have turned
the whole fleet towards.

And might have destroyed
the High Seas Fleet.

At 6:30pm, the British lost another
battlecruiser.

The third of the day,
as the Invincible was blown in two.

Half an hour later, Admiral Scheer

ordered his dreadnought fleet back
towards Jellicoe.

For the second time,
he was overpowered and turned away.

And overnight his wounded ships
crept back to Wilhelmshaven.

Just as damaged British ships began
to arrive on the Forth.

A junior
midshipman on HMS Warspite,

a man called Bill Fell, described
the reception the sailors received

bringing their wounded ships home.

He wrote, "As we passed under
the bridge all the railway people

"were lined along it.

"To our dismay they shouted
'Cowards! Cowards! You ran away!'

"They chucked lumps of coal at us."

The Battle of Jutland
had been marked by poor signals.

As ships continued to arrive
in Rosyth, this signal flag,

the letter D, served a grim purpose.

It was used to cover
the wounded when the ships came in

after Jutland, as they were being
brought into the dockyard at Rosyth.

In a fleet action
in the First World War,

you get this terrible destruction
on board ship, men are...

burned alive.

But the other thing about this
is that it's not clean.

We have textile conservation experts
who could clean this

if we wanted to.

Why do you choose not to?
Because this is the dirt

and the grime from the ships, so
it's part of the story of the battle.

Just wondered if
there was still a smell...

..of the battle.

So the smoke and the grime from over
100 years ago are still

embedded in this flag. And that
moment when the ships came in

and the people waiting didn't know
the outcome of the battle.

And they see damaged
British battleship,

damaged British battlecruisers
coming back

and the wounded coming off
and there's no news of victory.

There was concern that the British
navy had been

defeated which would have

been catastrophic for the British war
effort, possibly terminal.

In the days immediately
following the Battle of Jutland,

a key question remained unanswered.

Just who had won? Admiral Scheer had
twice turned his ships away.

But around the world,
newspapers printed German reports

of a German victory.

You can see why they claimed
victory,

they sunk more ships,
they killed more men.

6,500 or thereabouts British sailors
drowned, little over 2,000

on the German side, but in the end
none of that matters greatly.

What matters is the overall
strategic balance between the two

navies, and that hasn't changed.

The Germans know that they cannot
challenge the Royal Navy,

the Royal Navy effectively has
command of the North Sea.

After Jutland,
the great ships of the

Imperial German Navy would scarcely
leave harbour.

And yet across the North Sea,
no-one could claim that

Jutland was a great British triumph.

A strategic victory,
a tactical embarrassment.

And it lead to a lot
of recriminations and a lot

of people considering that actually
we need Beatty as commander-in-chief.

Five months after
Jutland in November 1916, Beatty

was promoted to admiral, placed
in charge of the Grand Fleet.

The man he replaced, Jellicoe,
reluctantly became First Sea Lord.

As Jellicoe left his flagship
at Scapa Flow, one witness

recalled that every officer
on the quarterdeck was in tears.

Together Jellicoe, Beatty,
their officers and men,

had negated the threat
of the German High Seas Fleet.

By not winning
the Battle of Jutland, Britain had

nonetheless won
the war of the dreadnoughts.

What remained, what was still
to come, was the war under the sea,

the war of the U-boats.