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On 31 May, 1916, the great battle fleets of Britain and Germany met off Jutland in the North Sea. It was a climactic encounter, the culmination of a fantastically expensive naval race between the two countries, and expectations on both sides were high. For the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet, there was the chance to win another Trafalgar. For the German High Seas Fleet, there was the opportunity to break the British blockade and so change the course of the war. But Jutland was a confused and controversial encounter. Tactically, it was a draw; strategically, it was a British victory. Naval historians have pored over the minutiae of Jutland ever since. Yet they have largely ignored what the battle was actually like for its thousands of participants. Full of drama and pathos, of chaos and courage, JUTLAND, 1916 describes the sea battle in the dreadnought era from the point of view of those who were there.
About the Author
Nigel Steel is head of the Imperial War Museum's Research and Information Department. He and Peter Hart have collaborated on several titles, including works on Gallipoli, Passchendaele and the First World War in the air. Nigel Steel and Peter Hart are both historians at the Imperial War Museum in London. They have collaborated on three previous titles.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Duel between Dreadnoughts,
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This review is from: Jutland, 1916: Death in the Grey Wastes (Hardcover)
The story of the Battle of Jutland has been told many times, but the authors have unearthed much fascinating new material from the archives of the Imperial War Museum. For the non-specialist, who does not wish to be weighed down by too much technical data, this book ably caters to the growing interest in the firsthand experience of modern warfare, as it happened "at the sharp end". The text is given over to lengthy eyewitness quotations which generally succeed very well in conveying the excitement, horror and pathos of both the long-range daytime encounters and the cut and thrust of the nighttime pursuit. During the intense gunnery exchanges between the opposing battlecruiser squadrons in the early stages of the engagement, thousands of men perished in a series of catastrophic explosions aboard British ships. Doctors' reports provide grisly evidence on the horrendous after-effects of fire and shell in the confined spaces between decks on other ships. Certain episodes, such as the attempts to save a wounded man fallen from a stretcher between the sinking "Warrior" and its rescue ship, will haunt the reader long after he or she has closed the covers. The view from the German perspective is not quite so graphic, reliant on translations of official German accounts, rather than the same sort of telling bottom-up memoirs, but is not omitted entirely. Who won? According to the authors, the British still won the Battle of Jutland strategically, although all the other evidence points towards a German tactical victory: the High Seas Fleet shot more accurately, sinking more enemy ships; outmanoeuvred the Grand Fleet during their famous battle turn-aways in the late afternoon; and the Germans' superior training in close-quarters night combat with searchlights paid off against a series of uncoordinated British destroyer attacks. But behind the propaganda which followed the battle, when both sides claimed victory, we now have a fitting tribute to the ordinary men who suffered and died to prove, or disprove, Mahan's nineteenth-century theories about naval supremacy. Some died in the flash of a cordite fire; others lingeringly in the sick bay or floating in the nighttime waters of the Skagerrak. And in the midst of all this horror were still glimpses of humanity, such as the destroyer survivors who insisted on singing "It's a long way to Tipperary" in honour of their eponymous lost ship. A good book.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Decisive Battle That Never Was,
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This review is from: Jutland, 1916: Death in the Grey Wastes (Paperback)
Even by the standards of the First World War there is something particularly brutal about the Battle of Jutland. Two vast fleets of grey ships on a grey sea set against a grey sky trying to destroy each other with high explosive shells and torpedoes. It is somehow elemental, not so much a clash between two navies as a clash between two massivily powerful forces of nature. And yet, for all the industry, endeavour and skillful seamanship displayed during the battle - and for all the bungling, design-flaws and misunderstood signals - the end result of this deadly engagement was a continuation of the status quo. The British maintained their significant numerical advantage over the German High Seas Fleet. At the end of perhaps the most violent 24 hours in the history of naval warfare the final result was "no change".
The authors of this book have taken something of a fresh approach in their portrayal of the events. The details of the battle, the personalities of the opposing admirals, the differences between the various types of warship are, of course, all discussed and explained, but the bulk of the book consists of some truly remarkable eye-witness accounts. By using extracts from letters and diaries written by those who actually took part in the battle this account has an immediacy and a human dimension that makes the events all the more poignant and moving. It is one thing to read a sober description of, say, the British Battlecruiser Queen Mary exploding, but it is quite another to read an account by one of the very few people who actually survived the sinking. The human element of Jutland, the sense of what it was like to witness the effect of high explosive shells crashing into steel and to see first hand the devestation caused is covered here in great, eloquent and moving depth. It's an excellent approach. There are descriptions here that will haunt you and that will bring home the true horror of war. If I had to make a slight criticism I'd say the book is a little heavy on British accounts at the expense of their German counterparts, but that may simply be because the British accounts are more numerous and readily available. It's a tiny quibble in what is a very good book. If you're after a technical account of the battle try Andrew Gordon's "The Rules of the Game", but if you're after an introduction to the events and an idea of what it must have been like to actually have been there then this is the book to get. Superb.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent use of primary sources,
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This review is from: Jutland, 1916: Death in the Grey Wastes (Paperback)
There are many works about the complex naval Armageddon-that-wasn't at Jutland, however this work is set apart by its extensive drawing on apparently new primary sources. This is a technique thay is not always easy - the combination of narrative history, 1st hand evidence and analysis can either be a disappointing pastiche, or highly impressive. This is the latter, giving the reader in-depth insight into the actions of both sides, the heroism (again on both sides), and critically on the confusion, and information or lack of it available to Jellicoe and Scheer. It certainly caused me to revise my critical attitude of Jellicoe for his now infamous decision not to turn his fleet and chase the retiring Scheer. The book stayed in my mind for some time since reading it; I can only hope the same authorial team might turn its attention towards other naval engagements or theatres of war - perhaps the Mediterranean in WW2?
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