The Grand Fleet in the First World War

The Grand Fleet was the main battle fleet of the Royal Navy in the First World War. It was formed on 4 August 1914, the day Britain entered the war, and its main base was the anchorage of Scapa Flow in Orkney. For four years it held the German High Seas Fleet in check and barred Germany’s way out of the North Sea to the ocean, which made the blockade of Germany possible. Under John Jellicoe it fought the Battle of Jutland in 1916, under David Beatty it received the German fleet’s surrender in 1918, and in April 1919 it was disbanded.

The fleet is born (1914)

The fleet was ready for war before London had decided to fight. On 26 July 1914 the First Sea Lord, Prince Louis of Battenberg, kept the ships at readiness after the test mobilisation, and on 28 July Winston Churchill ordered the First Fleet to sail from Portland to Scapa Flow. The anchorage in Orkney lay far from the German bases, and from there the Germans’ way to the Atlantic could be barred.

On the day war was declared the fleet was renamed the Grand Fleet. It was made up of the First Fleet and part of the Second Fleet of the former Home Fleets. Churchill and Fisher judged the existing commander, Admiral George Callaghan, unfit for wartime command, so Jellicoe took over, an expert in naval gunnery, with Iron Duke as his flagship. In the summer of 1914 the fleet had twenty-one dreadnoughts.

Its weak point was the base itself: Scapa Flow had no defences against submarines. After the alarm of 16–17 October, set off by a supposed U-boat, Jellicoe moved the fleet to Lough Swilly in Ireland and Loch na Keal on the Isle of Mull. On 27 October, off the north coast of Ireland, the modern battleship Audacious struck a mine and sank. In November the fleet returned to Orkney, and the first line of barriers at the Hoxa entrance was finished on 29 December 1914.

Blockade and battlecruisers (1914–1915)

The Grand Fleet did not watch the German ports from close in. Mines and submarines made it wise to keep the dreadnoughts away from enemy waters, and so large a fleet could not stay at sea for long either. The British therefore closed the northern exits of the North Sea. Between Shetland and Norway the armed merchant cruisers of the 10th Cruiser Squadron kept patrol.

The first actions were fought by lighter forces. On 28 August 1914 the fleet’s cruisers and destroyers routed the Germans in the Heligoland Bight. When in December Franz von Hipper’s battlecruisers shelled Scarborough and Hartlepool and escaped pursuit, Beatty’s battlecruisers were moved to Rosyth on the Firth of Forth. On 24 January 1915 they caught Hipper at the Dogger Bank, and on 11 February they were formed into the Battle Cruiser Fleet, subordinate to the commander of the Grand Fleet. There were disasters too: on 30 December 1915 the cruiser Natal blew up in the Cromarty Firth, killing about 400 men.

Jutland (1916)

In 1916 the High Seas Fleet was commanded by Reinhard Scheer, who wanted to lure parts of the Grand Fleet out to sea and destroy them with superior forces. Thanks to decrypted signals the British put to sea before the Germans had left port. At the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916 the Grand Fleet, by the most often cited counts, brought 151 ships, among them 28 dreadnoughts. It lost 14 ships and about 6,100 men, the Germans 11 ships and about 2,550 men, and Scheer twice broke out of the trap.

The result disappointed the British, but it changed nothing at sea. As early as the evening of 2 June Jellicoe reported the fleet ready to put to sea, and the blockade went on. A few days later the fleet’s cruiser Hampshire, carrying Lord Kitchener to Russia, struck a mine off Orkney and sank.

On 19 August the Grand Fleet again went out to meet Scheer; there was no battle, but submarines torpedoed two British cruisers. From then on the fleet kept to a cautious strategy, because the southern North Sea was becoming ever more dangerous for battleships.

Under Beatty (1916–1918)

At the end of November 1916 Jellicoe became First Sea Lord and Beatty took over the fleet. He chose the fast battleship Queen Elizabeth as his flagship. He rewrote the battle instructions, giving squadron commanders more freedom, and put the stress on gunnery training. Contrary to his supporters’ expectations he did not seek battle at any price: as long as the Grand Fleet existed, the Germans could not break the blockade anyway.

On 9 July 1917 the dreadnought Vanguard blew up at Scapa Flow. Of the 845 men on board, two survived. In the autumn German warships twice destroyed convoys to Norway, in October and in December, so Beatty detached battleships to cover them.

On 7 December 1917 four American dreadnoughts under Rear Admiral Hugh Rodman steamed into Scapa Flow, and Rodman placed himself under Beatty’s orders. They joined the fleet as the 6th Battle Squadron, later enlarged to five ships.

In January 1918 the Admiralty accepted Beatty’s view that the fleet should not risk battle in enemy waters. In April Beatty moved the main base from Scapa Flow to Rosyth. In the same month Scheer took the High Seas Fleet out against the Norwegian convoy, but failed to find it. By the end of the war the Grand Fleet numbered 35 dreadnoughts and 11 battlecruisers.

Surrender and the end (1918–1919)

In the autumn of 1918 Beatty expected one last German sortie. Scheer planned it, but the sailors refused to put to sea, and the Kiel mutiny set off the revolution in Germany. The armistice required the newest German warships to be handed over for internment. On 21 November 1918 the Grand Fleet, with American and French ships, more than 370 vessels according to Robert Massie, sailed out of the Firth of Forth to meet the Germans and escorted 70 of their ships into the firth. From there they sailed to internment at Scapa Flow.

On 3 April 1919 Beatty was made Admiral of the Fleet, and on 7 April he hauled down his flag in Queen Elizabeth: the Grand Fleet was disbanded. Its most powerful ships went to the new Atlantic Fleet, while the older ones briefly formed the Home Fleet. The German ships at Scapa Flow were scuttled by their crews on 21 June 1919, when the Allies were about to take them over under the Treaty of Versailles.