Bombardment of Scarborough and Hartlepool

On the morning of 16 December 1914 the German battlecruisers of Rear-Admiral Franz von Hipper shelled three towns on the east coast of England: Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby. For the first time in several centuries enemy shells fell on English towns, and the victims were above all civilians, including women and children. The raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby caused shock and outrage in Britain. At the same time a series of chaotic encounters took place in the North Sea, in which the Royal Navy twice missed the chance to destroy part of the German fleet.

Hipper’s plan

After the raid on Yarmouth at the beginning of November, Hipper argued that another sortie against the English coast might lure part of the British fleet out to sea. The commander of the High Seas Fleet, Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, agreed to the operation. The Germans knew that two British battlecruisers had been sent to the South Atlantic, where on 8 December they destroyed Admiral von Spee’s squadron. They therefore judged that the balance of forces in the North Sea was exceptionally favourable to them.

The battlecruisers were to shell the coast and the light cruiser Kolberg was to lay mines. Behind them, halfway across the North Sea, the main body of the High Seas Fleet was to wait. If part of the British fleet set off in pursuit of Hipper, it could run straight into superior German forces. Ingenohl, however, was constrained by the Kaiser’s order, issued after the Battle of Heligoland Bight, not to expose the fleet to serious losses.

Early on the morning of 15 December the battlecruisers Seydlitz, Moltke, Von der Tann and Derfflinger, the armoured cruiser Blücher, four light cruisers and some fifteen torpedo boats left the Jade estuary. Later the main body of the fleet, 22 battleships in all, also put to sea. On the same day a German airship was sighted off the mouth of the Humber, which the British linked with this expedition.

The British know, but not everything

The British Admiralty had managed to intercept and read German wireless signals. The cryptanalysts of Room 40 established that Hipper’s battlecruisers were putting to sea, but they did not know that the entire High Seas Fleet had sailed as well. The Admiralty decided to set a trap. Vice-Admiral David Beatty’s four battlecruisers, Vice-Admiral George Warrender’s six modern battleships, light cruisers and the Harwich Force were sent to intercept the Germans. This force was much weaker than the whole German fleet, but it was superior to Hipper alone.

Before dawn on 16 December the destroyers screening Warrender ran into the torpedo boats and cruisers screening the German fleet. Several chaotic clashes took place in the darkness. Ingenohl concluded that he was facing the screen of the entire Grand Fleet, and at about 5.30 a.m. he turned for home with the main body, leaving Hipper without support. He did not know that only ten British capital ships were nearby, which his fleet could have crushed. Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz later wrote bitterly that on that day Ingenohl had held the fate of Germany in his hands.

The shelling of the towns

At about 8 a.m. Hipper’s force divided into two groups. Derfflinger and Von der Tann approached Scarborough, a popular seaside resort, and shelled the town for several dozen minutes. Shells hit the castle, the coastguard station, the lighthouse, the imposing Grand Hotel, churches and houses. The town had no defences at all. Some eighteen people were killed, most often given as 17 or 18, and according to various sources between about a hundred and two hundred were wounded. The youngest victim was a fourteen-month-old boy. Meanwhile Kolberg laid about a hundred mines in Filey Bay, south of the town, towards Flamborough Head. Three ships sank on them that same day, and according to local historians the minefield had sunk about twenty vessels by March 1915.

The two battlecruisers then sailed to Whitby. The short bombardment was aimed at the coastguard station, but the shells also damaged houses and the ruins of the medieval abbey. Two or three people were killed in Whitby.

Hartlepool

The most victims were in Hartlepool, which in 1914 consisted of two neighbouring port towns, Hartlepool and West Hartlepool. It was the only one of the bombarded towns with coastal defences. On the headland stood three 6-inch (152 mm) guns manned by local Territorial gunners, who had been put on alert at dawn. At about 8.10 a.m. Seydlitz, Moltke and Blücher opened fire, and the bombardment lasted about 40 minutes. The German ships fired more than a thousand shells. They hit steelworks, the gasworks, the railway, churches and several hundred houses.

One of the first shells fell by the Heugh Battery and killed several soldiers from the guardroom. Among them was Private Theophilus Jones of the 18th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, a 29-year-old schoolteacher. He is regarded as the first British soldier killed by enemy fire on British soil in this war. The batteries returned fire and hit the German ships several times, Blücher most heavily, where several sailors were killed. The British scout cruisers and destroyers stationed at Hartlepool tried to engage, but were damaged or driven off by the fire of the German guns.

Figures for the victims in Hartlepool vary by source. According to some lists 86 civilians were killed, according to others more than a hundred, plus several soldiers and sailors. Several hundred people were wounded. In all three towns together, according to various counts, between about 120 and 137 people were killed and nearly 600 wounded. The victims were mainly civilians.

The escape

Hipper’s ships made off eastwards, straight towards the British waiting for them. The weather, however, had deteriorated, with mist lying over the sea and rain falling. The light cruiser Southampton of Commodore William Goodenough’s squadron made contact with the German light cruisers, but because of a badly worded signal from Beatty’s flagship Goodenough broke off the action and the enemy vanished into the mist. Soon afterwards the German light cruisers were sighted from Warrender’s battleships, but this contact too was quickly lost. Hipper slipped round the British squadrons to the north and returned to base. The British submarines waiting off the German coast also failed to attack effectively.

“Remember Scarborough”

Britain was in uproar. The press called the Germans “baby-killers”, and Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, wrote in a letter to the Mayor of Scarborough that the brand of “the baby-killers of Scarborough” would cling to the German navy. The slogan “Remember Scarborough!” appeared on recruiting posters calling on men to join the army. The shelling of defenceless resorts was also condemned in the press of neutral countries, especially in the United States.

The anger, however, was also turned against the Royal Navy. The public asked how it was possible that the most powerful fleet in the world had been unable to defend its own coast or catch the raiders. The Admiralty could not reveal that it had known about the sortie from intercepted signals. In Germany, in turn, Ingenohl was criticised for turning back instead of exploiting his advantage. The two fleets were to meet again in the North Sea in January 1915, at the Battle of Dogger Bank.