Dread Nought but the Fury of the Seas
- Thread starter sts-200
- Start date
The other way to do it is to have the HSF utterly crushed early on, then have the British try mental things like the Baltic project.
But I don't think we're going down that route...
But I don't think we're going down that route...
Seymour gets a bad rep doesn’t he. But in his defence the speed of warships and the range At which they now fought had advanced at a far quicker rate than communication between ship and squadron could keep up with. Flags could only do so much and no longer served and along with lights could become obscured by bad weather, smoke from both the funnels and gunfire as well as culumitive damage destroying flag-lanyards and destroying lights/dynamos (not to mention killing crew) rendering said ship deaf dumb and blind. Radio communication had been in use in the RN since 1901....just a few months before the RN learned how to jam it. For me the biggest failure was Beatty not imparting his intentions upon his sub commanders and ship captains. He instead spent as much time ashore and prior to Jutland did not for example even bother to meet the Admiral in charge of the 5th BS let alone attempt to share his intentions once battle was joined. Replacing Seymour with another man does not change the limitations that the then communication systems of the day imposed on WW1 warfare and I am afraid changes very little if anything.
I've heard it suggested that Seymour also wasn't actually properly trained in the Signals he was meant to know as well.
The Samoan Strategy
The Samoan Strategy
Having liberated Samoa, or rather taken control of the town of Apia, Admiral von Spee’s first act was to resupply from both German and captured New Zealand stores.
His next decision remains controversial, although most of those involved acknowledged that he treated the prisoners with utmost courtesy and went to great efforts to ensure their safety, despite the ruthless way in which he chose to use them. The captured men of the NZEF were taken on board three of the colliers, and with the decks of all his ships piled high with coal, he sailed away from Samoa, stopping to maroon the prisoners on the island of Manihiki, some 600 miles to the East. However, his behaviour was not entirely callous, as they were left with supplies, two small fishing boats and the assurance that instructions had been left at Samoa to start broadcasting their position in two weeks’ time. He also promised to send a ship back to the island before the end of October, in case the other arrangements went wrong.
Having planted in the prisoner’s minds what might, or might not, be a piece of misinformation, he sailed away from Manihiki, his ships disappearing over the western horizon.
The need to mop up German forces in New Guinea meant that troops weren’t available to recapture Samoa until early October, and with the obvious possibility that von Spee was waiting to spring a trap, the troop convoy to the island was guarded by both battlecruisers. When they arrived, Samoa surrendered without a fight.
The situation on the island was a bizarre one in the days before the fleet arrived. Von Spee had left only a dozen volunteers to hold key positions, somewhat questionably helped by the local police force. The Admiral and the restored German Governor insisted they carry no arms and remained civilians, but they did help in keeping an eye out for the New Zealanders who hadn’t surrendered, and German Marines (possibly helped by their police colleagues) held the wireless station and a few government buildings in the face of two raids. On the 1st October, they were under orders to broadcast the location of the marooned prisoners, but having done so, there was no reason to try to hold the island and risk further damage to German property or lives. On the other side, by this time the New Zealanders who remained on Samoa were in a sorry state – cut off from almost all supplies, they had made themselves decidedly unpopular with the native population by stealing food at night.
On the 2nd, a truce was agreed. The New Zealanders were allowed back into Apia and were assured that their compatriots were safe a few hundred miles away, with signals sent to ensure their rescue. The Germans remained in control of the wireless station and the Governor’s house, but formally surrendered once Allied ships were sighted offshore on the 8th October.
Despite the bloodless recovery of Samoa, the brilliance of von Spee’s strategy continued to manifest itself. The men of the NZEF now needed to be rescued from Manihiki, and the British were obliged to continue to use both of their battlecruisers to escort the troopships and sweep the seas around the island, in case von Spee’s ships were waiting in ambush.
For Admiral Patey, it made for a frustrating few weeks, on top of the time wasted in escorted troops to capture Samoa in the first place. He knew, and had said as much, that the island could have left alone while he cleared the seas, and then captured at the Alies’ leisure once the German squadron had been neutralised. He had been overruled then, but now he knew that von Spee would be long gone from Manihiki by the time he reached it; the German Admiral’s strategy was to distract and evade, not to seek confrontation with superior forces. His Lion-class battlecruiser Australia could handle von Spee’s squadron alone, and even the smaller New Zealand could comfortably outrun and outfight any of the German ships.
Nevertheless, the Dominion governments had insisted that the troopships be heavily escorted until the various elements of the Australian and New Zealand Expeditionary Forces were back on Samoa. He had interpreted his orders broadly and had sent his ships on wide sweeps on the trip to Manihiki and back, but it was only on the 23rd October that was he free to start the hunt for the German squadron once again.
New Zealand and a pair of cruisers headed east from Samoa, in case von Spee tried to make his way to Tahiti or the isolated Marquesa Islands, from where she would loop back through the Marshalls and Marianas. Aboard the Australia, Patey decided to scout to the north, then return to the New Guinea area, searching along a route von Spee might follow if he were heading for the Dutch East Indies.
However, following his departure from Manihiki on the 27th September, no-one had seen von Spee.
Having liberated Samoa, or rather taken control of the town of Apia, Admiral von Spee’s first act was to resupply from both German and captured New Zealand stores.
His next decision remains controversial, although most of those involved acknowledged that he treated the prisoners with utmost courtesy and went to great efforts to ensure their safety, despite the ruthless way in which he chose to use them. The captured men of the NZEF were taken on board three of the colliers, and with the decks of all his ships piled high with coal, he sailed away from Samoa, stopping to maroon the prisoners on the island of Manihiki, some 600 miles to the East. However, his behaviour was not entirely callous, as they were left with supplies, two small fishing boats and the assurance that instructions had been left at Samoa to start broadcasting their position in two weeks’ time. He also promised to send a ship back to the island before the end of October, in case the other arrangements went wrong.
Having planted in the prisoner’s minds what might, or might not, be a piece of misinformation, he sailed away from Manihiki, his ships disappearing over the western horizon.
The need to mop up German forces in New Guinea meant that troops weren’t available to recapture Samoa until early October, and with the obvious possibility that von Spee was waiting to spring a trap, the troop convoy to the island was guarded by both battlecruisers. When they arrived, Samoa surrendered without a fight.
The situation on the island was a bizarre one in the days before the fleet arrived. Von Spee had left only a dozen volunteers to hold key positions, somewhat questionably helped by the local police force. The Admiral and the restored German Governor insisted they carry no arms and remained civilians, but they did help in keeping an eye out for the New Zealanders who hadn’t surrendered, and German Marines (possibly helped by their police colleagues) held the wireless station and a few government buildings in the face of two raids. On the 1st October, they were under orders to broadcast the location of the marooned prisoners, but having done so, there was no reason to try to hold the island and risk further damage to German property or lives. On the other side, by this time the New Zealanders who remained on Samoa were in a sorry state – cut off from almost all supplies, they had made themselves decidedly unpopular with the native population by stealing food at night.
On the 2nd, a truce was agreed. The New Zealanders were allowed back into Apia and were assured that their compatriots were safe a few hundred miles away, with signals sent to ensure their rescue. The Germans remained in control of the wireless station and the Governor’s house, but formally surrendered once Allied ships were sighted offshore on the 8th October.
Despite the bloodless recovery of Samoa, the brilliance of von Spee’s strategy continued to manifest itself. The men of the NZEF now needed to be rescued from Manihiki, and the British were obliged to continue to use both of their battlecruisers to escort the troopships and sweep the seas around the island, in case von Spee’s ships were waiting in ambush.
For Admiral Patey, it made for a frustrating few weeks, on top of the time wasted in escorted troops to capture Samoa in the first place. He knew, and had said as much, that the island could have left alone while he cleared the seas, and then captured at the Alies’ leisure once the German squadron had been neutralised. He had been overruled then, but now he knew that von Spee would be long gone from Manihiki by the time he reached it; the German Admiral’s strategy was to distract and evade, not to seek confrontation with superior forces. His Lion-class battlecruiser Australia could handle von Spee’s squadron alone, and even the smaller New Zealand could comfortably outrun and outfight any of the German ships.
Nevertheless, the Dominion governments had insisted that the troopships be heavily escorted until the various elements of the Australian and New Zealand Expeditionary Forces were back on Samoa. He had interpreted his orders broadly and had sent his ships on wide sweeps on the trip to Manihiki and back, but it was only on the 23rd October that was he free to start the hunt for the German squadron once again.
New Zealand and a pair of cruisers headed east from Samoa, in case von Spee tried to make his way to Tahiti or the isolated Marquesa Islands, from where she would loop back through the Marshalls and Marianas. Aboard the Australia, Patey decided to scout to the north, then return to the New Guinea area, searching along a route von Spee might follow if he were heading for the Dutch East Indies.
However, following his departure from Manihiki on the 27th September, no-one had seen von Spee.
Once the von Spee part of the story comes to an end, I'll do a round-up of the changes in terms of ships ordered prior to the outbreak of war.
Churchill’s Greyhounds
Churchill’s Greyhounds
‘We seek him here, we seek him there
Our cruisers seek him everywhere,
Is he off China, or far Ponape?
That damned elusive Graf von Spee…’
-From a satirical cartoon of October 1914.
In the minds of the British public, the escape of the Goeben had been avenged in late August, when four battlecruisers led by HMS Lion sailed into the Heligoland Bight and sank three German light cruisers in the space of little more than half an hour. Two weeks later, Goeben’s former companion, SMS Breslau, was intercepted off Norway by the armoured cruisers Warrior and Cochrane. Breslau fled from these slow ships but was intercepted further south by three of Beatty’s battlecruisers, his squadron now including the brand-new HMS Panther, sailing on her first combat mission.
Nevertheless, there had been other setbacks. Samoa was lost (albeit briefly) to von Spee’s bold attack, and in late September two cruisers were torpedoed by a U-boat just a few miles from where HMS Bacchante had been sunk by the Goeben, resulting in the loss of nearly 1,000 lives. The loss of the battleship Audacious to a mine a few weeks later only underlined that the underwater threat was very real.
The inability to catch von Spee was causing the British government and the Navy considerable embarrassment, and it prompted the politically engineered downfall of the First Sea Lord, Admiral Battenburg and his replacement with a man who was seen as both 'less German' and immeasurably more dynamic.
With Turkey neutral and the Austrian Fleet staying quiet, HMS Inflexible was despatched from the Mediterranean to reinforce the East Indies squadron, and she reached Singapore on the 4th November. Despite the concerns of Admiral Jellicoe, HMS Princess Royal was ordered to the Caribbean, where she could assist in the hunt for the light cruisers Dresden and Karlsruhe (both known to be somewhere off the South American coast) and be ready to intercept von Spee should he choose to come through the Panama Canal.
In the Atlantic, areas of responsibility had been changed following the need for Admiral Stoddart to cover operations against Germany’s African colonies. Admiral Cradock’s squadron was therefore covering South America and was to be reinforced with HMS Invincible. The Admiral, however, couldn’t wait for her and had taken the cruisers Good Hope and Suffolk south to search for the Leipzig, which had been raiding off the west coast of the Americas.
After leaving Manihiki, von Spee’s ships coaled at uninhabited Christmas Island, where at a ‘council of war’ aboard the Blucher on the 6th October, he decided that the time had come to split up the squadron.
The following day, Gneisenau and Nurnburg sailed for the Marquesas Islands. With no communications with the outside world they stayed there for six days, allowing their crews to rest and coal in safety while obtaining fresh stores from a German firm, still trading in these French-owned islands. The two ships then sailed on east, stopping at the even more isolated Easter Island, where they bought fresh beef and a small supply of flour from an English rancher, who even after three months, still didn’t know that war had been declared. From there they steamed to the coast of South America, entering the neutral Chilean port of Valpariso on the 16th November.
Von Spee headed slowly west, sending the supply ship Seydlitz into Pearl Harbour, which she reached on the 21st October. Her Captain had considerable difficulty in persuading the Americans to allow him to coal, as they were suspicious that she was assisting a belligerent warship, and not heading for the Panama Canal as he claimed, but they did allow him to communicate with Berlin during his day in port.
She rejoined the squadron with news of the ongoing war and the success of Captain von Muller in the Emden, confirming the Admiral’s decision to head West, where he hoped to hide in the neutral islands of the Dutch East Indies, before breaking through to the Indian Ocean and perhaps reaching German East Africa.
His spoofs and evasions had kept the Allies guessing for three months, and directly or indirectly more than 30 warships were searching for his four cruisers.
In the south Pacific, HMS New Zealand, Hampshire, HMAS Melbourne and the French Montcalm were on the lookout. To the north, Admiral Jerram’s pre-dreadnought HMS Triumph, with Newcastle and Yarmouth blocked the route into the China Sea, assisted by the Japanese battleship Kurama and cruiser Iwate. The trade routes to Australia through the Java Sea were patrolled by Admiral Pierse, whose pre-dreadnought HMS Swiftsure and light cruiser Dartmouth had just been reinforced by HMS Inflexible. Patey, with Australia, Sydney and HMS Minotaur was in the Bismarck Sea.
On the 16th November, Admiral von Spee’s luck ran out.
‘We seek him here, we seek him there
Our cruisers seek him everywhere,
Is he off China, or far Ponape?
That damned elusive Graf von Spee…’
-From a satirical cartoon of October 1914.
In the minds of the British public, the escape of the Goeben had been avenged in late August, when four battlecruisers led by HMS Lion sailed into the Heligoland Bight and sank three German light cruisers in the space of little more than half an hour. Two weeks later, Goeben’s former companion, SMS Breslau, was intercepted off Norway by the armoured cruisers Warrior and Cochrane. Breslau fled from these slow ships but was intercepted further south by three of Beatty’s battlecruisers, his squadron now including the brand-new HMS Panther, sailing on her first combat mission.
Nevertheless, there had been other setbacks. Samoa was lost (albeit briefly) to von Spee’s bold attack, and in late September two cruisers were torpedoed by a U-boat just a few miles from where HMS Bacchante had been sunk by the Goeben, resulting in the loss of nearly 1,000 lives. The loss of the battleship Audacious to a mine a few weeks later only underlined that the underwater threat was very real.
The inability to catch von Spee was causing the British government and the Navy considerable embarrassment, and it prompted the politically engineered downfall of the First Sea Lord, Admiral Battenburg and his replacement with a man who was seen as both 'less German' and immeasurably more dynamic.
With Turkey neutral and the Austrian Fleet staying quiet, HMS Inflexible was despatched from the Mediterranean to reinforce the East Indies squadron, and she reached Singapore on the 4th November. Despite the concerns of Admiral Jellicoe, HMS Princess Royal was ordered to the Caribbean, where she could assist in the hunt for the light cruisers Dresden and Karlsruhe (both known to be somewhere off the South American coast) and be ready to intercept von Spee should he choose to come through the Panama Canal.
In the Atlantic, areas of responsibility had been changed following the need for Admiral Stoddart to cover operations against Germany’s African colonies. Admiral Cradock’s squadron was therefore covering South America and was to be reinforced with HMS Invincible. The Admiral, however, couldn’t wait for her and had taken the cruisers Good Hope and Suffolk south to search for the Leipzig, which had been raiding off the west coast of the Americas.
After leaving Manihiki, von Spee’s ships coaled at uninhabited Christmas Island, where at a ‘council of war’ aboard the Blucher on the 6th October, he decided that the time had come to split up the squadron.
The following day, Gneisenau and Nurnburg sailed for the Marquesas Islands. With no communications with the outside world they stayed there for six days, allowing their crews to rest and coal in safety while obtaining fresh stores from a German firm, still trading in these French-owned islands. The two ships then sailed on east, stopping at the even more isolated Easter Island, where they bought fresh beef and a small supply of flour from an English rancher, who even after three months, still didn’t know that war had been declared. From there they steamed to the coast of South America, entering the neutral Chilean port of Valpariso on the 16th November.
Von Spee headed slowly west, sending the supply ship Seydlitz into Pearl Harbour, which she reached on the 21st October. Her Captain had considerable difficulty in persuading the Americans to allow him to coal, as they were suspicious that she was assisting a belligerent warship, and not heading for the Panama Canal as he claimed, but they did allow him to communicate with Berlin during his day in port.
She rejoined the squadron with news of the ongoing war and the success of Captain von Muller in the Emden, confirming the Admiral’s decision to head West, where he hoped to hide in the neutral islands of the Dutch East Indies, before breaking through to the Indian Ocean and perhaps reaching German East Africa.
His spoofs and evasions had kept the Allies guessing for three months, and directly or indirectly more than 30 warships were searching for his four cruisers.
In the south Pacific, HMS New Zealand, Hampshire, HMAS Melbourne and the French Montcalm were on the lookout. To the north, Admiral Jerram’s pre-dreadnought HMS Triumph, with Newcastle and Yarmouth blocked the route into the China Sea, assisted by the Japanese battleship Kurama and cruiser Iwate. The trade routes to Australia through the Java Sea were patrolled by Admiral Pierse, whose pre-dreadnought HMS Swiftsure and light cruiser Dartmouth had just been reinforced by HMS Inflexible. Patey, with Australia, Sydney and HMS Minotaur was in the Bismarck Sea.
On the 16th November, Admiral von Spee’s luck ran out.
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There are 5 points of departure:
-Better Anglo-Ottoman relations in the runup to war, based on a slightly more supportive attitude by the British (of course, motivated entirely by their desire to keep everyone else out – c.f. British de-facto support for the Monroe Doctrine).
-In 1909, the Australians agreed to fund a Fleet Unit (as OTL), but including one of the latest Lion-class ships (why this didn’t happen in reality is beyond me – I’ve never seen a satisfactory explanation).
-In 1911, the British authorised 'HMS Panther', a sister-ship to Queen Mary, as a (slightly) cheaper alternative to OTL's HMS Tiger. (This hasn't appeared in the story yet).
-The Canadian Conservative government pursues discussions with the Liberals, to create a scaled-back alternative to the Canadian Naval Aid Bill, which passed in 1913.
Partly as a consequence, the ships of the RN 1913 programme will be different.
(This hasn’t appeared in the story yet).
-The Blucher was despatched to relieve the S & G earlier than was planned in reality. Then in the story, war intervened and von Spee was left with a stronger squadron.
Consequences of this:
HMS New Zealand (same design as OTL) was sent out to the Pacific in mid-1914 following concerns the Germans were reinforcing their Asiatic Squadron.
Goeben is therefore even more desperately needed at home, and with Turkey less friendly, she’s ordered to get the hell out of Dodge earlier than in reality.
I’ll admit I have got a bit bogged down with von Spee, which probably hasn’t helped make the overall flow very clear at this stage. However, his attempt to return home is one of my favourite war stories, so I couldn’t resist.
We’ll return to home waters in a couple of installments.
-Better Anglo-Ottoman relations in the runup to war, based on a slightly more supportive attitude by the British (of course, motivated entirely by their desire to keep everyone else out – c.f. British de-facto support for the Monroe Doctrine).
-In 1909, the Australians agreed to fund a Fleet Unit (as OTL), but including one of the latest Lion-class ships (why this didn’t happen in reality is beyond me – I’ve never seen a satisfactory explanation).
-In 1911, the British authorised 'HMS Panther', a sister-ship to Queen Mary, as a (slightly) cheaper alternative to OTL's HMS Tiger. (This hasn't appeared in the story yet).
-The Canadian Conservative government pursues discussions with the Liberals, to create a scaled-back alternative to the Canadian Naval Aid Bill, which passed in 1913.
Partly as a consequence, the ships of the RN 1913 programme will be different.
(This hasn’t appeared in the story yet).
-The Blucher was despatched to relieve the S & G earlier than was planned in reality. Then in the story, war intervened and von Spee was left with a stronger squadron.
Consequences of this:
HMS New Zealand (same design as OTL) was sent out to the Pacific in mid-1914 following concerns the Germans were reinforcing their Asiatic Squadron.
Goeben is therefore even more desperately needed at home, and with Turkey less friendly, she’s ordered to get the hell out of Dodge earlier than in reality.
I’ll admit I have got a bit bogged down with von Spee, which probably hasn’t helped make the overall flow very clear at this stage. However, his attempt to return home is one of my favourite war stories, so I couldn’t resist.
We’ll return to home waters in a couple of installments.
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Yes, insofar as I'm trying to write a focused sea story, not a history of the world, or even a complete re-telling of the Great War.
However, obviously world events will affect the world's navies, so I shall provide some context, but if you want all the details of (for example) developments on the Eastern Front, that isn't going to happen.
Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
Re; Loss of HMS Audacious. The RN made strenuous efforts to prevent the Germans &/or the Great British Public ignorant of her loss. They maintained her pennant number in navy lists all the way to late 1918. When the story was finally told the publication I have referred to censorship in the nation's interest. And that was despite plenty of American passengers aboard the Olympic having shots with their box brownies, although the moment of her actual sinking went unobserved by neutral eyes, so a case could be made that she was towed into dock or beached.
I’m very interested how you plan to do this as the Naval Aid Bill was one of the most devisive bills in Canadian history and even a watered down Conservative style bill was not going to fly in the slightest, especially with the Liberal controlled Senate holding the knife over the bill itself.
It’s also rather questionable that HMAS Australia is a Lion class and New Zealand has stayed as per OTL?
Quite right. I believe the Germans even admired the British for not acknowledging the loss (and trying to confuse them), although of course they were well aware of the sinking within a few months.
It's always amused me the widespread media/popular fiction assumption that military secrecy is always concealing an understatement (e.g. speed of an aircraft, number of ships available etc...), when so often these are classified to hide the fact that something isn't very good, or even that it isn't available at all!
It's a much smaller POD than you might think, in that it doesn't result in any more ships (it helps to build different ones). I won't spoil it now, but it will be a 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours' deal, which allows a little creative accounting...
I suppose I could have pushed it to both, but the New Zealand gov't jumped at the chance to pay for a ship early in 1909, whereas it took the Australians until almost the end of the year to agree the funding of a fleet unit (despite that fact, both capital ships were built almost at the same time, starting in 1910).
In the story, but I'm assuming those months were used rather better, with the Admiralty in London pointing out the superiority of the Lion design. It's also not hard to imagine the Australians wanting to outbuild their neighbours, if only to say 'our battleship's bigger than yours'.
Deleted member 94680
Rather than things out of the scope of the story (developments on the Eastern Front can be covered by a line of dialogue, if needed, for example) I rather meant whether the TL would be mainly about the PoDs themselves - would we follow the development of the changes, the challenges the characters face, etc - or would we follow the knock-on effects of these changes and have to discern them from the world the characters now live in.
A lot of lessons were learned from her sinking that very likely saved a number of vessels from progressive flooding in subsequent battles including Lion at Dogger bank.