From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, Volume III: Jutland and After, May to December 1916 (Volume 3) (From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, III) Paperback – April 15, 2014

Arthur J. Marder's 5 installments on the Royal Navy from the late 1800s through to the end of World War I is a masterpiece of scholarship. It delves into all aspects of the Royal Navy in the run up to WWI, the early War at Sea, Gallipoli, the Submarine War, Jutland, the German Naval surrender, the scuttling of the German ships in Scapa Flow by their crews, and finally, the early post war years.It is a good read; though, I admit its 5 volumes are daunting but well worth the while.

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The most thoughtful, detailed analysis of theBattle of Jutland and all the influences on the decisions made by the commanders-in-chief and other officers I have ever read.

Great experience!

Please read the first paragraph of my review for The Road to War, Volume I of Dreadnought to Scapa Flow.This review is based on the second edition of Volume IIIIt was expected by both the British Public and the British Navy that when the Grand Fleet finally met the German High Seas Fleet in battle the result would be a second Trafalgar. When the two fleets met at Jutland in 1916 the result was a tactical victory for the British with the German Fleet retiring back to it base in the dark while inflicting grater losses than it revived. The British press, public and even the Navy felt there must have been some mistakes by commanders of the fleet for this result to have happened and so begin the Jutland controversy. Most of the books on Jutland written in the two decades after WWI each critical of either Admiral Jellicoe or Admiral Beatty. Volume III of Dreadnought to Scapa Flow is considered by many historians to be the best unbiased history and analysis of the battle and received excellent reviews in the British press when it was published.The first chapter of Volume III looks at “The Grand Fleet Battle Orders” It is important to understand the “Battle Orders” because they explain Jellicoe’s views of how he was going to handle the Grand Fleet in Battle. They were submitted to the Admiralty for review and comment before the battle of Jutland.Chapters 2 through 4 give a very detailed description of the battle. Professor Marder’s text is accompanied by a set of 15 excellent ship tack charts. Even if you have read other descriptions of Jutland you will still find new and interesting insights. (Do read the foot notes in all the volumes, there are some very interesting comments and additional information in most of them. This is especially true for Jutland)For me the most interesting chapters are 5 “Jutland: Comparisons and Reflections” and 5 “Jutland: Evaluation”. Here is where Professor Marder analyzes the battle in detail. Everything from the performance of the British and German heavy guns to the tactics of both fleet commanders is analyzed. These chapters are where Professor Marder deals with some of the criticisms raised in previous works. Chapter 6 tells the story of what happened when the Grand Fleet returned from the battle. The German press release touting the battle as a victory, the first British Admiralty press release focusing on British losses and understating the German loses and the way the British press originally reported the battle all contributed to starting what was to become the Jutland controversy.Chapter 7 “Jutland: Reformation” discuses the changes made in both “materiel” and tactics in the British Navy as a result of the lessons from Jutland.Volume III raps up with a chapter on the change in administration at the Admiralty because of increasing losses from U-boats.For those who find Jutland interesting there have been some excellent books published since Professor Marder’s Volume III. The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command by Andrew Gordon is the best attempt yet to try and understand why the officers of the Grand Fleet acted the way they did a Jutland. It also has an excellent analysis of the battle cruiser action. I found it very interesting. Jutland: Death in the Gray Wastes by Peter Hart and Nigel Steel gives a good idea of what is like to fight the battle using the experience of participants, both German and British. Jutland an Analysis of the Fighting by John Campbell is a technical analysis of Jutland focusing damage reports for the major ships and quality of the ships gunnery.Finally I thought I would share a quote from some of what was written during the “Jutland controversy” in the years after WWI. This quote comes from The Jutland Scandal by Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon, a Jellicoe proponent, and was written in response to a newspaper article by Filson Young, a Beatty proponent. Filson Young “With that risk he [Admiral Beatty] played throughout his marvelous fighting chase towards and return from the south-east at Jutland, when he brought back the whole German High Seas Fleet and laid it, as cat brings you a mouse, at Jellicoe’s feet.” To which Bacon replied “This is delightful! The cat ran away from the mouse and lost sight of it in twenty minutes, and never saw it again.” When asked where the mouse was the cat had to confess it didn’t know!” After you read Volume III you will understand what motivated such comments.

(publisher’s review copy)‘Jellicoe is the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon’Winston Churchill, ‘The World Crisis’.. But fortunately for the whole world, being calculating and far-seeing, rather than hot-headed, he didn’t.Seaforth here present in paperback a reprint of Professor Marder’s 1975 second edition of his analysis of Jutland, which he had been able to tune using input from a very long list of Jutland veterans who wrote in following the original publication of the work.The first half of the book is devoted to an exhaustive and authoritative account of the battle itself, which will forever be the greatest sea battle in the history of the world. It has been fought over ever since, from tactical floor to tablecloth, floodlit by hindsight and the audience misled by partisan efforts to big up favoured participants, Churchill’s ill-informed and ignorant comments in ‘The World Crisis’ (apart from his lambent insight quoted above) and Beatty’s deliberate tampering with the official record, and widespread mistaken belief that sea battles are an end in themselves. Here in Marder, an academic historian and an American at that, we have an absolutely neutral commentator who cuts through all this to present us with the ultimate, wholly objective account, analysing all available detail (much only unearthed due to his diligent ferreting) with scrupulous fairness to the participants of whom he provides interesting character sketches. In the process he demolishes or qualifies several popular myths. His exhaustive research apart, it is remarkable that a civilian can get so accurately under the skin of naval events. His analysis benefits from his own WW2 intelligence experience.As to the battle, in spite of superior German cartridge design, optical equipment and spotting rules; superior German ship subdivision facilitated by their wider dry docks; defective British shell fuzes; our inadequate magazine flash doors and catastrophically mistaken ammunition handling policy; repeated failure by subordinate British commanders, from Beatty downwards, to pass on vital (or any) information; the limited intellectual and professional abilities of subordinate flag officers and captains, and Beatty’s own Flag Lieutenant (whose shortcomings had already been demonstrated to his master), and their technical ignorance; want of appropriate training at all levels, including Staff training; primitivity of W/T (aggravated by German jamming) and difficulty in visual signalling; mishandling of intelligence in the Admiralty; banks of mist, clouds of cordite smoke and near a thousand belching funnels; fatigue to the point of utter exhaustion from lookouts to commanders; dead reckoning affected by the concussive effect of gunnery on compasses; the Germans’ use of our recognition challenge; Jellicoe won a total strategic victory. His decision to deploy in a way that crossed the enemy‘s T is surely among the most crucial operational decisions ever taken by any commander. The Germans failed in their tactical aim of seeking a winnable battle so as to achieve their strategic goal of breaking the British blockade, whereby the silent pressure of our sea power slowly strangled their nation into well-deserved defeat.‘Clothes burnt send money’(News of the battle as telegraphed to his parents by a midshipman from HMS Warspite)Dead bodies from the battle drifted as far as Norway.The Grand Fleet was reported ready for action again at 0945 on the day after its return to harbour. The Admiralty’s crass mishandling of the press eventually came right as more informed commentators recognised the futility of taking undue risks, as against the need to preserve the superiority of the Grand Fleet as the anchor of our entire (and successful) naval strategy, and the fact that it takes two sides to make a battle for, as was been demonstrated, Scheer did not want to take part; all his manoeuvring once he had discovered that the Grand Fleet was at sea had been aimed at getting back to his base. The Admiralty formally endorsed Jellicoe’s insistence of concentration and his treatment of mine and torpedo threats. The centralisation of command enshrined in Grand Fleet Battle Orders was vindicated by events.Nevertheless great debate ensued and materiel improvements were put in hand, improved W/T sets were fitted in our submarines, and the 15” Repulse and Renown emerged from the builders to join the Battle Cruiser squadron. A crucial limiting factor was shortage of destroyers, given competing needs in the Mediterranean. Tactical measures were much discussed, including the correct way to employ the battle cruisers and the fast Queen Elizabeth class battleships.Rumination was rudely interrupted by an abortive German sortie on 19th August aimed at bombarding Sunderland. The German use of Zeppelin reconnaissance backfired when L13 falsely reported what was actually the Harwich force as including battleships, which ironically caused Scheer to steer south and thus avoid what might otherwise have been annihilation. In the event, for a variety of reasons not least Scheer’s determination to avoid a battle with the entire Grand Fleet, the main fleets never met.The Air does not escape Marder. The fledgling RNAS, many of whose squadrons had been diverted to support the army in France, was pretty much an irrelevance to Grand Fleet operations. Its advocacy suffered from no one admiral having charge of it - materiel, personnel and operations were all directed by different heads who might or might not (mostly not) understand the relevant priorities and opportunities. By the end of 1916 we were still well behind the Germans in successfully making use of either aircraft or airships.Later in the year public dissatisfaction with the conduct of the war began to wash over to the Navy, partly due to two essentially unsuccessful German tip and run raids in the English Channel, but also because of disquiet regarding the increasing depredations of U-boats. The time had come to freshen the nip. Lloyd George replaced Asquith, Balfour the First Lord was moved on in favour of Carson and as the U-boat campaign began to bite (by which, inter alia, Scheer had been deprived of their reconnaissance function) the worn-out First Sea Lord, Jackson, essentially out of his depth, was replaced by a reluctant Jellicoe. Beatty - not Jellicoe’s first choice - took over the Grand Fleet. All this is explained by Marder, as usual with a wealth of convincing detail as he slices through the personal axe-grinding and explains the various misconceptions about naval strategy that misinformed the debate.This Seaforth edition of Marder’s work is introduced by Barry Gough, a Canadian historian, who provides a précis and appreciation. Mercifully, in the main text many asides are appended as footnotes on the relevant pages so that one does not have to swap around from narrative to notes and back again. This is no picture book but portraits of the principals are included as illustrations. The narrative is supported by a number of elegantly drawn charts showing the action at various times. It is stated, but I could not see how to do this, that they can be downloaded in larger versions.This must be the master work on Jutland. Even though the story is familiar to this reviewer from other sources I emerged from reading this book much better educated and to boot was gripped by the flow of Marder’s narration. His coverage of the politics of the post-Jutland months is particularly informative.

For those who wish to understand the Royal Navy in The Great War, this is the book to read.

I shan't repeat the comments made by reviewers of the previous volumes in this series. This is arguably the pivotal volume, dealing as it does with that most controversial of all sea battles, Jutland. Whatever your views, 'Marder' is quite simply indispensable on the subject. As with all these books, Marder's writing style is wonderfully accessible and to me, appears to have full control of what can be a difficult-to-follow narrative. 'Unputdownable' is a word rarely used to decribe historical works such as this - but I literally couldn't putthis one down. Another point of note is that this is a reprint of the second, revised edition which is the one preferred by historians.The publishers deserve high praise indeed for reprinting 'Marder' which can be frustratingly hard-to-find and expensive. This reprint is attractively produced - and priced - and I'd actually award it 5 Stars +. Very highly recommended !

The book was a present for my father, an old naval officer who served on the HMS Malaya and several other ships in WW2. He was very impressed by the quality of the writing and the inclusion of many details that he did not know about the Battle of Jutland. I shall buy him the rest of the books now _ and borrow them when he has finished them!

The printed version of this book as opposed to the Kindle edition, contains few typographical mistakes. The Kindle edition is littered with transpositions, usually 'G' for 'C' so that the Commander of the Grand fleet abbreviated to C.-in-C., becomes G.-in-C and many other errors not present in the printed edition. Obviously the scanned copy that was then converted into a script capable of forming the kindle book was never proof read. At £12 this is quite disgraceful. The more so as new paperback editions are available on ebay for £11 (recommended retail price apparently £16). This is however simply an irritant.The actual content of the book is extremely interesting. I disagree with another reviewer who felt the battle was neither won nor lost. In terms of an engagement it was lost given the numbers and values of ships sunk and tactically (although the tactical mistakes were based on inaccurate information and intelligence and an instance of this is the understanding that German torpedoes left no visible track), however, a battle is more than simply about numbers dead etc. The outcome is over control or "command of the sea". There is no doubt that following that battle, the blockade of Germany continued unchecked with the result that essential war materials to enable Germany to continue to prosecute the war could not be imported by sea and this alone had a major influence on the outcome. Had Britain lost command of the seas, the German raiders that caused so much trouble for allied shipping at the start of the war would have proliferated and might easily have changed the outcome of the land war. Although submarines had caused the allies much difficulty, by 1917 convoys had been introduced which effectively neutralised the German counter blockade, indeed only 1 American troopship was sunk by submarine with a loss of 100. Had the British fleet been defeated the German fleet would have had control with only one result on the outcome of the war.

A scrupulously fair book on its judgements of It's commanders. A yard stick from which to compare all other books on Jutland, lucid and precise.