The Battle of Jutland;
The Day WW1 may have been lost & some
of the Freemasons there.
From WBro Damien of Lodge Devotion
The Battle of
Jutland was fought off Denmark’s coast in the North Sea between the British
Grand Fleet and Germany’s High Seas Fleet on 31 May and 1 June 1916. It
involved some 250 ships and 100,000 men and was the only major naval engagement
of World War I. The recent week saw its 100th Anniversary. This critical Battle does not get much
mention in the Australian view of WW1; we tend to think of Gallipoli and the
Western Front. Most Australians know nothing about important theatres like the
Eastern Front or Battles like Jutland where Australia did not play a role. No Australian vessel took part in the battle,
although there were Australians on other British Ships; ten died in the
battle. (Sad, but few in comparison to
the 6,094 British and 2,551 Germans who were lost. Two years later, the last months of the War
would be among the bloodiest with 1.8 million killed in the “Hundred Days
Offensive’ of 1918 which might obscure Jutland in our minds and hearts). HMS
Australia, lunched in 1911, would have been at Jutland save that she was under
repair after having collided in fog with her sister ship, HMS New Zealand, both zigzagging to avoid
submarine attack. HMS New Zealand was both seaworthy and involved at Jutland firing 420
twelve-inch shells during the battle, more than any other ship on either side.
She scored four hits and was hit once.
Reflecting the
perceived importance of the Battle of Jutland, Freemason and contemporary First
Lord of the Admiralty, Brother Winston Churchill, said of the Battle's
Commander, Admiral Jellicoe, that he was
‘the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon’. This was a heavy burden to rest on our
Brother, for like Churchill, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe (1859-1935) was also a
Freemason. After the War Jellicoe was Governor General of New Zealand (1920-24)
and Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of New Zealand (1922-1923). Likewise,
Germany's Grand Admiral, Alfred Peter Friedrich von Tirpitz (1849-1930) who
developed the small German Imperial Navy of the 1890’s into a world class force
was also a Freemason, a member of Lodge Zur Aufrichtigen Herzen, Frankfurt. The
famous WW2 ship Tirpitz of the Kriegsmarine was named after him. Hence the
heads of both the German (Tirpitz) and
British (Churchill) Navies at the time of the Battle of Jutland were
Freemasons. At Sea, it was Admirals Jellicoe and Germany’s Reinhard Scheer who
led their respective forces at Jutland.
Had the Allies lost
the Battle of Jutland, the First World War would have been changed. The Allies’
blockade maintained before and after the Battle was strategically critical. It
greatly impacted on the German war effort restricting Germany’s naval movements
and domestic and war supplies. Allied command of the Sea was part of the reason
the Germans resorted to raiding and unrestricted submarine operations just as
they would later in WW2. Lacking command of the Sea was part of the reason
Germany lost both World Wars. Jutland was a critical event in the German’s
defeat.
Many will have heard
of the Battle of Trafalgar (1805) when the British Navy under command of
Horatio Nelson famously “crossed the T“ of the opposing and combined French and
Spanish Navies. This happened twice in a
single hour at the Battle of Jutland, although the Germans were able to escape
it with quick thinking and good seamanship aided by poor visibility. Crossing the T allows one belligerent to fire
a broadside down the full length of ships that can only use their forward guns, if they have
them. Admiral Nelson achieved this with devastating results but was killed by
sniper fire during Trafalgar. (There are several pieces of circumstantial
evidence which suggest Nelson himself was a Freemason, but this has never been
proved). In Australia, Jutland is generally forgotten, a bit like Vice Admiral
Cutherber Collingwood who first engaged the Spanish at Trafalar and took over
when Nelson was killed. I mention him because the suburb Collingwood is named
after him and hence our “Collingwood Masonic Centre” also shares the name of
this English Naval Hero. Further, Admiral Collingwood Lodge (No.13) UGLV is
named in his honour. The future King George VI, saw action during the Battle of
Jutland and was mentioned in dispatches, he would be later initiated in
December 1919 into Navy Lodge, No. 2612 (UGLE), of which his grandfather, King
Edward VII, had been founding Master. He was one of many Freemasons on both
sides which took part in the battle.
On the German side, one of
the notable characters who was a Freemason was Count Felix Von Luckner
(1881-1966). Luckner was an amazing fellow and I will digress to give you a
summary of this Brother's adventures; they are quite remarkable. Known as The Sea Devil he was known for the “habit of successfully waging war without
casualties which made him a hero and a legend on both sides”. In the great
battle of Jutland, von Luckner commanded a gun turret on the Kronprinz with “skill and cunning’. As a boy of 13, he
had run away from home to the sea but finding life aboard ship comprised
dealing with latrines and pigsties , he abandoned that ship in Freemantle
Australia and then “roamed the world in a
great and bewildering series of jobs, including selling the Salvation Army’s
War Cry, assistant lighthouse keeper, kangaroo hunter, circus hand,
professional boxer, fisherman, seaman, Mexican army guard for President Diaz,
railroad construction, tavern keeper and barman. He even spent time in a
Chilean gaol accused of trying to steal pigs; won a wrestling competition in
Hamburg; twice suffered broken legs, was thrown out of a hospital in Jamaica
for lack of funds, but was lucky enough to be befriended by some German
sailors. A visit to German territories in Africa saw him engaged on an elephant
hunt.
World War I broke out in
1914. Von Luckner’s world travel, life's experience and adventurous nature ,
combined with the fact that he had served ‘in sail’ singled him out for a
unique command which “sailed him into the
history books of the world”.
Count von Luckner is best
known as the captain of The Seeadler (Sea Eagle). A 1,570 ton three masted
sailing ship, built in Glasgow 1888 and captured by the Germans while under a
British flag. Seeadler was converted under von Luckner’s directions to an
auxiliary cruiser, heavily armed and equipped with two 500 H.P. engines, but
carefully disguised as a Norwegian timber ship “Inna”. During a violent gale in
the North Sea 23 December 1916, Von Luckner managed to slip through the British
blockade maintained after the Battle of Jutland. The “Inna” was then inspected
and passed—and sailed north around Scotland into the Atlantic.
Over the following 88 days his ship, disguise removed,
captured eleven Allied ships in the Atlantic, and sank ten without a single
loss of life... Even the ships’ cats were safe, at one time there were 144 on
board his ship! At times up to 400 persons, men and women, were held … until
transferred ashore in South American ports. “I had the courage to sink ships”,
he said, “but I had not the courage to deprive a mother of a child. I fought
the war without killing anyone . . . I always thought of my mother, and
imagined what tears and sadness I would cause if I killed the son of some other
mother.” It is claimed that he once delayed sinking a sailing ship until the
Captain’s false teeth had been saved!
In April 1917 he rounded
Cape Horn and entered the Pacific sinking three more ships before his good
fortunes ran out on 2 August when the Seeadler was cast ashore by a tidal wave
onto remote Mopelia Island in the Tahiti group. Some American prisoners alleged
that the ship drifted aground while the prisoners and most of the crew were
having a picnic on the island. Von
Luckner tells of Sunday services conducted by himself to “worship the Great
Ruler of the Waves”. Beside the Bible rested the German flag plus those of
the prisoners. “I wanted our prisoners to
feel that the service was as much theirs as ours, and that we did not feel
ourselves any more a chosen people before Cod than any other people.”
Sounds quite Masonic ! From Mopelia he sailed 3,700 km (2,300 mi) in an
open boat, on one occasion claiming to be Dutch-American mariners crossing the
Pacific for a bet and was allowed to proceed. He was later captured but escaped
in December 1917 but was again captured, spending the rest of the War in New
Zealand POW Camps. He was repatriated to Germany in 1919 as a hero.
In 1926 he sailed his yacht Vaterland on a goodwill mission
around the world including the USA. Later in 1937 & ’38 in his yacht Seeteufel
he returned to Australia and New
Zealand. Although too old for active service
in World War II, Hitler attempted to use him for propaganda purposes but
demanded that he renounce Freemasonry. Our hero who had been initiated in Zur
Goldenen Kugel Lodge No. 66, Hamburg on 26 May 1921, refused. In 1943, in
Berlin, he saved the life of a Jewish girl by finding her shelter and giving
her a passport picked up on a bomb site. She managed to reach a neutral country
and then the United States. After the war, when the Count again visited the
U.S.A. appealing for the expulsion of the hatreds engendered by the war, she
opened previously shut doors by her influence. “I was given an opportunity of reaching the hearts of men and women who
had previously rejected me in their own sorrow and refused to listen to what I
had to say. They had refused to give me a hearing because I was a German and
came from that country whose government had once brought them such terrible
sorrow.”
Hitler made life difficult
for von Luckner, and his bank account was frozen. Living in the remote German
city of Halle, The Count was asked by the Mayor and others in April 1945 to
contact the approaching American troops and seek terms. The German General in
command disclaimed any responsibility, but permitted him to try. The control
officer from Berlin remarked disdainfully: “There’s another international
Freemason.” He did manage to find and negotiate with the Americans, among whom
were Masonic friends, and they agreed not to bomb the city. On hearing that
Hitler had condemned him to death, he went into hiding. He died in 1966. These
are but just a few of our Brother's exploits.
Reading of Jutland led me
to Count Felix Von Luckner’s “boys own” story. The above hardly recounts all
his adventures, I recommend you google him. It was a refreshing break from reading
from the strategic importance of the British Blockade and the horror of
Jutland.
During the Battle, fourteen
British and eleven German ships were sunk. Several were destroyed in
catastrophic explosions when their magazines ignited with the loss of almost
all hands. There were no survivors of the HMS Black Prince (857 men) nor HMS Defence (903 men). Only
two from HMS Indefatigable survived (1,019 men), Rear-Admiral Hood went down with HMS Invincible with 1,026 men and only six survivors.
Eighteen survived when the HMS Queen Mary blew up
exploded "like a puffball"
with 1,266 crewmen lost. The Kaiserliche Marine did not suffer
as many lost, but SMS Pommern was torn in half by a magazine explosion and her
full complement of 839 perished, SMS Wiesbaden had only one survivor of the
589 crew.
Via the Great War Project,
we know of 67 confirmed British Brethren
who lost their lives at Jutland. No doubt there were some on the German side as
well as more unidentified brothers among the British..
Some lodges would have felt
the impact of the battle keenly, for instance three Brothers from UNITED
SERVICE No. 1428 went down on HMS Invincible and another brother from the same
lodge was lost on HMS Defense. In total United Service Lodge lost 16 members in
the Battle. Sixteen !
HMS Defence was the
flagship of Rear Admiral Sir Robert Arbuthnot, leading the First Cruiser
Squadron. HMS Defence was engaged in the follow up attack on the German Light
Cruiser SMS Wiesbaden which had been disabled by a shell from HMS Invincible
(which had many Freemasons on board who died in the battle). While closing for
the kill, Defence drew the combined firepower of the German battlecruisers,
whose proximity was hidden by smoke and mist. After initial damage she was
struck by a salvo which blew up her aft magazine, within seconds, another salvo
immediately hit forward, and she blew up in a spectacular explosion. Not a
single member of her 903 crew survived and 12 known Freemasons are were amongst
that number; Brothers Alton, Boggia, Dyer, Howes, Mclean, Moss, Reynolds,
Roberts, Sandham, Shapter, Taylor, Wharmby.
HMAS Invincible broke in
two and sank with the loss of all but six of her crew of 1,021. Admiral Hood was among the dead. 16
Freemasons were amongst those who were lost in the Invincible, 6 were from United Service Lodge No 1428.
Lost were Brothers Best, Bowditch, Clapson, Dunnaway , Embling, Harris, Harvey,
Hunt, Johnson, Jones, Luker , Main, Melvin, Mortimer, Potter & Seelleur.
The German’s plan under the
forces commander Admiral Scheer at Jutland was to overcome the numerical
superiority of the British commanded by Jellicoe by engaging only part of the
fleet but they were met in force, mainly due to their codes having been
broken. Many say that strategically,
Jutland proved as decisive as the Battle
of Trafalgar.
The German High Sea Fleet
had been driven home and would put out to sea only three more times on minor
sweeps.. In his after-action report to the Kaiser, Admiral Scheer advised
avoiding future surface encounters with the Grand Fleet because of its “great
material superiority” and advantageous “military-geographical position,” and
instead advised “the defeat of British
economic life–that is, by using the U-boats against British trade.”
Both sides claimed
victory at Jutland. Perhaps the saying “won the battle but lost the war” could
be applied here, despite the controversies about Jellicoe not pushing home a
decisive victory because he knew his current superiority would prevail if not
compromised by a defeat, but the fact remains that British losses amounted to
6,784 men and 111,000 tons, and German losses to 3,058 men and 62,000 tons. Yet
despite this, Britain retained control of the North Sea and a numerical
advantage forcing the German’s to maintain a “fleet in being” meaning in port
it presented a strategic threat the Allies forcing them to continually deploy
forces to guard against it. A "fleet in being" can be part of a sea
denial doctrine, but not one of sea control and there is no doubt the British
had control of the sea.
Although the British
public was disappointed with Jutland for it did not bring a decisive victory,
Winston Churchill perceptively noted that Jellicoe was the one man who could
have lost the war in an afternoon. Jellicoe’s judgement might have been that
even excellent odds in his favour were not good enough to bet the British
Empire. The former criticisms of Jellicoe also fails to sufficiently credit
Scheer, who was determined to preserve his fleet by avoiding the full British
battle line, and who showed great skill in effecting his escape. Despite this,
twenty-five ships were still lost in the Battle.
The two phases of
Jutland and the details of the same make for interesting reading. The first
began at 4:48 p.m. on May 31, 1916 when the scouting forces of Vice Admirals
David Beatty and Franz Hipper commenced a running artillery duel at fifteen
thousand yards. Hipper’s ships took a severe pounding but survived due to
superior design. Beatty lost three battle cruisers due to lack of antiflash
protection in the gun turrets, which allowed fires started by incoming shells
to reach the powder magazines. Commenting that “[t]here seems to be something
wrong with our bloody ships today,” Beatty after this initial encounter turned
north and lured the Germans onto the Grand Fleet. The second phase of the
battle started at 7:15 p.m., when Admiral John Jellicoe brought his ships into
a single battle line by executing a 90-degree wheel to port. Gaining the
advantage of the fading light, he cut the Germans off from their home base and
twice crossed the High Sea Fleet’s “T.” Admiral Reinhard Scheer’s ships took
seventy direct hits, while scoring but twenty against Jellicoe: Scheer’s fleet
escaped certain annihilation only by executing three brilliant 180-degree
turns.. By early afternoon on 1 June, most of the High Seas Fleet reached the
safety of German harbours with Scheer's flagship, SMS Friedrich der Grosse,
arrived at Wilhelmshaven at 3pm.
Four Victoria
Crosses were awarded at Jutland, three posthumously.
Captain Loftus Jones
VC (1979-1916) died at Jutland commanding HMS Shark. He was awarded the medal
“for his heroism in continuing to fight against all odds” continuing to give
orders after being hit by a shell which took off his leg above the knee.
Major Francis John William
Harvey VC (1873-1916) , a Marine, was aboard HMS Lion and although mortally
wounded and almost the only survivor after the explosion of an enemy shell in
"Q" gunhouse, “with great presence of mind and devotion to duty
ordered the magazine to be flooded, thereby saving the ship. He died shortly
afterwards.” His actions saved the ship from blowing up and 1,092 lives
Rear Admiral (then
Commander) Edward Barry Stewart Bingham VC, OBE (1881-1939) commanding the
destroyer HMS Nestor closed within 2,750
metres of the opposing German battle fleet at Jutland so that he could bring
his torpedoes to bear. The Nestor was sunk and Bingham was taken prisoner.
John Travers
Cornwell VC (8 January 1900 – 2 June 1916), commonly known as Jack Cornwell or
as Boy Cornwell, is remembered for his gallantry at the Battle of Jutland.
Having died at the age of only 16. Cornwell is the third-youngest recipient of
the VC after Andrew Fitzgibbon and Thomas Flinn.
After the action,
ship medics arrived on deck to find Cornwell the sole survivor at his gun,
shards of steel penetrating his chest, looking at the gun sights and still
waiting for orders. He died on the morning of 2 June 1916 before his mother
could arrive at the hospital
The recommendation
for citation from Admiral David Beatty, reads:
"the instance of devotion to duty by Boy (1st Class) John Travers
Cornwell who was mortally wounded early in the action, but nevertheless
remained standing alone at a most exposed post, quietly awaiting orders till
the end of the action, with the gun's crew dead and wounded around him. He was
under 16½ years old. I regret that he has since died, but I recommend his case
for special recognition in justice to his memory and as an acknowledgement of
the high example set by him."
Lest We Forget
Select Sources
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http://irishfreemasonry.com/blog/?p=1514
http://luckner-gesellschaft.de/en/
http://worldofwarships.asia/en/news/history-feature/naval-battles-100-years-jutland/
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-13/history-of-royal-australian-navy-in-wwi/5868272
http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/losing-the-war-in-an-afternoon-jutland-1916/
http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/war-at-sea-1914-15-the-virtual-unreality-part-2/
http://www.britishbattles.com/aussies-at-the-battle-of-jutland/
http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/bingham.htm
http://www.illustratedfirstworldwar.com/timeline/1916-2/battle-of-jutland/
http://www.lodgedorickilwinning68.org.uk/contact-us/
http://www.masonicgreatwarproject.org.uk/
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jutland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bingham
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_von_Luckner
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Harvey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Cornwell
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https://www.awm.gov.au/military-event/E144/
https://www.navyhistory.org.au/the-australians-at-jutland/