EDWARD HUGHES
Seaman R.N. (Boy 1st class O.N.J. 39921) Died May 31st 1916, aged 16 years and 10 months, in the Battle of Jutland.
Like many of my generation I lost relatives who served in the Great War of 1914-18. This is the story of Edward, an uncle who I never met.
Edward was born in July 1899 at Willenhall, Staffordshire, the youngest child of three. His mother, Pattie, widowed when he was four, remarried in 1905 and moved with her young family to Tipton. Edward’s step-father James Bailey was a Police Constable stationed at the Lower Church Lane police station. Edward stayed at school beyond the statutory leaving age of 12, and in the jingoistic mood of the time was attracted to a military career. His older brother, Alfred, had been similarly inspired and in 1915 had joined the Army as a volunteer. Why Edward chose the Royal Navy is a mystery. I cannot imagine there were many Black Country lads serving in His Majesty’s fleet. At 15 he joined the shore station HMS Ganges at Shotley near Ipswich for a one year training course. On the completion of his training he signed-up for nine years in the Royal Navy and was posted to Scapa Flow in Orkney to join the crew of HMS Black Prince, under Captain T.P. Bonham.
Stories of life at Shotley depict a harsh, disciplined regime and many of the boys did not complete their training. The fact that Edward survived suggests that he was determined to join the Royal Navy despite his lack of a naval background. The boarding school lifestyle at Shotley would transfer smoothly to conditions on board ship and early in 1916 he became one of 30 Boys 1st class serving on Black Prince, earning the appropriately princely sum of 7d per day.
Black Prince was an armoured cruiser, built at the Thames Iron Works, Blackwall and launched in 1906. It had a displacement of 13,550 tons, and a complement of 790 officers and men, the principal armament was 6 x 9.2 inch guns mounted on the main deck. The vessel was the first to be designed by Phillip Watts and was part of the 1902/03 RN Programme to build larger armoured cruisers incorporating the latest improvements in armament, protection and machinery. However, some of the design changes brought problems; the aft 6 inch guns were too close to the waterline to be fired in any but the calmest weather and the fixed angle of fire of the 3 pounder guns made them virtually useless as an anti-torpedo weapon. Armoured deck protection was flimsy, the thickness of metal ranging from 0.75” to 1.5”. The ineffective secondary battery reduced the value of this class of ship considerably and the four ships built did not enjoy a high reputation. Edward had joined a ship that had limited use, one that should not engage any of the modern cruisers, battle-cruisers or battleships of the German High Seas Fleet.
At Scapa Flow the ships of the Grand Fleet commanded by Admiral Jellicoe had two objectives, to impose a blockade upon the North Sea ports handling goods destined for Germany, and to engage the German High Seas Fleet in a decisive battle. The former was carried out extremely effectively despite the attentions of German submarines. The ships of the High Seas Fleet rarely left their harbours at Wilhelmshaven, Cuxhaven and Kiel, except for the occasional foray to bombard English coastal towns; Hartlepool, Scarborough, Whitby, Sunderland and Lowestoft were among those attacked. Black Prince was suited to blockade duty.
It is easy to imagine life on board ship as a mixture of the dramatic and the mundane. Intercepting blockade–runners and impounding cargo must have been exciting moments for a 16 year- old, the days spent coaling the ship at Scapa certainly were not. All members of the crew except for the Captain and First Engineer would be engaged in filling the ship’s bunkers, the coal being barrowed or craned in sacks from a collier moored alongside. The bunkers of the Black Prince had a capacity of 750 tons, which was sufficient to fuel a 4 day patrol. After this period of intense manual work the crew were given one day of shore leave. How did Edward spend this day? Exploring the coastline, discovering the remains of early settlements, tending an allotment, meeting locals, playing football, enjoying the facilities at the Lyness base are all possibilities.
The Grand Fleet’s routine of manoeuvres and patrols was shattered on the morning of the 30th of May with the dramatic news that the German High Seas Fleet commanded by Admiral Hipper was about to leave harbour. The aim of Hipper was to lure the British fleets into battle and to confront their separate units, thus ensuring a numerical advantage. Advance knowledge of the High Seas Fleet’s intentions had been known to the British since the find of a notebook containing the German naval cipher code used for wireless transmission. The notebook had been found on the body of a crew member of the Magdeburg, which had foundered off the coast of Sweden. The notebook subsequently came into the hands of the Admiralty from Britain’s Russian allies. Admiral Jellicoe with the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow and the Cromarty Firth and Vice-Admiral Beatty with the Battle-cruiser Fleet at Rosyth, left their respective anchorages four and a half hours before the German High Seas Fleet, had left the security of their harbours.
The news of the intentions of the German fleet and the chance of a full scale sea battle galvanised Jellicoe and Beatty. The strategy was for the British fleets to meet and sail eastwards to intercept the ships of the High Seas Fleet and to block any retreat to their North Sea harbours. The British fleets consisted of 151 ships, ranging from 37 battleships and battle-cruisers, each with a displacement of over 20,000 tons and a cruising speed of around 22 knots, to 51 destroyers displacing less than 1000 tons each but capable of steaming at up to 35 knots. The rest of the force was made up of armoured cruisers like Black Prince, light cruisers like HMS Caroline*, which displaced 3750 tons, and the seaplane carrier HMS Engadine. It was a huge force to manoeuvre and very little went as smoothly as had been planned. Black Prince’s role in conjunction with other cruisers and destroyers was to provide a screen around the capital ships to protect them from attack by submarine and torpedo boat. The effectiveness of such a strategy demanded a high standard of seamanship and navigation, and ships that were reliable and able to maintain the consistent speed required by those they were escorting. Early in the morning of the 31st of May the separate fleets of Jellicoe and Beatty were sailing on easterly bearings towards the German High Seas Fleet gathering north-west of the Horne Reefs.
The first contact with the enemy was made at 1428 when HMS Galatea, a light cruiser in Beatty’s Battle-cruiser Force was hit by fire from the Elbing, a light cruiser in Hipper’s Scouting Group. Beatty’s Force had got ahead of Jellicoe’s fleet and although occupying the seas between the German group and its harbours, the ships of the Battle-cruiser Force were out-numbered and vulnerable. Battle was engaged in earnest and by 1630 two of Beatty’s famed battle-cruisers, HMS Indefatigable and HMS Queen Mary had been sunk. The two British fleets joined at 1733 when Black Prince steaming on the extreme starboard wing of Jellicoe’s force sighted HMS Falmouth, one of Beatty’s light cruiser screen. The British and German fleets engaged and a number of fierce gunnery exchanges occurred over the next four hours. The German Admirals Hipper and Scheer realising the size of the combined British force began a controlled run south to the safety of their harbours. At this stage the weather began to exert an influence. Mist was beginning to form and when allied to the smoke from the ships’ funnels, visibility rapidly deteriorated. The British hoped to block the German ships sailing south by taking up a position west of the Horne Reefs, but the enemy slipped through and by 2200 the battle was effectively over. That is, for all, but Black Prince.
When Galetea and Ebling were in combat, Jellicoe’s force was 60 miles north of Beatty’s position. Black Prince, together with Defence, Warrior and the Duke of Edinburgh, were part of the protective screen to the starboard side of Jellicoe’s capital ships. As these cruisers approached the noise and smoke of battle, their crews must have been filled with a mix of excitement and trepidation, and at approximately 1800 the four ships came under fire from the battle-cruisers of Admiral Hipper’s force. These were exactly the type of ship the armoured cruisers were unsuited to engage. Displacing over 20,000 tons and armed with 11” guns the German ships were far superior to the British cruisers. Defence was sunk at 1820, Warrior was badly damaged and later abandoned and Black Prince was hit by shellfire and withdrew from the action. Unwisely, Captain Bonham chose to follow in the wake of Jellicoe’s fleet, despite sailing at the reduced speed of 12 knots. Nothing reliable is known of the Black Prince’s movements from approximately 1830 until the ship was sunk shortly after 0100 on the 1st of June.
Black Prince spent the evening of the 31st of May searching for the British fleet, until shortly after midnight she blundered into the lines of Vice-Admiral Scheer’s battleship squadron. The German fleet having escaped the intended British trap to the north were progressing in line towards the mine-free channel through Jade Bay leading to the safety of the harbour at Wilhelmshaven. It is thought that Bonham seeing the stern lights of the otherwise black outlines believed he had found Jellicoe’s fleet. Upon recognising Black Prince, the battleships Friedrich der Grosse, Thuringia and Ostfriesland lit the British ship with their searchlights and at a range of a few hundred yards poured shell after shell into their hapless target. Black Prince was wracked with fire and explosion and sank with the loss of all 857 officers and men. Eyewitnesses on board the German ships described the awful scene, of men with their uniforms ablaze running along the decks and leaping into the sea. On page 329 in Steel and Hart’s book “Jutland 1916” published by Cassell in 2003, the loss of the Black Prince is described as an “episode of staggering futility” on the part of Bonham, while Hipper on the Friedrich der Grosse saw the destruction as “a grand but terrible sight”.
One can only assume that Edward was drowned in the sinking, his body not mutilated or charred by fire. A few days after the battle his body was recovered by the crew of a Norwegian submarine and brought ashore near Tonsberg, 75 miles SSW of Oslo. In Edward’s pocket a letter from his mother Pattie confirmed his identity. Edward was buried in a marked grave in the Gamle Kirkegard, Tonsberg.
The news of the sinking of the Black Prince and the loss of all hands was a terrible shock to Pattie and the rest of the family, and it would have been assumed that his body would not be recovered. Letters from the Admiralty were business-like and compassionate, but out of the blue on 19th September 1917 came notice that Edward’s body had been recovered and buried in Norway.
Among the letters received from the Admiralty, the Certificate of the Inspector of Seamen’s Wills is one of the most interesting. Its content is as follows:
Feb. 13 1917 Compensation for loss of effects £5 – 5 –0
Dec. 22 1918 “ “ £2 -15 –0
May 22 1919 Residue of Wages £1 -10 –9
War Gratuity £3 – 0 –0
Aug. 26 1920 Naval Prize Fund £7 -10 –0
July 5 1921 Prize Bounty for Jutland 3 –1
June 10 1922 Naval Prize Fund £11—5 –0
Oct. 25 1923 “ (Supplementary) £1 – 0 – 0
Total £32 -18—0
(£1 in 1920 would be worth approximately £27 today)
After 10 years of feverish construction of bigger and more powerful ships and the anticipation of a clash of giants – “Armageddon” “Der Tag”, the outcome from Jutland was inconclusive and little changed over the remainder of the war. The British blockade continued and the High Seas Fleet never sailed from its harbours again, until it left for internment. Although seen as a catastrophe for the reputation of the Royal Navy the battle achieved little and many sailors’ lives were sacrificed to the great god of vanity. British losses were greater than German, and in Germany the battle was trumpeted as a huge victory for its fledgling navy.
British German Total
Ships engaged in battle. 151 99 250
Ships sunk. 14 11 25
Casualties. Killed 6094 2551 8645
Wounded 674 507 1181
P.O.W. 177 – 177
Total 6945 3058 10003
To me, Edward’s story is still not quite complete. As a result of the reparations ordered against Germany at the end of the war, the High Seas Fleet was disbanded and the ships distributed between the victorious nations. As the country to have had most shipping losses, Britain received 74 ships, while France, the USA, and Italy each received smaller numbers. From November 23rd 1918 to January 10th 1919 seventy-four vessels of the High Seas Fleet under the command of Vice-Admiral von Reuter left their North Sea ports, for internment at Scapa Flow. Such ignominy was hard to accept by the German officers and a plan was devised to scuttle the entire fleet. On June 21st 1919, to the amazement of the British guard ships and garrison, on the semaphored order of van Reuter the entire fleet settled into the waters of Scapa Flow. The skeleton crews escaped safely despite many of the big ships capsizing as they sank. As the seacocks were opened airtight bulkheads kept some of the lower decks free of the incoming water, which collected at higher levels. This meant that the ships became top-heavy and turned turtle as they sank. Van Reuter had ensured that his prized ships would not be used again in battle and would be very difficult to salvage.
Nevertheless, beginning in 1924 and for the next twenty-two years, ships of the High Seas Fleet were raised from the seabed and towed away to be broken up for their high value scrap metal. The engineer chiefly responsible for the salvage was Mr.E.F.G. Cox, born in Wolverhampton in 1883, the son of a draper, and joint founder of Cox and Danks Ltd. The lighter destroyers, often lying in shallow waters, were raised first, but as the engineers and divers became more expert, most of the huge battleships were salvaged too. Six still lie on the seabed, the wrecks providing an endless source of interest for divers and for tourists aboard semi-submersible craft. On the 5th August 1937 the hulk of the Friedrich der Grosse arrived keel uppermost at the dry-dock of the Rosyth breakers-yard. Perhaps, this was an appropriate ending for the former flagship of Vice-Admiral Scheer; one of the battle-cruisers that had applied the coup de grace to Edward’s ship, Black Prince.
Sadly, the family tragedy was not over. Edward’s brother Alfred, who had served in France for two years as a rifleman with the Kings Royal Rifle Corps, died on the 22nd of November 1917 in hospital at Le Treport near Boulogne, from wounds received in action near Ypres a month earlier.
Allan Bealt
*Of the 250 ships that took part in the Battle of Jutland only HMS Caroline remains afloat. It is moored in The Alexandra Dock, Belfast undergoing restoration and conversion to a floating museum.