On 28 August 1914 British destroyer flotillas under Commodore Reginald Tyrwhitt, with submarines under Commodore Roger Keyes, raided the German patrols in the Heligoland Bight, close to the German naval bases. A signal telling the two Commodores that Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty's battle cruisers and a squadron of light cruisers were coming in support did not reach them in time, and the day became a string of confused fights in the mist. The Germans lost the destroyer V 187 and the light cruisers Mainz, Cöln and Ariadne, the last two to Beatty's battle cruisers. No British ship was sunk. On the same day in 1862, Stonewall Jackson attacked a Union column at Brawner's Farm in Virginia.
Battle of Heligoland Bight
28 August 1914 · 112 years ago
A trap off the German coast
The raid grew out of a proposal that Commodore Keyes, head of the submarine service, made on 23 August. Since the first days of the war his submarines had watched the Bight and learned the German routine: destroyers with light cruisers patrolled at night and were relieved or met after daylight. Winston Churchill writes that he presided at a meeting on the plan in his room at the Admiralty on 24 August. In Corbett's official history, the plan was changed after consultation with Tyrwhitt so that the westward drive would begin at 8 o'clock.1
Tyrwhitt led in the newly built light cruiser Arethusa with the 3rd Flotilla, and the Fearless led the 1st. Sir John Jellicoe sent Beatty with three more battle cruisers and Commodore Goodenough's six light cruisers to join Invincible and New Zealand from the Humber. Corbett counts five battle cruisers in all; Scheer and Tirpitz both write of four. The Admiralty message announcing this reinforcement, in Corbett's words, "never reached either Commodore"; Churchill writes that it "did not reach them in time", through "a fault in Admiralty staff work".2
Fighting in the mist
Tyrwhitt reported sighting a German destroyer at 6.53 a.m.; Corbett has it shortly before 7.0. The British chased German destroyers towards Heligoland until two cruisers appeared, which Corbett identifies as Stettin and Frauenlob; Scheer writes that these two had been sent out to help. The sea was calm but visibility, Tyrwhitt wrote, "not more than 3 miles at any time"; Scheer gives three to four miles near Heligoland.3
Arethusa was hit many times, Tyrwhitt reported, until only one 6-inch gun remained in action. Lieutenant Eric W. P. Westmacott, his signal officer, was killed at his side, Tyrwhitt wrote. At 8.25 a 6-inch shell from Arethusa wrecked the enemy's fore bridge, Tyrwhitt reported, and the German cruiser turned away for Heligoland.4
The lost boats of V 187
Destroyers of the 1st Flotilla trapped the German flotilla leader V 187 and shelled her until she went down, at 9.10 by Corbett's account. As their boats picked up survivors, a German cruiser came out of the mist and opened fire, and the destroyers had to leave two of Defender's boats behind. Lieutenant-Commander Ernest W. Leir of the submarine E 4 had watched through his periscope. He surfaced, took on the Defender's men and found the boats full of badly wounded Germans. He took one German officer and two men prisoner, "as a sample", as he put it in Corbett's account, and left the rest with water, biscuit and a compass to make for Heligoland.5
Lieutenant Jasper of V 187, in the report Scheer prints, writes that her seriously wounded commander ordered the ship sunk and that explosive charges were set before the men went overboard. Later Jasper saw the submarine marked "E 4" come up and took off his jacket "lest I should be recognised as an officer and taken prisoner". German destroyers later picked up the boats, and six dead and forty-four survivors were brought to Wilhelmshaven, he wrote.6
Beatty goes in
Through the late morning German cruisers attacked the crippled Arethusa again, and Tyrwhitt called for help. At 11.30 Beatty turned his battle cruisers towards the fight at full speed, despite the risk of submarines and of a sortie from the German bases. "It was evident that to be of any value the support must be overwhelming and carried out at the highest speed possible," he wrote. According to Scheer, the state of the tide kept the German battle cruisers from crossing the bar of the Outer Jade before one o'clock; Churchill, who cites Scheer in the same passage, gives the same reason.7
Meanwhile the cruiser Mainz, out of the Ems, ran into the British flotillas. Her fire badly damaged several destroyers, and Lieutenant-Commander Nigel Barttelot of the Liberty was killed. Then, Tyrwhitt reported, "the Light Cruiser Squadron appeared, and they very speedily reduced the 'Mainz' to a condition which must have been indescribable". In the British accounts the light cruisers and destroyers sank her. Scheer writes that Mainz and Cöln fell victims to the battle cruisers' guns, but in the record by her first officer, Lieutenant Tholens, that Scheer prints, whether the battle cruisers "also tried to get in a few hits has never been definitely ascertained". Keyes laid the destroyer Lurcher alongside the sinking ship; he rescued 220 of her crew in Rear-Admiral Christian's despatch, 224 in Churchill's account. Her senior surviving engineer wrote that "the English ships made the greatest efforts to pick up the survivors".8
Beatty's battle cruisers opened fire at 12.37 p.m., by his report, on the cruiser Corbett identifies as Cöln, flagship of the German Flotilla Admiral. At 12.56 another cruiser, the Ariadne, crossed ahead; two salvoes from Lion left her, in Beatty's words, "burning furiously and in a sinking condition". Beatty then turned back to finish Cöln, which sank at 1.35. He reported that his destroyers searched the area but "found none"; Corbett writes that they found a single stoker, and that the Flotilla Admiral "and his whole complement of 380 had perished". Ariadne sank later; Corbett says her few survivors were picked up by the Von der Tann, Scheer that most of her crew were saved by Stralsund and Danzig. Her captain, Seebohm, in his report in Scheer, describes the crew on the forecastle cheering the Emperor and singing: "Even the wounded joined in".9
Counting the cost
In Corbett's official history, British casualties for all ships engaged did not exceed 35 killed and about 40 wounded; Churchill gives the same figures in almost the same words. No British ship was sunk. Corbett writes that only Arethusa suffered at all severely and two destroyers were badly damaged; Churchill, that no British ship was seriously injured.10
Churchill writes: "Considerably more than a thousand Germans, including the Flotilla Admiral and the Destroyer Commodore, perished". Corbett's estimate has a different scope: German losses "in killed, wounded and prisoners", he writes, "must have been well over 1,000". He counts 348 of the Mainz's complement of 380 rescued. Beatty sent the cruiser Liverpool to Rosyth that evening with 7 officers and 79 men, survivors from the Mainz.11
A muzzled fleet
Scheer argued that once Stettin and Frauenlob had driven off Arethusa and Fearless, the British plan "had gained but a moderate success with the sinking of 'V 187'", and wrote that "we were all burning to avenge the slap in the face we had received". Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz called 28 August "a day fateful, both in its after-effects and incidental results, for the work of our navy". "The Emperor did not wish for losses of this sort," he wrote; orders followed that "the loss of ships was to be avoided, fleet sallies and any greater undertakings must be approved by his Majesty in advance". Churchill quotes the passage and concludes that the German Navy was indeed "muzzled". Corbett credits the action, "at least in part", with "the continued disinclination the enemy displayed to venture his ships beyond his base defences".12
The same waters saw another clash in 1917, told in our article on the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight, and a very different one in 1864, on our page for 9 May; more sea fights are in our guide to the greatest naval battles.
Also on this day
Battle of Lubrze
28 August 1656 · 370 years ago
In the Swedish Deluge, a small Polish unit under Andrzej Karol Grudziński raided by night a Swedish and Brandenburg camp at Lubrze, whose men were marching to relieve besieged Kalisz. The surprised enemy fled in panic, and their commander Wrzesowicz was killed as he ran.
1862: at Brawner's Farm near Groveton, Virginia, Confederate troops under Stonewall Jackson attacked a Union column marching on the Warrenton Turnpike. Jackson wrote that it was sunset when he "determined to attack at once"; Rufus Dawes of the 6th Wisconsin remembered "a blood red sun, sinking behind the hills". Brigadier General John Gibbon reported that his brigade fought "most of the time not more than 75 yards apart" and lost 751 killed, wounded and missing; Dawes gives 754. The firing lasted until about nine o'clock, by Jackson's and Dawes's accounts. Jackson wrote that the Federals fell back, "yielding the field to our troops"; Gibbon, that he ordered his line back in good order but held the ground with pickets.13
