Raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby

The High Seas Fleet was outnumbered by the Grand Fleet and perforce, avoided a fleet action.[lower-alpha 1] The Grand Fleet had to patrol continuously, whereas the ships of the High Seas Fleet could remain in port. The German navy could choose when to concentrate its ships and the British would always be dispersed. Several months after the declaration of war in August 1914, wear on the British ships reached the point where repairs could not be postponed and several ships were withdrawn from the Grand Fleet. Three battlecruisers had been sent to South America and the brand new super-dreadnought HMS Audacious had been lost to a mine; HMS Thunderer, another super-dreadnought, was undergoing repairs.[3] German ships used three main codes for which codebooks were issued to their ships and copies had been obtained from sunk or captured vessels unbeknown to the Germans. British code breakers at Room 40 in the Admiralty building could read German messages within a few hours of receiving them. Sufficient information had been gleaned on the evening of 14 December, to know that the German battlecruiser squadron would shortly be leaving port but the information did not suggest that all of the German fleet might be involved.[4]

The battleships and cruisers commanded by Warrender set out from Scapa Flow at 05:30 on 15 December. The bad weather meant that he could not take destroyers with him but Beatty brought seven when he departed from Cromarty at 06:00, together with the battlecruiser squadron. The two forces combined at 11:00 near Moray Firth. As the senior admiral, Warrender had overall command of the force, which sailed toward its assigned interception point at Dogger Bank.[13] At 05:15 on 16 December, the destroyer HMS Lynx sighted an enemy ship (the destroyer SMS V155). The destroyer squadron went to investigate, and a battle ensued with a force of German destroyers and cruisers. Lynx was hit, damaging a propeller. HMS Ambuscade was taking on water and had to drop out of the engagement. HMS Hardy came under heavy fire from cruiser SMS Hamburg, taking heavy damage and catching fire but managed to fire a torpedo. News of a torpedo attack was passed to Admiral Ingenohl commanding the High Seas Fleet, whose outlying destroyers were the ones involved in the fighting. The engagement broke off after a couple of hours in the dark, but at 06:03 the following morning one of the four destroyers still able to fight, HMS Shark, again came in contact with five enemy destroyers and the four attacked. The German ships withdrew, reporting another contact with an enemy force to the admiral.[14]

Ingenohl had already exceeded the strict limit of his standing orders from the Kaiser by involving the main German fleet in the operation, without informing the Kaiser.[15] At 05:30, mindful of the orders not to place the fleet in jeopardy and fearing he had encountered the advance guard of the British Grand Fleet, he reversed course towards Germany. Had he continued, he would shortly have engaged the four British battlecruisers and six battleships with his much larger force, which included 22 battleships. This was the opportunity that German strategy had been seeking, to even the odds in the war. The ten British capital ships would have been outnumbered and outgunned, with significant losses likely. Their loss would have equalised the power of the two navies. Churchill later defended the situation, arguing that the British ships were faster and could simply have turned about and run.[16][17] Others, such as Jellicoe, felt there was a risk that an admiral such as Beatty would have insisted upon engaging the enemy once contact was established.[18] Admiral Tirpitz commented "Ingenohl had the fate of Germany in his hand".[16][19]

At 06:50, Shark and the destroyers again sighted an enemy ship, the cruiser SMS Roon, defended by destroyers. Captain Jones reported his sightings at 07:25, the signal being received by Warrender and also by New Zealand in Beatty's squadron but the information was not passed on to Beatty. At 07:40 Jones, attempting to close on Roon to fire torpedoes, discovered that she was accompanied by two other cruisers and was obliged to withdraw at full speed. The German ships gave chase but could not keep up and shortly returned to their fleet. Warrender changed course towards the position given by Shark, expecting Beatty to do the same. At 07:36, he attempted to confirm that Beatty had changed course but did not get a reply. At 07:55, he managed to make contact, and Beatty belatedly sent his nearest ship—New Zealand—to intercept, followed by the three light cruisers, spaced 2 mi (1.7 nmi) apart, to maximise their chance of spotting the enemy, followed by the remaining battlecruisers. At 08:42, both Warrender and Beatty intercepted a message from Patrol at Scarborough advising that she was under attack by two battlecruisers. The chase of Roon, which might have led to an encounter with the main German fleet, was abandoned and the British squadron turned north to attempt to intercept Hipper.[20]

British recruiting poster picturing damage from German naval artillery to a civilian house: "No 2 Wykeham Street, Scarborough....four people were killed in this house including the wife...and two children, the youngest aged 5."

A recruitment poster.

At 09:30 on 16 December, Hipper's ships recombined and headed for home at maximum speed. His destroyers were now some 50 mi (43 nmi) ahead, still moving slowly through bad weather. On inquiring where the High Seas Fleet was now stationed, he discovered that it had returned home and that his destroyers had sighted enemy ships.[21] Jellicoe was now requested to move south with the Grand Fleet, which was waiting at Scapa Flow. Tyrwhitt was ordered to join Warrender with his destroyer flotilla but bad weather prevented this. Instead he joined the chase with just his four light cruisers. Keyes's submarines were to move into Heligoland Bight to intercept ships returning to Germany. Warrender and Beatty remained separated, first to avoid shallow water over the Dogger Bank but then to cut off different routes which Hipper might take to avoid minefields laid off the Yorkshire coast. Beatty's light cruisers entered the minefield channels to search.[22]

At 11:25, the light cruiser Southampton sighted enemy ships ahead. The weather—which had started clear with good visibility—had now deteriorated. Southampton reported that she was engaging a German cruiser accompanied by destroyers and Birmingham went to assist. Goodenough now sighted two more cruisers, Strassburg and Graudenz but failed to report the additional ships. The two remaining British light cruisers moved off to assist but Beatty, not having been informed of the larger force, called one of them back. Due to confusion in the signalling, the first cruiser misunderstood the message flashed by searchlight and passed it on to the others. The result was that all four disengaged from the enemy and turned back to Beatty. Had Beatty appreciated the number of German ships, it is likely that he would have moved forward with all his ships, instead of recalling the one cruiser to screen his battlecruisers. The larger force suggested that major German ships would be following behind. The ships had now disappeared but were heading toward the opposite end of the minefield, where Warrender was waiting.[23] At 12:15, the German cruisers and destroyers exited the southern edge of the minefield and saw battleships ahead. Stralsund flashed the recognition signal, which had been sent to her shortly before when she encountered Southampton, gaining a little time. Visibility was now poor through rain and not all the battleships had seen the enemy. Orion's captain, Frederic Charles Dreyer, trained his guns on Stralsund and requested permission of his superior, Rear Admiral Sir Robert Arbuthnot, to open fire. Arbuthnot refused until Warrender granted permission. Warrender also saw the ships and ordered Packenham to give chase with the four armoured cruisers. These were too slow and the Germans disappeared again into the mist.[23]

Beatty received the news that Warrender had sighted the ships and assumed that the battlecruisers would be following on behind the lighter vessels. He consequently abandoned the northern exit of the minefield and moved east and then south, attempting to position his ships to catch the German battlecruisers, should they slip past the slower British battleships. Hipper initially attempted to catch up with his cruisers and come to their aid but once they reported the presence of British battleships to the south and that they had slipped past, he turned north to avoid them. Warrender, realising that no battlecruisers had appeared in his direction, moved north but saw nothing. Kolberg, damaged in the raid and thus lagging behind the others, saw the smoke from his ships but was not herself seen. Hipper escaped.[24] Belatedly, the Admiralty intercepted signals from the High Seas Fleet at Heligoland as it returned to port and now warned the British ships that the German fleet was coming out. Jellicoe with the Grand Fleet continued to search on 17 December, attempting to engage the High Seas Fleet but failed to find it as it was safely in harbour.[25] Keyes's submarines had been despatched to attempt to find returning German ships. They also failed, although one torpedo was fired at SMS Posen by HMS E11, which missed. As a last ditch attempt to catch Hipper, the Admiralty ordered Keyes to take his two destroyers and attempt to torpedo Hipper as he returned home around 02:00. Keyes himself had considered this and wanted to try. Unfortunately, the message was delayed and failed to reach him until too late.[26]

In Hartlepool near Heugh Battery, a plaque in Redheugh Gardens War Memorial "marks the place where the first ...(German shell) struck... (and) the first soldier was killed on British soil by enemy action in the Great War 1914–1918."

The raid had an enormous effect upon British public opinion and became a rallying cry against Germany for an attack upon civilians and criticism of the Royal Navy for failing to prevent it. The attack became part of a British propaganda campaign; 'Remember Scarborough' was used on army recruitment posters and editorials in neutral America condemned it; "This is not warfare, this is murder".[27] Blame for the light cruisers disengaging from the German ships fell upon the commander, Goodenough at first but the action was contrary to his record. Blame eventually settled on the confused signals, which had been drafted by Lieutenant Commander Ralph Seymour. Seymour remained flag officer to Beatty, making similar costly mistakes at the Battle of Dogger Bank and at the Battle of Jutland. An order was promulgated to captains to double check any orders to disengage if in an advantageous position.[28]

The German High Seas Fleet failed to engage the inferior British squadrons at Dogger Bank and the British nearly led a chase into the German fleet even after it had turned away but by chance drew back. Hipper escaped the two forces set to trap him, although at Jutland, it was the British battlecruisers which suffered the greater harm. Jellicoe resolved that the entire Grand Fleet would be involved from the start in similar operations and the battlecruisers were moved to Rosyth to be closer. The Kaiser reprimanded his admirals for their failure to capitalise upon an opportunity but made no changes to the orders restricting the fleet, which were largely responsible for Ingenohl's decisions.[29]

In 2010 archaeologist Bob Clarke, a local to Scarborough, wrote that at the time Scarborough was noted in maritime literature as a defended town due primarily to the castle site. The town had three radio stations as well as new technology in the organisation of the British fleet. The shell patterns suggest that these were the targets for the raid on 16 December 1914, not civilians as reported at the time and since.[30][31]

The German ships fired 1,150 shells into Hartlepool, striking targets including the steelworks, gasworks, railways, seven churches and 300 houses. People fled the town by road and attempted to do so by train; 86 civilians were killed and 424 injured (122 killed and 443 wounded according to Marder).[32] Seven soldiers were killed and 14 injured. The raid resulted in the first death of a British soldier from enemy action on British soil for 200 years, when Private Theophilus Jones, of the Durham Light Infantry, age 29, was killed.[33][34] Eight German sailors were killed and 12 wounded.[35]

• Churchill, Winston (1923–1927). The World Crisis. I. 4 volumes. London: Thornton Butterworth. OCLC 752891307.
• Clarke, B. (2010). Remember Scarborough: A Result of the First arms Race of the Twentieth Century. Stroud: Amberley. ISBN 978-1-84868-111-8.
• Corbett, J. S. (2009) [1929]. Naval Operations. History of the Great War Based on Official Documents by Direction of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence. II (2nd, Imperial War Museum and Naval & military Press repr. ed.). London: Longmans, Green & Co. ISBN 978-1-84342-490-1. Retrieved 28 January 2017.
• Litchfield, Norman E. H. (1992). The Territorial Artillery 1908–1988 (Their Lineage, Uniforms and Badges). Nottingham: Sherwood Press. ISBN 978-0-9508205-2-1.
• Marder, Arthur J. (1965). From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era, 1904–1919: The War Years to the eve of Jutland: 1914–1916. II. London: Oxford University Press. OCLC 865180297.
• Massie, Robert K. (2004). Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 978-0-224-04092-1.
• Tirpitz, Alfred von (1919). My Memoirs. II. New York: Dodd, Mead. OCLC 910034021. Retrieved 14 July 2017.
• Witt, Jann M.; McDermott, R. (2016). Scarborough Bombardment: Der Angriff der deutschen Hochseeflotte auf Scarborough, Whitby und Hartlepool am 16. Dezember 1914 [Scarborough Bombardment: The Attack by the German High Seas Fleet on Scarborough, Whitby and Hartlepool on 16 December 1914]. dual English and German. Berlin: Palm Verlag. ISBN 978-3-944594-50-7.

• "It is Magnificent but it is not War". The Independent. New York. 80 (3447). 28 December 1914. OCLC 4927591. Retrieved 15 July 2017.