Why did the doomed ships fight to the death?

[Graf von Spee]

One thing I've noticed while reading about WW1 naval engagements is that heavily damaged ships keep fighting and almost never strike their colors, even when resistance is futile.

Why would they do this even when striking colors and turning to preservation of life of the crew seemed to be the better part of valor?

 

[saddletank]

Honour demands the ship goes down fighting, its a very ancient tradition of sea warfare. Striking the colours and surrendering is tantamount to not doing your duty to the fullest. Seems to have started around the time of the Armada, even before navies became professional.

 

[By_The_Danube]

saddletank is right as usual. The other answer I can think of is something in psychology called "seeing red" (it's a scientific term, go figure). In plain English, imagine you're fighting a person in real life - throwing punches, pushing, hitting, etc. How likely is it for either you or the other person to say: "Hold on. I'm sorry. I've just figured out that this is dangerous to my health and to yours. Let's just call it a disagreement." ??

 

[Hertston]

Why would they do this even when striking colors and turning to preservation of life of the crew seemed to be the better part of valor?

I'm guessing (only that) that the custom originated as a result of the crew's lives being considered less important than not 'gifting' the ship to the enemy. There are exceptions, but frequently with 'extenuating circumstances' from the understandable (as when HMS Seal surrendered to the Germans after having been forced to surface and the captain was convinced she would shortly sink anyway) to the totally bizarre (as when HMS Epervier was surrendered to the USS Peacock in the War of 1812). Frigates and ships of the line were honourably surrendered on many occasions after having been successfully boarded, but then the capture of the ship was inevitable anyway. Long before WW1, the chances of that happening had vanished entirely, and with the surrender of a major warship to the enemy intact being unthinkable in British, German, US and Japanese navies I guess a fight to the death it had to be.

 

[Graf von Spee]

The capture of the ship can be prevented by scuttling. You could strike the colors to and divert all hands to keeping her afloat and put out fires. The ship could be scuttled after the shooting stops.

The valuable officers and crew would then be around to fight the next war (after spending the remainder of that war as POWs).

 

[saddletank]

Generally scuttling is a procedure that takes considerable time, able bodies and good communications, all of which are lacking in a badly battered warship in battle.

Usually by the time it seems a good idea to scuttle, the means to organise it are lacking and of course to make preparations to scuttle before you got badly damaged would be very poor form: unthinkably defeatist.

Scuttling was done such as with Bismarck and (some claim) with Scharnhorst in 1943 but it was rare. In Scapa in 1919 when von Reuter scuttled the interned HSF, the RN were aghast that a highly ranked naval officer could do such a cowardly and dishonourable act.

Looking at WWI the mindset of the Victorian upper class needs to be understood here, a way of thinking that is quite alien to us today and since most captains and admirals came from the upper classes in society, their values on service, honour, loyalty, duty and so on more or less tramlined them into fighting the ship to the end.

Christopher Cradock is one of the most extreme examples of this, who knowingly sent his ships and men (many of them reservists and boy cadets) to their deaths against a vastly superior foe (numerically, technically and in crew preparedness/training) and did so without question since it was his job to do so. Understanding that kind of mind is difficult for us today.

In the days of wooden walls when boarding was common, surrender was much more frequent. I did not mention that as an example, as being boarded and taken was seen as doing your utmost to fight that you could anyway.

And yes, the value of men's lives was measured in a very different way 100 to 200 years ago to how we measure it now.

There are always exceptions but they come down to us through history as being noteable because they were exceptions.

 

[mariandavid]

The custom developed as large square-sailed ships and ship-killing guns dominated the major navies. So saddlebank is correct about the date but not the reason. Such ships were 'almost' impossible to sink - just one of many factors being that wood swells when wet, sort of closing any holes made in the hull. In addition because the solid shots had limited underwater penetration only a small proportion would make holes below the water-line. However guns (and the men who manned them) were much easier to hit, destroy and kill - the solid shot serving two functions; to hit the cannon and also create killing splinters. So it was usual for a ship to run out of fighting power before she would sink - hence one could surrender 'with honour' when ones fighting capacity was gone. This was especially true when there was a clear difference in fighting power. This applies to five of the six USN/RN frigate engagements of the 1812 war - in each case the loser (3 RN, 2 USN) gracefully conceding; the exception was the Shannon/Chesapeake where the two ships were equally matched and as a result the very heavy officer losses on the Chesapeake meant that she fought far past the point when surrender would normally take place (could not find the officer to surrender).

The custom withered when ships were more likely to sink before they ran out of fighting capacity (dating from the introduction of shell guns); I also heard that it became much more difficult to signal that one had surrendered and even more to spot that an enemy had (no tall masts and giant fighting flags!); the latter resulting inbad feelings that made everything worse.

 

[saddletank]

Good points.

I once played a set of age of sail miniatures wargame rules whereby if an opponent was completely dismasted and unable to manouvre and you could place your ship in a position to rake the stem or stern of the enemy, that would force him to surrender; the rule represented what mariandavid says above - a wooden ship being fought to standstill and forced to give up.

 

[mariandavid]

Agreed. And it was also perfectly respectable for a crew to take back a surrendered ship when circumstances changed. An example was at the big (bigger than Trafalgar in ships) battle of Toulon in 1744. A British 70 under Hawke wrecked the 'Podor' a Spanish 60 (in fact a converted French privateer and why she was in the line is baffling). Crew surrendered but then the very competant French admiral in the van tacked his ships, 'doubled' the British and drove them off (Nelson would have lost if the French admiral at Trafalgar had done the same!). The Poder crew then reclaimed their ship, and then abandoned her 'with honour' some hours later when if was found that she lacked the sail capacity to keep up with the fleet. All very complicated.

 

[Bullethead]

Christopher Cradock is one of the most extreme examples of this, who knowingly sent his ships and men (many of them reservists and boy cadets) to their deaths against a vastly superior foe (numerically, technically and in crew preparedness/training) and did so without question since it was his job to do so. Understanding that kind of mind is difficult for us today.

Think you so? This question requires the examination of the term "acceptable casualties". This isn't something that most civilians ever think about so, when somebody from the "firing line" mentions it, they view him at best as callous but normally as utterly alien. So let's consider a few things....

You no doubt own a car drive it over roads and bridges for your personal benefit. How many people died or were seriously injured to make that possible? From the miners and oil field workers producing the raw materials of and needed by the car itself, through the factory workers building the car and the refinery workers making the fuel, not to mention the road- and bridge-builders. Then consider that highway accidents themselves are the leading cause of death amongst young adults (IOW, folks of prime miltary age, with all their lives ahead of them). And consider that, in the US alone, nearly as many people die in car crashes in 1 year, every year, as died in the Viet Nam War in 10 years.

But nobody thinks about that at all, so long as they've got a car, relatively affordable fuel to put in it, and roads to drive it on. IOW, all the peolpe who were killed or maimed to make it all possible, those killed and maimed enjoying the end product, and even the maiming of an individual dirver, are all "acceptable casualties". Why? Because despite all this bloodshed, nobody wants to give up their car, their roads, or their bridges, even with close family members die in wrecks or they themselves are maimed, and nobody cares about the mine collapses or cancer from a lifetime of working in a refinery. If anything, folks only complain about the monetary cost of cars and fuel, but never the human cost. They are perfectly willing to accept all the casualties along the way so long as they can keep on driving. How callous and alien is that?

Here's another everyday example: the fireman. A fireman is, on average, a net asset to society. While there are exceptions, the average fireman is full of the self-sacrificing virtues that most folks consider good, perhaps even heroic. He's willing to get paid diddly divided by squat to risk his life and health for the safety of his community. But despite this, society values the fireman less than the lowest bum on the street, who has never done an honest day's work in his life. Why? Because society expects the fireman die trying to save the bum when the bum's meth lab explodes. But that's an acceptable casualty exchange in society's eyes. Otherwise society wouldn't have created firemen.

Now consider a member of the armed forces. He grows up seeing all the above in his society yet is willing to get paid diddly divided by squat to go take a bullet on some foreign shore, so that it all can continue. Why? Because part of it belongs to him and if he can't change the big picture, he can at least keep his little part of it running on his standards.

So tell me truly, who is harder to understand?

 

[mariandavid]

What Bullethead said is astute - but there is one thing that distinguishes the 'surrender at sea' examples from those he quotes. He is dealing with 'acceptable casulties' in the senses that the inflictor or bystanded does not know the cost or in the sense that an actuarial safety manager would say something like "it is legitimate to spend up to 2.8 million dollars per train to assure 'adequate' safety on a high-speed train full of about 280 people."

However the naval one is very different. With a captain making a conscious and calculated decision on how many men it is fair to see die in order to save their and his honour before surrendering. As opposed to the arrogant fool Craddock - for whom that number is irrelevent because "my honour is all that matters." (he was always like that - greatly admired by high society and regarded with bemused contempt by informed equals).

 

[bill44]

Some interesting points here.
I was under the impresion that as far as WWI was concerned that this sort of sacrafice was as a result of the debacle of the pursuit of the Goeben and Breslau.
It was such that Naval officers felt obliged for the honour of the service to take on superiour ships.
This was also the case in 1941 when the Gloworm took on the Adnmiral Hipper, CDR Roope could have escaped but he chose to a hopless action with the heavy cruiser.

 

[mariandavid]

You are correct that the failure of the admiral commanding the four AC to even close the Goeben and Breslau was universally condemned. But this was because both the German and British navies believed that you should always attempt to inflict damage at a superior enemy but NOT necessarily at the cost of your own ships. Troubridge (was that his name) was demonised for not even attempting to start the process (mind you there is a lot of discussion over this - the Admiralty under Churchill was very prone to throw blame at admirals when things did not work out and it may well be that the armoured cruiser squadron was under direct orders to wait for the Med Battle-cruiser Squadron to close on them before engaging the Germans).

Glowworm is an interesting case; no one really knows what her CO planned, since she emerged from smoke and mist so close to Hipper that actions must have been instinctive.

Quite beside the point this ramming business was frowned upon by the Admiralty in WW2 and DD, SL and FG commanders who rammed U-boats instead of blowing them to pieces might receive letters of reprimand (apart from anything else the asdic dome was wrecked making the ship useless for further action). Of course in WW1 the bow was for much of the time the only weapon against a sub!

 

[saddletank]

I'm struggling to see the relevance in BHs analogies. Civilian society has always thought that way and if there is one similarity we can draw, it is from the times of the 1700s and 1800s and early 1900s when men died in thousands building canals, railways and working in terrible conditions in mines, shipyards and factories. The fact that they did is a stamp of the social values of their time - today that level of deaths would be unacceptable - for example had the Channel Tunnel between Folkestone and Calais been built by Stephenson or Brunel in the 1850s, we could expect several hundred men to have died; inside big engineering works of those days they simply did because no-one had any concept of safe working conditions, nor, more importantly, the social awareness to implement them. That the Channel Tunnel was built in modern times without one single serious injury speaks volumes for that and, I think, sets aside as not relevant the analogies BH used.

Todays mines, refineries, chemical plants and engineering projects in the west are, on the whole, EXTREMELY safe places. The ambulance chasing lawyers have contributed to that. The only parts of the world they are not is in third world countries where there are still poor levels of safety equipment and procedure.

Cradock wasn't an arrogant fool, far from it. He was an extremely sensitive and intelligent man, by all accounts. I was using him just as an example but I think that mindset was common in the Victorian upper class gentleman whether he was a warrior or a civilian. It was simply "the done thing" to behave as a gentlenman should. Whether that got you shot off your horse by a Yankee marksman in the Wilderness because dismounting and taking ciover was seen as cowardly and inappropriate, or whether (tragically to us) that attitude meant that 1000 cruiser crewmen went with you to your honourable death because of your social values is the tragedy here - to us.

In those times it was not seen as tragic or unfair in those terms, but men dying bravely and for a good cause.

Cradock's loss is one reason why Britain was so buoyed up by Sturdee's victory a few weeks later, it was the archetypal perfect revenge for those who had died.

We're getting a bit off topic possibly though.

 

[martin worsey]

I think that Bill44 has put his finger on the cause of Craddock’s actions.

Saddletank mentions the Armada which represents the establishment of the navy as an effective organ of modern foreign policy. However, much of the success at this time relates to skilled and charismatic leadership from the likes of Drake and Hawkins and to superior ships. The English navy suffered a number of reversals subsequent to the Armada and on the whole did not perform well.

These reversals led to the drawing up of the Articles of War in 1653 which were subsequently updated by George Anson as First Sea Lord. These established a draconian level of discipline and established the principles of aggressive actions of the fleet. Admiral Byng was for example shot on the deck of his own ship for perceived lack of aggressive leadership.

RA Troubridge faced courts martial for the failure to engage the Goeben with his squadron of cruisers. There was a suggestion at the time, that he be charged with cowardice which was only dropped due to Troubridge’s previous conduct.

Thus a RN Admiral such as Craddock would probably prefer the course taken than the dishonour and humiliation of refusing to fight, especially when considering the treatment of Troubridge.

Other navies did not necessarily share the RN’s attitudes and Russian ships for instance did strike their colours in the RJW; ships which fought to the end were viewed as heroic by their Japanese opponents.

The German Navy was very much a junior service and the majority of her officers came from the middle classes as opposed to the nobility as in the army. There was also a sense of admiration for the RN which heavily outnumbered them. There would appear to have been a desire amongst the German officers to prove themselves as the equal of their RN or army counterparts and to fight to the end. In this respect they were successful as even official British communiqués acknowledge the bravery and skill of their German counterparts

 

[mariandavid]

I used the words 'arrogantly foolish' about Craddock because he failed to wait for the battleship that the Admiralty had provided (mind you how good a minimised pre-dreadnought would have been is questionable, after playing Jutland!!) and more important because he was (and you are correct in pointing out his mindset as a naval Victorian admiral) also contemptuous of ships that belonged to 'lesser navies'.

To be honest I am not sure how much experience he had of the Kaiser's fleet and its officers - a very few RN officers were (Packenham for one) informed and wary. It is an interesting question.

 

[martin worsey]

From what I have read of Craddock, he did not display contempt for the German squadron which he faced; on the contrary, he appears to have made a sensible assessment of his predicament.

To a large extent, the destruction of his squadron was the fault of the Admiralty which failed to issue coherent orders or provide adequate resources or predict the likely German movements with any form of judgement.

The logic behind the sending of the Canopus was somewhat flawed; the original plan had been to send a battlecruiser but Jellicoe objected to the weakening of Beatty’s force. The Canopus was then sent as she was available and it was felt that “something should be done” to help Craddock. Unfortunately, Canopus was old, worn out and not capable of anything like her designed speed.

At the very minimum, Craddock should have had the Minotaur available to reinforce his squadron but this more powerful unit was sent to and fro by the Admiralty, without bothering to keep Craddock informed as to were it was.

 

[martin worsey]

Troubridge (was that his name) was demonised for not even attempting to start the process (mind you there is a lot of discussion over this - the Admiralty under Churchill was very prone to throw blame at admirals when things did not work out and it may well be that the armoured cruiser squadron was under direct orders to wait for the Med Battle-cruiser Squadron to close on them before engaging the Germans).

Troubridge did in fact initiate the process and was attempting to force an engagement under reduced visibility. When it became clear that he would face the Goeben in good visibility, he allowed himself to be persuaded to turn back.

The issue with his orders was that he was instructed to avoid “superior force”; Churchill claimed this was the Austrian fleet but Goeben could have been regarded as superior as her speed could enable her to fight at longer range than the British cruisers could reach and break off at her choice. However, Goeben was probably unable to achieve anything like her designed speed at the time.

The Med and South Atlantic throw up quite a number of what if scenarios which would make interesting games (hint)

 

[saddletank]

I believe also that the Admiralty misinformed Cradock of how close the Canopus was (she was in fact steaming north off the Chilean coast and only a few hundred miles south of his squadron on the evening Cradock accepted battle). There is also the issue of how slow she was. I've read some accounts that the reports of her being fit for only 13 knots were exaggerated by an incompetent Chief Engineer, whereas, if he had taken more time examining her machinery he'd have found that with minor corrective effort she was capable of 16 or 17 knots, not significantly slower than the Otranto.

Cradock therefore was without correct information and had to (tragically as it turned out) make his decision beleiving that Canopus was both further away and slower than she was.

A game with Canopus present would make an interesting 'what-if'.

 

[mariandavid]

I apologise for my words about Craddock - they were ill-advised. Had just finished reading a new book about the two great historians of the 20th C RN (Marder and Roskill) - it emotes a little about the failings of the Admiralty and some of the more dinosaur admirals and assumed, obviously incorrectly, that Craddock was one. The most interesting part of the book to me was the revealing of Beatty's machinations to ensure that the Harper Report on Jutland was not made public - his later book of 1927 was heavily redacted by Admiralty order.