Themes

Conflict and Change

• Introduction

  • Timeline

  • Timeline: World Wars

  • HMS Warspite

  • HMS Premier

  • HMS Sovereign

  • HMS Fearless

• In Focus: 1900

• In Focus: World War One

• In Focus: Interwar

• In Focus: World War Two

• In Focus: Post War Conflict

• In Focus: Cold War Climate

• In Focus: Falklands and Beyond

• Special Exhibition: Falklands 25

Learning

• How To: Understand Propaganda

• Propaganda Image Galleries

• Education Project: Sea With Your Own Eyes

HMS Warspite

Article highlights

• HMS Warspite at the Battle of Jutland

• The 'super dreadnought'

• Position in the Grand Fleet

• Scheer's scheme

• Memories from the Battle

• Signal failure

• Fatal blows

• The Fifth Battle Squadron enter the action

• The Grand Fleet come to the rescue

• HMS Warspite's withdrawal and battle damage

Fatal blows

At 1602 the German ship Von der Tann hit HMS Indefatigable with 11-inch shells causing the forward magazine to explode and it sank the ship with the loss of all but four of the crew.

German ships dealt HMS Queen Mary a similar fatal blow at 1625 and it too sank with the loss of all but 20 of the crew. Five minutes later HMS Invincible was also lost.

Destruction of the battlecruiser HMS Invincible. All but six of its crew, including Admiral Horace Hood, died. (RNM)

One of the main causes of the severe damage at the Battle of Jutland was the large amount of cordite, a highly explosive substance used to propel the shells fired from the naval guns, carried and exposed on board the British ships.

If the Royal Navy had stored the cordite away to protect it from flash, or if they had used a safer substance, perhaps the damage wreaked at Jutland could have been avoided. Captain Poland writes of the incident:

'We then heard that Beatty had sighted enemy light cruisers. Closed up at 5 and went straight to it. BCS (Battlecruiser Squadron) had opened fire about 25 minutes earlier and … lost the Indefatigable 10 minutes after engaging. All the ships lost were sunk by gunfire as far as we can tell through a turret being hit and a chain of cordite fires being lit down the trunks to the magazines. (This can easily be prevented in the future).'

Destruction of HMS Queen Mary. German ship SMS Seydlitz hit the ship several times. It blew up causing the death of all but twenty of the 1 275-strong crew. (RNM)