At about 4.30 a.m. the steam ejector was repaired and the boiler room was cleared of water well below the floor plates at about 5.15 a.m. As the land was closed the weather improved, and at 5.30 a.m. the destroyers stopped making oil track.
Marlborough passed Spurn Light Vessel at 7.35 a.m., and secured to No. 3 buoy off Immingham at 10 a.m.
When the ship was torpedoed, Stoker William Rustage, Official Number K. 20,877, and Stoker Edgar G. Monk, Official Number K. 4,266, who were on duty in the Diesel Room, were instantly killed.
Marlborough’s crew saw no less than seven torpedoes fired at them, which they avoided. They never saw the eighth which hit!
Controversy over the battle raged for decades and, even today, opinions are divided over whether Jellicoe should have turned away in the face of the mass torpedo attack at 0717, or whether he should have taken the risk of torpedo hits in order to ensure the complete destruction of the enemy fleet. Hindsight is always 20/20. One has to realise that with the rapid growth in the performance and lethality of the torpedo in the early twentieth century, the standard procedure for all fleet commanders, British or otherwise, was always to turn away.
In fact, on that very point, Jellicoe had gone out of his way to lay down such a principle in a letter to the Admiralty in October 1914, and Their Lordships had approved his strategy. Of course, it is easier to be wise after the event, and it is perhaps sobering to read in the new Fleet Standing Orders issued after Jutland that, if the fleet was instructed to take evasive action against torpedoes, ‘Commanders were given discretion that if their part of the fleet was not under immediate attack, that they should continue engaging the enemy rather than turning away with the rest of the fleet.’ Good in theory, and naturally leading to the breakup of a cohesive formation. The orders went on to insist that ‘All ships, not just the destroyers armed principally with torpedoes but also battleships, were reminded that they carried torpedoes intended to be used whenever an opportunity arose.’
It seems that not all the battleships’ torpedo-men were as eager to get to grips with the enemy as were those of HMS Marlborough. At least one other battleship, and there would have been many more, certainly fired off as many torpedoes as possible: Oscar Parkes comments that the torpedo flat team of HMS Agincourt were deep in water at the end of the action, not from flooding through shell hits, but by their own zeal in opening the underwater tubes to reload without bothering to wait until the water inside had been pumped topside.
UNRESTRICTED U-BOAT WARFARE
When the Imperial German navy attempted to impose a blockade of the merchant fleets of her opponents, she had long lost the means to carry out the classic guerre de course using surface ships. Her regular warships had been swept from the seas, and her handful of disguised raiders could make barely a dent in the vast numbers of British and French merchant ships, which were busily bringing the Allies all they needed for the pursuit of the war: food, armaments, munitions medicines and fuel. The High Seas Fleet was certainly not ready in 1915 to challenge the Royal Navy for command of the North Sea, let alone the wide-open spaces of the Atlantic trade routes. There was only one arm which could take up the struggle, and that was the U-boat.
The long-established rules of a guerre de course demanded that the corsair vessel intercepting a belligerent ship other than a warship should allow the crew to take to the safety of their boats before destroying the ship. Vessels flying the flag of neutral states should stop and allow inspection of their cargo manifests, to prove they were not carrying ‘contraband’ goods on behalf of the enemy. Early in the Great War, submariners on both sides had attempted to apply these gentlemanly rules, but the rapid onset of total war had cast aside such niceties. And there were other pitfalls for the submarine crews. Their craft were small and relatively slow. If a merchantman attempted to make off at speed, it could often escape the U-boat. Then there were the aggressive captains who took every opportunity to ram the much smaller submarines. And, finally, the British began to mount guns on their merchant ships, intending that they should not go down without a fight.
A final restraint was the availability of adequate torpedoes. They were bulky and expensive. For a U-boat on an extended cruise, the expenditure of the last torpedo meant a return to base. As commanders such as Nasmith had discovered in the Sea of Marmora, a deck gun, on the other hand, was a much cheaper weapon, which could be furnished with a decent supply of ammunition without taking up excessive room aboard the submarine. So U-boat crews attacking merchant ships began to use their 8.8cm and 10.5cm guns to stop and, if necessary, attack merchant ships. A shot across the bow might suffice to bring the captain to his senses, and if he tried to make a run for it or radio a warning, then the gun could be aimed at his bridge and radio room.
Then the British introduced decoys, better known under their designation of Q-ship — an innocent-looking vessel designed to lure an unsuspecting U-boat captain into surfacing and using his deck gun. At which point the White Ensign would — or should — be raised as the prelude to opening deadly fire with a concealed battery of quick-firers. Unfortunately, not all U-boats so lured were sunk, and those that escaped the trap soon gave the alarm.
Weighing up all the pros and cons, it appeared unavoidable that the U-boats’ guerre de course would henceforth take a sinister turn. On 4 February 1915 the German navy declared that:
1. The waters around Great Britain and Ireland, including the whole of the English Channel, are herewith declared a War Zone. From 18 February onward, every merchant ship met within this War Zone will be destroyed, nor will it always be possible to obviate the danger with which the crews and passengers are thereby threatened.
2. Neutral ships, too, will run a risk in the War Zone, for in view of the misuse of neutral flags ordered by the British Government on 31 January and owing to the hazards of naval warfare, it may not always be possible to prevent the attacks on hostile ships being directed against neutral ships.
The mention of the use of neutral flags arose because in January 1915 Captain Turner of the Lusitania had flown American flags to show he was carrying a large number of American passengers. There were also confidential instructions issued to U-boat commanders, to the effect that, since the safety of the boat was paramount, rising to the surface to examine a ship was to be avoided. In other words, ‘Shoot first and ask questions later’.
Following this declaration there were to be many sinkings deemed to be outrageous by the Allies, and which tended to inflame public opinion, especially in the United States. But the most infamous attack was the torpedoing of the 30,396-ton Cunard liner Lusitania on 7 May 1915 by the U 20 commanded by Walter Schweiger. To be fair to Schweiger, he identified the Lusitania as a Royal Naval auxiliary as noted in the 1908 edition of Brassey’s Naval Annual, Cunard having received government subsidies to prepare the vessel to receive an armament of 6in guns as an armed merchant cruiser.