BBC_Ships That Changed the World_2of3_Ships at War
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00:00The sinking of the Titanic in 1912 had sent a shockwave around the world.
00:18If this supposedly unsinkable ship could be lost on its maiden voyage, along with so many
00:23lives, suddenly the whole world appeared less secure.
00:34Few could have predicted the carnage that was to follow, with war and hardship on a
00:39scale never previously imagined.
00:43Soon loss of life at sea would become commonplace as warships grew in size and power, and merchant
00:50warships became the target of choice for both sides.
00:58Maritime tragedies to rival the death toll of the Titanic began to fill the pages of
01:03history.
01:06But for Holland and Wolff, the company that built the Titanic, war brought opportunity.
01:12Visionary leadership allowed the company not only to survive, it actually prospered during
01:16the worst ravages of the war.
01:18The tonnage lost in the massive battles at sea had to be replaced, and it was the shipyard
01:23at Queen's Island that stepped up to the mark.
01:48At the start of the 20th century, Holland and Wolff, in the north of Ireland, was officially
01:58the biggest shipyard in the world.
02:02Its close partnership with the White Star Line had brought success and prosperity beyond
02:07belief.
02:09As White Star battled it out with rival Cunard and other European lines, passenger ships
02:15had grown ever more massive, culminating in the Olympic-class liners, the largest ships
02:21in the world.
02:25But that had all changed now, as the sinking of the Titanic became the single greatest
02:30maritime disaster in history, and still the most talked about to this day.
02:38Just as the passenger companies battled for commercial supremacy in the Atlantic, so the
02:42real shipping arms race between the navies of Britain and Germany brought Europe ever
02:47closer to war, and in the same way that the largest passenger ships were due to the vision
02:53of just one man, Holland and Wolff chairman Lord Perry, so the mightiest warships owed
02:58their existence to one individual military thinker.
03:05Admiral John, or Bufnot Fisher, affectionately known as Jackie, was undeniably the greatest
03:11Royal Navy Admiral since Lord Nelson.
03:14Indeed, his first ship was the HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar.
03:25Never the most conventional of men, Lord Fisher had an amazing ability for getting things
03:29done, and he demonstrated both qualities in abundance by walking round the Admiralty with
03:34a sign round his neck saying, I have no work to do.
03:38But it was his first sea lord in the years immediately preceding World War I that Jackie
03:42Fisher was to exert his strongest influence.
03:48Fisher was determined to drag the ageing British fleet out of the Victorian era, and the Kaiser's
03:54rapidly expanding navy gave him just the excuse he needed.
04:00He scrapped many of the older ships, dismissing them as a miser's hoard of useless junk, too
04:05weak to fight, and too slow to run away.
04:11In their place, he introduced his precious all-big-gun warships, starting with the HMS
04:16Dreadnought in 1906.
04:22As well as 15-inch guns, these ships had the sheer locomotive force of massive steam turbine
04:28engines but were built with lighter armour to offset the extra weight.
04:33It is armour, as Fisher put it.
04:39The German philosophy was different, with smaller guns and engines, their fleet sacrificed
04:44gun calibre and speed for the protection of much thicker armour.
04:50So the Germans were geared up for close combat at sea, but the British still planned to keep
04:55their distance.
04:56The Fisher strategy was well conceived, but the theory still had to be tested in anger.
05:06Meanwhile, the aftermath of the Titanic disaster was beginning to play out across the world.
05:14Britain's Board of Trade was severely criticised for failing to update its safety regulations
05:20as passenger liners grew ever bigger.
05:24The owners of the ship, the White Star Line, fared little better.
05:29Although no formal charge was brought against the company and it never had to pay out a
05:33single penny in compensation, it was privately criticised for disregarding the safety of
05:38its passengers.
05:43Chairman J. Bruce Ismay, branded a coward for taking a place in a lifeboat, was forced
05:49to resign.
05:50It was the beginning of the end for the White Star Line.
05:57For Holland and Wolfe, there was surprisingly little negative effect, at least financially.
06:01Cleared of any blame, even praised for its workmanship, the shipyards still received
06:05payment for the Titanic.
06:07After all, as people in Belfast are still fond of saying, she was all right when she
06:12left here.
06:20All ships, new and old, had to comply with updated safety rules and, ironically, it was
06:25the island men who would carry out many of the necessary alterations.
06:33The first of the Titanic's sister ships, the Olympic, returned to Belfast for a substantial
06:39refit, and by the end of the year in which the Titanic sank, Holland and Wolfe's profits
06:44had actually increased.
06:49The Titanic had also started on the third sister, the Gigantic, to be the biggest and
06:54finest of them all.
06:57But the public now had less of an appetite for such self-aggrandising names and it was
07:01quietly changed to the more regal-sounding RMS Britannic.
07:06But the events that were to follow meant that she would never sail as a passenger ship.
07:20With the outbreak of the Great War, Germany soon demonstrated that not all of her naval
07:25efforts had been expended in developing surface warships.
07:29They had a new breed of craft, one that would prove even more deadly in this conflict and
07:34the next.
07:35Its name, of course, was the U-boat.
07:42For the first few months of the war, U-boats operated within the rules of engagement known
07:48as the prize rules.
07:51Previously agreed to by both sides, these basically said that passenger ships were off
07:55limits and merchant ships could only be attacked once the crew were out of harm's way.
08:02Only warships could be sunk without warning.
08:09But these had been laid down during more civilised times, the era of sailing ships, and Lord
08:14Fisher had foreseen that applying them to submarines would be pointless.
08:21There is nothing a submarine can do except sink or capture, he argued.
08:25What if the Germans were to use submarines against commerce without restriction?
08:31The response of the first Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, was as dismissive as it
08:36was wrong.
08:38He simply refused a countenance that any civilised nation could sink to such low treachery.
08:43But before long, Lord Fisher's premonition came true and merchant ships became the U-boat's
08:48primary target.
08:50As the conflict escalated, Churchill lost no time in calling upon the full resources
08:55of the world's finest shipbuilders.
09:00He immediately ordered a fleet of battleships from Harland and Wolfe.
09:06This might have seemed optimistic, given that the yard hadn't built a warship in more than
09:1130 years.
09:13But then, this was to be no ordinary fleet.
09:18What Churchill wanted was a flotilla of fakes.
09:22Ten cargo ships converted to look like battleships, each a copy of a real warship.
09:27The purpose of this so-called special service squadron was, in his words, to confuse and
09:33mystify the enemy, to baffle and distract from the enterprise of his submarines.
09:42The order was soon increased to 14, and no fewer than 2,000 highly skilled craftsmen
09:57worked day and night to fashion turrets and guns out of wood, canvas and whatever they
10:03could lay their hands on.
10:07The entire conversion from merchant vessels to battleships took just 10 weeks, and the
10:12results, frankly, rubbish.
10:20It's not that these ringers didn't look the part. Some of them actually were good enough
10:24to fool some of the enemy, some of the time.
10:29But the ships they were built from were a mismatched collection of shapes and sizes.
10:35Put together, this dummy fleet looked more like a carnival sideshow than a real squadron.
10:42The whole sorry-looking collection sailed to Scapa Flow in the Orkneys to join the British
10:47Grand Fleet, where they were met with disbelief and derision.
10:53Under protest, commander of the fleet, Admiral John Jellicoe, tried in vain to find a use
10:58for them.
10:59They tried to use them initially to lure submarines into ambush, but the U-boats wouldn't take
11:04the bait.
11:06Then they spent some time in the Mediterranean, where the deception did work, briefly. So
11:10well, in fact, that one of them got torpedoed.
11:13The idea of sinking them caught on, and the British scuttled two of them to act as nothing
11:17more than a breakwater in a Greek port.
11:26A few did successfully transport troops and supplies, but then they probably could have
11:30done this perfectly well without their cunning disguise, a sheep in wolf's clothing.
11:38By the middle of 1915, no one could find a practical use for the remaining fix, and most
11:44returned to Belfast to be restored to their former glory.
11:54While the dummy fleet was being made and then unmade again, Admiral Fisher's all-big-gun
11:59strategy had faced its first serious test.
12:05The Royal Navy had just suffered a humiliating defeat off the coast of Chile. Sir Christopher
12:10Craddock had been sent on what was essentially a suicide mission. His ship's crews had been
12:15hopelessly unexperienced, and the vessels themselves were typical of the useless junk
12:21that Lord Fisher so badly wanted to get rid of.
12:27In the Battle of Cornell, as it was called, this near-obsolete squadron was sent to attack
12:32some of Germany's finest battlecruisers, led by Admiral von Spee.
12:39The German ships, especially the two battlecruisers called the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau,
12:45had superior speed and guns, and stayed beyond the reach of enemy fire.
12:58In a carbon copy of Fisher's proposed tactics, they simply blasted the British into defeat,
13:03its first in over a century.
13:07Two Royal Navy ships escaped. The other two were lost, with nearly 1,600 crew, including
13:14Craddock.
13:19Determined to seek revenge, the Admiralty then sent two of its most powerful warships
13:22to the South Atlantic. There they rendezvoused with a host of other ships, including cruisers
13:27and armed merchantmen, anchoring in Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands in order to refuel.
13:32Blissfully unaware of this, von Spee made a fatal error on his return to Germany. He
13:38knew that Port Stanley was a vital British communications hub, and he believed it to
13:43be totally undefended, and so he resolved to attack.
13:53The Germans sailed right into the impressive British squadron, which opened fire with all
13:58its might.
14:06Still unaware that he was up against some of the fastest warships in the world, von
14:10Spee tried to make his escape, but the faster British battlecruisers began to close the
14:15gap.
14:23Von Spee bravely turned his two most powerful ships, the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau,
14:28to face the fight, hoping his smaller vessels might escape, but it was no use.
14:37After a long-range battle lasting four hours, the two German battlecruisers were sunk, and
14:42the British went on to hunt down the rest.
14:48Revenge for the defeat at Cornell was complete, and Fisher was triumphant that his strategy
14:53had been vindicated. Fuelled by this success, three more giant battleships were ordered
14:58to bolster the Royal Navy, and the largest of these would be built in Belfast.
15:06Before that could begin, however, Churchill had instigated a crash programme at Harlan
15:10and Wolfe. The first task was to design and build a series of monitors, heavily armed,
15:17shallow-draft boats used for coastal bombardment.
15:22This is the M33 Minerva, one of the very monitors ordered by Fisher and Churchill in 1915, and
15:29one of only two British warships from the Great War still around today, which is quite
15:33an achievement considering she was such a rushed job. She was ordered in March, launched
15:38in May, and went into action in June, just three months from start to finish.
15:45Her first action was to support the British landings during the failing and ultimately
15:49disastrous Gallipoli Campaign. The objective was to conquer the Ottoman capital of Istanbul,
15:57Constantinople as it was then, providing a safe passage through the strategically valuable
16:02Dardanelles Straits.
16:07In a series of battles fought over the best part of a year, British, French, Australian
16:13and New Zealand allies were defeated time and time again by Turkish forces under German
16:18command.
16:22Lord Fisher was against the campaign from the start, but he kept uncharacteristically
16:27silent, even as Churchill planned the naval expedition. It's only when the invasion started
16:32to go wrong he broke his silence and openly voiced his objections.
16:37But when these were ignored by the Admiralty, Admiral Jackie Fisher dramatically tendered
16:42his resignation as First Sea Lord, despite urgent pleas from Churchill and the press.
16:52Both sides at Gallipoli suffered casualties in excess of a quarter of a million before
16:56the Allied forces were eventually compelled to withdraw, having achieved precisely nothing.
17:04A resounding disaster for Britain, Gallipoli also cost Churchill his position as First
17:09Lord of the Admiralty.
17:14From his lofty position as one of the top three commanders in the Royal Navy, Winston
17:18Churchill, the British bulldog, who would go on to lead Britain twice as Prime Minister,
17:23immediately volunteered for army duty and went off to serve in the trenches of the Western
17:27Front. Today it would be like Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld being sacked and a week
17:33later find themselves rifle in hand on the streets of Basra.
17:41As for the M33 Monitor herself, it wouldn't be fair to let Holland & Wolff take all the
17:45credit for this particular ship.
17:49By this time, the world's largest shipyard had become so busy that it had to subcontract
17:55some of the work out to the world's second largest shipyard. And for that, you had to
18:00go all the way to Belfast. It's hard to believe, but at the height of its success, Holland
18:07& Wolff's main rival was right next door in the north bank of the lagoon. Workman Clark
18:12was known locally as the Wee Yard, but at its peak, it employed more than 12,000 men.
18:19Founded in the late 1800s by two former Holland & Wolff apprentices, this was the very first
18:37shipbuilder to produce cold storage ships for preserving beef and fruit during transport.
18:45While it never built anything quite as glamorous as the mighty Olympics, what's incredible
18:49is that on two separate occasions, Workman Clark actually produced more annual shipping
18:53tonnage than its more famous counterpart across the river.
18:58They built ships for many clients, Cunard, dozens of smaller passenger lines and the
19:06British Admiralty, as well as jobs sent across from Holland & Wolff, including, of course,
19:12the M33 Monitor. Whatever small part this ship played in the Gallipoli operations, she
19:18survived that and the rest of the First World War. She also emerged unscathed from operations
19:23in Russia against the Bolsheviks and as a minelayer in World War II. It's hardly surprising
19:29she has a reputation as a lucky ship.
19:34But for some of the former luxury liners that had emerged from the peacetime Battle of the
19:37Atlantic, luck was in very short supply. By 1915, Kaiser Wilhelm II had declared the waters
19:45around Britain a war zone. Any ship found there faced sinking without warning, and Cunard's
19:54flagship, the RMS Lusitania, was to become one of the heaviest casualties of this unrestricted
19:59U-boat warfare.
20:04Having left New York's Pier 54 on the 1st of May, 1915, the Lusitania was forced to
20:12sail just off the south coast of Ireland, near Kinsale, en route to its first port of
20:19call in Queenstown. Her first-class passenger list read like a who's who of British and
20:25American society, and of the nearly 2,000 people on board, 129 were children.
20:35In the same waters, a U-boat commanded by Kapitan Leutnant Walter Schweiger was making
20:41its way back to Germany, having just sunk three vessels in the Fastnet area.
20:52Low on fuel, and with only three torpedoes left, it was pure chance that brought the
20:57Lusitania into the U-boat's sights.
21:05Schweiger ordered the submarine to submerge and adopt battle stations, then gave the command
21:11to fire. A single torpedo was launched.
21:25Eighteen minutes later, the ship was gone.
21:35Over 1,200 people were lost, including nearly a hundred children.
21:43Technically, the Lusitania was a legitimate target. She was a registered naval reserve
21:50vessel and she was carrying military supplies in a declared war zone. Nevertheless, there
21:55was international outcry. Many neutral nations joined America and Britain in blacklisting
22:02Germany and calling for Schweiger to be tried as a war criminal.
22:10The dead included 128 Americans, and the single incident almost became the Pearl Harbor of
22:16its day.
22:24United States President Woodrow Wilson showed either remarkable restraint or utter cowardice,
22:36depending on your point of view, by responding with a formal protest rather than a declaration
22:41of war. Despite the threat from America, the Chief of the German Naval Staff wanted to
22:48intensify the U-boat campaign, promising, quite realistically, a collapse of the British
22:54fleet within six months before any U.S. intervention could take effect.
23:02For the first time, U-boats began sinking ships faster than they could be built, and
23:07if this had continued, the outcome of World War I might have been very different.
23:14Shortly after the Lusitania, again off the old head of Kinsale, a German U-boat sank
23:19the Holland and Wolf-built SS Arabic without warning and taking 44 lives. Once again, Germany
23:27received sharp riposte from America, and fearing the consequences, decided on a more cautious
23:32response. The prize rules were restored, at least for now.
23:40The third of the Olympic trio, now renamed the Britannic, was no less unfortunate. Like
23:49many of her kind, she was conscripted as a hospital ship to help with the huge numbers
23:53of casualties generated in the Dardanelles campaign.
24:01Unlike her sister ships, the Britannic saw no cheering crowds on her maiden voyage, even
24:06though she was the largest ship in the world, and still would have been, even if the Titanic
24:10had survived. Instead, she quietly set sail for the tiny Greek island of Lemnos in the
24:16Aegean Sea.
24:20Britannic may even have seen her sister ship there, also stripped of her finery and commissioned
24:25as a troop carrier. While the Olympic brought as many as 7,000 soldiers at a time to the
24:31site, Britannic's job was to bring home the sick and wounded, taking 3,300 on her first
24:37trip back to England. Less than a year later, on just her sixth voyage, she was steaming
24:45down the narrow channel between mainland Greece and the island of Kea, with more than a thousand
24:50crew and medical staff on board. At 8am, the bulkhead doors had been opened, as the staff
24:58were changing shifts. A few minutes later, Britannic was rocked by a huge explosion,
25:06struck either by a mine or a torpedo. Violet Jessop was a nurse's aide aboard the ship.
25:16Suddenly there was a dull, deafening roar.
25:21Two lifeboats were launched whilst the ship was still moving, with Violet Jessop in one
25:24of them. But as the boats were being lowered, they were sucked into the still-turning propellers
25:29and shredded to pieces. Unable to swim, she narrowly avoided death by jumping from the
25:34lifeboat, and so lived to tell the tale of the sinking of the Britannic.
25:41All the deck machinery fell into the sea like a child's toys. Then she took a fearful plunge,
25:49her stern rearing hundreds of feet into the air until, with a final roar, she disappeared
25:57into the depths, the noise resounding through the water with undreamt of violence.
26:07In less than an hour, having never carried a single fair-paying passenger, the second
26:12of White Star's ill-fitted Olympic-class liners lay at the bottom of the sea.
26:19Fortunately most people on board survived, but for Violet Jessop it must have been a
26:22frighteningly familiar experience, because she had been a stewardess on board the Olympic
26:27under Captain Smith when it had collided with HMS Hawk in 1911, causing severe damage to
26:32both ships. And incredibly, she had been a stewardess on board the Titanic on its maiden
26:37voyage, making her the only person to survive all three catastrophes.
26:46Back in Belfast, work was now well underway on the first major warship to be built there.
26:51In May 1915, the island men had begun laying down the keel of HMS Glorious, a large flagship
26:59battlecruiser, equipped with four 15-inch guns, but classed as a light cruiser due to
27:04her relatively thin armour.
27:11This was exactly in keeping with Lord Fisher's strategy, but before she was even completed,
27:16that theory would finally face the test of all-out combat in the greatest naval battle
27:22of the First World War, and in terms of the sheer number of battleships involved, the
27:27greatest of all time.
27:31This is the light cruiser HMS Caroline, the only other British warship still around from
27:36the 1418 war. She wasn't built in Belfast, but she's been here as a Royal Navy Reserve
27:42training ship since 1924. But what makes her particularly special is that she's the only
27:49remaining surviving warship from one of the defining moments of the First World War, the
27:55Battle of Jutland.
28:01In May 1916, Admiral Reinhard Scheer, commander of the German fleet, decided on the incredibly
28:09risky strategy of trying to lure a small part of the British fleet out into the North Sea,
28:14namely the squadron of battlecruisers commanded by Admiral Sir David Beatty.
28:21The plan was to use Beatty's equivalent on the German side, the battlecruiser squadron
28:26led by Admiral von Hipper, as bait. Once Beatty had been lured sufficiently far from his home
28:31base, Scheer would turn up with the entire German high seas fleet and obliterate them.
28:40What the Germans didn't know was that as von Scheer and Hipper planned all this by radio,
28:46the British had been listening in and had decoded some of their messages. With Admiral
28:51Sir John Jellicoe at the helm, the entire British Grand Fleet was already underway hours
28:57before the Germans had even left port.
29:02So, the British had the biggest guns and the fastest warships. They also had a proven strategy
29:08and this time, the element of surprise. So what could possibly go wrong?
29:15Well, nothing at first. Beatty's battlecruisers played their part perfectly.
29:23His ships sailed out from Scotland to chase Hipper's squadron, which then started retreating
29:30towards Scheer's waiting fleet. Instead of continuing to chase them into the trap, as
29:37the Germans expected, Beatty veered north, forcing the entire German navy to follow them
29:42right into the British Grand Fleet, turning the tables on the enemy as the hunter became
29:47the hunted. But along the way, the impetuous Beatty lost the advantage of his bigger guns
29:56by attacking the Germans at too close a range.
30:11Soon he had also lost two of the fastest vessels in the British navy and was famously heard
30:16to complain, there's something wrong with our bloody ships today.
30:23In practice and in combat, the Royal Navy had become so obsessed with firing their guns
30:27quickly that they'd missed the main goal of warfare at sea, which is to hit the enemy
30:32ships. What followed was a classic example of the fog of war, both figuratively and literally.
30:40As Beatty's crippled squadron pressed ahead, the Battle of Jutland raged on. Heavy haze
30:48plus the smoke of battle caused widespread confusion and obscured vital signals.
30:57Through miscommunication from Beatty and plain bad intelligence, Jellicoe basically got lost
31:03and ended up too close to the enemy, again losing his key advantage. The German guns
31:10were more accurate and more reliable, easily blasting holes in the weaker British armour,
31:16and many of the British guns were simply too big for the decks they were built on, ripping
31:20apart their own ships with every shot fired. The Royal Navy lost 6,000 men and 15 of their
31:28finest ships, but remained powerful enough to survive. The German side was hit hard too,
31:36and Von Scheer only escaped with the remainder of his fleet under the cover of night.
31:43The Germans claimed a material victory, and it was, but the British were left in control
31:47of the North Sea and indeed the oceans of the world, and so for them it was a strategic
31:52victory. But in reality, the result of the Battle of Jutland was a decisive dead heat.
32:03Many lessons were learned on both sides, not least of which was the importance of effective
32:07armour. For HMS Glorious, still unfinished at Holland and Wolfe, it was too late. Jackie
32:15Fisher's design flaws were already built in, and the consequences would reach all the
32:20way into the next World War. But the immediate effect for both Britain and Germany was a
32:29realisation that this type of warfare was far too costly. From then on, the war at sea
32:34would concentrate almost exclusively on a girder course, crippling supply lines by attacking
32:39merchant ships. Growing ever bolder, Germany's U-Boat campaign was now sinking three ships
32:47for every one produced. Ironically, it was this fact that would ensure Holland and Wolfe's
32:53success through these most difficult of times. Lord Perry had realised that the heavy losses
32:58at sea would have to be replaced, and initiated a massive expansion of his fleet.
33:05Many of Holland and Wolfe's rivals diluted their workforce with unskilled labour, leading
33:09to friction over wages. But Perry stubbornly maintained the high standards of his excellent
33:14men, keeping them keen with bonuses and overtime.
33:20The company now had facilities at seven centres throughout Britain, including Glasgow and
33:26Liverpool. The Belfast Yard was also expanding massively, with the opening of the East Yard
33:34on the Musgrave Road, and the opening of the East Yard on the Musgrave Road, and the opening
33:39of the East Yard on the Musgrave Road.
33:44The Belfast Yard was also expanding massively, with the opening of the East Yard on the Musgrave
33:49Channel, specialising in the mass production of what were called standard ships with interchangeable
33:55parts.
33:59Holland and Wolfe built a staggering number of merchant ships in the last year of the
34:03war, 200,000 tons in 1918 alone, double that of their nearest rivals. Perry's achievements
34:08in the industry won him both the position of Comptroller General of Merchant Shipbuilding
34:13and the nickname of Modern Noah.
34:25Shortly before the war ended, the last of Perry's Olympic liners had her chance to avenge
34:30the loss of her sister at the hands of the Germans.
34:38For some time, U-boats had been targeting passenger ships and even hospital ships.
34:47When Germany issued a declaration making its unrestricted U-boat campaign official, it
34:52was the last straw for America, who entered the war on the 16th of April, 1917.
35:00Just two days earlier, the Olympic had re-entered service after being given a dazzle paint job
35:06and fitted with anti-submarine guns.
35:11She was given the job of carrying American troops to Europe, and on the 22nd of these
35:16voyages, as she entered the declared war zone of British waters, she spotted the German
35:21submarine, U-103.
35:26The Olympic fired first, but she was too close and she couldn't press her guns enough, and
35:30so the shots went straight over the top. The U-boat responded by firing a torpedo, but
35:35it missed, and so the captain of the Olympic took it upon himself to ram the enemy submarine,
35:39cutting it clean in two. As a result, the Olympic became the only known merchant vessel
35:45to sink an enemy warship in the First World War.
35:52But if Holland & Wolff's former passenger liner was a resounding success in war, the
35:56same could hardly be said of its purpose-built battlecruiser, HMS Glorious.
36:04HMS Glorious only saw action once during this war. On the 17th of November 1917, along with
36:11HMS Courageous, she took part in a major operation off Heligoland Bight against German forces
36:16involved in mine-sweeping operations in order to clear a path for their all-important U-boats.
36:26The ships may have been called Glorious and Courageous, but the engagement was neither.
36:34Visibility was poor, and the waters were littered with mines belonging to both countries, although
36:40neither side was sure of their exact locations.
36:45Amid a haze of confusion, the British ships fired literally hundreds of shells, but managed
36:50to hit little more than a passing buoy.
36:56In fairness, the Germans hadn't done that much damage either, but HMS Glorious had suffered
37:01from some heavy self-inflicted wounds. The repeated firing of her 15-inch guns had ripped
37:06through the deck and caused some serious structural damage. Admiral Fisher's design flaw had struck again.
37:14For this reason, Glorious was mothballed at the end of the war, but not before she'd had
37:19the good fortune to be present on the 21st of November 1918 to witness the surrender
37:24of the German High Seas Fleet.
37:31The Great War was finally over, and with it, the age of the Great Sea Battles.
37:39The U-boat had proven itself against the vital merchant ships and would do so again, but
37:44this war brought a new technology, one that would take the conflict from the sea to the sky.
37:51The aeroplane was in its infancy in 1914, but by the end of the war, it had already
37:57progressed from a simple scouting tool to an effective fighting machine.
38:04The rise of the plane in both peace and war would eventually reduce the role of the great
38:09ships to mere bulk carriers, designed purely for function.
38:16More immediately, the end of the hostilities in Europe was just the beginning of Holland and Wolff's troubles.
38:26When the guns and bombs stopped, there was a price to pay, and the decades after the
38:31war would prove the hardest of all.
38:37As economic depression gripped the world, so orders dried up.
38:41Workers were laid off in their thousands, and the cranes and slipways of the world's
38:46largest shipyard stood silent.
38:49It looked like it was the end for Holland and Wolff, but history had other plans.