John Barnes, Historian

(c) John Barnes

Final 21 July 2015

Beatty and Evan Thomas: a signal missed and a signal made.

It has long been known, and held to his discredit, that Beatty, when First Sea Lord, attempted to make changes in the Record of the Battle of Jutland, prepared by Captain J.E.T. Harper and a small team for the information of the Admiralty Board and for subsequent publication. Subsequently efforts were also made to modify Corbett’s account of the battle in the third volume of the Official History and an Admiralty Narrative of the battle was published in June 1924 to which Jellicoe took strong exception. It has been widely accepted that this was the Beatty version of the action. In 1998 J.A. Yates completed a doctoral thesis on the controversy, paying particular attention to the genesis of the Naval Staff Appreciation of the battle from which the Narrative was drawn. Dr Yates suggests that it was not simply an exercise in vanity on Beatty’s part: “to legitimise his favourable idea of his own performance and the principles he wished to see adopted by the Fleet, Beatty knew that there had to be an account that endorsed his views, which was also endorsed by the Admiralty and which was generally accepted as accurate.”¹ Since Beatty himself kept a remarkably complete file of his own dealings in the matter, Yates’s explanation, while still open to challenge, makes better sense than the simple charge that Beatty was out to falsify history absolutely and in the long term.

The assumption throughout the thesis is that Beatty knew that the performance of the Battle Cruiser Fleet and his own exercise of command had been poor, but because he believed strongly in the principles he espoused, he sought to conceal the damning facts that at Jutland his “system” had failed. “David Beatty was well aware that interpretation of the evidence would decide how the Navy developed after Jutland. Therefore, he sought to influence the Jutland histories to his advantage - to support his reforms and enhance his image - by corrupting the evidence upon which contemporary perceptions of the battle were based.”² Brock and Chatfield are portrayed as his reluctant co-adjutors, whereas there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that, particularly where the Battle Cruiser Fleet’s gunnery was concerned, Chatfield often took the lead. Beatty’s consciousness of his own failings is largely assumed rather than demonstrated. However, this article is concerned less with the generality of Beatty’s actions and his motives, than with one particular aspect of the case Dr Yates argues.

He is critical of predecessors writing about the controversy for not realising that the defects in the evidence are not simply the result of what he terms “natural historiographical discrepancies”. He describes earlier views as “most erroneous. Natural historiographical discrepancies there are, but what still remains to be examined are the deliberate alterations to the evidence and the efforts to make it appear to be authentic. Most of these were instigated by Beatty. It is these actions and their consequences for the Navy that need study.”³ In fact a good many, if not most, of these activities have been covered before in accounts that are in general hostile to Beatty, but as Dr Yates surveys the ground he wished to cover, it becomes plain that he believes Beatty did not content himself with trying to change the accounts of the battle given in what became known as the Harper Record and the official history, but that he manipulated the raw material from which those histories were compiled.

“Every author up to [t]his point [the publication of the official life of Jellicoe in 1936], whether or not they knew of Beatty's interference, assumed that the basic material used in the official accounts - mainly from the Despatches – was accurate. No-one tested the validity and accuracy of this evidence. The Dewars did not, Corbett did not, and the Admiralty Narrative certainly did not. Neither did Bellairs, Bacon, Altham, Frost or Pastfield. Harper had provided a sure indication of where authors should have looked if they had wanted a better understanding of the issue, but they assumed that Harper's views were corrupted because of his poor opinion of Beatty. This was a serious and erroneous mistake.”⁴ Nor did the situation improve, despite the availability of German accounts which would have thrown new light on the claims made for the Battle Cruiser Fleet. Dr Yates is right to think this is a most serious charge and it deserves serious examination. His sweeping dismissal of pre-war writers is less than fair: as he notes, Harper’s work on the Record and the charts accompanying it was made available to and valued by Corbett and the Dewars, while Pollen, who had worked with Harper, made adjustments to the charts in the light of the German evidence. Yates’s assertion that this tainted their work rests on the untested assumption that Harper had made the changes that Beatty ordered. The evidence suggests that the reverse is true. But the possibility that Beatty or his acolytes tampered with the original documentation is not a charge previously made,⁵ and is not one they consider.

It would be interesting to know where precisely Dr Yates found in Harper’s The Truth about Jutland a pointer to these fabrications as opposed to charges that Beatty could be seen either as wilfully flying in the face of or deliberately misrepresenting the evidence. Dr Yates does not tell us, but it becomes clear that at this point he has in mind particularly claims about the effect of the Battle Cruiser Fleet’s gunnery. It is relevant to note therefore that one of the most significant pieces of evidence that he uses in this context was neither altered or destroyed, simply retained by Chatfield. That may well lend support to his explanation of the motivation of Beatty and his supporters, but it does not support, quite the reverse, any charge of fabrication. It should be noted in passing, however, that the charge of controlling the supply of evidence is levelled at Beatty, while Chatfield, “who might have provided more information”⁶ in his memoirs, escapes serious criticism, presumably because he is viewed, a trifle oddly, as Beatty’s unwilling collaborator rather than as a man with axes of his own to grind.⁷

Of the later accounts, only Campbell and Grove escape a bludgeoning from Dr Yates, while Barnett⁸ is criticised for thinking, although he was not without good reason, that German materiel was superior.⁹ Dr Yates is unduly dismissive of Campbell’s work, which went a long way to provide conclusive proof that German gunnery was superior to that of the Battle Cruiser Fleet, and is a good deal less than fair to Gordon’s Rules of the Game.¹⁰ The latter had tested the evidence, but is presumably open to Dr Yates’s criticism, because he had not spotted any deliberate falsification of the raw material to be found in the Jutland Despatches. It should be added that Gordon’s masterly account is far less conventional than Dr Yates seems ready to admit, and sharply critical of any subsequent misrepresentation of events.

Dr Yates tends to conflate two quite separate questions, first whether the Jutland despatches provide an accurate guide to events, and second, considerably more serious, whether they have been subject to tampering. Self evidently they are not the raw material of history, but the first draft of it, compiled by participant observers and inherently subjective. But Dr Yates looks beyond these inherent defects to argue that “deliberate alterations” were made to the evidence and that these have corrupted the historical record. He is unable to demonstrate when this is supposed to have occurred, but points to a possible opportunity: “All despatches and plans from ships attached to the BCF were sent initially to Beatty. A few weeks after the battle, the senior survivor from Invincible, the Gunnery Officer, Commander Hubert Dannreuther, took them with him to London, to show to the King and the Admiralty.”¹¹ Beatty’s own despatch, however, was sent to Jellicoe on 12 June and by then the original reports, including that from Evan Thomas, had been transmitted to him. He was under pressure to submit his own report.¹² Yates argues that it “is by no means certain to what extent the material in the published Despatches reflects what was actually written by each Captain; much original material has long-since been destroyed.... Achieving publication of the Despatches was a significant advantage to Beatty, because he chose in 1916 (as BCF C-in-C) and 1920 (as First Sea Lord), what evidence went into them. Indeed, in at least one case, he even re-wrote a portion to suit his views. Much of the extant evidence held by the Admiralty had been seen by Harper before publication of the Despatches. However, as he was to find out, there was a good deal more not disclosed by 1920 which proved that Beatty had something to hide regarding his command in the BCF.”¹³

These are serious charges and to be upheld they would require considerably more substantiation than Dr Yates offers in his thesis. They can be seen as inherently implausible. There are two possibilities, one rather more readily accomplished than the other. The more plausible of the two charges that Dr Yates wishes to bring, suppressio veri , would have been difficult to achieve. The expectation that every ship would make a report (exemplified in the way that survivors were asked to report on the loss of their ship) is the first hurdle. Making undetectable alterations in a series of documents produced by others is even harder to accomplish. Only those with professional knowledge of the problems of a forger who wishes to escape detection over time, will realise the immensity of the task which Dr Yates supposes Beatty, with the active complicity of his staff, to have set himself. To do so he would have to assume that no Captain would have kept copies of what he had written and that others with their own take on the battle would not be able to establish at a later date inconsistencies between what was reported and what actually took place. Publication, far from being to Beatty’s advantage, would be fraught with danger, since a far wider professional audience, with clear recollections of the day or access to private records, would be able to spot “errors” in the published despatches in regard to what had taken place. It is almost inconceivable that those who signed a despatch in the first place would not read it again and know whether it was their own or not. Against this, Dr Yates offers no evidence at all of the process which he supposes Beatty and his staff to have undertaken beyond the assertion that Beatty rewrote one passage, as yet unspecified.

Perhaps the strongest evidence against the suggestion made by Dr Yates is to be found in the Harper memorandum. Harper writes: “The next day [23 July 1920] a new point was raised¹⁴, which was that the 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. paragraphs were incorrect and, therefore, the track of the British Battle Cruisers incorrectly plotted at this time with reference to the enemy. This objection was raised because the ranges, times of opening fire, etc., given in the Record, did not agree exactly with one passage in the despatch from [Beatty]. The documentary evidence included the original gunnery records, from all the Battle Cruisers, including Lion. These agreed in the main with one another, but the evidence was at variance with the statement made in the despatch.”¹⁵ Far from making a sustained effort to alter the evidence, Beatty and his staff had apparently left intact the very documentation that Harper used to question the accuracy of Beatty’s despatch.

Further, when Beatty attempted to secure an alteration of the track of the battle cruisers at 1915 to bring the range of the enemy down to 13,400 yards rather than the 17,000 plotted, “it was pointed out that if the amended track were to agree, even approximately, with the official certified ranges it would be necessary to move the enemy track some 3000 yards to the Westward, and this would, of course, throw out all our Battleship ranges. In fact to make such an alteration as that desired by the First Sea Lord would necessitate replotting the tracks of every squadron.... With such a mass of ships and squadrons engaged it would be impossible to alter one track on a track chart without having to alter others.... it would lead to chaos.”¹⁶ Yet this is the task that Dr Yates supposes Beatty’s staff to have undertaken in less than a fortnight. It is also telling that Beatty sought to amend Lion’s track chart on 7 July to accord with his own recollection. He would scarcely have needed to have done so had he sought to have manipulated the record before sending in his own despatch.¹⁷ It is evident from his trust in the gunnery records that Harper detected no such action and was able to deploy them to query the views conveyed to him by Chatfield in September 1920.¹⁸

This brings us to the single charge of fabricating evidence which Harper himself brought against Beatty. It concerns Plate 8a in the Jutland despatches. This did not figure in the Admiralty records as the original had not been forwarded by Jellicoe. There is good reason to suppose that it was sent by Beatty to Jellicoe on 17 July 1916, but that the latter was not prepared to accept Beatty’s attempt to alter the track of the battle cruisers. The issue was that of the 32 point turn. Beatty had evidently realised that the original did not accord with his recollection of what had taken place. The new sunprint of Lion’s track enclosed with his letter was unsigned. Beatty’s “crime” was to attempt to add his signature four years later in order to make the document ‘official’; as Harper noted, to “make it ‘official’ it must be signed, so it was signed.”¹⁹ Contrary to Harper’s opinion, it is almost certain that this was an original sun print²⁰, although not an official one. Harper rightly describes this as a “stupid deception” and so it was, but it scarcely suggests the early large scale attempt at falsification that Dr Yates suggests or the skill that would have been required to carry it out successfully.

In fairness to Harper, who is said to have been the inspiration for the thesis put forward by Dr Yates, it should be said that this is the only allegation of fabrication made against Beatty in the whole of the Harper papers as opposed to documentation of his attempts to “fudge” the official Record. Beatty is also accused of wishing to make an omission from his despatch before it was printed. On examination the charge made by Harper is correct, the motive seemingly that the information included in good faith in 1916 was known by 1920 to be incorrect. Significantly, however, the passage was included when the report was printed in the Jutland Despatches. Had Beatty “chosen” what went into the 1920 publication, as Yates alleges he did (no reference given) would he not have modified his own despatch?

Dr Yates appears to offer only three specific examples to support his charges. Although it deals with all three, the main purpose of this article is to test the validity of the most substantial charge, the suggestion that a particular signal was forged and led to a falsehood being told in the House of Commons on 15 March 1927.

This necessitates a return to the much debated question of what actually happened when, at 1432 on 31 January 1916, Beatty turned his battle cruiser squadrons SSE while the 5^th Battle Squadron, rather than conform to Beatty’s move, continued on its original course. The obvious question, since the 5^th Battle Squadron turned some eight minutes later to the same course, is why it turned when it did? I share Dr Yates’s view that the significance of the entire episode has been considerably exaggerated. If Beatty is to be criticised for failing to concentrate his force, attention would be better focused on what happened almost an hour later at 1521, when Evan Thomas chose to steer a course which diverged from that of Beatty’s battle cruisers, and in so doing cancelled out much of the ground which he had gained on them by judicious cutting of corners.

However, it was the earlier decision that became the prime example of Beatty’s failure to concentrate his force before going into action, one of the central charges made in Bacon’s The Jutland Scandal.²¹ It is a charge repeated in Gordon’s Rules of the Game and accepted by Stephen Roskill in his biography of Beatty. All three seem to assume prior knowledge on the part of both Beatty and Evan Thomas that they were dealing with something more than German light forces, although it is far from clear that either man thought that at the time or even had good reason to think so.

Before turning to the documents whose authenticity Dr Yates questions, it is necessary to establish the context. The log of the British light cruiser Galatea, which was operating in tandem with Phaeton at the right hand end of Beatty’s screen, noted “2.07 p.m., sighted enemy T.B.D.s.” In his report, dated 2^nd June, Alexander-Sinclair, who was flying his Commodore’s broad pennant in Galatea, implicitly corrects the timing of the sighting: At 2.18 p.m. on 31st May in latitude 56° 52' N., longitude 5° 21' E., " Galatea " and " Phaeton " being in the Port Wing position of the Light Cruiser Screen, course and speed of Battle Cruiser Fleet being S.E., 20 knots, attention was drawn by a steamer, bearing S. 72 E. about 12 miles, blowing off steam and the masts and two funnels of a war vessel were made out in her vicinity. This was reported by " Galatea," who in company with " Phaeton," closed at high speed. It was then found that two German Destroyers had stopped the steamer and that a squadron of Cruisers and Torpedo-boat Destroyers were a little to the North-eastward apparently steaming in various directions which made it difficult to send an adequate report.” ²²

Not only was there no synchronisation of time between squadrons or within squadrons, but clocks on board ships could frequently differ. The Navigating Officer would have access to his chronometer, but jealously guard it against others. Discrepancies between times noted on the bridge and those in the signal office are therefore to be expected. One might expect those in reports of proceedings to be more carefully considered and the product of more than one source of evidence, but that does not mean they are necessarily correct. Despatches, as noted already, are most certainly not the raw material of history, but the product of judgment after the event. Whether acknowledged by the author as such or not, a despatch is no more than a first draft of history, but, significantly, it is likely to be regarded by its author as reliable.

Beatty had turned his force North by East at 1415; at the same time he told Evan Thomas to “look out for advanced cruisers of Grand fleet.”²³ Both signals were recorded as being made by searchlight. Evan Thomas signalled his own squadron by flags to alter course in succession at 1417. Galatea, an unidentified officer recalled, “was late in receiving the signal, and about 2.15 was only just about to turn when a merchant ship was sighted ahead, which appeared to be stopped and blowing off steam, so the Commodore held on his course for a few minutes to have a look at her.”²⁴ As Galatea approached, a destroyer, which had at first not been spotted, made off. She was “unmistakably a Hun. Action stations were at once sounded off.”²⁵ Alexander-Sinclair made the signal “Enemy in Sight” at 1420, and at the same time wirelessed “Urgent. Two Cruisers probably hostile in sight bearing ESE course unknown. My position Lat. 56 48’N, Long. 5 21’E.” At 1421 Evan Thomas signalled his squadron that he intended to proceed at 19 1/2 knots. Beatty was steaming at 19 knots and the 5^th Battle Squadron was slightly inside its station. Galatea’s signal reached every ship in Beatty’s force but few, if any, seem to have thought that a major action was imminent. No one on the bridge of either Lion or Barham had any knowledge that the High Sea Fleet was out. Beatty, who had known of the possibility, like Jellicoe had been informed in a message sent by the Admiralty at 1230: “no definite news enemy. They made preparations for sailing early this morning Wednesday. It was thought fleet had sailed but direction signal placed flagship Jade at 11.10 GMT Apparently they have been unable to carry out air reconnaissance which has delayed them.”²⁶

It will have taken a minute or two for Galatea’s wireless message to be deciphered and passed to Lion’s bridge. Beatty signalled his destroyers at 1425, using flags: “Take up position as Submarine screen when course is altered to SSE.”²⁷ Barham, according to the Admiralty Narrative, received the “course about to be steered” at 1430.²⁸ The Dewars, who wrote the Narrative, are referring to the signal stationing the destroyers, and the signal, as the First Lord of the Admiralty made clear in a parliamentary answer on 15 March 1927, was recorded in Barham’s signal log.²⁹ Evan Thomas was later to write “he knew that two enemy light cruisers had been reported and that the battle-cruisers were turning but to what course it was impossible to see; and they rushed off into space without his having received any signal from the Vice Admiral in command, neither searchlight or wireless having been used by Lion.”³⁰ It was an unfortunate lapse of memory. Evan Thomas’s Flag Captain was in no doubt that this signal was passed to her, and in an account written after Evan Thomas was dead, he recalled suggesting that the 5^th Battle Squadron turn east at once.³¹ Barham’s executive officer, Commander Egerton, apparently confirmed receipt also. One can infer from the time of receipt that was repeated to her by searchlight. Tiger was then acting as repeating ship. It should be noted that all Barham’s consorts received the signal at 1734 and that Fearless recorded it as being received from Barham.

Beatty’s next order was made to his entire force: “Alter course leading ships together the rest in succession to SSE.” The signal was made by flags and was hauled down at 1432. A minute later he signalled his intention to proceed at 22 knots and ordered “raise steam for full speed and report when ready to proceed.”³² As Lion turned, Barham signalled the 5^th Battle Squadron to turn two points to port, evidently intending to resume the zigzag course that had been pursued before the turn N by E, the course Evan Thomas was steering, N by W, would have been the port leg of a four point zigzag.³³

Barham not only failed to conform immediately to Beatty’s turn, but was actually steering almost directly away from her. It is only fair to note that, as Evan Thomas later put it, the “signal for ‘Steam for full speed’ had been made, and all the battle cruisers were drawing their fires forward and making a tremendous smoke, which made it impossible to distinguish flag signals from Fifth Battle Squadron stationed five miles off, except possibly on rare occasions. Had signals been made by searchlight as they had been on other occasions on the same day, they would have been seen immediately.”³⁴ However, it is equally apparent that Evan Thomas made no effort to maintain his assigned station nor did he in any way conform to what the battle cruisers were doing. Instead he or his staff were addressing the distance between ships of the squadron and redeploying their own destroyer screen to the SSE. We are told that Evan Thomas maintained to the end of his life that he received no executive signal, although that is not quite what is said in his letter to The Times of 13 February 1927 nor indeed what he had told Jellicoe previously.

It is worth quoting the entire passage, even though it will be evident that had Evan Thomas genuinely thought Beatty intended to sandwich the enemy between the two squadrons, he should at the very least have turned his own squadron back into line ahead and that he would not have been redeploying his own destroyer screen on a course SSE.³⁵ “The only way I could account for no signal having been received by me,” he wrote in this exculpatory letter, “was that the Vice Admiral was going to signal another course to the Fifth Battle Squadron – possibly to get the enemy light cruisers between us. Anyway, if he wished us to turn, the searchlight would have done it in a moment. It was not until Tiger asked Lion by wireless whether the signal to turn was to be made to Barham, that the Vice Admiral seemed to realise the situation. But these lost minutes turned out afterwards to be a most serious matter.”³⁶ We are not told explicitly on what evidence Evan Thomas based his statement that Beatty, prompted by the supposed signal from Tiger, “seemed to realise the situation”, a point to which we shall have to return. But the charge he makes against Beatty is as sweeping as those made earlier by Bacon in The Jutland Scandal and may have been prompted by it: “After all isn’t it one of the fundamental principles of naval tactics that an admiral makes sure that his orders are understood by distant parts of his Fleet before rushing into space covered by a smoke screen? Also, if, as I believe, he knew the German heavy ships were at sea, should he not have seen that his most important ships were close at hand.”³⁷ Quite how Evan Thomas could write this last sentence is incomprehensible. It is possible, but unlikely that he did not know that Beatty, like his Commander-in-Chief, assumed from the earlier signal sent by the Admiralty that they had not left harbour, or perhaps, to be more charitable, that they were not expected to have done so any earlier than 1300 hours. But, in any case, Evan Thomas contradicts himself in the course of writing this paragraph since his ‘alibi’ rests on the assumption that Beatty could afford to divide his force since he was dealing only with the German light forces.

The authors of the Admiralty Narrative write: “Six minutes later, the Lion’s alter course having been received³⁸, the Barham turned back fifteen points to S.S.E. By the time she had completed this turn the Barham was over nine miles from the Lion, and though in the next hour she was able by steering a converging course to regain some of this distance she was still considerably astern of her appointed station when the action commenced about 3.50 p.m.”³⁹ Although the authors say six minutes on the basis of Barham’s log⁴⁰, they note also that the logs of Valiant, Warspite and Malaya all give 2.40 p.m. as does Warspite’s track chart.⁴¹ The distance between the two flagships steering on almost diametrically opposite courses will have lengthened by something like 1,300 yards a minute so that by the time Barham ordered a turn in succession to SSE, speed 22 knots at 1440, the battleships lagged the battle cruisers by something like ten sea miles. The Admiralty Narrative provided no explanation for the delay and simply notes that “the actual ‘executive signal’ is logged as having been received at 2.37 p.m.”⁴²

Jellicoe took this to be an insinuation that Evan Thomas was responsible for the delay, thought that “unjust”, and insisted on making his dissent known. Noting that at 2.32 p.m. the 5^th Battle Squadron was actually inside the distance at which Beatty had stationed it, he observed that at “this time a signal was made general by flags for the leader to turn to S.S.E., ships following in succession. It is not surprising (he went on) that this signal was not immediately distinguishable on board the Barham, nearly 5 miles away, and apparently it was not until 2.40 p.m. that it was made out and the course of the 5^th Battle Squadron altered accordingly; during the period 2.32 – 2.40 the distance between the Lion and Barham had opened to 10 miles.” It scarcely needs saying that a signal hauled down at 1432 could not have been “made out” at 1440!

Jellicoe went on to detail three further occasions in the next hour when Beatty made a general signal by flags and makes the point that it was not realised apparently until 1535 that Barham could not read Lion’s flag signals and that a signal was then made to her by searchlight, which Evan Thomas immediately obeyed.⁴³ Whether these later flag signals were intended for the 5^th Battle Squadron at all is disputable, and warrants debate in any account of the battle. However, they are mentioned here simply because they were used to reinforce the charge that the error was not Evan Thomas’s, but had been made in Beatty’s signal department; and for that of course, Beatty must take ultimate responsibility. If there was an error in the signal department, again something to be discussed and not simply assumed, it may well not have been the decision to use flags, but the failure to realise that Tiger might be in some difficulty as the ship tasked to repeat Lion’s signals by searchlight.

It should be noted that in his biography of Jellicoe, Bacon implicitly amends what he had said in The Jutland Scandal, alleging that “Tiger called Sir David’s attention to the mistake on signalling and the 5th Battle Squadron were then given a new course.”⁴⁴ That would certainly explain the course of events, but Bacon provides no evidence for the existence of this signal; and no documentary evidence to support his statement has ever come to light, The realisation that Tiger was no longer repeating Lion’s flag signals by searchlight came later when Tiger signalled to the Lion at 1505 that the 2.32 signal and signals made since had not been passed to the Barham.⁴⁵ It is highly unlikely that the signal would have been made in that form if Tiger had indicated to Lion at about 1434 that she had been unable to communicate the 2.32 signal to Barham. Gordon refers to Evan Thomas’s assertion that Tiger wirelessed Lion, and clearly infers that it is farfetched to think she would have done so. Semaphore or searchlight would be more likely. No such signal is found in the list of signals compiled for Harper, nor is there any reference to the issue in either Pelly’s report or his memoirs.⁴⁶ One is driven to think, in direct contradiction of Dr Yates, that Evan Thomas knew that he had received a searchlight signal to turn, that it came from Lion, and that he inferred, rather than knew, that it had been prompted by Tiger. He had evidently missed the significance of the latter ship’s signal at 1505.

Evan Thomas’s report elides any glitch, but clearly accepts that Beatty’s intention was to turn his whole force SSE:

“No. 024. " QueenElizabeth,"

9th June 1916.

Sir,

I HAVE the honour to report that, on 31st May 1916, when in Latitude 57° N,, longitude 4° 45' 30" E., at 2.23 p.m., the Fifth Battle Squadron.... in single line ahead.... was five miles N.N.W. of the First Battle-cruiser Squadron, steering N. by E., when a W/T signal was intercepted from "Galatea" — "Enemy in sight," upon which the Battle-cruiser Fleet and Fifth Battle Squadron were turned to S.S.E. by signal from the Vice Admiral Commanding the Battle-cruiser Fleet and speed increased to 25 knots.”

An accompanying set of diagrams first shows the situation at 2.20 p.m. and then the situation at 2.40 p.m. This second diagram shows the 5^th Battle Squadron steering SSE while the 2^nd Battle Cruiser Squadron has yet to complete its turn. The next diagram provided is timed at 4.00 p.m. If anyone is obscuring the truth here, it is Evan Thomas. He had turned his squadron at 1440 to precisely the same course and speed that Lion had signalled.⁴⁷ Beatty, who paid warm tribute to Evan Thomas’s “brilliant support” in his despatch, contents himself with the observation that at or shortly after 1530, the “5^th Battle Squadron, who had conformed to our movements, were now bearing N.N.W., 10,000 yards.”⁴⁸ While generous, this was less than the truth.

The first indication that Evan Thomas’s failure to conform with Beatty’s turn to the SSE would become an issue can be found in Jellicoe’s letter to Evan Thomas of 3 June 1922 and was the result of what he took to be an insinuation in the Naval Staff Appreciation that the latter was to blame “for the opening of the distance between the BCF and 5thBS to ten miles between the time of Galatea sighting the enemy and the BCF being in action. I pointed out very clearly that this was due to signals being made by flags at a great distance and not by W/T or S.L. and that if there was any blame it lay elsewhere.”⁴⁹ As Gordon makes clear⁵⁰, Jellicoe’s post-war view disregards what the GFBOs themselves indicated should happen where a signal was indistinguishable; it also ignores the duty of a squadron commander to maintain station unless signalled to the contrary, a point which we believe was urged on Evan Thomas by his Flag Captain and by Commander Egerton. We also have Beatty’s understanding from his discussions with Algernon Boyle, who commanded the Malaya at Jutland, that Evan-Thomas "could certainly have seen Lion turn to stbd and conformed without signal. The real reason for this delay was RA waited until his TBD screen assumed new position for screening... From his despatch he does not consider there was any undue delay".⁵¹ If Jellicoe was pointing the blame at Beatty’s signals organisation, it should be said in fairness that Tiger had been assigned the duty of repeating Lion’s signals by searchlight to Evan Thomas and that this was the first occasion on which she had failed to do so.

Be that as it may, Jellicoe’s views hardened and when the Admiralty Narrative was published in 1924, they were published in an appendix and dismissed.⁵² Corbett had in the meantime written in the Official History that “the general signal for this movement – that is, to turn in succession to the S.S.E – which he made at the moment his helm was put over, was not passed on to Admiral Evan-Thomas, and being made by flags, could not be seen distinctly from the Barham. It was thus not till a few minutes later began to follow his lead.”⁵³ Corbett added in a footnote that Tiger had signalled at 3.5 that this signal and others made since had not been passed to Barham. It is possible that when Beatty commented on the proof “Not True”, he had in mind not Tiger’s admission, but the fact that Lion had passed the signal, but no alteration to the text was made, and the point cannot be proven.

Bacon made Jellicoe’s charge a major part of his attack on Beatty in The Jutland Scandal, and Kenneth Dewar made an equally fierce reply in the pages of The Naval Review. In the course of it Dewar noted that the “failure of the 5th battle squadron to conform to the Lion's alteration of course at 2.32. which increased the distance between them by 5 miles, is also laid at Admiral Beatty's door, on the grounds that the signal was not made by searchlight as well as flags. But there may have been good reason for this. Signalling by searchlight is difficult during alterations of course, or it may have been prevented by smoke interference whilst working up speed. Although Admiral Beatty is severely criticised for not waiting for the 5th B.S. to close, we are told on page 59 that the 5th battle squadron had no right to depart from its cruising station (N.N.W. 5 miles from Lion) without orders. If this is correct, the Barham should have preserved her bearing and distance from the Lion and Beatty cannot be held responsible for the increase of the distance to 10 miles. The book abounds in contradictory statements of this kind.”⁵⁴

However, it was the serialisation in The Times of Winston Churchill’s account of Jutland in February 1927 that brought the attention of the House of Commons to the issue and gave rise to the Parliamentary answer that is central to the allegations made by Dr Yates. The relevant passage appeared on 9 February and was challenged by Evan Thomas in a letter written on 13 February and printed on the 16^th. When the matter was first raised in the House of Commons on 9 March 1927, the First Lord, William Bridgeman, referred his questioner to the Admiralty Narrative: “he will find, on page 12, that at 2.31 the "Barham" had received the signal indicating the course which the Vice-Admiral (Admiral Beatty) intended to steer. The actual executive signal is logged as having been received at 2.37 p.m. by the "Barham."⁵⁵ When pressed by Lieutenant Commander Kenworthy on the means of communication, flag or searchlight, he asked for that question to be tabled. Commander Bellairs did so, making a careful distinction between the preparatory signal made at 1425 and the executive signal to turn.

Bridgeman replied: “The signal referred to on pages 12 and 106 of the Official Narrative is recorded in the signal log of H.M.S. "Barham" as received at 2.30 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time, by searchlight, from "Lion," the text being as follows: Take up position now to form submarine screen when course is altered to S.S.E. The Executive signal to turn is recorded in the "Barham's" signal log as received at 2.37 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time, by flags, from "Lion," the text being as follows: Alter course, Leaders together, remainder in succession, to S.S.E., speed 22 knots. I may add that between these two times the "Barham" had signalled to her own Destroyers: Take up station for screening on altering course to S.S.E. This signal is timed at 2.34 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time, in the Log of H.M.S. "Fearless," Senior Officer of the Flotilla.”⁵⁶

The time of receipt offers a clear explanation of why Evan Thomas ordered the 5^th Battle Squadron to turn SSE when they did, but immediately poses a different problem, why a signal hauled down at 1432 should not have been recorded in Barham’s signal log until 1437. To Dr Yates the explanation is simple. “There cannot, then, have been such a signal received. If Beatty knew that he could not get a signal through and Evan-Thomas and Craig were certain that none was made, then it was impossible that the signal could have been seen and recorded at the time in Barham. It is impossible to log a signal that was never made, so these quotes from Bridgeman and Dewar must result from fabrications.... Barham's log must have been altered after it left the ship.”⁵⁷

It is only fair to acknowledge at this point that Dr Yates is substantiating the charge which he believes Evan Thomas had himself made, and that his conclusion is reached through a chain of reasoning which needs to be examined in depth if it is to be conclusively refuted.

Before doing that, it is convenient to deal with a related charge of fabrication made by Dr Yates, not least because it throws some light on his handling of evidence. Craig’s brief report on the action included some notes which were not as full or accurate as he would have wished, in part because their author was mortally wounded later in the action, and they were then completed by a Midshipman. The relevant passages read: “2.15 p.m. course N. by E. 5th B.C.S. 5 miles ahead of “Lion", ordered to look out for advanced Cruisers of Grand Fleet. 2.38 p.m. S.S.E. 22 knots in consequence of 1st L.C.S. reporting enemy cruiser S.S.E. at 2.35 p.m. The Battle Cruiser Squadron turned rather before the 5th Battle Squadron and were out of sight for some time.”⁵⁸

Dr Yates finds this deeply suspicious: “Craig cannot have written this. The visibility to the east was approximately 11 1/2 miles. At 2:40, Lion was 10 miles away and Tiger around 8 miles. Craig had his eyes on the BCF from at least 2:30. He did not forget what had happened in the following week or so until his report was submitted and suddenly remembered hereafter, nor did he shut his eyes. The ships involved did not suddenly develop speeds in excess of their designed maximum. The scenario of the BCF being lost to sight was physically and spatially impossible. As the 5^th BS followed the BCF, one might well ask how they knew the course to follow to try to cut the distance if they could not see to anticipate the moves, and why Lion made visual signals to the 5^th BS. If Craig could not see, this must apply to the rest. This remark was inserted after the event, to invite the conclusion that whilst the BCF pursued the enemy, the 5^th BS dithered.”⁵⁹

There is a good deal to question in this argument, the most obvious point being the attribution to Craig on the bridge notes made by other officers in the lower conning tower. From the bridge the horizon would have been just over ten miles and the Battle Cruiser Fleet were at that distance. From the lower conning tower, while still visible, they would have been hull down. The visibility, as we know from a whole range of participants in the action, was patchy rather than uniformly good or bad, and smoke from the BCF clearly acted as a screen. It is therefore far from the case that the “scenario of the BCF being lost to sight was physically and spatially impossible”, the more so since the phrase was qualified by the words “for some time”. However, Craig was not only very much alive to challenge any change made in the reports, which would have been evident to him when the Jutland Papers were published, but was active later in support of Evan Thomas when he sought to challenge Churchill’s account of the whole episode in The World Crisis. He would have had no good reason to stay silent if he thought an alteration had been made. Even more to the point he offered independent testimony in 1927 that “at 2.37 the Battle Cruisers appeared only as a cloud of smoke.”⁶⁰ It is almost impossible therefore to see how Dr Yates can sustain this charge.

At first sight he makes a rather more plausible case for doubting the authenticity of the signal quoted by Bridgeman in the House of Commons in March 1927, although if there was fabrication it must have been done years earlier. Such a signal was evidently available to the Dewars since it is summarised in the Admiralty Narrative. Corbett would seem also to have known about it and the use he made of it in his initial version is revealing. He indicates that Lion's 2:25 signal to the destroyers was repeated by searchlight to Barham, but that the signal might not have reached Evan-Thomas. Of the signal to alter course, "repetition by searchlight would have entailed a loss of some minutes." The implication appears to be that it was repeated to Barham by searchlight.

Corbett and Jellicoe were in correspondence not only about the Staff Appreciation of the battle, which had been prepared by the Dewars, but about his own account, and it is very likely that this was modified as a result of Jellicoe’s letters of 6 June and 29 May and his cable on 16 June 1922. At all events Jellicoe wrote to Evan Thomas on 3 June to say that he “had to enter a strong protest against the manner in which the authors of the Staff Appreciation of Jutland insinuated that blame was attachable to you for the opening of the distance between the BCF and 5thBS to ten miles between the time of Galatea sighting the enemy and the BCF being in action. I pointed out very clearly that this was due to signals being made by flag at a great distance and not by w/t or S.L. and that if there was blame it lay elsewhere.” In his diary for 19th June 1922, Corbett noted receipt of a "Recorded cable from Jellicoe approving all but two paragraphs I had altered with Pollen."⁶¹ In Naval Operations as published Corbett studiously left open what caused Evan Thomas to follow the lead given by the battle cruisers. He may not have wanted to differ openly with Jellicoe, but he must have been aware that the position taken by the latter was untenable. It was one thing to argue that “the signal was not immediately distinguishable aboard the Barham 5 miles away”, quite another to suggest that “it was not till 2.40 p.m. that it was made out and the course of the 5^th Battle Squadron altered accordingly.”⁶² To repeat a point made earlier, as an executive signal the flag signal had been hauled down at 1432 and was no longer there to make out. We are left with the problem that if this signal was fabricated, as Yates suggests, an explanation is required as to why Evan Thomas turned when he did.⁶³

It is time to address Dr Yates’s argument. What may have been its fons et origo, and is certainly his starting point are the holograph notes Beatty made after his meeting with the First Sea Lord on 26 June 1916.⁶⁴ The subject of the meeting was Beatty’s desire to keep the 5^th Battle Squadron at Rosyth until the Grand Fleet moved there in October. Beatty was evidently angered by Jackson’s remark that “the next time I had them with me he hoped that ‘I would keep them in line with me’. In response Beatty explained his cruising formation “which was in accordance with the C-in-C’s wishes, except that I had been at 5 miles away instead of 8 as laid down in G.F.O. That if I had had them with me constantly as I had asked and so enable them to be trained with me so that the R.A. and myself should have thoroughly understood each other they would have been at 2 miles.... (Furthermore during the manoeuvring before contact was made with the enemy, there was ample opportunity for the 5^th BS to have closed the BCs as they were on the inside of the half circle described by the BCs – see plans. That they did not do so was due to the fact that I could not get a signal to them, and to the absence of training together, which if we had had the opportunity the R.A. would have done the right thing instinctively without orders....) In brackets, not stated at the meeting as I had no wish to impute bad manoeuvring on the part of R.A. 5^th B.S. who had supported me so well. But I did point this out to C.O.W.S.⁶⁵ subsequently.” Beatty also pointed out that the stationing of the 5^th Battle Squadron was suitable for all contingencies, including the possibility of sighting the whole High Sea Fleet.

Dr Yates quotes only the passages that I have underlined and therefore misleads others, and possibly himself, into thinking the words in brackets apply to the situation between 1420 and 1440, when the full context makes it evident that Beatty is thinking of the whole period between 1432 and, at the earliest, 1545, more probably 1600. It is possible to infer that inter alia, his remark that he “could not get a signal to [the 5^th Battle Squadron]” applies to the 1432 signal as well as to later signals made as his force attempted to cut Hipper’s 1^st Scouting Group off from its base, but it is far from certain that this was the case. What seems clear is that, whether fairly or not, he thought Evan Thomas could have done more to close the gap. It is likely therefore that he had in mind courses steered after Hipper was sighted rather than the earlier situation. What the full context of his remark makes clear is that his inability to get a signal through refers not to a particular event, but to a lengthy period of time when the Battle Squadron was already a long way astern.

Dr Yates praises Beatty for taking personal responsibility; but because he chooses to think Beatty’s remarks apply only to the 1432 signal, infers that, when as First Sea Lord he chose not to defend Evan Thomas, he was protecting his signal staff and, more particularly, Seymour. Much of the subsequent argument pursued by Dr Yates rests on the incorrect assumption that the time of the difficult signal to which Beatty referred, “must encompass 2:20 to 2:32. So, on hearing of the enemy, some difficulty was experienced in the BCF's procedures and Beatty almost certainly knew he had failed to communicate with Evan-Thomas, which he also knew was important. Far from rushing into space at the enemy, as some have suggested, Beatty waited for about 8 poorly accounted for minutes, but without much success due to signalling difficulties, excitement and dither, hence the poor explanation.”⁶⁶

This passage makes very little sense, almost certainly because Yates has in mind the accusation that Beatty waited 12 minutes before turning his ships. That point is not relevant to Yates’s argument since he suggests that Beatty probably became aware of the failure after the turn. He makes the reasonable assumption that Beatty was told that Evan Thomas’s ships had not turned. But the usual charge made against Beatty at this point is that he did not wait for Evan Thomas. While it is true that he did not immediately move off at full speed, there is no evidence to suggest that he hung around or indeed thought he had need to do so.

In common with others, Dr Yates makes heavy weather of Tiger’s failure as the designated repeating ship either to repeat the signal or warn Lion that she could not do so. She cannot have thought that her role changed with the alteration of course or she would not have made her 1505 signal. He also rather unnecessarily wonders whether Evan Thomas might have thought general flag signals did not apply to the 5^th Battle Squadron. That was never part of Evan Thomas’s defence and the suggestion cannot be taken seriously. General flag signals were to all ships in sight, hence the need for them to be repeated by searchlight. Evan Thomas noted himself that the point was “that in the visibility as it was, together with the intense smoke made by the battle cruisers bringing fires forward, it was impossible to see what Lion was doing until most of the Squadron had turned, Barham was zigzagging at the time, which caused delay, but as Lion had been signalling to Barham with a searchlight previously to the turn, and had made all alterations of course by that method, there was no reason why a signal should not have been made for Barham to turn with Lion, by searchlight, if not by wireless."⁶⁷

Evan Thomas could have gone further. As Dr Yates makes clear from an examination of the methods of signalling used around the time in question “it is evident that when Beatty made general signals (i.e. to all ships in sight) he used flags.... When a signal specific to a ship was to be made, then either the searchlight or WT was used. Both recorded signals to Evan-Thomas were made by searchlight either side of the turn towards the enemy at 2:32, suggesting that nothing was wrong physically with the searchlight at those times.”⁶⁸ However, the inference that Lion not only could but should have signalled Barham direct instead of relying on Tiger as repeating ship is belied by the fact that the 1432 signal was general.

That must call into question Evan Thomas’s private attack on Beatty in a rather confused letter to Jellicoe of 30 June 1926: "Nowhere is it mentioned that no signal had been made to me to turn (at this time only a destroyer had been sighted) and we all thought that we were intended to go on & that a signal would be made to us directly how to steer to cut something off, was our idea.... I don’t know that I ever had known a case before in the Navy where a man who was in command and made a bad mistake, nor seeing that his forces were concentrated (more or less) for battle, is able to use his position to shelter himself and throw blame on others who were mad keen to do anything possible to obey his slightest wish. The Admiral in command must be to blame if a signal is not made. It was made when Tiger asked. It was quite out of the question for us to see flags. The smoke was black and previous signals had been made by searchlight. A great mistake was made by the Admiral commanding (Admiral, of course including his staff) but he must be responsible. No attempt seems to have been made by him to concentrate his force...”⁶⁹ The point that bears repetition here is that if he was genuine in thinking that Beatty might divide his force in order to prevent their quarry making for the Skagerrak, he cannot have believed it necessary for Beatty at that moment to concentrate his force and vice versa. It is also worth noting that Evan Thomas does not say that no signal was made, only that it was made when Tiger asked.

Dr Yates recognises that the most damning evidence against Evan Thomas is Bridgeman’s answer in the House of Commons since that quotes verbatim both the signal made at 1425 and the executive signal recorded in Barham’s signal log at 1437. His first reason for doubting its authenticity is a letter written almost thirty three years later by Alfred Dewar to his brother Kenneth⁷⁰: “Both signals were taken in in HMS Barham... recorded in her signal log as received at 2.40pm [Barham's signal log Deptford no23346 in 1927] The point is this as the executive of a flag signal is the hauling down, the flags... were hauled down at 2.32pm [not repeated by any other ship] the signal must have been received at 2.32 though evidently not recorded and acted upon till 2.40 by the Barham.” Marder had already noted that the letter contradicted Bridgeman’s Parliamentary answer. However, if we are to endorse so strong a term as “contradicts”, we would need to be sure that Alfred had in front of him as he wrote documentary evidence that the time was as he represented it and not the time Bridgeman gave in March 1927. It could otherwise be faulty memory of what he had written in the Narrative or even a slip of the pen. His assumption that the signal was read at 1432 and not acted upon is unwarranted.

While the suspicion prompted by the contradiction is not unreasonable, it is far from clear why someone seeking to perpetrate a forgery should have produced two copies of a supposed log entry with different dates, only one of which had been taken with him by Alfred Dewar when he retired. It is more likely that in 1959 if he was relying on a document, it would be some note of his own, possibly an annotated copy of the Narrative, and that he misleadingly telescoped the information it provides. Even so, it has to be said that the discrepancy lends some support to Dr Yates’s suspicion.

Another persuasive point made by Dr Yates, although far from conclusive, is the absence of any mention in the Staff Appreciation of Barham’s signal log. “As Dewar made no mention of it in the Staff Appreciation,⁷¹ which one must suspect he would have done, it must have been inserted after Dewar completed his work and before the draft of the official history went to the printers in early 1923. This was almost certainly done when protestations regarding the movements of Barham and Lion became more actively disputed in 1923...”.⁷² Dr Yates treats this as evidence that the signal did not exist, but it looks as if Corbett had seen it by the time he completed the text he sent to Jellicoe. It is conceivable that Dewar thought it unnecessary to reference more than the log books. It is even possible that at that point he had not gone back to the relevant signal books and that Pollen drew his attention to them when working on the Narrative. It also seems quite possible that nobody thought the matter important until Jellicoe chose to make it so.

Dr Yates offers a further reason for doubting the authenticity of the signal. “In Bridgeman's answer to Bellairs, there was a 5 minute gap between the signal being made executive and its being recorded. If this were (sic) genuine and the signal was seen, it is unlikely that such a gap would exist. It was logged 3 minutes before the turn and Evan-Thomas would not have waited.” His reasoning here is faulty. Barham’s log is quite explicit; Evan Thomas ordered the turn at 1638. The times on Barham may have been ahead of those kept in the remainder of the squadron, but the order clearly followed closely upon the receipt of the supposed signal. Barham’s navigating officer was clearly puzzled by and could “not account for the discrepancy between the Valiant’s time of turning and our own.”⁷³

Telling an untruth to the House of Commons is a very serious matter and it is highly unlikely that his officials would have allowed their minister to make the statement he did without clear documentary evidence. A pencilled record in a signal log is relatively easy to alter, but in this instance a whole signal would have to be created in such a way as to pass the scrutiny of experienced naval officers in the Historical Section. Dr Yates appears to assume without explanation of his reasoning that the time was altered⁷⁴ and that action provides a clue as to when the alteration was made i.e. that there was some genuine signal that had been altered. The argument here is unclear since there would appear to be no relevant signal that could simply be adjusted as to timing. On the assumption that there was a forged signal, and that one or other of the Dewar brothers was the forger, the signal must have been in existence by the time Corbett completed his first draft account of the action. The question of motive then arises since at that time there had been no controversy and scarcely any attention paid to the fact that, as Harper put it, the “Battle Cruiser Squadron turned rather before the Fifth Battle Squadron and were out of sight for some time.”⁷⁵

Dr Yates finally offers in confirmation that the signal was never made not merely Evan Thomas’s denial, but that of his Flag Captain and Beatty’s private admission that this was so. “If Beatty knew that he could not get a signal through and Evan-Thomas and Craig were certain that none was made, then it was impossible that the signal could have been seen and recorded at the time in Barham. It is impossible to

log a signal that was never made, so these quotes from Bridgeman and Dewar must result from fabrications.”⁷⁶ It is unfortunate for Dr Yates that Evan Thomas also denied receipt of the 1425 signal, which Craig acknowledged was received, and which all serious historians are agreed was the case. The suggested explanation for this is the somewhat lame one, that five minutes after receipt of Galatea’s signal “Enemy in sight”, Evan Thomas had yet to appear on the bridge. However, as we have seen, his denial that any signal was received is less than absolute, his point being that no searchlight signal was made at 1432 or immediately thereafter, which no one denies.

But the conclusive blow to Dr Yates’s position, somewhat unexpectedly, is delivered by Craig. The relevant passage from his defence of Evan Thomas in the Naval Review reads: “The fact is that all signals from the Lion intended for the 5th B.S. were passed by searchlight, the invariable rule in the case of squadrons or units stationed at such a distance from the main body, without a repeating ship. The signal for “destroyers to take up position to form submarine screen when course is altered to SSE" was made by searchlight to Barham and the actual alter course signal should have been made in the same manner if intended to apply to the 5th B.S. This signal was passed to Barham at 2.37 and in passing it the original system (flags) and time of origin (executive) 2.32 was also passed. The procedure, apart from the delay, was quite correct as it was intended to convey the information to the R.A. 5th B.S. that the signal had been made by flags and that the turn had been made by the Lion at 2.32. Immediately on receipt of the signal at 2.37 the R.A. 5th B.S. made the alter course signal to his squadrons and the Barham actually turned at 2.38. The Flag Signal made by [Beatty] could not be distinguished on board Barham under the conditions prevailing at 2.32, and at 2.37 the Battle Cruisers appeared only as a cloud of smoke.”⁷⁷

Further proof of the authenticity of the signal as given to the House of Commons, if that is needed, is that it conflated two separate signals from Lion, one indicating course and the other speed.⁷⁸ Barham responded by signalling her consorts not only to steer SSE but Speed 22 knots. While it is difficult to square Evan Thomas’s explanations with his signal to his destroyers, it is virtually impossible to explain, unless there was such a signal, why he turned when he did and turned not only to the same course but to the same speed as the battlecruisers.

Clearly the signal received by Barham was made at 1437 by searchlight and since it was not made by Tiger, it can only have been made from Lion. There are only two possibilities: either Beatty or one of his staff realised that the 5^th Battle Squadron had yet to turn and asked for the signal to be repeated or the much maligned Seymour recognised that for whatever reason Barham had missed the signal, and put the last two flag signals into one signal which he had made to her by searchlight.

Whether Beatty should have concentrated his forces then or a little later will no doubt remain a matter for dispute, but what can be said without question is that neither he nor his Flag Lieutenant was at fault in the signalling foul-up. The fault lay with Tiger, and the omission was put right almost immediately. That Evan Thomas ought to have conformed even without a signal is clear, but this much can be said in his defence. Barham had become accustomed to receiving confirmation by searchlight from Tiger of general signals which Lion had made by flags. The absence of such confirmation may well have planted some doubt in his mind as to whether some specific order was to follow. Even so, there were actions that might have been taken to facilitate an alternative course of action. No such steps are evident.

Conclusion

Throughout Dr Yates’s interesting and often perceptive account of the controversy over the Battle of Jutland, he makes a number of largely unsubstantiated charges that Beatty, or perhaps others acting in his interests, falsified the evidence and thus corrupted the historical record. Three instances are proffered, but with little beyond assertion to buttress any but the third and most major charge. On close examination, however, the only evidence which stands up is that provided earlier by Harper: it seems clear that Beatty when First Sea Lord authenticated a track chart that had been forwarded to Jellicoe in July 1916, but which the latter had refused to accept. There is no reason to suppose that the sunprint offered was anything other than a genuine copy of that which had been sent, nor does Harper question its authenticity. Not only is there no credible evidence to support any other charge, but on the most substantial, that a fraud was perpetrated on the First Lord of the Admiralty and a lie told to the House of Commons, it can be shown conclusively that Dr Yates is mistaken. Precisely the reverse can be shown to be the case.