Francis Harvey is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | ||||||||||||||||
This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on September 14, 2008. | ||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
Current status: Featured article |
This article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article was created or added to during the Victoria Cross Reference Migration. It may contain material that was used with permission from victoriacross.net. |
Man oh man, what a man!!! Seminumerical 06:08, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
< DREAMAFTER> < TALK> 01:33, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
This sentence is difficult:
As soon as the turret had been hit the captain had ordered Q magazine doors closed and the magazine flooded, the order passing to the Transmitting Station below the armoured deck where Stoker 1st Class William Yeo was entrusted with passing the order on.
It takes more than one reading to follow. Is the second clause really needed? Kablammo ( talk) 02:23, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
I don't know where willons account can be found or what it says, but I have an account by 'the gunnery officer of HMS Lion', whoever that might be? from 'Fighting at Jutland' by Fawcett available here [1] Sandpiper ( talk) 21:59, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
I believe the page number in these cites should be the number shown on the .pdf of the actual journal page, not the page number shown in the box at the top of the webpage. See the final two corrected Gazette cites. Kablammo ( talk) 03:41, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
Is there a source for the statement that "Harvey turned the ship into one of the best ships for gunnery in the Royal Navy"?
All my reading about Jutland and naval operations in WWI indicates that the gunnery of the Battle Cruiser Force as a whole was notoriously bad, partly because of an obsession with a fast rate of firing as opposed to accuracy. Indeed, the preoccupation with rate of fire may well have contributed to the loss of 3 battlecruisers by leaving important doors open in the ammunition supply chain in the interests of keeping up the rate of fire. Lion's chief gunner's mate apparently also noted how out of date and unstable a lot of the cordite was and managed to get it replaced, which may have helped to save his ship from the fate of the others.
This does not, of course, detract from the personal heroism of Major Harvey, but it would be useful to have a reference for the statement.
Ken Garland —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.137.40.171 ( talk) 07:48, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
Article makes it clear that Harvey's service branch was Royal Marine Light Infantry, on the other hand it is also made very clear that he was an artillery specialist. This sounds interesting or even strange, as I have always thought that shipboard guns are manned by sailors, not marines - at least not infantry marines as there is also a artillery branch in marines. I think some background information about this would be good to add to the article. Was it usual or a even a standard procedure to have marines as Instructors of Gunnery in the Royal Navy? Or did Harvey simply made an unusual career? SGJ ( talk) 16:27, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
It was customary for one of the turrets in major warships in the Royal Navy to be manned by Royal Marines. In the days of the sailing navy, larger warships carried a detachment of Marines for hand-to-hand fighting, landing parties and keeping order on board ship. With the development of modern naval warfare, these functions became less in demand and I guess the Marines asked for something else to do and were given the turret duty! Kennethgarland ( talk) 19:32, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
Was the flooding a common procedure? Did the men carry buckets or hoses to execute the order or was flooding the chamber a feature of the device requiring the opening of a valve or something similar? 67.62.15.241 ( talk) 17:09, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
I was just reading 'Fighting at jutland: the personal experiences of forty five officers and men of the british fleet' by Fawcett and hooper, which is available online at [2]. The book had a couple of US copyright expired photos of damage to Q turret which I have added to the article. It also has the following description (p.45):
Cordite Fire in "Q" Turret, H.M.S. "Lion." This description of events was ivritten by the Gunnery Officer of H.M.S. " Lion." He obtained the details after the action from the evidence of the two men who were the only survivors of the turret's crew. As the indirect result of a German shell penetrating the roof of the turret, 10 minutes after the action started, a cordite fire occurred in " Q " turret which nearly resulted in the magazine and so the ship blowing up. It appears that all the occupants of the gun-house proper, most of the silent-cabinet's crew, and most of theworking chamber's crew situated directly below the gun-house, were killed or severely wounded by the detonation of this shell in the gun-house. The Officer of the Turret, though himself severely wounded, realised that his turret was out of action and on fire, and also that the fire might reach the magazine. He accordingly passed his orders by the direct-voice pipe down to the handing-room below, to close the magazine doors and open the magazine flood valves. This order was promptly carried out, and did in fact prevent the flash from the cordite charges reaching the magazines, and so the ship from being blown up. After giving his orders to the handing-room the Officer of the Turret sent his Sergeant, who although very badly burnt and wounded was conscious and capable of movement, to make a personal report to the Captain to the effect that the turret was definitely out of action, and that the flooding of the magazine had been ordered. The Sergeant succeeded in clambering to the bridge and made his report. There were only two others of the turret's crew who escaped with their lives The damage and loss of life caused by the actual explosion of the German shell did not extend to the magazine handing-room and shell-room crews, none of whom were wounded, but unfortunately all of them lost their lives through the cordite fire which followed a few minutes afterwards. An inspection of the "state" in the turret, as soon after the action as was possible, indicated that this serious cordite fire originated in a curious way. The lever which controls the working of the left breech was blown to the rear, i.e., in the direction "open the breech," and accordingly the breech opened. The gun was loaded, and the shell in the gun being unseated by the shock of the hit slid down towards the breech, falling, with its cordite charge, down into the well which is in rear of the breech, and up which ammunition is supplied. The projectile and a half-burnt powder igniter from the cordiibe charge were found here afterwards. The burst of the enemy shell had started a fire in the gun-house, probably of men's clothing, or in fact of any inflammable material, and this must have reached down to the naked charge of cordite lying in the gun-well. This
cordite caught fire and, burning, passed the ignition to cordite which was
waiting in both gun-loading cages, and so down the main ammunition
supply trunk. The resulting flash is that shown in the photograph (facing
this page), as it took its easiest course to escape namely, upwards through
the roof of the turret by the hole made by the enemy shell-burst.
The flash also passed down the main trunk into the shell-room and
handing-room, and up the escape trunk into the switchboard compartment.
In this latter compartment were stationed, besides the switchboard men and
certain of the electrical repair party, the after medical party under the
charge of a surgeon. All these men, together with the magazine and shellroom
crews, were killed by the cordite fire. It is to be remarked that the
clothes and bodies of these men were not burnt, and in cases where
the hands had been raised involuntarily, palms forward, to protect the
eyes, the backs of the hands and that part of the face actually screened by
the hands were not even discoloured. Death to these men must have been
instantaneous.'
Reading this account and then the wiki article I was struck by the issue of what part the captain and stoker yeo had in this. If the captain gave the order to flood and yeo carried it out, what exactly did Harvey do and why would he get a VC?
I have recently been reading Brooks: Dreadnought gunnery and the battle of Jutland, which discusses the accuracy of gunnery on Beatty's battlecruisers, and says it was awfull. It is hard to reconcile this with the article statement that Under her new commander, Admiral David Beatty, Harvey turned Lion's gunnery into among the best in the fleet . It wasn't, ergo he couldn't have. Someone else commented on this on the talk page.
I am also struck by the claim Harvey was responsible for specific hits on Seydlitz, which initially stikes as unlikely. Harvey seems to have been commander of this one turret out of 4. These normally fired together, so how could anyone tell that Harvey's guns had been responsible for the hit on Seydlitz?
I am not quite clear exactly where Harvey was when the shell hit, thus his survival when everyone in the gun house was killed. Nor really, from the above, how severely he was wounded. The above suggests he might not have been prticularly injured before the cordite blast finished everyone off.
I'm slightly confused as to exactly where the shell struck. The pictures of the turret (from the above book) seem to suggest a hit on the join of the front plate and roof plate between the two guns.
There are some more comment on the talk page. Sandpiper ( talk) 21:34, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
You may have a point Sandpiper, however Grant would have been busier than your usual letter-writing officer, being expected as Chief Gunner to be here there and everywhere in the ship.
At any rate, on Friday I found an account in the Liddle Collection of Great War reminiscences which backs up Campbell's version of events. Midshipman Frederick Clayton Woodhouse, Royal Navy was the assistant to the Officer of the Turret in "A" Turret in Lion during the battle. Lion, by the Report of Proceedings written by Captain Chatfield, opened fire at 3.47. Woodhouse, who "was writing notes as well as I could", has the ship opening fire at 4.47 (the discrepancy in time standard aside, the times match). Not long afterwards, on page 4 of his account written soon after the battle, he writes: "At 5.0 we heard from the T.S. the order to flood Q magazine." By any standard account of what happened to Lion at Jutland, that suggests that the order to flood was given immediately, and rather likely it came from the bridge.
Out of pure interest, here is Woodhouse's version of what happened in "Q" Turret;
“ | I did not go to see it till after the action when most of the bodies had been removed. The shell burst on top of the left gun & blew off the front & roof. The inside of the turret caught fire & the major, who was not badly wounded sent the sergeant major to report the turret out of action. 10 minutes later the cordite in the gunloading cages & waiting trays exploded & the flash travelled right down the trunk & exploded the cordite in the hoppers & also went into the shell room & killed everybody there. The [7] magazine doors had just been closed, a fact which saved the ship. Everyone in the handing room was killed & the flash travelled up through the hatches to the switchboard, killing Dr Moon, Mr Good [Goad?] & all the men there, then went right up & along the mess deck, & the blast of it was noticed by the people in the wireless office. Another hit by the canteen had wiped out nearly the whole of the after repair party. | ” |
just a note that there is a further account by private Willons (mentioned above) that the shell room was not flooded untill later.
He says the handling room switchboard, flat and shell room were completely burned out, the crew were lying in all directions, some still hanging on the ladder in a last attempt to get out. On finding that it was impossible to salve any of the projectiles for use in the other turrets the shell room was flooded. The captain of marines sent for me then to go to the gunhouse to find the major and remove some of the casualties. I got into the the gunhouse through the manhole on top and assisted by another marine got out seven people from the right cabinet. tThe chaplain was one of these. The major was in the rangefinder position close by the voice-pipe. There was a great deal of smoke coming from behind the ready use shell bin and we gave the alarm that four common shell were being roasted and were likely to cause another explosion. With the assistance of several more marines the fire was put out and the remainder of the casualties were removed. They were then taken aft, identified if possible and sewn into hammocks. This carried on most of the night of the 31st May.
So the shell room wasn't flooded, and indeed had a fire in it. Sandpiper ( talk) 07:59, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
I have to say I do not think this article reflects well on wikipedia and therefore should not be a FA. It starts with a blunt inaccuracy, which has remained there for some time despite pointing it out. Lion was one of the worse ships in the fleet as regards gunnery, thus Harvey can hardly have made it one of the best, and since he was just commander of one of its turrets, could hardly have been responsible for its overall performance anyway. Either fix it, or I am going to request its demotion. The text goes on to be somewhat contradictory, not surprising since accounts of what really happened are somewhat contradictory. Fine, if that's what the situation really is, then we report it, but as things stand we do not explain this complex mess. Sandpiper ( talk) 09:32, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
Can't tell you exactly what page, but the last book i was reading on this, Gordon 'rules of the game', goes into the issue of bad gunnery by the battlecruiser fleet generally, which Jellicoe had written to beatty about. It would seem to follow from this, that the ship could not have been noted for good gunnery, but entirely the reverse. others comment that 'Queen mary' was the best battlecruiser at gunnery. Specifically, three battlecruisers had been sent away for gunnery practice at the time of the battle because of this problem. (not, i think, because they were worst, but because they made up one complete squadron)
I notice someone has removed the particularly objectionable sentence from the intro, but the next sentence also is objectionable, the guns under his command sank two german cruisers. How could anyone know, when he was commanding just 2 of 8 guns firing simultaneously at the same target using the same targeting coordinates? Similarly, later, it says Harvey's guns again caused severe damage to a German force at the Battle of Dogger bank . They did, did they? And what about serving on many large warships as gunnery training officer and gun commander. Define 'many'. I think I have seen descriptions from at least a couple of gunnery officers senior to harvey on Lion, and the fact of him ending up as a turret commander after this long career as an instructor makes you wonder how come, if he really was any good at it. The conflicting evidence suggests to me that whatever source provided the info extolling Harvey's fame, has seriously been laying it on with a trowell trying to puff up his reputation. Ok, wiki simply quotes other people, but in this situation it seems likely this was WWI propaganda and we are still propagating it. I am afraid I would not have wished to see this article on wiki's front page as it stands now. Superficially it seems perfectly fine, untill you start considering the statements carefully. I am left with the suspicion that beatty's own propaganda war to enhance his own reputation may have taken up the cause of Harvey. (though admittedly the admiralty as a whole was desperate for heroes at the time) User:Sandpiper 23:46, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
“ | Dreyer was also unimpressed by other aspects of the gunnery of Beatty's ships at the Dogger Bank.
"The unsupported Spotting of the Battle Cruisers does not seem to have been very good." In fact, it is clear that, in general, `their reputation for gunnery was very very shaky indeed' and `that the Battle Cruisers' shooting was rotten'. An officer posted to Invincible reported back to Barham's first lieutenant that `he was shocked by the standard of efficiency he encountered. 159 Undoubtedly, the battlecruisers, based in the Forth, found practice hard to get." However, there also seems to have been a feeling in the Grand Fleet that they did not try hard enough. Ships from the Forth, visiting Scapa for gunnery drills, found that `the Battle Cruisers' name up here is mud, owing to the inefficiency of their gunnery and the general casualness and lack of concentration with which they appear to treat the war.160 In November 1915, Jellicoe wrote to Beatty: I am afraid you must have been very disappointed at Lion and Tiger's battle practice results. I can't understand how a control officer of experience could have made such a blunder as that made by Lion's ... I fear the rapidity ideas were carried to excess in one case (Queen Mary I think). Also the RF operators were bad. It is most difficult for you to give them proper practice I know. Even before the war, Beatty's battlecruiser orders had emphasised the importance of maximising the rate of hitting and had recommended breaking into rapid independent after the first or second straddle.162 Now Beatty responded, with the same complacency that he had shown after the Dogger Bank: Yes indeed it was a terrible disappointment the battle practice of Lion and Tiger ... The other three were not bad but undoubtedly as you say we could do with much more practice at sea ... I do not think you will be let down by the gunnery of the battle-cruisers when our day comes. ... on the subject of rapidity of fire [I] feel very strongly ... and think we should endeavour to quicken up our firing ... the Germans certainly do fire 5 to our 2. |
” |
(thats a quote from captain Frederic Dreyer, something of a a gunnery expert}. From what you say above, then, Snelling does not produce evidence of harvey's good gunnery post 1913, and other sources claim the ships gunnery generally was rotten. Hmm. Sandpiper ( talk) 23:06, 1 March 2009 (UTC) By the way, the intro says he 'ordered the blazing magazine to be flooded'? Once again, naturally off the top of my head, if the propellant had already been 'blazing' we would not now be having this debate because the ship would have exploded. The magazine, as i understand it, did not contain shells at all. It contained propellant. The shells were stored in a different room on a different deck and as the other quote above indicates, apparently did suffer a fire without exploding. However it would seem, from the quote by grant, that harvey was well dead before that fire. The battle of heligoland bight might better be described as confused than bitter. The German cruisers were outgunned and outclassed by the British battlecruisers, Hipper's battlecruisers were still in port and unable to go to sea untill the high tide. Beatty had to be very careful to leave before they could get out. I don't think Lion dropped back to engage Blucher, it just dropped back. The problem at Dogger bank was exactly that Beatty got left behind and his ships mistakenly went after Blucher. Had he been there as well, he might have been able to order them after the fleeing germans. This again reads like a puff piece designed to exaggerate the importance of Lion/beatty/Harvey, British propaganda. 'Staggering across the wreckage of the turret'? Did they check the security video afterwards? Harley, i don't know if you mighy know, but i am suspicious of the claim the magazine doors were saved by the weight of water behind them. Yes, i know it would be virtually impossible to open a door against the weight of water, but it would also be virtually impossible to buckle it by hand. I am uncertain how the force required to buckle the unaided door might compare to the force required to move the water. Sandpiper ( talk) 01:05, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
there is a quote in Jutland 1916 by steel and hart from stoker maclachlan about events after the the battle. It seems to be from a recorded interview, so might have been some time after the events,
“ | Three of us went into the turret, we knew who had saved us with his dying breath. We found a charred piece of humanity near where the voice pipe was. We stood still, dazed, knowing that to him we owed our lives. It seemed at the same time we had better get something special to put these poor remains in. We went down to the nearest officers cabin that was intact and we found some linen. We took it up with us and we wrapped him in that. We took him down to the after deck and told the officer in charge there. | ” |
Which doesnt go to explain much about the timings, but I suppose does say that the crew at the time believed he had saved the ship. Sandpiper ( talk) 07:44, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) I've not looked at this issue for a few weeks now due business. I've looked at the contemporary accounts of three officers from Lion and none mention Harvey as having saved the ship. Private Willons' account is not dated but one cannot imagine that a copy of his account would find its way into Beatty's papers many years later. Most if not all I.W.M. accounts (including Grant's) were written decades later and there is always the danger that they incorporate more than actual memories.
I'm just reading through a doctoral thesis written in 1998 about the Jutland Controversy, and there is some fascinating hitherto unpublished information in it. For example, when Arthur Marder first made use of Grant's memoir in the 1966 edition of From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow Volume III, Vice-Admiral Sir Geoffrey Blake was moved to write to the editor of The Naval Review that Grant must have invented some of the oft-quoted material about Lion's cordite precautions or lied to him when they spoke immediately after the battle as none of it was mentioned. (Letter to Vice-Admiral Mansergh, 13 February, 1967. Blake Papers at the National Maritime Museum, BLE 13) The circumstances of their meeting were that Jellicoe sent three gunnery experts down to Rosyth after the battle to check the B.C.F.'s gunnery records. Dreyer, Iron Duke's Captain and probably the most accomplished gunnery officer in the navy at that time; Commander Charlie Forbes, Jellicoe's Flag Commander and gunnery expert; and Blake.
Blake was Gunnery Officer of Iron Duke at Jutland and later went on to be one of the most promising officers in the navy before a pulmonary thrombosis compelled him to resign in 1938. The Admiralty literally begged him to stay on, such was its opinion of him. -- Simon Harley ( talk | library | book reviews) 19:31, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
As a more modern cut on this, heres a quote from a phd about Jutland by James Yates, p.358, 'The Jutland controversy: a case study in intra service rivalry', hull university,1998
“ | In 1934, Beatty noted that the loss of the battlecruisers was "not the fault of anybody in them, poor souls, but of faulty design... [the German battlecruisers] were too stoutly built whereas ours went up in a blue flame on the smallest provocation. " (unacknowledged quote in Tarrant, p. 98).
It would seem that, even in 1934, Beatty was totally unaware of what had saved Lion. Although known to those directly involved, it seemed that Lion's ammunition handling system was very much Chatfield's and Grant's secret. This was largely responsible for leading people into thinking that the ships' design was at fault and this gained universal acceptance, but it also clouded understanding of the manner in which the BCF had worked and performed. This quote from Beatty could not be more wrong, yet he had to believe it. After the war, Seydlitz's experience at Dogger Bank, when 62 charges had ignited and jeopardised the ship, was common knowledge. Lion adopted similar precautions against igniting explosives before Jutland, but not many ever seemed to make the link to the causes of the losses, which was a very painful thing to admit to. It was sufficient to most to accept the first remotely plausible answer, that the BCF were let down by poor shells and bad ship design. |
” |
He also seems to think Grant saved the ship, although if Beatty wasn't aware of this at the time, it might mean other senior people werent and thus made it more likely Harvey would get credit. If I went into conspiracy theory mode, it might even be the case that Harvey was the acceptable explanation of how Lion survived when other ships exploded. If simply handling ammunition better had saved Lion, then perversely heads might have rolled if it was felt something could have been done to save the other ships and had not been. Sandpiper ( talk) 07:59, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
This sentence regarding HMS Queen Mary: "just minutes after that HMS Queen Mary exploded "like a puffball" in one huge column of grey smoke, killing 1,275 sailors". The article about HMS Queen Mary says the following: "1,266 crewmen were lost; eighteen survivors were picked up by the destroyers HMS Laurel, HMS Petard, and HMS Tipperary, and two by the Germans.", so there seems to be a possible mistake regarding how many sailors lost their lives. Ulflarsen ( talk) 20:42, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
Francis Harvey is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | ||||||||||||||||
This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on September 14, 2008. | ||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
Current status: Featured article |
This article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article was created or added to during the Victoria Cross Reference Migration. It may contain material that was used with permission from victoriacross.net. |
Man oh man, what a man!!! Seminumerical 06:08, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
< DREAMAFTER> < TALK> 01:33, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
This sentence is difficult:
As soon as the turret had been hit the captain had ordered Q magazine doors closed and the magazine flooded, the order passing to the Transmitting Station below the armoured deck where Stoker 1st Class William Yeo was entrusted with passing the order on.
It takes more than one reading to follow. Is the second clause really needed? Kablammo ( talk) 02:23, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
I don't know where willons account can be found or what it says, but I have an account by 'the gunnery officer of HMS Lion', whoever that might be? from 'Fighting at Jutland' by Fawcett available here [1] Sandpiper ( talk) 21:59, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
I believe the page number in these cites should be the number shown on the .pdf of the actual journal page, not the page number shown in the box at the top of the webpage. See the final two corrected Gazette cites. Kablammo ( talk) 03:41, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
Is there a source for the statement that "Harvey turned the ship into one of the best ships for gunnery in the Royal Navy"?
All my reading about Jutland and naval operations in WWI indicates that the gunnery of the Battle Cruiser Force as a whole was notoriously bad, partly because of an obsession with a fast rate of firing as opposed to accuracy. Indeed, the preoccupation with rate of fire may well have contributed to the loss of 3 battlecruisers by leaving important doors open in the ammunition supply chain in the interests of keeping up the rate of fire. Lion's chief gunner's mate apparently also noted how out of date and unstable a lot of the cordite was and managed to get it replaced, which may have helped to save his ship from the fate of the others.
This does not, of course, detract from the personal heroism of Major Harvey, but it would be useful to have a reference for the statement.
Ken Garland —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.137.40.171 ( talk) 07:48, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
Article makes it clear that Harvey's service branch was Royal Marine Light Infantry, on the other hand it is also made very clear that he was an artillery specialist. This sounds interesting or even strange, as I have always thought that shipboard guns are manned by sailors, not marines - at least not infantry marines as there is also a artillery branch in marines. I think some background information about this would be good to add to the article. Was it usual or a even a standard procedure to have marines as Instructors of Gunnery in the Royal Navy? Or did Harvey simply made an unusual career? SGJ ( talk) 16:27, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
It was customary for one of the turrets in major warships in the Royal Navy to be manned by Royal Marines. In the days of the sailing navy, larger warships carried a detachment of Marines for hand-to-hand fighting, landing parties and keeping order on board ship. With the development of modern naval warfare, these functions became less in demand and I guess the Marines asked for something else to do and were given the turret duty! Kennethgarland ( talk) 19:32, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
Was the flooding a common procedure? Did the men carry buckets or hoses to execute the order or was flooding the chamber a feature of the device requiring the opening of a valve or something similar? 67.62.15.241 ( talk) 17:09, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
I was just reading 'Fighting at jutland: the personal experiences of forty five officers and men of the british fleet' by Fawcett and hooper, which is available online at [2]. The book had a couple of US copyright expired photos of damage to Q turret which I have added to the article. It also has the following description (p.45):
Cordite Fire in "Q" Turret, H.M.S. "Lion." This description of events was ivritten by the Gunnery Officer of H.M.S. " Lion." He obtained the details after the action from the evidence of the two men who were the only survivors of the turret's crew. As the indirect result of a German shell penetrating the roof of the turret, 10 minutes after the action started, a cordite fire occurred in " Q " turret which nearly resulted in the magazine and so the ship blowing up. It appears that all the occupants of the gun-house proper, most of the silent-cabinet's crew, and most of theworking chamber's crew situated directly below the gun-house, were killed or severely wounded by the detonation of this shell in the gun-house. The Officer of the Turret, though himself severely wounded, realised that his turret was out of action and on fire, and also that the fire might reach the magazine. He accordingly passed his orders by the direct-voice pipe down to the handing-room below, to close the magazine doors and open the magazine flood valves. This order was promptly carried out, and did in fact prevent the flash from the cordite charges reaching the magazines, and so the ship from being blown up. After giving his orders to the handing-room the Officer of the Turret sent his Sergeant, who although very badly burnt and wounded was conscious and capable of movement, to make a personal report to the Captain to the effect that the turret was definitely out of action, and that the flooding of the magazine had been ordered. The Sergeant succeeded in clambering to the bridge and made his report. There were only two others of the turret's crew who escaped with their lives The damage and loss of life caused by the actual explosion of the German shell did not extend to the magazine handing-room and shell-room crews, none of whom were wounded, but unfortunately all of them lost their lives through the cordite fire which followed a few minutes afterwards. An inspection of the "state" in the turret, as soon after the action as was possible, indicated that this serious cordite fire originated in a curious way. The lever which controls the working of the left breech was blown to the rear, i.e., in the direction "open the breech," and accordingly the breech opened. The gun was loaded, and the shell in the gun being unseated by the shock of the hit slid down towards the breech, falling, with its cordite charge, down into the well which is in rear of the breech, and up which ammunition is supplied. The projectile and a half-burnt powder igniter from the cordiibe charge were found here afterwards. The burst of the enemy shell had started a fire in the gun-house, probably of men's clothing, or in fact of any inflammable material, and this must have reached down to the naked charge of cordite lying in the gun-well. This
cordite caught fire and, burning, passed the ignition to cordite which was
waiting in both gun-loading cages, and so down the main ammunition
supply trunk. The resulting flash is that shown in the photograph (facing
this page), as it took its easiest course to escape namely, upwards through
the roof of the turret by the hole made by the enemy shell-burst.
The flash also passed down the main trunk into the shell-room and
handing-room, and up the escape trunk into the switchboard compartment.
In this latter compartment were stationed, besides the switchboard men and
certain of the electrical repair party, the after medical party under the
charge of a surgeon. All these men, together with the magazine and shellroom
crews, were killed by the cordite fire. It is to be remarked that the
clothes and bodies of these men were not burnt, and in cases where
the hands had been raised involuntarily, palms forward, to protect the
eyes, the backs of the hands and that part of the face actually screened by
the hands were not even discoloured. Death to these men must have been
instantaneous.'
Reading this account and then the wiki article I was struck by the issue of what part the captain and stoker yeo had in this. If the captain gave the order to flood and yeo carried it out, what exactly did Harvey do and why would he get a VC?
I have recently been reading Brooks: Dreadnought gunnery and the battle of Jutland, which discusses the accuracy of gunnery on Beatty's battlecruisers, and says it was awfull. It is hard to reconcile this with the article statement that Under her new commander, Admiral David Beatty, Harvey turned Lion's gunnery into among the best in the fleet . It wasn't, ergo he couldn't have. Someone else commented on this on the talk page.
I am also struck by the claim Harvey was responsible for specific hits on Seydlitz, which initially stikes as unlikely. Harvey seems to have been commander of this one turret out of 4. These normally fired together, so how could anyone tell that Harvey's guns had been responsible for the hit on Seydlitz?
I am not quite clear exactly where Harvey was when the shell hit, thus his survival when everyone in the gun house was killed. Nor really, from the above, how severely he was wounded. The above suggests he might not have been prticularly injured before the cordite blast finished everyone off.
I'm slightly confused as to exactly where the shell struck. The pictures of the turret (from the above book) seem to suggest a hit on the join of the front plate and roof plate between the two guns.
There are some more comment on the talk page. Sandpiper ( talk) 21:34, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
You may have a point Sandpiper, however Grant would have been busier than your usual letter-writing officer, being expected as Chief Gunner to be here there and everywhere in the ship.
At any rate, on Friday I found an account in the Liddle Collection of Great War reminiscences which backs up Campbell's version of events. Midshipman Frederick Clayton Woodhouse, Royal Navy was the assistant to the Officer of the Turret in "A" Turret in Lion during the battle. Lion, by the Report of Proceedings written by Captain Chatfield, opened fire at 3.47. Woodhouse, who "was writing notes as well as I could", has the ship opening fire at 4.47 (the discrepancy in time standard aside, the times match). Not long afterwards, on page 4 of his account written soon after the battle, he writes: "At 5.0 we heard from the T.S. the order to flood Q magazine." By any standard account of what happened to Lion at Jutland, that suggests that the order to flood was given immediately, and rather likely it came from the bridge.
Out of pure interest, here is Woodhouse's version of what happened in "Q" Turret;
“ | I did not go to see it till after the action when most of the bodies had been removed. The shell burst on top of the left gun & blew off the front & roof. The inside of the turret caught fire & the major, who was not badly wounded sent the sergeant major to report the turret out of action. 10 minutes later the cordite in the gunloading cages & waiting trays exploded & the flash travelled right down the trunk & exploded the cordite in the hoppers & also went into the shell room & killed everybody there. The [7] magazine doors had just been closed, a fact which saved the ship. Everyone in the handing room was killed & the flash travelled up through the hatches to the switchboard, killing Dr Moon, Mr Good [Goad?] & all the men there, then went right up & along the mess deck, & the blast of it was noticed by the people in the wireless office. Another hit by the canteen had wiped out nearly the whole of the after repair party. | ” |
just a note that there is a further account by private Willons (mentioned above) that the shell room was not flooded untill later.
He says the handling room switchboard, flat and shell room were completely burned out, the crew were lying in all directions, some still hanging on the ladder in a last attempt to get out. On finding that it was impossible to salve any of the projectiles for use in the other turrets the shell room was flooded. The captain of marines sent for me then to go to the gunhouse to find the major and remove some of the casualties. I got into the the gunhouse through the manhole on top and assisted by another marine got out seven people from the right cabinet. tThe chaplain was one of these. The major was in the rangefinder position close by the voice-pipe. There was a great deal of smoke coming from behind the ready use shell bin and we gave the alarm that four common shell were being roasted and were likely to cause another explosion. With the assistance of several more marines the fire was put out and the remainder of the casualties were removed. They were then taken aft, identified if possible and sewn into hammocks. This carried on most of the night of the 31st May.
So the shell room wasn't flooded, and indeed had a fire in it. Sandpiper ( talk) 07:59, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
I have to say I do not think this article reflects well on wikipedia and therefore should not be a FA. It starts with a blunt inaccuracy, which has remained there for some time despite pointing it out. Lion was one of the worse ships in the fleet as regards gunnery, thus Harvey can hardly have made it one of the best, and since he was just commander of one of its turrets, could hardly have been responsible for its overall performance anyway. Either fix it, or I am going to request its demotion. The text goes on to be somewhat contradictory, not surprising since accounts of what really happened are somewhat contradictory. Fine, if that's what the situation really is, then we report it, but as things stand we do not explain this complex mess. Sandpiper ( talk) 09:32, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
Can't tell you exactly what page, but the last book i was reading on this, Gordon 'rules of the game', goes into the issue of bad gunnery by the battlecruiser fleet generally, which Jellicoe had written to beatty about. It would seem to follow from this, that the ship could not have been noted for good gunnery, but entirely the reverse. others comment that 'Queen mary' was the best battlecruiser at gunnery. Specifically, three battlecruisers had been sent away for gunnery practice at the time of the battle because of this problem. (not, i think, because they were worst, but because they made up one complete squadron)
I notice someone has removed the particularly objectionable sentence from the intro, but the next sentence also is objectionable, the guns under his command sank two german cruisers. How could anyone know, when he was commanding just 2 of 8 guns firing simultaneously at the same target using the same targeting coordinates? Similarly, later, it says Harvey's guns again caused severe damage to a German force at the Battle of Dogger bank . They did, did they? And what about serving on many large warships as gunnery training officer and gun commander. Define 'many'. I think I have seen descriptions from at least a couple of gunnery officers senior to harvey on Lion, and the fact of him ending up as a turret commander after this long career as an instructor makes you wonder how come, if he really was any good at it. The conflicting evidence suggests to me that whatever source provided the info extolling Harvey's fame, has seriously been laying it on with a trowell trying to puff up his reputation. Ok, wiki simply quotes other people, but in this situation it seems likely this was WWI propaganda and we are still propagating it. I am afraid I would not have wished to see this article on wiki's front page as it stands now. Superficially it seems perfectly fine, untill you start considering the statements carefully. I am left with the suspicion that beatty's own propaganda war to enhance his own reputation may have taken up the cause of Harvey. (though admittedly the admiralty as a whole was desperate for heroes at the time) User:Sandpiper 23:46, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
“ | Dreyer was also unimpressed by other aspects of the gunnery of Beatty's ships at the Dogger Bank.
"The unsupported Spotting of the Battle Cruisers does not seem to have been very good." In fact, it is clear that, in general, `their reputation for gunnery was very very shaky indeed' and `that the Battle Cruisers' shooting was rotten'. An officer posted to Invincible reported back to Barham's first lieutenant that `he was shocked by the standard of efficiency he encountered. 159 Undoubtedly, the battlecruisers, based in the Forth, found practice hard to get." However, there also seems to have been a feeling in the Grand Fleet that they did not try hard enough. Ships from the Forth, visiting Scapa for gunnery drills, found that `the Battle Cruisers' name up here is mud, owing to the inefficiency of their gunnery and the general casualness and lack of concentration with which they appear to treat the war.160 In November 1915, Jellicoe wrote to Beatty: I am afraid you must have been very disappointed at Lion and Tiger's battle practice results. I can't understand how a control officer of experience could have made such a blunder as that made by Lion's ... I fear the rapidity ideas were carried to excess in one case (Queen Mary I think). Also the RF operators were bad. It is most difficult for you to give them proper practice I know. Even before the war, Beatty's battlecruiser orders had emphasised the importance of maximising the rate of hitting and had recommended breaking into rapid independent after the first or second straddle.162 Now Beatty responded, with the same complacency that he had shown after the Dogger Bank: Yes indeed it was a terrible disappointment the battle practice of Lion and Tiger ... The other three were not bad but undoubtedly as you say we could do with much more practice at sea ... I do not think you will be let down by the gunnery of the battle-cruisers when our day comes. ... on the subject of rapidity of fire [I] feel very strongly ... and think we should endeavour to quicken up our firing ... the Germans certainly do fire 5 to our 2. |
” |
(thats a quote from captain Frederic Dreyer, something of a a gunnery expert}. From what you say above, then, Snelling does not produce evidence of harvey's good gunnery post 1913, and other sources claim the ships gunnery generally was rotten. Hmm. Sandpiper ( talk) 23:06, 1 March 2009 (UTC) By the way, the intro says he 'ordered the blazing magazine to be flooded'? Once again, naturally off the top of my head, if the propellant had already been 'blazing' we would not now be having this debate because the ship would have exploded. The magazine, as i understand it, did not contain shells at all. It contained propellant. The shells were stored in a different room on a different deck and as the other quote above indicates, apparently did suffer a fire without exploding. However it would seem, from the quote by grant, that harvey was well dead before that fire. The battle of heligoland bight might better be described as confused than bitter. The German cruisers were outgunned and outclassed by the British battlecruisers, Hipper's battlecruisers were still in port and unable to go to sea untill the high tide. Beatty had to be very careful to leave before they could get out. I don't think Lion dropped back to engage Blucher, it just dropped back. The problem at Dogger bank was exactly that Beatty got left behind and his ships mistakenly went after Blucher. Had he been there as well, he might have been able to order them after the fleeing germans. This again reads like a puff piece designed to exaggerate the importance of Lion/beatty/Harvey, British propaganda. 'Staggering across the wreckage of the turret'? Did they check the security video afterwards? Harley, i don't know if you mighy know, but i am suspicious of the claim the magazine doors were saved by the weight of water behind them. Yes, i know it would be virtually impossible to open a door against the weight of water, but it would also be virtually impossible to buckle it by hand. I am uncertain how the force required to buckle the unaided door might compare to the force required to move the water. Sandpiper ( talk) 01:05, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
there is a quote in Jutland 1916 by steel and hart from stoker maclachlan about events after the the battle. It seems to be from a recorded interview, so might have been some time after the events,
“ | Three of us went into the turret, we knew who had saved us with his dying breath. We found a charred piece of humanity near where the voice pipe was. We stood still, dazed, knowing that to him we owed our lives. It seemed at the same time we had better get something special to put these poor remains in. We went down to the nearest officers cabin that was intact and we found some linen. We took it up with us and we wrapped him in that. We took him down to the after deck and told the officer in charge there. | ” |
Which doesnt go to explain much about the timings, but I suppose does say that the crew at the time believed he had saved the ship. Sandpiper ( talk) 07:44, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) I've not looked at this issue for a few weeks now due business. I've looked at the contemporary accounts of three officers from Lion and none mention Harvey as having saved the ship. Private Willons' account is not dated but one cannot imagine that a copy of his account would find its way into Beatty's papers many years later. Most if not all I.W.M. accounts (including Grant's) were written decades later and there is always the danger that they incorporate more than actual memories.
I'm just reading through a doctoral thesis written in 1998 about the Jutland Controversy, and there is some fascinating hitherto unpublished information in it. For example, when Arthur Marder first made use of Grant's memoir in the 1966 edition of From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow Volume III, Vice-Admiral Sir Geoffrey Blake was moved to write to the editor of The Naval Review that Grant must have invented some of the oft-quoted material about Lion's cordite precautions or lied to him when they spoke immediately after the battle as none of it was mentioned. (Letter to Vice-Admiral Mansergh, 13 February, 1967. Blake Papers at the National Maritime Museum, BLE 13) The circumstances of their meeting were that Jellicoe sent three gunnery experts down to Rosyth after the battle to check the B.C.F.'s gunnery records. Dreyer, Iron Duke's Captain and probably the most accomplished gunnery officer in the navy at that time; Commander Charlie Forbes, Jellicoe's Flag Commander and gunnery expert; and Blake.
Blake was Gunnery Officer of Iron Duke at Jutland and later went on to be one of the most promising officers in the navy before a pulmonary thrombosis compelled him to resign in 1938. The Admiralty literally begged him to stay on, such was its opinion of him. -- Simon Harley ( talk | library | book reviews) 19:31, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
As a more modern cut on this, heres a quote from a phd about Jutland by James Yates, p.358, 'The Jutland controversy: a case study in intra service rivalry', hull university,1998
“ | In 1934, Beatty noted that the loss of the battlecruisers was "not the fault of anybody in them, poor souls, but of faulty design... [the German battlecruisers] were too stoutly built whereas ours went up in a blue flame on the smallest provocation. " (unacknowledged quote in Tarrant, p. 98).
It would seem that, even in 1934, Beatty was totally unaware of what had saved Lion. Although known to those directly involved, it seemed that Lion's ammunition handling system was very much Chatfield's and Grant's secret. This was largely responsible for leading people into thinking that the ships' design was at fault and this gained universal acceptance, but it also clouded understanding of the manner in which the BCF had worked and performed. This quote from Beatty could not be more wrong, yet he had to believe it. After the war, Seydlitz's experience at Dogger Bank, when 62 charges had ignited and jeopardised the ship, was common knowledge. Lion adopted similar precautions against igniting explosives before Jutland, but not many ever seemed to make the link to the causes of the losses, which was a very painful thing to admit to. It was sufficient to most to accept the first remotely plausible answer, that the BCF were let down by poor shells and bad ship design. |
” |
He also seems to think Grant saved the ship, although if Beatty wasn't aware of this at the time, it might mean other senior people werent and thus made it more likely Harvey would get credit. If I went into conspiracy theory mode, it might even be the case that Harvey was the acceptable explanation of how Lion survived when other ships exploded. If simply handling ammunition better had saved Lion, then perversely heads might have rolled if it was felt something could have been done to save the other ships and had not been. Sandpiper ( talk) 07:59, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
This sentence regarding HMS Queen Mary: "just minutes after that HMS Queen Mary exploded "like a puffball" in one huge column of grey smoke, killing 1,275 sailors". The article about HMS Queen Mary says the following: "1,266 crewmen were lost; eighteen survivors were picked up by the destroyers HMS Laurel, HMS Petard, and HMS Tipperary, and two by the Germans.", so there seems to be a possible mistake regarding how many sailors lost their lives. Ulflarsen ( talk) 20:42, 23 September 2017 (UTC)