Background
David Beatty, first earl, was bom at Howbeck Lodge, Stapeley, near Nantwich, Cheshire, on January 17, 1871, the second son of an army captain.
David Beatty, first earl, was bom at Howbeck Lodge, Stapeley, near Nantwich, Cheshire, on January 17, 1871, the second son of an army captain.
Beatty entered the navy in 1884 and was quickly recognized for his energy and courage. He served Lord Kitchener in 1896-1898 in the naval brigade in Egypt and the Sudan and was promoted to commander in 1898 over the heads of 395 senior lieutenants. Beatty also fought in China during the so-called Boxer rebellion, distinguishing himself through personal bravery; he was promoted to captain in 1900 at the age of twenty-nine (almost thirteen years ahead of normal procedure).
In January 1910, Beatty was promoted to flag rank, the youngest officer to have been awarded this distinction for over a hundred years. The first lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, in 1912 chose Beatty for his naval secretary, and two years later appointed him "over the heads of all" to command the battle-cruiser squadron. Beatty was already known for his passion for victory and for being a bom leader at sea.
The outbreak of war in August 1914 found Beatty on board the Lion as part of the Grand Fleet commanded by Sir John Jellicoe. On August 28, Beatty led a British sortie into the Helgoland Bight which netted the German light cruiser Ariadne, Köln and Mainz. This action showed Beatty at his best: offensive minded as well as impetuous, the vigor and determination to engage the enemy balanced by the ability to temper boldness with caution. In January 1915, he intercepted the German Recon-naissance Forces under Admiral Franz Hipper in their third attempt to shell the British coast near Whitby, Scarborough, and Hartlepool.
In what is known as the battle of the Dogger Bank, Beatty's battle cruisers severely damaged the German battle cruiser Seydlitz and destroyed the Blücher. Yet it was not a great day: Beatty's flagship was disabled at the critical juncture in the battle and his second in command misunderstood his signal "attack the rear of the enemy," and instead concentrated fire on the already sinking Blücher and thereby permitted the rest of Hipper's squadron to withdraw safely.
During the battle of Jutland, Beatty, then in the grade of vice admiral, distinguished himself in several skirmishes with Hipper. At 3:48 P.M. on May 31, both battle-cruiser squadrons began a fierce fight, with Hipper drawing Beatty unawares onto the German High Sea Fleet steaming north up the coast of Denmark under Admiral Reinhard Scheer. One hour later, Beatty sighted a forest of masts coming up from the south. Beatty the hunter now became Beatty the hunted. He reversed his position in order to draw the High Sea Fleet upon Jellicoe's battleships steaming south. At 5:35 P.M., Beatty turned eastward in order to bend back Hipper's van; this brilliant maneuver prevented the Germans from sighting Jellicoe's Grand Fleet. But the cost was high: the battle cruisers Indefatigable, Queen Mary, and Invincible were sunk by superior German fire which revealed British turret flash controls to have been inadequate.
By 6:30 P.M. the two main battle fleets were in action. Scheer took a terrible pounding. Twice Jellicoe managed to cross the T, and the German commander extricated himself from hopeless situations by two dramatic battle turns away from the Grand Fleet. The ensuing darkness prevented Jellicoe from scoring the much-sought "Second Trafalgar." The next morning found Beatty with six battle cruisers operational against Hipper's one. Scheer chose to remain in his anchorages. Jutland was a tactical victory for the Germans who destroyed nearly twice as much tonnage as they lost, but in terms of strategy it left the Grand Fleet supreme.
At the end of 1916 Jellicoe became first sea lord and Beatty was appointed his successor with the acting rank of admiral. For the next two years he refitted the fleet on the basis of the lessons learned at Jutland, worked diligently to enhance the convoying of merchant ships, to Scandinavia especially and rewrote the British "Battle Orders." Above all, he kept morale in the fleet high to the end of the war.
On November 21, 1918, Beatty accepted the surrender of the German fleet under Admiral Reuter, and gave the famous signal: "The German flag will be hauled down at sunset, and will not be hoisted again without permission."
On January 1, 1919, David Beatty was promoted to the grade of admiral and on April 3 to that of admiral of the fleet; four days later the Grand Fleet was disbanded. Beatty served as first sea lord from 1921 to 1927 primarily in order to deal with the difficult problems concerning reducing a war fleet to a manageable peacetime navy. He represented Britain at the Washington Conference in November 1921, and retired in July 1927. Britain had rewarded her most famous sea commander in 1919 with a money grant of £100,000 and had raised him to the peerage as Early Beatty, Viscount Borodale of Borodale, Baron Beatty of the North Sea and of Brooksby. He died in London on March 11, 1936, and was buried five days later in St. Paul's Cathedral. Arthur Marder offers the view that Beatty was "a grand leader in many ways but not really at the top of the tree".