David Beatty

“There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today”

David Richard Beatty was born on 17 January, 1871, second son of a British Army officer in Cheshire, England. The relationship of his parents was a scandalous one, with his mother the wife of another officer, and the two were not married until December of 1871, following Beatty’s father leaving the Army. As his sons grew up they were raised on horseback, learning the skills needed for a well off English family of the period and developing a close bond.

While the elder child would follow his father into the Army, David had long nursed an interest in the sea, and had been enrolled at the Burney Academy in 1882, a preparatory school geared toward future Navy men. In 1884, at the age of 13, Beatty entered the Royal Navy as a cadet, where he would spend two years aboard the training ship HMS Britannia. During this time he would develop an ability to press limits, which he would retain through his career, being able to gauge just how far he could go before incurring serious repercussions.

HMS Alexander, Beatty’s first sea posting

Beatty graduated in 1886 and was assigned to Singapore, but an intervention by his mother with Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, a family friend, instead say him posted to the ironclad HMS Alexandra, the flagship of Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh and a son of Queen Victoria. This posting would allow the young officer to begin making powerful friends during his service in the Mediterranean, and by 1890 he was promoted to Sub Lieutenant, with a posting to the cruiser HMS Warspite.

Subsequently Beatty would attend various naval schools, and would also serve for a brief period aboard Queen Victoria’s yacht, before being posted to the battleship HMS Trafalgar. Here he would find himself under the command of Stanley Colville, who had been Beatty’s immediate superior aboard the Alexandra years earlier. In 1896 Colville requested that Beatty follow him as he took command of a flotilla of gunboats deployed onto the Nile in the Madhist War in Egypt. When Colville was wounded Beatty assumed command personally, and distinguished himself, being decorated for valor as well as being noticed by Lord Herbert Kitchener, who personally assigned him to additional service in Egypt.

HMS Barfleur

Subsequent service would see Beatty serving s Executive Officer of the battleship HMS Barfleur, which would take him to China in time for the 1900 Boxer Rebellion. As the Boxers seized the port of Tientsen Beatty landed with a force deployed to secure the port in order to support the efforts to relieve the besieged Peking Foreign Legations, where he was wounded, requiring a return to Britain for surgery.

Beatty’s actions in China would see him promoted to Captain at the young age of 29, ten years below the average in the Royal Navy at the time. During his convalescence, Beatty would begin courting a married woman, Ethel Tree, an American heiress. Ethel would eventually divorce her husband and marry Beatty in a small, private civil ceremony in 1901. The next year Beatty was declared fit for duty, and given his first command, the cruiser HMS Juno.

Beatty would spend the next few years in the Mediterranean, moving between different commands and amassing an impressive record. In 1908 he was appointed Naval Aide-de-Camp to King Edward VII, and in 1910 was promoted to Rear Admiral. Some difficulty occurred in 1912, when Beatty was offered the post of Second in Command of the Atlantic Fleet, but the young Admiral instead demanded a posting to the Home Fleet. This almost cost Beatty his career, but the intercession of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill (whom Beatty had become aquainted with during their mutual service in Egypt) saved him, resulting in a posting as commander of the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron and a posting as Naval Secretary.

The Battlecruiser Squadron in Russia just before the outbreak of war in 1914

In command of the Squadron, Beatty encouraged individual initiative among the Captains serving under him, realizing that in the chaos of battle it would be important for individual ships to be capable of functioning without command from the fleet leader should the need arise.

The outbreak of the First World War in the summer of 1914 saw the Royal Navy faced with one of the greatest threats ever presented to it in the form of Wilhelm II’s Kaiserliche Marine. Beatty’s battlecruisers engaged a German force at the Heligoland Bight within a month of the outbreak of war, the resulting victory elevating Beatty to new levels of fame at home while prompting the Kaiser to order his fleet to avoid confrontation with the Royal Navy.

British sailors watch as the German cruiser SMS Mainz sinks at Dogger Bank

Beatty next took his battlecruisers into action at Dogger Bank in 1915, securing a victory against the Germans again and sinking the German armored cruiser SMS Blucher. A promotion to Vice Admiral would come later in the year. Despite these victories, Beatty’s greatest test lay ahead, as the dreadnaughts of both powers clashed in 1916 in what would be known to history as the Battle of Jutland.

On the afternoon of 31 May, 1916, Beatty led his battlecruisers to meet the German fleet, engaging it at 14:28. After engaging the German pickets, Beatty began to move towards the German battlecruiser group, commanded by Admiral Franz Hipper, which was itself attempting to draw Beatty toward the big guns of the German High Seas Fleet. Beatty held his fire as he closed (a decision that has met with some criticism), until the Germans opened fire, which was returned. The British were hampered by poor visibilty in this engagement, and Beatty’s planned targeting plan for his fleet quickly disintegrated. Beatty’s flagship, the HMS Lion, was badly hit and her forward guns disabled, and both the HMS Indefatigable and HMS Queen Mary were destroyed by magazine explosions.

One of Beatty’s battlecruisers, the HMS Indefatigable, sinking at Jutland

Not long after, Beatty’s wounded force sighted Admiral Franz Hipper’s High Seas Fleet, and as destroyers fought in the sea between the German and British battlefleets Beatty turned his ships about to draw the Germans toward the approaching Royal Navy Grand Fleet. Eventually Beatty and his battlecruisers would rejoin the fray as Admiral Sir John Jellicoe’s battleships engaged the Germans, in what became the largest naval engagement of the Great War.

Admiral Beatty meets with Admiral Hugh Rodman, commander of the US Battleship Squadron 9, which was to serve with the Royal Navy Grand Fleet in the closing months of the Great War

In December of 1916 Beatty was promoted to full Admiral, replacing Jellicoe as commander of the Grand Fleet. Cutting a dashing figure, he remain in the post for the duration of the war, and was tasked afterwards with escorting the defeated German High Seas Fleet to internment at Scapa Flow. In 1919 he was promoted to Admiral of the Fleet, and took the post First Sea Lord, which came with a title of 1st Earl Beatty. He would subsequently have a hand in the Washington Naval Treaty, which would have far reaching consequences in the next war.

Beatty retired from the Royal Navy in 1927 at the age of 56, although he was named a member of the Privy Council and occasionally commented on naval affairs to Parliament. He remained an advocate of British sea power, clashing publicly with politicians and officials who hoped to downsize the fleet in the interwar years.

Admiral Beatty aboard the HMS Queen Elizabeth latter in the First World War

Beatty served as a pallbearer at the funeral of Jellicoe in 1935 despite his own failing health, and likewise insisted on attending the funeral of King George V in 1936. On 12 March of that year, he himself died, and he was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. A monument was commissioned for him, being unveiled in 1948 in the form of a bust on Trafalgar Square.