In December 1910, Jellicoe left the Admiralty to become Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet. He was at sea when he learned by wireless that his five-year-old daughter, Betty, had died of a mastoid infection; she had come to the dock perfectly healthy a few weeks before to see him off. In 1911, he became second in command of the Home Fleet and in 1912 was promoted to vice admiral and returned to the Admiralty as Second Sea Lord. By this time, few in the navy questioned Fisher’s wisdom in grooming Jellicoe for supreme command. Captain Wilhelm Widenmann, the German naval attaché in London, informed Tirpitz on January 11, 1912, “If one asks English naval officers which admiral would have the best chances for a brilliant career on the basis of his capability, one almost always receives the same answer: besides Prince Louis of Battenberg, unquestionably Sir John Jellicoe. Sir John possesses the absolute confidence of his superiors as well as his subordinates.”
During his two years as Second Sea Lord, Jellicoe and his family lived in a large, comfortable house in Sussex Square. Every morning, he walked two miles to the Admiralty, and every evening the two miles back. At the Admiralty, he found the new First Lord, Winston Churchill, fifteen years younger than himself, to be brilliant, assertive, and, he thought, dangerously self-confident. “It did not take me very long,” Jellicoe wrote later,
to find out that Mr. Churchill was very apt to express strong opinions upon purely technical matters. Moreover, not being satisfied with expressing opinions, he tried to force his views upon the Board. His fatal error was his entire inability to realize his own limitations as a civilian. I admired very much his wonderful argumentative powers. He surpassed the ablest of lawyers and would make a weak case appear exceedingly strong. While this gift was of great use to the Admiralty when we wanted the naval case put well before the government, it became a positive danger when the First Lord started to exercise his powers of argument on his colleagues on the Board. Naval officers are not brought up to argue a case and few of them can make a good show in this direction.
In May 1913, Sir John and Lady Jellicoe were invited to Berlin on the occasion of the marriage of William II’s only daughter. The guests included King George V of England and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia; the ceremony became the last meeting of prewar European monarchs before the outbreak of hostilities fifteen months later. Jellicoe, a minor figure among the royalty, nevertheless had a busy schedule. He was given a two-hour ride in a zeppelin; he was invited to lunch by the German chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, and then to dinner by the kaiser. After dinner with William, Jellicoe had a long conversation with the emperor and Tirpitz about the different methods used to select naval cadets in the two countries. Tirpitz, charmed by the Jellicoes, invited them to tea to meet his daughter, who had just returned from two years at Cheltenham Ladies’ College. Before leaving, Jellicoe asked the founder of the German navy to return the visit by coming to England and staying at his own house. “He thanked me,” Jellicoe said, “but said that he would certainly be murdered if he were to visit England, as the British objected so strongly to his naval policy.” While in Berlin, Jellicoe attended the annual dinner of the German naval officers who had served in China and, in the course of conversation, asked who were the rising men of the German navy. He was told that “certainly one of the future leaders” was an admiral named Reinhard Scheer.
In July 1913, Jellicoe’s term as Second Sea Lord was interrupted by a special assignment. In war games involving 350 warships, Jellicoe commanded the “Red Fleet,” representing a German naval force convoying an invading German army to England. The “army” was only a token force—three battalions of infantry and a battalion of marines—but Jellicoe managed to completely outmaneuver the defending “Blue Fleet,” commanded by Britain’s senior naval officer afloat, Sir George Callaghan, Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet. Avoiding Callaghan, Jellicoe successfully landed the invading troops at the mouths of the Humber and the Tyne. In fact, Jellicoe had done too well: Churchill, observing the exercises from Jellicoe’s flagship,
Thunderer,
hurriedly ended the maneuvers lest they tell the Germans how the thing might actually be done. There was a further consequence. Churchill was dazzled by Jellicoe’s “brilliant and daring” performance (he wrote to Jellicoe that “the results leave your naval reputation second to none”), and he was convinced that Fisher was right: here was the man to command the British fleet at the Battle of Armageddon.
On a London midsummer evening, Jellicoe sat alone in a first-class compartment on a train departing Kings Cross station for the north of Scotland. In his hand, he held a wax-sealed envelope containing a letter delivered to him by an Admiralty messenger a few moments before the train left the station. He was not to break the seal until instructed to do so by specific Admiralty order, but, to his consternation, he knew what the letter inside would say. The contents would make him Commander-in-Chief of the British Grand Fleet, the gray armada that would serve as the shield of the British empire and the sword of British naval supremacy. Once opened and read, the letter would bestow on him the greatest responsibility the navy could offer. Distractedly tapping the envelope on his knee, then turning to look out the window at England rushing past in the twilight, Jellicoe hoped that the order to open the letter would not come. The day was Friday, July 31, 1914.
Alone in his compartment through the night, Jellicoe had time to think about the events of the preceding three days and, especially, of that afternoon. On Tuesday, the twenty-eighth, Vice Admiral Jellicoe, the Second Sea Lord at the Admiralty, had gone to a dinner given by Lord Morley at which the other guests included Churchill; the Lord Chancellor, Richard Burdon Haldane; Field Marshal Earl Kitchener of Khartoum; and Lord Bryce, just returned from a long tour as British ambassador to the United States. When Jellicoe remarked conversationally to Bryce that the European horizon “looked to be very clouded,” Bryce asked what he meant. Jellicoe said it seemed as though England might soon be at war with Germany. “War with Germany?” Bryce exclaimed. “Absurd! Why, any British government that did such a thing would be thrown out of office immediately.” Twenty-four hours later, Churchill, who shared Jellicoe’s opinion, took the precautionary step of ordering the British First Fleet to proceed to the remote northern fastness of Scapa Flow.
With the fleet at its war station, Churchill and his colleague Prince Louis of Battenberg, the First Sea Lord, confronted another decision. For nearly three years, the First Fleet—soon to be renamed the Grand Fleet—had been under the command of Admiral Sir George Callaghan, a capable, popular sailor who was sixty-two years old. Callaghan had done well. The fleet had improved in readiness and in December 1913 the admiral’s two-year appointment had been extended for a third year. The succession thereafter was already arranged: in December 1914, Jellicoe would step into Callaghan’s shoes. Both men had accepted this turnover as a routine rotation of senior naval officers. The First Lord of the Admiralty, however, was not a naval officer, and famously had no special respect for naval routines and traditions. And Churchill, increasingly, had come to believe that, as a wartime commander, Callaghan would not do.
On Wednesday, July 29, as his fleet steamed north, Admiral Callaghan was not with his ships, but at the Admiralty in discussion with Churchill and Battenberg. During these face-to-face talks, Churchill’s doubts about Callaghan intensified. To some, sixty-two years might not seem old, but to the exuberant thirty-nine-year-old First Lord, it appeared to be the threshold of senescence. He worried that the admiral might fail under the mental and physical strains that war would put upon him. Jellicoe, on the other hand, was seven years younger, talented, experienced, and already in line to command the fleet as Callaghan’s successor.
During his meeting with Callaghan, Churchill resolved to accelerate the forthcoming change. He did not reveal this intention to Callaghan, and his first move was only a half step: he told Callaghan that, in order to relieve him of some of his burdens as Commander-in-Chief, he was sending Jelli-coe immediately to the Grand Fleet as second in command. The First Lord then summoned Jellicoe and gave him his new assignment. Callaghan appeared to welcome the arrangement and, before leaving London to join the fleet, arranged with his new assistant that the dreadnought
Centurion
should be Jellicoe’s flagship. But Churchill, although he said no more to either man on the twenty-ninth, did not intend that Jellicoe continue long as assistant. On Friday afternoon, the thirty-first, Jellicoe had a long conversation with the First Lord and the First Sea Lord. At this meeting, it became clear to Jellicoe that, “in certain circumstances,” he might abruptly be appointed Commander-in-Chief in succession to Callaghan; Jellicoe understood that “certain circumstances” had to do with the imminence of war. Still, nothing was settled. When Jellicoe boarded his train that night for Scotland, he understood that the final decision had not been made and that when the Admiralty decided, he would know because he would be instructed to open the envelope he held in his hand.
Jellicoe was a calm, orderly man, self-confident and ambitious, but always within the established framework of naval traditions. Given his respect for the decorum and hierarchy of the service, Jellicoe found the sequence of events orchestrated by Churchill distressing, even repugnant. He and Callaghan were brother officers and personal friends. “I had the most profound respect and admiration for him,” Jellicoe said. They had served together in China during the Boxer Rebellion and, when Callaghan became Commander-in-Chief of the First Fleet in 1911, Jellicoe had commanded the best of his battle squadrons. Now, after three years, Callaghan knew his fleet and its senior officers and ships intimately. Under these circumstances, the plan to push Sir George aside seemed outrageous, almost unthinkable. The Commander-in-Chief, Jellicoe knew, had no idea that he was about to be summarily replaced. Might he not regard Jellicoe’s participation—albeit involuntary and unwilling—as a personal betrayal?
Equally, Jellicoe worried “that the fleet might conclude that I had been in some measure responsible for the change.” The navy was an intensely loyal service and the fleet trusted and admired its Commander-in-Chief. A change of command would come as a shock and would be certain to breed resentment. None of this would be helpful to a new commander at the beginning of a war. Already, there was opposition in the fleet to Jellicoe’s coming even as second in command. Callaghan, on returning from the Admiralty to Scapa Flow, had told Vice Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly, commander of the 1st Battle Squadron, that Jellicoe would be coming as his assistant. Bayly had declared that the assignment of an assistant was an insult and said that if he had been the Commander-in-Chief he would have hauled down his flag in protest.
Jellicoe might be worried about what others would think, but his reluctance to succeed Callaghan had nothing to do with lack of personal confidence that he could do the job. At fifty-four, after a forty-two-year navy career, he knew that professionally, mentally, and physically he was ready to command the Grand Fleet. He was younger than Callaghan and had more recent experience with modern weapons. He knew that he was a better fleet commander than Callaghan. This had been made clear the previous year, in those naval maneuvers during which Jellicoe’s attacking Red Fleet had thoroughly outmaneuvered the defending Blue, led by Callaghan.
While Jellicoe worried how Callaghan and others would perceive his promotion, Churchill was hurrying to make it a fact. To remove Callaghan, a close friend of King George V, Churchill needed the king’s approval. On July 31, the day Jellicoe left for Scotland, the First Lord wrote to the king to warn him that should war come he would submit the name of Sir John Jellicoe for supreme command. Regretfully, Churchill said, he had come to the conclusion that Callaghan was too old. “These are not times,” he urged the monarch, “when personal feelings can be considered unduly. We must have a younger man. Your Majesty knows well the purely physical exertion which the command of a great fleet demands.”
The following day—Saturday, August 1—as Germany and Russia went to war, Churchill decided that Jellicoe’s appointment must be immediate. He wrote again to the king, asking “respectfully and most earnestly” for approval of the change. Confident that approval would come, the First Lord also wrote to Lady Jellicoe, saying of her husband, “We have absolute confidence in his services and devotion. We shall back him through thick and thin. Thank God we have him at hand.”
Meanwhile, that Saturday morning, Jellicoe reached the small Scottish North Sea port of Wick, where the light cruiser
Boadicea
was waiting to take him across the Pentland Firth to Scapa Flow. When he arrived, however, the town and harbor were enveloped in fog and the short voyage had to be delayed. While he waited, Jellicoe telegraphed to Churchill the first of a series of extraordinary messages pleading that the change of command not take place or, at the very least, be postponed. The first of these was sent at 10:30 p.m. on August 1:
PERSONAL: DETAINED WICK BY FOG. AM FIRMLY CONVINCED AFTER CONSIDERATION THAT THE STEP YOU MENTIONED TO ME IS FRAUGHT WITH THE GRAVEST DANGER AT THIS JUNCTURE AND MIGHT EASILY BE DISASTROUS OWING TO EXTREME DIFFICULTY OF GETTING IN TOUCH WITH EVERYTHING AT SHORT NOTICE.
THE TRANSFER EVEN IF CARRIED OUT CANNOT SAFELY BE ACCOMPLISHED FOR SOME TIME.
I BEG MOST EARNESTLY THAT YOU WILL GIVE MATTER FURTHER CONSIDERATION WITH FIRST SEA LORD BEFORE YOU TAKE THIS STEP.
JELLICOE
Believing that a career naval officer would better understand his position than the civilian First Lord, Jellicoe sent a copy of the telegram to Prince Louis, adding a sentence:
YOU WILL UNDERSTAND MY MOTIVE IN WIRING IS TO DO MY BEST FOR COUNTRY, NOT PERSONAL CONSIDERATIONS.
On Sunday morning, the second, still waiting at Wick for the fog to lift, Jellicoe sent another telegram, this one addressed to both the First Lord and the First Sea Lord: