- 4 hours ago
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:05of all the clashes between the British and German navies in the 20th century
00:11the Battle of Jutland during the First World War was the biggest and the deadliest
00:18Britain had more ships and superior firepower the public expected a walkover
00:27but the outcome of the battle shook the nation to its core thousands of British sailors lost their
00:33lives in less than 24 hours recriminations followed the truth was distorted signatures
00:41were forged documents were fiddled with the reputation of the Admiral who led the battle
00:49was ruined now a hundred years on his grandson is determined to put that right I do feel that an
01:00injustice has been done this story of Jutland needs to be told in the right way once and for all
01:07controversy has plagued Jutland ever since the battle for the first time an expedition is
01:15setting out to find all the ships that were lost armed with state-of-the-art sonar they will scan
01:22the
01:23seabed in forensic detail building an accurate map of the site and revealing for the first time what
01:30really happened this is what archaeology can do show us the truth because the shipwrecks don't lie
01:38truths will emerge from the depths completing the picture of the final moments of lives lost as we bring
01:45the battleships back from the dead
02:00in May 1916 the first world war had been raging for two years Jutland took place just a month before
02:09the
02:09battle of the Somme for many you think world war one you think trench warfare and yet Jutland was a
02:18the big battle that the Royal Navy had wanted to have with the German high seas fleet it's the
02:23battle the Kaiser had wanted to have with his fleet and that clash that epic clash should have
02:29been the type of thing that would have decided a war it should have been a Trafalgar Nelson's decisive
02:37naval victory at Trafalgar in 1805 meant that Britannia had ruled the waves for over a hundred years but in
02:45the early 20th century a naval arms race between Britain and Germany saw the development of
02:51dreadnoughts the biggest fastest most powerful ships the world had ever seen on the eve of the
02:59first world war Britain led the race its supremacy a source of national pride and anticipation the public
03:09expected that fleet to be used and they expected therefore if war broke out that the Royal Navy was
03:14going to win a decisive battle and this would play a major role in the overall victory of the British
03:20Empire in Britain the Admiralty believed the fleet's first task was a blockade ensuring enemy ships never
03:30left the North Sea would starve their economy Germany wanted to break the stranglehold and on May the 31st 1916
03:39her Navy went looking for a fight
03:46the glorious battle both nations yearned for proved far from decisive
03:56there were huge losses on both sides 6,000 British sailors died and two and a half thousand Germans
04:05Germany declared a famous victory as Britain had lost more men and more ships Jutland was no Trafalgar
04:17far from being another Nelson the Admiral who led the battle John Jellicoe was sidelined and later sacked he was
04:27powerless to prevent the spinning of events that tarnished his reputation a small bust of him lies forgotten in a
04:35corner of Trafalgar Square overshadowed by Nelson's column which towers nearly a hundred and seventy feet into the
04:45air Jellicoe is largely ignored by an indifferent public but at the family home in Wiltshire Nick Jellicoe
04:54is determined that his grandfather should be remembered for who he really was so I thought
05:01I'd take out some of the old albums we have I've got a rather amazing one actually on HMS Iron
05:08Duke his
05:09flagship some of the photos in here are just really just remarkable there's actually even one of of the
05:16Admiral as a as a cadet this is a photograph of my grandfather's aged about I guess 1874 it must
05:25be
05:25about 15 and the emerald has a sort of rather odd waves of standing hand on his hip brothers of
05:32a
05:32little bit of a nonchalant little cocky certainly wasn't the character that he grew up to be he became
05:38a very modest man but that's it's a lovely photograph of him after Jutland John Jellicoe was heavily
05:47criticized he had failed to sink Germany's fleet despite his superior force and firepower an official
05:56report blamed him for excessive caution recently Nick's brother Johnny made an extraordinary discovery
06:06it made them suspect the official report did not tell the whole story so this is actually where Johnny
06:14found the charts I mean it was you can see up here it was just all piles of wallpaper and
06:21there was no
06:22way that anybody knew just what a treasure was sort of sitting there when he brought them down and
06:26showed them to me I mean I was astonished you can imagine these probably hadn't seen the light of
06:32Dave well at least since the family's been living in this house so this is what we found when Johnny
06:39and I kind of unrolled this I mean both of us sort of said immediately it's it's Harper it was
06:44signed
06:44Harper Battle of Jutland and we weren't sure for quite a while just how important or significant these kind
06:51of charts were John Harper was the Navy's senior navigation officer after Jutland he was tasked
07:00with producing a factual record of the day's action and to chart all of the ship's movements but in the
07:07recriminations that followed his charts were never published now Nick has been offered the chance to join a
07:16scientific expedition to unearth new evidence coupled with his rare unpublished charts the expedition could
07:24have far-reaching significance for the truth about the first world war's deadliest battle at sea
07:39he's going to be accompanying marine archaeologist dr. Innes McCartney the world's leading expert on the
07:45underwater geography of the battle site well I mean we first started looking at the Jutland Rex back in
07:512000 and then it was a matter of putting on our diving equipment swimming around the outside of
07:57the larger ones looking at them in all and trying to understand how we're going to interpret these
08:02because they're huge and you you can only see small parts of them on on any specific dive what
08:08we're going to do this time which is which is unprecedented is to use absolute state-of-the-art high
08:14resolution geophysics which allow us to map each shipwreck and I'm genuinely hoping that the
08:18interpretations we'll be able to make on what's there will will fundamentally reshape how we
08:23understand the battle the genuine new information lies on the bottom of the ocean it was off the coast
08:34of the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark that the world's two biggest battleship fleets finally met
08:42Innes yeah we're here this is it this is the basin in uh innes and Nick will join the Vena
08:48the expedition's
08:49specially equipped survey ship for Innes it's a chance to make new discoveries and for Nick it's an
08:56opportunity to travel in his grandfather's wake what's nice about this is is having six days looking at the all
09:05the
09:05wrecks of Jutland which is something that I never dreamed I'd be doing but doing it with you know
09:11people who are as passionate about this as as I am with expedition leader Gert Andersen at the helm
09:20and his Danish crew they will examine an area of 4,000 square miles the most comprehensive map of the
09:29battle site ever will reveal all the sunken ships for the first time all those ships are still out
09:36there on the bottom capable of telling their own story and in that I think increasingly what we find
09:43is that the official record isn't always correct the outcome of the expedition will fundamentally alter our
09:51understanding of the greatest naval battle in modern history marine archaeologist Dr Innes McCartney is
10:08leading a unique scientific expedition to explore the Jutland shipwrecks in the North Sea he is accompanied
10:15by Nick Jellicoe grandson of the admiral who led the British fleet to date only a handful of the ships
10:25have been located many questions about the battle remain if the expedition can pinpoint more of the wrecks
10:33Nick will discover which is closer to the truth the unpublished charts he found for the official account
10:41that defamed his grandfather previously diving has only provided a partial view of the shipwrecks new sonar
10:52technology will enable Innes and his team to produce incredibly accurate maps of the wreckage the data will
11:00then be transformed into three-dimensional images that can be closely examined from every angle
11:12this new view of the shipwrecks will rewrite the history of the Battle of Jutland
11:21in the dead of night on the 30th of May 1916 the British Grand Fleet led by Admiral Sir John
11:28Jellicoe slipped anchor
11:30from Scapa Flow in Scotland at the same time his vice-admiral Sir David Beattie led out an advance party
11:39including six battle cruisers
11:42they set off 200 miles south with 151 ships and a hundred thousand men it was the largest assembly of
11:50the most powerful fleets the world has ever known
11:57Jellicoe and Beattie were to rendezvous on the 31st of May and lie in wait they knew from radio intercepts
12:05that the unsuspecting Germans would be venturing into the North Sea that day
12:11the British fleet was commanded by two men who couldn't have been more different Jellicoe came from a modest background
12:19after a conventional education he joined the Navy as an officer cadet working his way up to the top
12:26Jellicoe was a very attractive personality very thorough very human very good manager but Jellicoe had one great defect in
12:37my opinion
12:38he was far too cautious by contrast Beattie was born into a well-to-do Anglo-Irish family his early
12:47education focused on horsemanship hunting and how to be a gentleman
12:52Beattie was a man of style he designed his own uniform he was a raffish figure very buccaneering very
13:01swashbuckling not very competent not a good fleet commander just a few hours after Jellicoe and Beattie left
13:09port Admiral Reinhard Scheer commander of the German high seas fleet set off with him were 99 ships an
13:18armada a third smaller than the British fleet it included his scouting party of five battlecruisers
13:25under the command of vice-admiral France Hipper at 220 on the afternoon of the 31st of May sightings of
13:34Hipper's battlecruisers were reported to Beattie without waiting for backup or informing Jellicoe the
13:41British battlecruiser commander turned southeast in pursuit an hour later Hipper spotted Beattie
13:48advancing towards him it was the moment everyone had been waiting for at 10 to 4 in the afternoon
13:55Hipper's flagship the Lutso opened fire this rare photograph captures that dramatic moment
14:06the Lutso and Beattie's own flagship HMS lion engaged in a fierce firefight
14:15a 12-inch shell from the Lutso scored a direct hit on lion's central turret 99 men were killed
14:26worse was to come 14 minutes into the exchange of fire at the end of Beattie's line HMS indefatigable
14:35was hit by three German shells
14:39soon afterwards she was struck again on her forward turret at two minutes past four observers reported a
14:47huge explosion she sank with the loss of a thousand and seventeen lives
15:02aboard the expedition vessel Innes and Nick are approaching the site of the wreck of the indefatigable
15:09they are hoping to answer some outstanding questions about her fate one famous photograph
15:17appears to show her last moments but doesn't tell us everything eyewitness accounts are unreliable clouded
15:26by a limited perspective smoke from the guns in the fog of war
15:33diving the site has its limitations this site we first examined 14 years ago by diving it and it was
15:43very dispersed
15:43and it was very difficult to really make sense of what we were looking at when we saw turrets we
15:49saw guns
15:50we saw boilers we saw all the features that you see on these large grand fleet wrecks but it was
15:55very difficult to make sense of them in terms of how the ship was actually lying
16:02exactly what happened to the indefatigable has been unclear for a hundred years new multi-beam scans are a revelation
16:11even in the few minutes I've had since it first started appearing on the computer screens when I can say
16:16straight away that it is going to change the way we look at
16:20the last few minutes of this vessel I mean it was destroyed with over a thousand men on board there
16:24were only two survivors
16:25and the multi-beam image is is showing us a pattern of that destruction that is
16:34tragic horrific incredibly violent and the explanation why a thousand people died
16:42there were no movie cameras at jutland one ship that took part in the battle
16:47hms barham was caught on film when it was sunk in the second world war
17:01the film of those terrifying last few moments give some idea of what it must have been like for the
17:07men aboard hms indefatigable
17:11a first-hand account by one of the only two survivors who had climbed the ship's mast gives a glimpse
17:17of the carnage
17:20there was a terrific explosion on board the ship the magazines when I also saw guns going up in the
17:27air just like matchsticks
17:31bodies and everything within half a minute she turned right over and was gone
17:40I was 180 foot up and was thrown clear of the ship
17:45when I came up there was another fellow Jimmy Green we got a piece of wood
17:54a few minutes afterwards some shells came over us and
18:00Jim was minus his head
18:05the multi-beam reveals the indefatigable's final moments in forensic detail
18:10it has produced a remarkable new insight
18:14it wasn't the bursting shell that did the damage
18:17but a second explosion in the ship's magazine
18:21in seconds the blast reduced a 20,000 ton warship
18:26to shrapnel claiming over a thousand lives
18:31looking at it it's reminiscent of an aerial photograph of a village that has been destroyed by artillery fire
18:36there are just craters all over the seabed as far as you can see
18:39and it it I mean you couldn't depict the more violent end to a battleship in any other way if
18:45you tried
18:45to see this today for the first time genuinely revelatory and quite astonishing
18:50and at the same time tragic and you know very moving I have to say I'm a bit slightly choked
18:56you know
19:03there is another key moment of the battle that Innes is keen to investigate
19:09just minutes after the loss of indefatigable
19:12the British were to suffer an even greater catastrophe
19:18the Queen Mary was one of the biggest and most powerful of all the battle cruisers
19:24the pride of the Royal Navy
19:27now she found herself under relentless bombardment by not just one but two German battle cruisers
19:35less than an hour into the battle cruiser action she too exploded
19:42she plummeted to the sea floor
19:48the Queen Mary was Britain's biggest naval loss of the first world war
19:551,266 sailors killed in an instant
20:00this whole seabed is a cemetery
20:02there were very very few survivors
20:06the majority of the crew
20:08they would have had no idea what would have happened to them
20:12no idea what was going on above
20:13and would have died
20:17any sense of what was going on
20:23a sailor on board HMS Dublin
20:25witnessed what happened to the Queen Mary after she exploded
20:31the forepart suddenly shot ahead
20:33listing slightly to port and veered towards us
20:36in so doing we noticed the height of the bow wave rising
20:41this sorry load of humanity
20:44listing further
20:45now slowing up gently
20:48slid into the deep
20:52oh the sight of those poor fellows
20:56I was to experience many dreams
20:59nightmares
21:00nightmares
21:00more appropriate for months afterwards
21:06in the case of Queen Mary the damage is so obvious
21:08it is so cataclysmic
21:10that we can say straight away what has gone on
21:14and in fact the salvo which destroyed the ship
21:18that detonation of the magazine underneath
21:21has clearly split the ship clearly in half at that point
21:24the new archaeology throws up a mystery
21:28the most intact part of the wreckage
21:30is the back of the ship
21:32the stern
21:34the front section the bow
21:37disintegrated in the sheer force of the explosion
21:39given the ship's course
21:41how did the stern come to be in front of the remains of the bow
21:46the bow
21:46but what the multi beam has done for us today
21:48is to draw together
21:51a lot of our thinking
21:52into this quite remarkable sight man
21:56the multi beam finally confirms
21:59that it was not the front of the ship
22:00that shot forward as William Cave saw it
22:03the bow had already shattered into a million pieces
22:08instead
22:09the cave must have witnessed the stern shooting forward
22:12travelling past the wreckage of the bow
22:16by then
22:17most of the men he imagined suffering on board
22:20the stuff of his nightmares
22:22would have already been dead
22:27even Beatty with his bravado was shocked by this second unexpected loss
22:32there is something wrong with our bloody ships today
22:34he was heard to declare
22:38in fact
22:38there was nothing wrong with the ships
22:41the fault lay in commanders demanding speed over safety
22:46there's a history in the navy
22:48where rate of fire against your enemy
22:51is what wins you a fight
22:52if you can fire faster than the chap is firing at you
22:54you will take him out
22:56so everybody working in the gun turret
22:58their prime motive
23:00is to make sure that the guns are being loaded and fired
23:03as fast as they possibly can
23:05and it has been suggested
23:06not only in the battle cruiser fleet
23:07but also in the main fleet itself
23:09that a lot of the safety features
23:11flash doors and the rest were left open
23:13but of course if you do this
23:15the potential for the ship to be nothing more than the tinderbox
23:23with the safety doors left open
23:25and ammunition and explosives stacked around the turret and magazine
23:29the turret shaft becomes like a fuse
23:32with a huge bomb below
23:35one strike
23:40and the whole ship goes up
23:44Beatty would later be accused of being too gung-ho
23:47in the first phase of the battle
23:49he had pursued the Germans without waiting for backup
23:53he had also allowed safety procedures to be relaxed on ships under his command
23:57to achieve a faster rate of fire
24:00I can't help feeling that there was an element of recklessness in the man
24:04you know
24:05he loved riding to the hounds
24:07he obviously liked the thrill of the chase
24:09and that's all fine and good
24:10the criticism leveled at Beatty at the beginning of the battle of Jutland
24:14is that perhaps the thrill of the chase slightly got the better of the man
24:19with his own ship battered
24:21and two of his battle cruisers sunk after just an hour of combat
24:25Beatty was in for another shock
24:28now he learned he was facing not just HIPAA's scouting party
24:32but the entire German high seas fleet
24:36he led his ships in a U-turn
24:38trying to entice the Germans towards the far bigger British Grand Fleet
24:43however he failed to communicate effectively with Jellicoe
24:47I don't think he was very good professionally
24:49for example when he's running back towards the Grand Fleet
24:54pursued by the German fleet
24:56Jellicoe signals him and says
24:57what is the course of the German fleet
25:00he's got to know where they're going
25:02so that he can make up his own disposition
25:05this is a critical thing
25:07instead what Jellicoe gets back is
25:09they're right there they're on my tail
25:11for Jellicoe time was now critical
25:15I thought what could I bring with me
25:18that would make this special
25:19and so I brought the two watches my grandfather used on the day
25:24this one probably was used when he was making the deployment of the fleet
25:29and watching this carefully and thinking
25:33how many minutes do I have before the Germans arrive
25:38Nick's grandfather now had the opportunity to spring the greatest naval ambush in British history
25:44and make an even bigger name for himself than Nelson
25:47the immediate outcome of the First World War was in his hands
26:03early on the evening of the 31st of May 1916
26:07Admiral John Jellicoe commander of the British fleet lay in wait
26:12as his vice-admiral David Beattie attempted to lure the German fleet into his path
26:21under the command of Reinhard Scheer
26:23the smaller and less well armed enemy were now heading into a trap
26:28the Germans are now facing a horizon full of enemy ships
26:34oh dear
26:38Jellicoe had very little information or time to act
26:41he deployed his fleet against Scheer in a classic naval tactic
26:46crossing the T
26:48so you want a situation in which a lot of your guns focus on him
26:53and not too many of his focus at you
26:56if you're going along and someone else is across you
26:59then he's in the ideal position
27:02that's crossing the T
27:06Jellicoe positioned his ships brilliantly
27:09but poor visibility prevented him from delivering the killer blow
27:14Scheer saw the trap
27:16he ordered the hardest fleet maneuver of all
27:19turned every ship around at the same time
27:22and sailed off
27:26later, to cover his escape
27:28Scheer ordered his destroyers to launch a mass torpedo attack
27:33Jellicoe faced another critical decision
27:36to pursue Scheer
27:38he'd have to steam into the oncoming torpedoes
27:41to minimize losses
27:42he'd need to turn away
27:44he chose the safer course
27:47a lot of the criticism of Jellicoe turning away
27:50comes from an early account of Jutland by Winston Churchill
27:54he had been first Lord of the Admiralty
27:57but that doesn't make you an expert in naval warfare
28:00he had been a cavalryman
28:02and he was always very entranced by the idea of the offense
28:06you attack
28:07well, sometimes if you attack
28:10and you just get wiped out
28:11this is not a terribly good thing
28:14Jellicoe's defensive maneuver succeeded
28:17not one of the 31 German torpedoes hit home
28:22the price was that the German high seas fleet
28:25was able to escape under the cover of darkness
28:29so by the following morning
28:31the high sea fleet was well on its way and couldn't be caught
28:35it had got away
28:37the one opportunity to sink the high sea fleet
28:41had been let slip
28:45British woes were not over
28:49during the night
28:51HMS Black Prince became separated from the British fleet
28:55sometime after midnight
28:57her crew spotted what they thought were Jellicoe's ships
29:01and fell into line
29:03by the time they realized their mistake
29:05it was too late
29:08they had stumbled into the heart
29:09of the German fleet
29:12and almost at the same instant came the word
29:15British, salvo, fire!
29:19an immense column of fire blazed up
29:22and a devastating fire now opened up on the whole of the enemy ship
29:26she failed to put up any effective defense
29:30so quickly was she overwhelmed
29:34and then the vessel sank
29:37almost in silence
29:41857 men went down on Black Prince
29:45there were no survivors
29:49Innes is now hoping the new multi-beam technology
29:53might be able to solve a 100 year old riddle
29:56it's always been a bit of a mysterious case
29:59because it went down in the middle of the night
30:01there's practically no information on the British side about what happened to it
30:05and where it is is in an area where the underwater visibility isn't particularly good
30:14He wants to establish whether the severed piece of wreckage is the front or the rear of the ship
30:21if he can figure out which way she was sailing when she was hit
30:24he might be able to shed new light on the last moments of the men on board
30:30this time the multi-beam doesn't provide any answers
30:35the team decide to use the remotely operated vehicle or ROV with its onboard camera
30:43we have the multi-beam and we can target the ROV right to a specific point
30:47and we'll see if we can work out which end of this wreck is which
30:50and then finally close the book on what the Black Prince was doing at the moment that it was sunk
30:56you can be pretty... this site has been dived but I bet you this piece never has
30:59you're probably the first people ever to see this
31:04that's brilliant Gert, that's fantastic
31:13coupled with the multi-beam scan
31:16the ROV images enable Innes to answer for the first time
31:20what happened during Black Prince's last moments
31:23the question has always been to what extent did the ship manage to extricate itself from this absolute nightmare
31:31the images reveal that the crew realized their mistake
31:35in a desperate bid to escape they managed to turn the ship around
31:41too late
31:45appalling loss of life wasn't confined to the British fleet
31:50Hipper's flagship, the Luzzo
31:53was repeatedly battered and bombarded by British forces during the course of the day
32:00If the Queen Mary was Britain's greatest naval loss of the First World War, the Luzzo was Germany's
32:07This multi-beam shows the full length of the ship
32:11upside down
32:13and the ship had taken in so much water because it had been hit 24 times by British shells
32:19and when you compare that to the losses of our battle cruisers in Germany that were only struck, if anything,
32:24sometimes only once or twice
32:27it's a great testament to the design that went into the construction of this vessel
32:32The Luzzo had been so damaged that the Germans decided to deliberately sink her
32:38rather than let her fall into enemy hands
32:421,150 surviving members of the crew were transferred to German ships that came alongside
32:50It was noticeable that all were suffering from severe memory loss and were unbalanced mentally
32:56Several had to have their hands and feet bound to make transport for them possible
33:03All shouting incessantly for water
33:08They were the lucky ones
33:11Tragically there were German sailors trapped in the ship that they couldn't get out
33:15So it was a matter of informing them down the voice pipes that the ship was going to be scuttled
33:19with them alive still in it
33:22Finally, the Luzzo, with the men still trapped on board, was torpedoed by a German escort ship
33:31As the torpedo exploded, the Luzzo's bow quickly dipped and the stern rose and stood on end
33:37Then she heeled over and sank
33:41Forming a great whirlpool that carried everything within it into the depths
33:47When I think on Luzzo, I think of these sailors who didn't make it off the Luzzo
33:53And their comrades had to torpedo them, torpedo the ship
33:58To take it down, knowing that they were leaving friends there
34:02And I think that's an incredibly sad story
34:06Anecdotally at least, the last people evacuating Luzzo could hear them singing
34:10Inside the ship through the voice pipes
34:16These are sort of moments in German naval history that I think must be remembered
34:24Must be remembered
34:27The expedition team are hoping that uncovering the truth
34:31About what sailors went through at Jutland
34:34Will help to remember them properly
34:58This week we've steamed over 800 miles
35:02We've now captured on the hard drive in the ship
35:05Probably the resting places of all of the Jutland ships that are in this area
35:09It's so far past the expectations I had
35:14The next few weeks and months is going to be the process of going through it all
35:19And confirming what we have added to the Jutland story
35:25Only after his analysis will Innes know what the data reveals about the battle as a whole
35:31And about the actions of those in command
35:45When Admiral Jellicoe and the British fleet returned from the Battle of Jutland
35:49They didn't receive a hero's welcome
35:53Some ships were booed by Dockyard Matis
35:58There was a feeling that all had not gone well
36:01This was certainly not a new Trafalgar
36:02And there was a great feeling of disappointment
36:06Of shock even
36:08The public demanded explanations
36:12Those in charge came under extreme pressure to justify themselves
36:19Beattie
36:19Beattie, despite the losses of his battle cruisers
36:22Sought to portray himself as the hero of Jutland
36:25Who had delivered the German fleet to Jellicoe
36:28Only for him to fail to destroy it
36:32Each man's supporters argued bitterly
36:35Then came a chance for Beattie to protect his reputation
36:39In December 1917, Jellicoe was dismissed
36:44Three years later he was appointed Governor of New Zealand
36:47Beattie then replaced him as First Sea Lord
36:50In charge of all naval matters
36:53With Jellicoe over 10,000 miles away
36:56Beattie had free reign to rewrite history
37:00Documents at the National Archives show how he did it
37:04So what we've got here is one of the earliest maps
37:09Showing the track of the battle cruiser fleet
37:12This was completed literally within a few hours
37:15Of the ships returning to Rosyth
37:18In an official dispatch
37:20Beattie boasted that at all times he was in contact with the enemy
37:25Yet the original chart showed his ship had veered in a circle
37:30The Vice Admiral had lost sight of the Germans
37:35It gave Beattie a problem
37:37John Harper, the Royal Navy's Chief Navigation Officer
37:41Was compiling his factual account
37:44Beattie needed the record to match his boast
37:48He pressured his subordinate to alter the chart
37:53Harper says I'm not going to make these changes
37:55Unless I receive a written order from you
37:57This Beattie refuses to do
37:59Because if he does his insistence on these changes is then placed in the public domain
38:04Beattie then went as far as to produce an alternative chart
38:07With his circling manoeuvre removed
38:10He signed and dated it 1916
38:13Only with a style of signature he didn't start using until 1920
38:16When he was made an Earl
38:18Just his surname with a bigger B
38:22He's then realised what he's done
38:24And has affected this rather unusual David in front of it
38:30Now as far as Harper is concerned
38:32This shows completely that this track has been fabricated
38:39Certainly things got very fraught
38:42Signatures were forged
38:44Documents were fiddled with
38:46This was quite extraordinary
38:49Attempts to rewrite history
38:51Weren't solely down to the ego of senior officers
38:55The destruction of the battlecruisers
38:58And loss of lives under Beattie's command
39:00Raised awkward questions
39:03The real problem was the magazine practices
39:07And no one wanted to go there because it was so incredibly embarrassing
39:12Would the British have lost any battlecruisers at Jutland
39:14If they'd handle them properly? I don't think so
39:19Think about how devastating that is
39:24I think you're watching a smoke screen
39:30The question remains
39:32Are the Harper charts accurate?
39:35If they are, they would help restore John Jellicoe's reputation
39:40Despite Beattie's distortions
39:45Innes McCartney's exploration of the Jutland battle site is complete
39:49The survey has pinpointed for the first time
39:53The precise location of every ship sunk
39:58Now he can compare the accurate map of the battle site
40:01To the Harper charts discovered at the family home by Jellicoe's grandsons
40:06How are you doing?
40:07Good to see you
40:08How are you doing?
40:08Good journey?
40:09Yeah, good journey
40:10Come on in, let's go up
40:13We've got so much to talk about
40:14Great, great
40:17The results I've got today are some quite startling discoveries
40:21We've pegged out the battlefield 100% accuracy
40:25The battlefield as depicted here is only slightly smaller than the county of Yorkshire
40:30So it's a massive area
40:34The map shows the 24 positions of the wrecks
40:38The red dots are where Harper calculated the ship's positions to be
40:43And the blue dots are where they actually are
40:46Harper's charts are incredibly accurate
40:49Falling within 2 miles of the survey results in nearly all cases
40:55For many years, the position of one of the wrecks cast doubt on Harper's accuracy
41:01Indefatigable
41:02Is not where the expert navigator thought it should be
41:05For the 15 years it's been since we found that wreck in 2001
41:10There has been no satisfactory explanation for why this one would be inconsistent with the rest of Harper's work
41:17What we've got here is a piece of ship from the bow which we looked at with the ROV
41:21To what we thought was the stern
41:23That's 140 metres
41:25And yet we know in the fact it was 180 metres long
41:29So there's 40 metres to be accounted for
41:31And it was just nagging me
41:33And I thought well if we get back there this year
41:36Just wondered whether we might pick something else up
41:40And so after a couple of hours, lo and behold
41:43That's what we were missing, unbelievably
41:45Goodness me
41:46So you found it, you found the missing 40 metres
41:50That's right, it is the stern of the ship
41:52And in there you've got a barbet and you've got a turret
41:54Which I'll show you
41:55500 metres away
41:58The eyewitness account of the sinking of Indefatigable
42:02Assumed the ship was still whole when she blew up
42:05But she wasn't
42:07The stern was blown off some minutes earlier
42:10Sending a shockwave through the ship
42:12Had probably killed everyone on board
42:16It was only when the remains of the ship blew up later
42:19That it was recorded as being destroyed
42:21We now know the sinking incident which is probably just here
42:27On the edge of the photograph
42:28Has happened, has happened perhaps six minutes earlier
42:31Here they are
42:32The difference between the actual time Indefatigable sunk
42:36And the recorded time
42:38Explains why Harper in his calculations
42:40Got the position of Indefatigable wrong
42:43Having established what's
42:45What really happened to Indefatigable
42:48We can go back to Harper
42:50Yeah
42:50And look in totality at all of the positions
42:55He reported, you know, mapped against all of the wrecks
42:58And the battlefield now found
42:59And we find a remarkably accurate portrayal of events
43:03This kind of really seems to validate, you know, his work
43:07This is testament to the incredible work that Harper and his team did
43:10It confirms what many had long suspected
43:15That the Harper record was an accurate depiction of events
43:18And I'm astonished by this
43:20I'm astonished by the revelation that one has a hundred years after
43:26This is what archaeology can do
43:28It can show us the truth
43:30Because the shipwrecks don't lie
43:34The fog is finally lifting from Jutland
43:38Innes' multi-beam has revealed new forensic detail
43:42About what really happened in that fateful 24 hours
43:48The total vindication of Harper's work
43:50Leaves no doubt
43:52That Beattie attempted to manipulate the facts about the battle
43:55At the expense of his admiral, John Jellicoe
44:00Now, the process of reassessing Jellicoe's reputation can begin
44:04In 1925, Jellicoe returned to England from New Zealand
44:09And went into retirement
44:12For the rest of his life
44:14He refused to take part in the Jutland controversy
44:18He died of pneumonia in 1935
44:22This is actually my grandfather, John Jellicoe
44:25And what's remarkable actually is that David Beattie died three months later
44:29And when he was at the funeral of John Jellicoe, he was deathly ill already
44:36I think there's no doubt that the scandals, the controversy, the vitriol took a burden on both men
44:42But you know, the burden of command must have been absolutely enormous
44:48For Nick, this has not just been a debate about the rights and wrongs of Jutland
44:53But a deeply personal exploration of his family history
44:56And the character of his grandfather
44:59It's been an amazing journey to travel, to be honest
45:04But I think now, more than ever, I feel the sense of professionalism that he had
45:10That he wouldn't bow down to the pressure of the controversy
45:16I hope that he feels what I'm doing now is correct
45:21And that he would have approved of what I'm trying to do
45:24And I'm really trying to make sure that, you know, this square is not forgotten
45:28For what it represents
45:32Some historians argue that Jellicoe was not timid
45:35But prudent
45:37He kept the British fleet intact
45:39And the economic blockade of Germany was maintained
45:43In the end, the question is always who wins
45:45And the British win
45:47The British win because, at the end of the day
45:50The Germans are still stuck on their side of the North Sea
45:53They don't get out
45:55The one time they do come out
45:57Once they spot the British, they go back in
45:59End of story
46:02Jellicoe really can lose the war in the afternoon
46:04And he doesn't
46:06That's called winning
46:08Other historians think calling the battle a British win
46:12Is too strong
46:14If Jutland had been the great strategic victory that people say
46:18There wouldn't have been this controversy
46:20There wouldn't have been this backbiting
46:22There wouldn't have been this argument
46:24There wouldn't have been these forgeries
46:26Everybody would have thought, oh, what a good job we did
46:30But we didn't do a good job
46:33And the result was years of controversy
46:37Decades
46:37A century even
46:46The Man vs Nature collection
46:49Including Touching the Void in 127 Hours
46:51Is available now on all four
46:55A three-year-old takes a tumble off his granny's trampoline
46:58And that means 24 hours on A&E this Monday at 9
47:01And next, Jennifer Lawrence has got to cane it
47:04Running for her life in the ultimate reality show
47:06The Hunger Games
47:10In55
47:1025 years
47:11The Hunger Games
47:11The Hunger Games
Comments