Admiral Sir David Beatty
David Beatty commanded the battlecruisers at Jutland and asked what was wrong with his ships. Born in Cheshire in 1871 into an Anglo-Irish family of horse dealers and cavalry officers, he entered the navy at thirteen and was promoted with extraordinary speed after service in the Sudan, where he commanded gunboats on the Nile, and in the Boxer Rebellion, where he was wounded. He was a captain at twenty-nine and a rear admiral at thirty-nine, the youngest in a century. Churchill made him naval secretary and then, in 1913, gave him the battlecruiser squadron. Battlecruisers were fast ships with battleship guns and cruiser armour, designed to run down cruisers and to scout, and not to fight the enemy's line. He won a confused action at Heligoland Bight in 1914 and sank the Blücher at Dogger Bank in 1915, where a signalling failure let the rest of the German squadron escape. At Jutland on 31 May 1916 he engaged Hipper's battlecruisers and drew them and the whole German fleet north towards Jellicoe — the correct execution of his role. In the process Indefatigable and Queen Mary blew up within half an hour, and Beatty remarked to his flag captain that there seemed to be something wrong with their bloody ships today. There was. Cordite charges had been stacked in turrets and passages with anti-flash doors left open to raise the rate of fire, which he had encouraged. He became First Sea Lord and served eight years. He died in 1936. He presided over the Washington Naval Treaty negotiations and accepted parity with the United States.
- Lived: 1871 CE – 1936 CE
- Nationality: British
- Roles: admiral
