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In October 1843,

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100,000 people
gathered on the streets of London.

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A grand memorial to their greatest
hero was about to be unveiled.

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Nelson's column, built with
donations from an adoring public,

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their gift to a man who
had paid for victory with death.

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His granite figure stands 50 metres
up, facing south towards the site
of his last and greatest victory,

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Trafalgar.

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The turning point in the
titanic struggle against France,

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a war from which Britain had emerged
as the world's only super-power.

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But this was so much
more than just a statue.

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Situated here in the heart
of London, between Parliament,

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Buckingham Palace and the City,

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Nelson's column was the totem
of the British state,

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and a clear expression
of the central role of the
Royal Navy within it.

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After Trafalgar, the Navy took
control of the world's sea lanes,

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driving Britain's pursuit
of trade and empire.

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New technologies extended
its lead over other navies.

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And more than ever,
British ships and sailors
were the symbols of the nation.

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But Britain's dominance would not go
uncontested forever, and by 1914 she
faced her greatest challenge yet.

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Once again, Britain found herself
vying for global supremacy,

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this time against a backdrop of
unprecedented upheaval and the
emergence of a dangerous new enemy.

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The Navy, which had been
the instrument of Britain's success,

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now took her
to the very brink of defeat.

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Early one January morning in 1841,

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12 British warships sailed up
to the mouth of the Pearl River,

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gateway to the
southern Chinese port of Canton.

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As the 19th century unfolded, the
navy had built on Nelson's legacy.

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They had pushed British interests
further afield than ever before.

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Algeria, Egypt, Burma, New Zealand.

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Now, it was China's turn.

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The Royal Navy was here to open up
China for business,

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but this was
no polite trading mission.

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This was war.

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For years, British merchants
had been buying
Chinese tea and paying with opium.

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They smuggled in six million
kilograms a year.

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The Chinese authorities had been
appalled by the devastating
affect of the drug on their people.

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They clamped down on the trade,
and threw the British out of China.

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Retribution
was to be brutal and effective.

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The Navy was sent to re-open
the Chinese market by force.

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Among the fleet that day
there was a new ship.

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She hadn't yet been
tested in battle.

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She was called Nemesis.

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For the Chinese,
that's what she turned out to be.

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Nemesis went into action
against 15 war junks.

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As soon as she opened fire,
she immediately set one alight.

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From the deck, her captain,
William Hall, viewed the scene.

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"The smoke and flame and
thunder of the explosion,"

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he said, "were enough to strike
awe, if not fear, into the stoutest
heart that looked upon it."

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Armed with antiquated guns
and spears,

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the junks were no match
for the Nemesis and her evil weapons
in a modern world.

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They turned and fled up
narrow river channels.

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At this point, the large traditional
sailing ships of the Royal Navy
would have had to give up the chase.

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But the Nemesis was able to set off
after the junks in hot pursuit

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because deep within her hull
roared a steam engine.

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Revolutionary new technology that
drove a ship through the water

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no matter what the wind,
tide or currents were doing.

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And every single junk the Nemesis
chased, she captured or destroyed.

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Never before had a steam-powered
ship played such a decisive role.

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The astonished Chinese
called her a demon ship.

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Britain was shaping the
future of warfare and China,

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the world's oldest empire,
suffered a crushing defeat.

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In the past, people put
the extraordinary success
of the British Empire in this period

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down to divine favour or
racial superiority,

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or even a particular kind of valour,
but none of this was true.

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It was Britain's industrial lead
that lay at the heart
of this triumph.

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The Navy, once dominant,
had now become untouchable.

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But the British didn't claim
huge swathes of mainland
China as their spoils of war.

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Instead,
she merely demanded the right

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to trade through Chinese ports,
and the Navy took its own prize -

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a Chinese island with a deep,
sheltered harbour -

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Hong Kong.

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CAR HORNS BEEP

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It's hard to believe this was once
the quiet beach front of Hong Kong,

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and this road here
was actually a towpath
that was used by the crews of junks.

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Beyond it was the sea,
and in January 1841

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British Naval officers disembarked
and landed at this very spot.

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They planted a flag in the ground
and drank a toast to Queen Victoria,

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and then, with three cheers,
took possession of Hong Kong.

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The mastermind behind the
occupation of Hong Kong was Royal
Navy Captain, Charles Elliott.

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He was Britain's Chief
Superintendent for Trade in China,

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and he had grand plans
for the island.

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Elliott didn't just see Hong Kong
as a naval base,
but as the perfect place

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from which British merchants could
conduct all their trade with China.

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Within months, Elliott started
selling small plots of land
and invited merchants in to trade.

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But back in London,
the British government didn't
see it the Navy's way.

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Hong Kong was dismissed as a barren
island with hardly a house upon it.

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Elliott was sacked.

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But despite his departure, Elliott's
plans had a momentum of their own.

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A small fleet of six
Royal Navy vessels
was kept anchored in the harbour.

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With the security
of knowing their warehouses

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and cargoes were protected,
British merchants kept investing.

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Captain Elliott's successor
predicted, "Within six months
of Hong Kong being declared

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"a permanent colony,
it will be a vast emporium
of commerce and wealth".

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In 1842, Hong Kong was formally
ceded to the British Empire,
in perpetuity.

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From then on, the warships
stationed in the harbour
became a potent sign of the force

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that would come crashing
down on the Chinese
if they reneged on the deal.

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It was the advent of what
became known as "gunboat diplomacy",

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British interests secured
down the barrel of a gun.

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This was central to the so-called
Pax Britannica, peace enforced
by worldwide naval domination.

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By 1848, 129 British warships
were posted on 55 foreign stations.

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The Navy's bases on
Gibraltar, Malta and Aden
guarded the key routes to India.

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The Falklands protected British
interests in South America.

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And in the middle
of the world's oceans,

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supply stations
on islands like Ascension

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kept naval ships
steaming from port to port.

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World trade flowed
like never before,
nearly doubling in the 1850s alone.

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Riding high on the back of her
dominant navy,

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Britain had the lion's share,

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twice as much
as her nearest rival, France.

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People think that Britain
was rich and powerful
because of her vast Empire,

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but actually, you can forget the
big open spaces of southern Africa,
Australia and Canada.

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The source of her wealth
was control of the territory
that really mattered, the sea.

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Back at home, the Navy was
celebrated like never before.

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Over the summer of 1863,
the best family day out was

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a trip to see the Navy's ships as
they went on a tour around Britain.

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1.5 million people,
7% of the population, turned out
to see their splendid fleet.

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It was all part of an
elaborate PR exercise,

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designed to highlight the central
role of the Navy in public life.

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This was the star of the show.

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HMS Warrior, the largest,
fastest, most powerful battleship
anywhere in the world at the time.

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She is famous for being
Britain's first ironclad.

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In fact, she's more than just clad
in iron, she's iron throughout,

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making her one of the most
revolutionary ships of all time.

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The Warrior was the embodiment of
the industrial revolution, at sea.

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Inside, people could marvel
at some of the greatest
inventions of the era.

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The engine room.

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240 tons' worth
of machinery down here.

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It's when you come right down here
into the bowels of the ship,

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away from the masts
and rigging up there,

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that you realise just how far
we are now from
Nelson's navy of wood and sails.

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This new navy needed men
with different skills.

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The crew included 12 engineers
to operate the engines,
and up to 66 stokers to shovel coal.

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At full pelt, they could make
the Warrior go faster than
any sail-powered battleship.

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The Armstrong guns
were a brand new design.

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The first thing we do
when we come to fire something
like this, 110 pounder,

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is we need to
slacken off the breach group.

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The 110 pound breach loader
could propel shells
over a range of 2.5 miles.

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They were laid out in a single gun
deck within an armoured citadel.

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The most powerful guns of the day
couldn't pierce these iron walls,
even at point blank range.

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There were no set visitor hours,
so people could just drop by

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any time of day, but that meant
that they saw whatever was going on
on board at the time.

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On this deck alone, 450 sailors
might be taking their lunch at these
tables, or cleaning the decks,

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or repairing parts of the ship.

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Or, if they were off duty,
perhaps they'd just be
fixing up their uniforms

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or just reading the newspaper.

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It was a unique opportunity for
the public to gain a glimpse
of the realities of life on board.

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And they were amazed by it.

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Not just the weapons, but the
state-of-the-art domestic touches.

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Bathing was a rare event for many
Victorians, but the Warrior
had private bathroom facilities.

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And ladies were astonished by the
first-ever onboard washing machines.

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The Admiralty had pulled out
all the stops to show the Navy
in the best possible light.

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It reassured the public that
Britain still ruled the waves.

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Because Warrior had been
built in response
to a terrifying new reality.

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For the first time
in over 100 years,
another nation had stolen a march

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on Britain's technological lead.

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The surprising thing
about the idea for this kind of ship

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is that it didn't come
from Britain at all,
but from her oldest enemy, France.

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It was the French who had
launched the world's first ironclad
battleship in 1859,

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called La Gloire.

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Now, this was a wake up call
to everyone at the Admiralty,

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a reminder that the French threat
was still alive and well.

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La Gloire had been a
crushing blow to national pride.

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Prince Albert had fumed,
"The war preparations
of the French are immense.

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"Ours are despicable.

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"What have we got
to meet this new engine of war?"

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The answer was Warrior,

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1.5 times bigger,
and twice as powerful as La Gloire.

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No ship in the world could
compete with the Warrior.

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Britain had yet again established
its naval supremacy,

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but the shipbuilding
revolution did not stop here.

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Instead, it accelerated.

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Britain and France both desperately
strove to outdo each other and
produce new and more powerful ships.

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A new term was coined to describe
this intense rivalry - an arms race.

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And the pace was incredibly fast.

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Ships were outdated
as soon as they were launched.

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Ten years after the Warrior,
the most powerful ship on earth,
was commissioned, it was obsolete.

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The building of Warrior
marked the start of a battle
between Britain and her rivals

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that would be decided not by combat,
but through a never-ending
game of technological one-upmanship.

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And over the next 20 years,
it was Britain's navy which appeared
to be winning the arms race.

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The question was, could
the men inside the navy keep up?

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In October 1881, the Navy's latest
ship arrived in Malta,

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home to the Mediterranean fleet,
the largest and most
important fleet in the Navy.

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In command, her newly
appointed captain, Jacky Fisher.

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When Fisher entered this harbour, he
must have thought that he'd arrived.

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00:16:38,640 --> 00:16:41,360
He'd been given his most
prestigious posting yet,

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command of HMS Inflexible,
the most advanced, powerful
battleship in the Royal Navy.

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He would have known that
all the eyes in the fleet
were on him and his new ship.

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Jacky Fisher was enthralled by
the latest inventions of his age.

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He'd made a name for himself
pioneering a new type of weapon,
the torpedo.

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For him, the Inflexible was
a wonder, with the thickest armour,
the biggest guns,

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the largest of everything.

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Beyond any ship in the world.

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Above all else, she was modern.

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As well as two colossal steam
engines to drive the propellers,

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there were 39 smaller engines
to power electric lighting,
ventilation,

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steering gear and hydraulic pumps.

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00:17:32,800 --> 00:17:39,320
Captain Fisher immediately set
to work, making Inflexible ready
for the Admiral's inspection.

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00:17:42,040 --> 00:17:46,480
Fisher did everything he could
to get the Inflexible up to
a full state of battle readiness,

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but despite all his hard work he
didn't receive any official credit,

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and the reason
for that was very simple.

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Fisher and his men
were no good at sailing.

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Well, they were good sailors, but
they just couldn't use the sails.

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Incredibly, Inflexible, which was
state of the art in every other way,

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had masts, rigging and
hundreds of feet of canvas sails.

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Although traditional
sailing skills were now irrelevant
to modern warfare,

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the top brass at the Admiralty
still believed that
sailors were nothing without sails.

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00:18:29,400 --> 00:18:32,080
The old guard
clung to their traditions.

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00:18:32,080 --> 00:18:38,960
They regarded the use of the
engine as unseaman-like, and
there could be no greater insult.

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00:18:38,960 --> 00:18:43,720
But Fisher said that sails had,
"As much effect upon the Inflexible

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"in a gale of wind, as a fly
would have on a hippopotamus."

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He was alienated by what he
called the "bow and arrow party"
in the Admiralty.

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He saw that future battles would be
decided by the speed of engines
and the power of guns.

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But the modern machines
Fisher celebrated were despised.

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00:19:12,200 --> 00:19:15,960
Those who operated them, the
engineers and stokers with their

215
00:19:15,960 --> 00:19:20,960
dirty uniforms and technical
know-how,
were treated as interlopers.

216
00:19:20,960 --> 00:19:25,120
Even when masts and sails
were gradually phased out,

217
00:19:25,120 --> 00:19:29,600
sail drill was replaced by
an obsession for cleanliness.

218
00:19:29,600 --> 00:19:33,240
There were even reports of
ammunition being dumped overboard

219
00:19:33,240 --> 00:19:35,360
to avoid the mess
caused by gun practice.

220
00:19:35,360 --> 00:19:38,680
Battleships were becoming
showpieces, not weapons of war.

221
00:19:38,680 --> 00:19:41,560
Appearance
was more important than function.

222
00:19:41,560 --> 00:19:47,320
The old guard were failing get to
grips with the new technologies that
were revolutionising war at sea.

223
00:19:47,320 --> 00:19:51,000
There was an expression around at
the time to describe this attitude.

224
00:19:51,000 --> 00:19:54,280
It said that when the ships
were wood, the men were iron.

225
00:19:54,280 --> 00:19:58,360
Now that the ships were iron,
the men were wood.

226
00:19:58,360 --> 00:20:02,560
Fisher was convinced that in
the hands of the traditionalists,

227
00:20:02,560 --> 00:20:06,080
the Navy was lagging dangerously
behind in the arms race.

228
00:20:08,920 --> 00:20:13,800
When he returned to London in 1884,
he fought back.

229
00:20:17,600 --> 00:20:20,280
His tactics would be
instantly recognisable today.

230
00:20:22,160 --> 00:20:27,120
He leaked sensational stories
of arms shortages to the press.

231
00:20:29,960 --> 00:20:34,960
He found an ally in WT Stead,
editor of the Pall Mall Gazette,

232
00:20:34,960 --> 00:20:38,560
and pioneer of a
new kind of shock journalism.

233
00:20:38,560 --> 00:20:44,680
Dramatic exposes designed
to whip his readers up
into storm of indignation.

234
00:20:48,200 --> 00:20:51,800
Ah, here we go. Front page.
A headline that will
get everybody reading.

235
00:20:51,800 --> 00:20:56,440
"The Truth About The Navy,
by One who Knows the Facts.

236
00:20:56,440 --> 00:21:00,560
"Britain is short of everything from
battleships to torpedo boats,

237
00:21:00,560 --> 00:21:03,160
"from not enough
trained men able to fight,

238
00:21:03,160 --> 00:21:05,280
"and the guns aren't good enough.

239
00:21:05,280 --> 00:21:10,480
"Our guns actually fitted are
inferior both in weight and in power
to those of France and Italy.

240
00:21:12,040 --> 00:21:13,760
"And the conclusion is very simple.

241
00:21:13,760 --> 00:21:20,680
"I have shown that on almost all
important points the truth about the
Navy is that our naval supremacy

242
00:21:20,680 --> 00:21:22,960
"has almost ceased to exist."

243
00:21:25,040 --> 00:21:28,200
But to the Victorians, this would
have been absolutely shocking.

244
00:21:28,200 --> 00:21:32,680
They were raised on the idea of
British maritime invincibility.

245
00:21:34,440 --> 00:21:40,960
Fisher's propaganda played
on the nation's fears and
had exactly the impact he wanted.

246
00:21:40,960 --> 00:21:46,840
The suggestion that Nelson's
heritage had been squandered
was a horrifying concept,

247
00:21:46,840 --> 00:21:49,800
one that was picked up
by the national newspapers.

248
00:21:49,800 --> 00:21:52,720
The public went up in arms.

249
00:21:52,720 --> 00:21:55,360
The Daily Telegraph called it,

250
00:21:55,360 --> 00:22:00,680
"A cry of patriotic anxiety to which
no minister can close his ears."

251
00:22:00,680 --> 00:22:04,520
The Pall Mall Gazette articles
prompted a new sense
of fear and insecurity

252
00:22:04,520 --> 00:22:10,840
and the British people reacted
by seizing on to a new, more
aggressive form of nationalism.

253
00:22:10,840 --> 00:22:13,680
As one popular music hall song put
it at the time,

254
00:22:13,680 --> 00:22:18,640
"We don't want to fight,
but by jingo, if we do, we've got
the ships, we've got the men,

255
00:22:18,640 --> 00:22:20,560
"and we've got the money too."

256
00:22:20,560 --> 00:22:27,600
Jingoism was born, a response to
the British anxiety about losing
their dominant world position.

257
00:22:27,600 --> 00:22:32,720
And what was the symbolism of this
new mood? Well, the navy, of course.

258
00:22:32,720 --> 00:22:37,680
The navy was used to
advertise everything
from mustard to chocolate.

259
00:22:37,680 --> 00:22:41,000
Sailors were emblazoned across
cigarette packets

260
00:22:41,000 --> 00:22:43,880
and "ironclad"
became the brand name of choice

261
00:22:43,880 --> 00:22:45,600
for anything British made.

262
00:22:48,920 --> 00:22:52,120
Eventually, the Government
crumbled under public pressure.

263
00:22:52,120 --> 00:22:57,360
In 1889, they invested an
astonishing £21 million in the navy.

264
00:22:57,360 --> 00:22:59,720
Enough to make it more
than twice the size

265
00:22:59,720 --> 00:23:04,440
of her two greatest rivals,
France and Russia.

266
00:23:06,280 --> 00:23:09,120
This was such an important victory
for public opinion

267
00:23:09,120 --> 00:23:11,960
in what was fast becoming a modern
democratic society,

268
00:23:11,960 --> 00:23:15,720
a society with mass
circulation newspapers and journals,

269
00:23:15,720 --> 00:23:19,480
their column inches filled by
talk of the Navy,

270
00:23:19,480 --> 00:23:22,760
its commanders,
its weapons and its men.

271
00:23:28,120 --> 00:23:33,320
The Navy may have secured more
money for its fleet but it had
yet to deal with another problem.

272
00:23:33,320 --> 00:23:39,360
Since Trafalgar,
its men had had little experience
of full scale conflict.

273
00:23:41,560 --> 00:23:47,200
The skills that had made Nelson's
navy great were slowly being lost.

274
00:23:49,920 --> 00:23:54,960
Henry Capper joined a
training ship in 1869, aged 14.

275
00:23:54,960 --> 00:23:59,080
He started on the very bottom rung
of the ladder, as a rating.

276
00:24:00,880 --> 00:24:04,840
A uniform was introduced
for the first time
to the lower ranks in 1857,

277
00:24:04,840 --> 00:24:08,240
and it hasn't changed much since.

278
00:24:08,240 --> 00:24:14,520
The square collar was copied from
the sailors' suits worn aboard the
Royal Yacht, and it's still in use.

279
00:24:17,360 --> 00:24:20,560
Despite their smart appearance,
Capper thought these uniforms

280
00:24:20,560 --> 00:24:23,760
reinforced what he described
as a caste system.

281
00:24:23,760 --> 00:24:27,680
He said that nothing could more
clearly indicate the wide gulf

282
00:24:27,680 --> 00:24:30,680
that existed between himself
and the officers,

283
00:24:30,680 --> 00:24:36,120
and Capper noticed this gulf
because his lifetime ambition
was to become an officer.

284
00:24:36,120 --> 00:24:40,040
Yeah, go on, not far to go now.
Come on. Take over him.

285
00:24:40,040 --> 00:24:42,560
We do not want to lose this, guys.

286
00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:44,360
Stretch it, you can reach that now.

287
00:24:44,360 --> 00:24:46,120
Off you get. Next one just go.

288
00:24:48,120 --> 00:24:51,200
Good effort, Tayloridge.
Good, Cooke, well done.

289
00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:55,400
Today, ratings can advance
through the service
based on individual merit.

290
00:24:55,400 --> 00:24:57,360
Come on, let's go!

291
00:24:57,360 --> 00:24:58,680
Drive it on, come on...

292
00:24:58,680 --> 00:25:04,280
In Capper's time, the only way men
could prove themselves was
through acts of gallantry in battle.

293
00:25:06,160 --> 00:25:12,480
With no major wars to fight,
these opportunities were so rare,
that in 80 years,

294
00:25:12,480 --> 00:25:17,200
only two men from the lower ranks
made it into the officer class.

295
00:25:22,600 --> 00:25:27,320
Capper wrote this account of his
life in the navy, and he describes
all the snubs and humiliations

296
00:25:27,320 --> 00:25:31,240
that he was forced to endure during
his attempts to become an officer.

297
00:25:31,240 --> 00:25:34,960
Summed up by this passage here,
when a mother
of a lieutenant says to him,

298
00:25:34,960 --> 00:25:37,000
"You've chosen the wrong service.

299
00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:41,000
"The Navy belongs to us,
and if you were to win
the commissions you ask for,

300
00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:45,080
"it would be at the expense
of our sons and nephews
whose birthright it is."

301
00:25:45,080 --> 00:25:47,560
The message here is clear.

302
00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:51,440
If you began life as a rating, you
had no chance of reaching the top.

303
00:25:55,120 --> 00:25:59,960
Capper called the lack of incentive
"soul deadening".

304
00:25:59,960 --> 00:26:05,000
The navy was beginning to stagnate,
and it was losing what had always
been one of its greatest strengths,

305
00:26:05,000 --> 00:26:08,040
a rough and ready meritocracy
where anyone could get ahead.

306
00:26:09,640 --> 00:26:14,200
In wartime it had been easy
for talented men to shine.

307
00:26:14,200 --> 00:26:17,720
In peace, the entrenched hierarchy
was everything.

308
00:26:17,720 --> 00:26:22,280
The class system and rulebook were
smothering any spark of initiative.

309
00:26:26,880 --> 00:26:31,800
The flaws of this mindset
were about to be revealed,
with tragic consequences.

310
00:26:35,240 --> 00:26:40,120
Admiral Sir George Tryon
was one of the most famous
commanders of his era.

311
00:26:40,120 --> 00:26:45,880
Charismatic, larger than life,
the embodiment of an old seadog.

312
00:26:48,040 --> 00:26:54,720
In 1893, he held that most prized
role in the Navy, Commander
of the Mediterranean Fleet.

313
00:26:57,040 --> 00:27:01,840
Tryon liked to test his crews
by ordering them to carry
out intricate manoeuvres.

314
00:27:05,360 --> 00:27:07,440
MAN: Can't see anything out
at 11 miles.

315
00:27:07,440 --> 00:27:08,760
Watch reported at six.

316
00:27:11,200 --> 00:27:15,000
On one evening in June, he was
leading 11 of his finest warships

317
00:27:15,000 --> 00:27:17,840
off the coast of Tripoli
in southern Lebanon.

318
00:27:23,760 --> 00:27:27,880
In order to get his fleet
into a position where they could
anchor for the evening,

319
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:31,400
Tryon decided to carry out a
particularly complicated manoeuvre,

320
00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:33,360
but
he didn't tell anyone what it was.

321
00:27:33,360 --> 00:27:37,640
He just sent out a series of flag
signals from the deck of his ship.

322
00:27:39,480 --> 00:27:41,920
First, Tryon, aboard HMS Victoria,

323
00:27:41,920 --> 00:27:46,560
instructed his fleet
to form two columns
steaming parallel to each other.

324
00:27:49,040 --> 00:27:51,440
Then he ordered the two columns
to turn inwards

325
00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:54,360
so that they would end up
heading in the opposite direction.

326
00:28:01,120 --> 00:28:05,680
The problem was that big ships
like this need a huge
amount of space to turn.

327
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:10,280
Tryon's two lines of ships
needed to be about
a kilometre and a half apart

328
00:28:10,280 --> 00:28:14,320
in order to carry out the
manoeuvre safely, but they weren't.

329
00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:19,040
Admiral Markham,
who was leading the second column,
knew this, and he hesitated,

330
00:28:19,040 --> 00:28:22,520
but Tryon sent him another order,
saying, "What are you waiting for?"

331
00:28:22,520 --> 00:28:26,520
Markham decided to follow his orders
and turned his ship.

332
00:28:30,880 --> 00:28:34,400
Markham forged forward
towards Tryon's flagship.

333
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:45,920
At the last minute,
both desperately tried to reverse
but it was too late.

334
00:28:48,920 --> 00:28:54,040
With sickening inevitability, the
two ships ploughed into each other.

335
00:28:55,760 --> 00:28:59,920
Markham's battering ram
pierced the side of Tryon's ship.

336
00:29:03,120 --> 00:29:06,760
Within just a few minutes,
the foredeck was submerged.

337
00:29:06,760 --> 00:29:11,160
Even though their ship
was sinking under them,
many of the 600 men on board

338
00:29:11,160 --> 00:29:14,440
fell in to their neat ranks,
waiting for orders.

339
00:29:14,440 --> 00:29:18,160
Only when they were commanded to
do so, did they jump overboard.

340
00:29:21,240 --> 00:29:26,320
From a nearby ship, one eye witness
reported what happened next.

341
00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:33,800
"As HMS Victoria went, the boats and
weights on her port side fell over
to leeward with a terrible crash.

342
00:29:33,800 --> 00:29:41,120
"The ship then turned keel up,
and something after a minute after
this, she sank out of sight."

343
00:29:42,680 --> 00:29:47,880
Half the crew,
358 men, were drowned.

344
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:53,120
Some were trapped on board, some
dragged under, others couldn't swim.

345
00:29:54,680 --> 00:29:56,680
Tryon went down with his ship.

346
00:29:56,680 --> 00:30:00,800
His last reported words were,
"It was all my fault."

347
00:30:17,720 --> 00:30:22,840
The news that HMS Victoria
had been sunk by
another ship in Her Majesty's Navy

348
00:30:22,840 --> 00:30:27,440
was received with shock
and amazement.

349
00:30:27,440 --> 00:30:30,760
It was the worst naval
disaster in decades.

350
00:30:33,600 --> 00:30:38,800
With the death of Tryon,
Britain had lost a national hero.

351
00:30:38,800 --> 00:30:44,680
As one newspaper put it, "the angel
of sorrow hovered over the land."

352
00:30:44,680 --> 00:30:48,960
Key officers involved
in the accident
were to be court-martialled.

353
00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:04,440
To get away from the media
spotlight, the trial
was held out here in Malta.

354
00:31:04,440 --> 00:31:08,920
It was an old three-deck wooden
warship called HMS Hibernia which

355
00:31:08,920 --> 00:31:11,840
was moored up just there, on
the other side of Valetta Harbour.

356
00:31:13,360 --> 00:31:15,760
The question at the heart
of the enquiry

357
00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:19,400
was whether Tryon was to blame
for issuing a dangerous command,

358
00:31:19,400 --> 00:31:24,760
or whether it was Markham's fault
for blindly obeying an order
that he knew could lead to disaster.

359
00:31:24,760 --> 00:31:29,600
And that was an issue that
split not just the Royal Navy
but public opinion back in Britain.

360
00:31:32,560 --> 00:31:37,320
On the third day of the
court-martial, Markham
appeared in the witness stand.

361
00:31:38,920 --> 00:31:40,520
Markham tried to defend himself.

362
00:31:40,520 --> 00:31:44,400
He claimed that he'd been convinced
that Tryon would have something else

363
00:31:44,400 --> 00:31:47,280
up his sleeve and order a
further change of course.

364
00:31:47,280 --> 00:31:50,280
But for many people
this was an inadequate excuse.

365
00:31:54,600 --> 00:32:00,920
Markham was a rear admiral with
40 years of experience in the navy.

366
00:32:00,920 --> 00:32:03,760
He was second in command of
the Mediterranean fleet,

367
00:32:03,760 --> 00:32:08,280
responsible for some of
Britain's finest ships
and thousands of her men.

368
00:32:09,880 --> 00:32:15,480
Surely, he should have realised
how dangerous Tryon's signal
had been and disobeyed the order?

369
00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:24,280
The Victorian sailors had
been indoctrinated by a culture

370
00:32:24,280 --> 00:32:27,080
that placed enormous emphasis
on discipline.

371
00:32:27,080 --> 00:32:28,760
Orders must be obeyed.

372
00:32:28,760 --> 00:32:31,760
For many, Markham had
simply been doing his duty.

373
00:32:33,760 --> 00:32:40,400
Commenting on the trial, the Queen
herself wrote in her private journal
that to say that inferiors should

374
00:32:40,400 --> 00:32:45,600
disobey in the event of anything
very dangerous taking place
would never do.

375
00:32:49,240 --> 00:32:53,760
After ten days,
the verdict was delivered.

376
00:32:53,760 --> 00:32:59,120
This is a copy of the
conclusion of the trial,
and it says that the court finds,

377
00:32:59,120 --> 00:33:03,240
with the deepest sorry and regret,
that the collision
was due to an order

378
00:33:03,240 --> 00:33:09,080
given by Sir George Tryon, clearly
placing the blame for the loss
of the Victoria on his shoulders.

379
00:33:09,080 --> 00:33:13,720
Now, about Markham it says that
it would be fatal
to the best interests of the service

380
00:33:13,720 --> 00:33:17,920
to say he was to blame
for carrying out the directions
of the Commander in Chief,

381
00:33:17,920 --> 00:33:19,960
letting him off the hook.

382
00:33:24,280 --> 00:33:27,760
The sinking of the Victoria could
have been an opportunity to fix

383
00:33:27,760 --> 00:33:30,720
some of the problems
that afflicted the Victorian navy,

384
00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:36,200
but this verdict showed that
obedience was valued
higher than thinking for yourself.

385
00:33:36,200 --> 00:33:41,160
From now on, it was even more
important to do what you were told
than to do what was right.

386
00:33:41,160 --> 00:33:46,120
Nothing could have been more
different to the career of the
man who naval officers regarded

387
00:33:46,120 --> 00:33:50,240
as an icon, Horatio Nelson,
whose name they remembered

388
00:33:50,240 --> 00:33:54,520
but whose qualities for risk taking
and initiative they had forgotten.

389
00:33:57,000 --> 00:34:03,840
Nowhere was this blind worship of
Nelson more apparent than at an
important new barracks back at home.

390
00:34:14,120 --> 00:34:17,520
They were built in Portsmouth
in 1903.

391
00:34:29,120 --> 00:34:32,360
This is the mess, the officers'
mess, the canteen, if you like,

392
00:34:32,360 --> 00:34:36,280
where all the officers
that lived and worked in Portsmouth
would have eaten,

393
00:34:36,280 --> 00:34:42,760
and sitting here amongst your
brother officers, there was no doubt
as to what was expected of you.

394
00:34:50,640 --> 00:34:52,880
It certainly does not
feel like a canteen.

395
00:34:52,880 --> 00:34:56,800
It feels like a religious space, a
shrine to Britain's naval greatness.

396
00:34:56,800 --> 00:34:59,880
Take the ceiling, for
example, these massive oak beams.

397
00:34:59,880 --> 00:35:06,320
That is actually the shape of
HMS Victory's hull, the most famous
battleship in British history.

398
00:35:10,560 --> 00:35:14,720
And then on the walls, these
incredible murals on an epic scale,

399
00:35:14,720 --> 00:35:19,880
depicting all the greatest moments
in British maritime history.

400
00:35:19,880 --> 00:35:22,200
Of course, down here,
we have Nelson,

401
00:35:22,200 --> 00:35:24,400
the greatest admiral of them all.

402
00:35:26,600 --> 00:35:30,520
This room tells
you so much about the Royal Navy

403
00:35:30,520 --> 00:35:36,040
at the start of the 20th century,
the way its officers were surrounded
by images of a glorious past.

404
00:35:36,040 --> 00:35:41,080
But the problem was, these
victories were 100 years old,
and the world had moved on.

405
00:35:41,080 --> 00:35:47,120
Britain was no longer the
only modern industrial power.

406
00:35:47,120 --> 00:35:54,080
The technological lead that the
country had enjoyed for so much of
the 19th century had been lost.

407
00:35:54,080 --> 00:36:00,320
As the industrial revolution spread,
a new era of aggressive
national rivalry dawned.

408
00:36:02,120 --> 00:36:08,880
As a boy, Kaiser Wilhelm II
of Germany had dreamt
of one day building a fleet

409
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:11,920
to match that of his grandmother,
Queen Victoria.

410
00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:20,880
By the turn of the century,
Germany had a fleet
of 38 battleships planned.

411
00:36:26,160 --> 00:36:30,200
To the British,
this could mean only one thing.

412
00:36:30,200 --> 00:36:34,400
As the First Lord of the Admiralty
wrote in 1902,

413
00:36:34,400 --> 00:36:39,120
"the new German navy
is being built up for war with us."

414
00:36:41,200 --> 00:36:45,600
A radical overhaul of the navy
was now an urgent matter
of national security,

415
00:36:45,600 --> 00:36:48,280
and the man the Admiralty
turned to in this crisis

416
00:36:48,280 --> 00:36:51,360
was acting as Commander in Chief
down here in Portsmouth.

417
00:36:51,360 --> 00:36:55,240
The man of the moment
was Admiral Jacky Fisher.

418
00:36:59,520 --> 00:37:03,760
Fisher had come a long way
since his days on the Inflexible.

419
00:37:03,760 --> 00:37:07,000
He'd tirelessly worked his way up
to the rank of admiral, and in 1904

420
00:37:07,000 --> 00:37:11,120
he landed the top job in the navy,
First Sea Lord.

421
00:37:15,760 --> 00:37:20,600
Fisher was well aware of the
magnitude of the task that he faced,
and he spent the months before

422
00:37:20,600 --> 00:37:27,160
taking up office down in Portsmouth
writing this, a manifesto of
everything he hoped to achieve.

423
00:37:27,160 --> 00:37:30,960
He had it bound up and called
Naval Necessities,
and this is a copy here.

424
00:37:32,560 --> 00:37:37,400
It's a wonderful document, because
it's a direct transcription
of Fisher's actual handwriting,

425
00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:40,960
and they've replicated all the
underlinings, the capitalisations,

426
00:37:40,960 --> 00:37:45,960
the italics, and particularly the
exclamation marks, and the
entire text is littered with them.

427
00:37:45,960 --> 00:37:49,760
You really get a sense of
Fisher the man, his enthusiasm,

428
00:37:49,760 --> 00:37:54,160
his eccentricity, and above all his
energy and his passion for the navy.

429
00:37:54,160 --> 00:38:00,440
There's one essential passage here
that I think really gets
the heart of Fisher's world view.

430
00:38:00,440 --> 00:38:04,800
He writes, "The British Empire
floats on the British navy,

431
00:38:04,800 --> 00:38:11,000
"so we must have no doubt whatever
about its fighting supremacy
and its instant readiness for war."

432
00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:14,520
He wants to call back
all of Britain's obsolete ships from

433
00:38:14,520 --> 00:38:17,760
every corner of the Empire
and sell them for scrap.

434
00:38:17,760 --> 00:38:23,200
And then there's a raft of other
measures like defending naval ports,
and a complete shake up in the

435
00:38:23,200 --> 00:38:25,360
way that ships signal
to each other at sea.

436
00:38:26,280 --> 00:38:29,080
Fisher called this "The Scheme."

437
00:38:29,080 --> 00:38:35,240
This was nothing less than a root
and branch reform of the navy,
and he writes here,

438
00:38:35,240 --> 00:38:41,040
"We must have the Scheme, the whole
Scheme, and nothing but the Scheme."

439
00:38:50,240 --> 00:38:53,440
It's easy to see why
some people thought that Fisher
was a bit of a warmonger.

440
00:38:53,440 --> 00:38:59,240
I mean, one of his favourite
expressions was, "Hit first,
hit hard, and keep hitting."

441
00:39:01,400 --> 00:39:05,400
But actually he saw himself
as a man of peace.

442
00:39:05,400 --> 00:39:09,160
His guiding principal
is carved here above the door.

443
00:39:09,160 --> 00:39:13,360
"Si vis pacem, para bellum."

444
00:39:13,360 --> 00:39:17,400
That means, "If you want peace,
prepare for war."

445
00:39:17,400 --> 00:39:21,840
His idea was to build the navy up
into such an unassailable force

446
00:39:21,840 --> 00:39:24,360
that no-one would dare
to take it on.

447
00:39:24,360 --> 00:39:27,200
It was peace through deterrence.

448
00:39:32,240 --> 00:39:35,440
Fisher also had
a plan to build a ship.

449
00:39:35,440 --> 00:39:39,320
It would be the largest ever
produced in
one of Britain's dockyards.

450
00:39:48,680 --> 00:39:52,560
It would be the centrepiece
of what he liked to call
"the fleet that Jack built".

451
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:58,880
And he warned people
to get ready for a shock.

452
00:40:05,760 --> 00:40:08,760
These plans are very beautiful.
I love all the different

453
00:40:08,760 --> 00:40:12,360
colours they've used to shade in the
different compartments and boats.

454
00:40:12,360 --> 00:40:16,880
The Admiralty used the
scale of a quarter inch
to one foot for all its plans, and

455
00:40:16,880 --> 00:40:20,920
with brilliant consistency
they never changed this,
so as the ships got bigger

456
00:40:20,920 --> 00:40:24,240
the plans got bigger as well.
This one's absolutely gigantic.

457
00:40:24,240 --> 00:40:27,320
This wonderful profile here allows
us to see what was so

458
00:40:27,320 --> 00:40:30,480
revolutionary about the ship,
and that was its fire power.

459
00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:34,000
It was appropriate that the British,
who had done so much to develop

460
00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:38,400
the use of guns on ships, should now
bring it up to this great crescendo.

461
00:40:38,400 --> 00:40:41,480
No other ship in the world
had more than four 12-inch guns.

462
00:40:41,480 --> 00:40:47,600
This one mounted ten of them
in five turrets, here.

463
00:40:47,600 --> 00:40:51,880
When this ship fired its broadside,
it sent over three tonnes of steel

464
00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:54,960
and high explosives
towards the enemy.

465
00:40:54,960 --> 00:41:00,320
These thick black lines along
the outside of the hull
are actually armour plates.

466
00:41:00,320 --> 00:41:05,280
This ship had 5,000 tonnes
of armour, 800 more than
any other ship in the world.

467
00:41:05,280 --> 00:41:11,160
And the hull was divided up
into all these compartments here,
which were watertight.

468
00:41:11,160 --> 00:41:14,560
In fact, they're even called
watertight compartments here.

469
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:17,520
This ship really
was intended to be unsinkable.

470
00:41:17,520 --> 00:41:23,600
It's the culmination of
around a century of unprecedented
innovation in ship design.

471
00:41:25,320 --> 00:41:29,240
Fisher chose the name of
this new ship with great care.

472
00:41:29,240 --> 00:41:33,920
He wanted something that
would invoke the glorious tradition
of the Royal Navy,

473
00:41:33,920 --> 00:41:35,720
and he decided on Dreadnought.

474
00:41:38,400 --> 00:41:43,280
Elizabeth I had named one of her
ships Dreadnought, and had fought
against the Spanish Armada.

475
00:41:43,280 --> 00:41:46,320
There had been a Dreadnought
with Nelson at Trafalgar.

476
00:41:46,320 --> 00:41:48,640
Now there was a new Dreadnought.

477
00:41:51,240 --> 00:41:54,040
It was a name with history.

478
00:41:54,040 --> 00:41:59,520
Construction began
on 2nd October 1905.

479
00:41:59,520 --> 00:42:04,720
Under top secret conditions,
3,000 men worked 11 hours a day,

480
00:42:04,720 --> 00:42:08,480
six days a week,
in the Portsmouth royal dockyard.

481
00:42:08,480 --> 00:42:14,240
With record-breaking speed,
the first Dreadnought was completed
just a year and a day later.

482
00:42:17,680 --> 00:42:22,600
Dreadnought was designed
to give Britain an unassailable
lead over her enemies.

483
00:42:24,320 --> 00:42:29,800
But in a world where other
nations now had the shipbuilding
capacity to match Britain,

484
00:42:29,800 --> 00:42:35,840
one radical new ship
was no longer enough to guarantee
the navy's advantage for long.

485
00:42:37,400 --> 00:42:43,040
The problem was the Dreadnought was
so powerful and it made every other
battleship in the world obsolete.

486
00:42:43,040 --> 00:42:48,680
Britain had effectively wiped out
its own naval advantage by
creating a new level playing field.

487
00:42:48,680 --> 00:42:54,000
Now all a rival had to do to
overtake Britain was start
building its own Dreadnoughts.

488
00:42:54,000 --> 00:42:58,760
One nation seized
on this opportunity - Germany.

489
00:42:58,760 --> 00:43:03,880
The Dreadnought, far from deterring
the enemy, actually ignited a new

490
00:43:03,880 --> 00:43:08,440
arms race, and this time the stakes
would be higher than ever before.

491
00:43:13,000 --> 00:43:16,880
The Germans could build
six Dreadnoughts a year.

492
00:43:16,880 --> 00:43:21,000
Not to be outdone,
Fisher drove a vigorous campaign to

493
00:43:21,000 --> 00:43:26,800
double Britain's construction from
four to eight Dreadnoughts per year.

494
00:43:28,920 --> 00:43:33,520
The Liberal government
under Herbert Asquith
had been determined to reduce

495
00:43:33,520 --> 00:43:37,600
naval expenditure
in favour of social reform.

496
00:43:37,600 --> 00:43:42,400
But in 1909, he caved in to Fisher's
demands for eight Dreadnoughts

497
00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:45,960
because Europe was in the grip of
Dreadnought-building fever.

498
00:43:48,280 --> 00:43:53,400
Austria was planning three of the
mighty battleships. Italy, four.

499
00:43:56,920 --> 00:44:03,000
The threat was seen as so dangerous
that by 1910 a quarter
of all public expenditure

500
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:05,200
was going to the Admiralty.

501
00:44:08,120 --> 00:44:14,920
Fisher finally retired after five
tumultuous years at the very top of
the navy, but he'd won his battle.

502
00:44:14,920 --> 00:44:18,840
As the last of the Dreadnoughts that
he'd planned rolled off the slipway,

503
00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:22,040
it was clear
that Britain had trumped Germany.

504
00:44:22,040 --> 00:44:29,960
By 1914, Britain had 42 Dreadnoughts
built or planned to Germany's 26.

505
00:44:31,920 --> 00:44:36,320
The Germans gave up on their
plans of overtaking Britain.

506
00:44:36,320 --> 00:44:41,200
Fisher's policy of peace through
deterrence seemed to be working.

507
00:44:46,360 --> 00:44:51,960
On 20th June 1914,
a fleet of British Dreadnoughts
headed to Germany.

508
00:44:54,040 --> 00:45:00,480
The Royal Navy had been invited
to attend a sailing regatta
on the north German coast.

509
00:45:00,480 --> 00:45:05,440
The event, called Kiel Week,
is still held today.

510
00:45:05,440 --> 00:45:10,880
Kiel Week is yet another example
of the Kaiser's obsession
with all things British.

511
00:45:10,880 --> 00:45:16,000
Having borrowed the design of ships
and uniforms in the Royal Navy,
he even imported a week-long

512
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:22,000
sailing regatta, modelled on
Cowes Week, the highlight
of the British sailing calendar.

513
00:45:22,000 --> 00:45:29,000
But things here were a bit different
because Kiel was the home of the
Imperial German navy and, unlike

514
00:45:29,000 --> 00:45:34,520
relaxed Cowes,
this event was a bit more formal,
a bit more militaristic.

515
00:45:34,520 --> 00:45:38,520
The arrival of the Royal Navy ships
caused a sensation.

516
00:45:41,480 --> 00:45:44,120
Flotillas of boats sailed out
to greet the fleet.

517
00:45:46,760 --> 00:45:48,360
WHISTLE BLOWS

518
00:45:51,600 --> 00:45:54,920
The German navy laid on a week-long
programme of entertainments,

519
00:45:54,920 --> 00:46:00,120
banquets, dances, garden parties
and football.

520
00:46:01,400 --> 00:46:02,760
Eyes to the right.

521
00:46:04,280 --> 00:46:08,280
One German officer observed
everyone mixing at close quarters.

522
00:46:08,280 --> 00:46:11,840
Now we are 176.

523
00:46:11,840 --> 00:46:14,880
Yes. Cheers. Cheers.

524
00:46:14,880 --> 00:46:16,880
They were very soon good friends.

525
00:46:18,400 --> 00:46:19,760
We enjoyed the Kiel Week.

526
00:46:19,760 --> 00:46:22,760
At all the balls and dinners
the young English officers could

527
00:46:22,760 --> 00:46:30,440
be seen getting on famously with
the German officers and flirting
zealously with the German ladies.

528
00:46:32,800 --> 00:46:35,920
But the British weren't just
here to have a good time.

529
00:46:38,120 --> 00:46:43,040
The night before the fleet
left Britain, the admiral in command
issued a secret memorandum

530
00:46:43,040 --> 00:46:44,320
from his flagship.

531
00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:48,240
He said that all the officers
were to obtain
all the information they can

532
00:46:48,240 --> 00:46:52,880
about the latest German weapons
systems and state of the art
equipment. It's a fascinating list.

533
00:46:52,880 --> 00:46:59,120
He says to particularly look out for
gunnery fittings, torpedo fittings,
signalling and wireless telegraphy.

534
00:46:59,120 --> 00:47:02,040
Clearly, this mission was
about a lot more than diplomacy.

535
00:47:03,760 --> 00:47:08,560
The British, of course, were here
to spy and the Germans knew it.

536
00:47:08,560 --> 00:47:10,280
They had spies of their own.

537
00:47:11,880 --> 00:47:14,600
But it was clearly no
reason to stop the regatta.

538
00:47:14,600 --> 00:47:16,160
WHISTLES SOUNDS

539
00:47:18,720 --> 00:47:22,280
In fact, nothing, it seemed,
could end the fun.

540
00:47:25,480 --> 00:47:29,400
Then, on 28th June 1914, as
the Kaiser was racing his yacht,

541
00:47:29,400 --> 00:47:34,560
The Meteor, just out there,
a messenger approached on a boat,
bearing bad news.

542
00:47:34,560 --> 00:47:40,520
Earlier that day,
the Kaiser's friend and ally, the
Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand,

543
00:47:40,520 --> 00:47:43,200
had been shot and killed
in Sarajevo.

544
00:47:44,240 --> 00:47:48,040
The British ships stayed for
another day of festivities.

545
00:47:49,080 --> 00:47:55,120
When it was time for them to leave,
their hosts issued a signal
wishing them a pleasant journey.

546
00:47:57,200 --> 00:48:03,680
The British replied, "Friends today,
friends tomorrow, friends for ever."

547
00:48:03,680 --> 00:48:05,200
Cheers.

548
00:48:05,200 --> 00:48:07,360
Cheers.

549
00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:12,640
Yet, just six weeks after making
this promise,

550
00:48:12,640 --> 00:48:17,360
the British navy would
be at war with their German hosts.

551
00:48:20,360 --> 00:48:26,080
The fleet that Jack built
was about to be tested in battle
for the first time.

552
00:48:37,040 --> 00:48:42,800
HMS Caroline is a cruiser,
and one of the last ships to
survive form the First World War.

553
00:48:42,800 --> 00:48:48,160
She was built in record time
and launched in September 1914.

554
00:48:48,160 --> 00:48:51,240
Three months later, she
headed to Scapa Flow in Orkney

555
00:48:51,240 --> 00:48:56,160
to join Britain's grand fleet
under the command of John Jellicoe.

556
00:48:56,160 --> 00:48:59,200
He was the man Fisher had chosen
to be, as he put it,

557
00:48:59,200 --> 00:49:03,240
"Admiralissimo when the
battle of Armageddon comes along."

558
00:49:04,840 --> 00:49:11,960
That day finally dawned
on 31st May 1916,
when the German high seas fleet

559
00:49:11,960 --> 00:49:17,640
steamed out of their ports,
hoping to lure one of Jellicoe's
squadrons into battle.

560
00:49:17,640 --> 00:49:22,360
The British intercepted enemy
signals and knew about the trap.

561
00:49:22,360 --> 00:49:28,160
HMS Caroline and the
rest of the fleet left their bases
to meet the Germans.

562
00:49:28,160 --> 00:49:34,640
The two fleets would finally clash
in the North Sea,
near Denmark, just west of Jutland.

563
00:49:36,760 --> 00:49:42,880
When the war began, the British
people expected their beloved navy
to fight and win another Trafalgar.

564
00:49:42,880 --> 00:49:47,000
Even though it had been
100 years before, it was still
the only benchmark they had

565
00:49:47,000 --> 00:49:48,600
for a naval battle of this kind.

566
00:49:48,600 --> 00:49:53,440
The trouble was, since Trafalgar,
war at sea had changed beyond
all recognition.

567
00:49:53,440 --> 00:49:58,240
No-one, not even Jellicoe,
had any experience
of fighting on ships like this.

568
00:50:02,200 --> 00:50:07,440
One German officer recounted seeing
the British fleet for the first
time.

569
00:50:07,440 --> 00:50:15,120
"Suddenly, my periscope revealed
some big ships, black monsters,
six tall broad-beamed giants,

570
00:50:15,120 --> 00:50:22,640
"steaming in two columns,
and even at this great distance
they looked powerful, massive."

571
00:50:22,640 --> 00:50:28,960
But, despite first impressions,
things very quickly began
to go wrong for Jellicoe.

572
00:50:28,960 --> 00:50:35,760
For centuries, admirals have
signalled their orders to their
fleet using these, signal flags.

573
00:50:35,760 --> 00:50:39,920
Now, each have
a separate meaning, both
individually and when used together.

574
00:50:39,920 --> 00:50:44,360
Now, this is fine at the
Battle of Trafalgar when the ships
were just a few metres apart,

575
00:50:44,360 --> 00:50:50,680
but at Jutland, Jellicoe was
commanding over 100 vessels
spread over tens of miles of ocean.

576
00:50:50,680 --> 00:50:55,160
To make matters worse all
the smoke from these funnels would
have obscured the flags

577
00:50:55,160 --> 00:50:58,760
and made it really impossible to
read what the admiral was ordering.

578
00:50:58,760 --> 00:51:01,560
It was an outdated system
in a modern world.

579
00:51:04,000 --> 00:51:09,360
One admiral, Evan Thomas,
couldn't read the signals
of his commanding officer.

580
00:51:09,360 --> 00:51:13,600
Unthinkingly, he led his
squadron off in the wrong direction.

581
00:51:16,640 --> 00:51:19,320
Although he eventually turned
them round,

582
00:51:19,320 --> 00:51:22,960
four of the most powerful ships
in the world were unable to get

583
00:51:22,960 --> 00:51:26,760
close enough to the action for
the opening critical encounter.

584
00:51:32,600 --> 00:51:36,760
The problems could have been solved
by a brand new invention.

585
00:51:37,800 --> 00:51:41,400
Radio sets had recently been
installed on the ships and they

586
00:51:41,400 --> 00:51:45,160
should have helped with
communication but, like many forms
of new technology,

587
00:51:45,160 --> 00:51:50,400
they also caused a lot of confusion,
and some commanders
simply didn't bother using them.

588
00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:54,200
Battle commenced at 3.20.

589
00:51:54,200 --> 00:51:58,200
Throughout,
Jellicoe was left in the dark.

590
00:51:58,200 --> 00:52:03,160
He later said, "the whole
situation was difficult to grasp,
and we could hardly

591
00:52:03,160 --> 00:52:09,200
"see anything except
flashes of guns, shells falling
and ships blowing up."

592
00:52:15,200 --> 00:52:20,240
At 4 o'clock, the first British
battle cruiser was destroyed.

593
00:52:20,240 --> 00:52:24,640
20 minutes later, Queen Mary
exploded with tremendous force,

594
00:52:24,640 --> 00:52:27,960
debris soaring
hundreds of feet into the air.

595
00:52:27,960 --> 00:52:31,880
1,200 men were killed instantly.

596
00:52:41,600 --> 00:52:45,000
But this wasn't caused by
some German super-weapon.

597
00:52:45,000 --> 00:52:48,280
This was an avoidable error.

598
00:52:48,280 --> 00:52:55,760
Protective doors had been installed
to prevent fire spreading from
one area of the ship to another.

599
00:52:55,760 --> 00:53:00,680
But to decrease the time it
took for ammunition to be passed up
from the magazines to the guns,

600
00:53:00,680 --> 00:53:03,200
British sailors kept the doors open.

601
00:53:04,800 --> 00:53:09,440
What happened was that
German shells would hit the upper
deck, cause an explosion.

602
00:53:09,440 --> 00:53:15,120
It would send a white sheet of flame
tearing through the middle
of the ship until it ignited

603
00:53:15,120 --> 00:53:17,000
the magazine down here.

604
00:53:17,000 --> 00:53:21,840
Three British battleships
in particular
were blown apart in this way.

605
00:53:21,840 --> 00:53:26,040
One ship had only two
survivors and 1,000 men killed.

606
00:53:30,640 --> 00:53:34,840
For part of the battle,
HMS Caroline was in the thick of it.

607
00:53:34,840 --> 00:53:39,240
As the fighting raged, the
helmsman would have been sent below.

608
00:53:45,080 --> 00:53:47,120
Down here,
deep below the water line,

609
00:53:47,120 --> 00:53:52,880
where eight of the strongest men on
board would have steered the ship,
that hatch would have been locked.

610
00:53:52,880 --> 00:53:56,960
Their only connection with
the outside world
was this mechanism here,

611
00:53:56,960 --> 00:54:01,360
which transmitted the orders
of the officers in command
of the ship high up on the bridge,

612
00:54:01,360 --> 00:54:05,160
telling these men
which course to steer.

613
00:54:05,160 --> 00:54:09,240
If the ship was hit, they had
absolutely no chance of escape.

614
00:54:09,240 --> 00:54:13,440
These low lights
would have just died,
it would have been pitch black.

615
00:54:13,440 --> 00:54:18,680
Water would have started
to come in through these
joins in the steel plates.

616
00:54:18,680 --> 00:54:22,760
When you come down here, you realise
that warfare was just as terrifying,

617
00:54:22,760 --> 00:54:28,000
just as deadly, out here at sea,
as it was in the trenches
on the Western Front.

618
00:54:31,560 --> 00:54:35,120
By dawn the next day,
the British had lost three

619
00:54:35,120 --> 00:54:42,240
fast, powerful battle cruisers
for only one of Germany's, and the
British had lost twice as many men.

620
00:54:42,240 --> 00:54:46,680
Many British shells had broken up
rather than penetrate German armour,

621
00:54:46,680 --> 00:54:49,000
and British use of
intelligence had been woeful.

622
00:54:50,560 --> 00:54:55,240
When Jacky Fisher
heard reports of the battle,
he said, "They failed me.

623
00:54:55,240 --> 00:55:00,560
"I've spent 30 years of my
life preparing for this day,
and they failed me."

624
00:55:03,800 --> 00:55:09,000
In the end,
Jutland would be considered
a British strategic victory.

625
00:55:09,000 --> 00:55:13,520
The sheer size of Jellicoe's fleet
stopped the Germans from ever

626
00:55:13,520 --> 00:55:17,400
attempting to take on the British
in the same way again.

627
00:55:17,400 --> 00:55:22,080
But the Germans had exposed
weaknesses in that British fleet.

628
00:55:22,080 --> 00:55:27,280
Jutland
had not been the knockout blow
the British public had hoped for.

629
00:55:33,840 --> 00:55:39,760
After Jutland, the Kaiser
exultantly declared,
"The spell of Trafalgar is broken."

630
00:55:39,760 --> 00:55:41,560
And, in a way, he had a point.

631
00:55:41,560 --> 00:55:44,920
The Navy had failed to land the
knockout blow that they'd achieved

632
00:55:44,920 --> 00:55:49,880
100 years before,
but he was also right
unintentionally in another way.

633
00:55:49,880 --> 00:55:52,160
There would be no more Trafalgars.

634
00:55:52,160 --> 00:55:56,560
Jutland was the last battle decided
by big-gunned warships alone.

635
00:55:56,560 --> 00:56:01,520
Below the waves and in the skies
above, new weapons would now decide

636
00:56:01,520 --> 00:56:05,120
the outcome of war at sea,
and help defeat Germany.

637
00:56:05,120 --> 00:56:11,840
But the dominance of battleships,
so long a symbol of national might,
was over.

638
00:56:11,840 --> 00:56:16,440
Britain emerged from the war
victorious but exhausted and broke,

639
00:56:16,440 --> 00:56:20,640
and her navy was finally forced to
give up its determination

640
00:56:20,640 --> 00:56:23,840
to maintain by far
the world's largest fleet.

641
00:56:23,840 --> 00:56:27,080
In time,
other nations eclipsed Britain.

642
00:56:27,080 --> 00:56:31,320
It was the end
of centuries of naval supremacy.

643
00:56:33,920 --> 00:56:41,080
Four centuries before, the navy
had set a tiny impoverished kingdom
on the path to greatness.

644
00:56:41,080 --> 00:56:45,320
In time, it had transformed Britain
into the most powerful empire in

645
00:56:45,320 --> 00:56:49,000
history, with enormous consequences
for the rest of the world.

646
00:56:49,000 --> 00:56:53,720
There was slavery, conquest,
and war on a titanic scale.

647
00:56:55,360 --> 00:56:58,520
But the navy also ensured
that Britain would preserve its

648
00:56:58,520 --> 00:57:02,720
independence and its unique economic
and political systems.

649
00:57:02,720 --> 00:57:07,120
Its ships protected a vast trade
that made Britain wealthy and

650
00:57:07,120 --> 00:57:13,720
sparked revolutions in agriculture,
industry and finance which changed
Britain and the world for ever.

651
00:57:13,720 --> 00:57:19,840
The navy pioneered new sciences
and reinvented our understanding
of the world we live in,

652
00:57:19,840 --> 00:57:23,120
and they made the sea and seafaring
an integral part

653
00:57:23,120 --> 00:57:27,280
of our culture
and national identity.

654
00:57:30,360 --> 00:57:32,800
And today, just as they've done for
centuries,

655
00:57:32,800 --> 00:57:38,680
the ships of the Royal Navy
continue to defend Britain's shores
and protect her sea lanes.

656
00:57:40,800 --> 00:57:44,880
Everywhere I go, I see evidence
of what the navy has left behind.

657
00:57:44,880 --> 00:57:50,880
Its ships allowed this country
to have an impact far beyond the
confines of the British Isles.

658
00:57:50,880 --> 00:57:55,600
The modern world is built on
foundations laid by the Royal Navy.

659
00:58:22,320 --> 00:58:25,320
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

660
00:58:25,320 --> 00:58:28,320
E-mail: subtitling@bbc.co.uk