Jutland was the only major fleet engagement to take place during the First World War, and indeed the only time in history in which columns of great dreadnought battleships fought each other. In spite of terrible losses of life, the battle did nothing to change the strategic situation in northern European waters, in fact it simply confirmed Britains command of the seas and her ability to enforce the blockade which was eventually to lead to Germanys downfall.

Since the days of the Battle of Trafalgar, the Royal Navy had been the acknowledged as the most powerful maritime force on the planet. But the Germans had undertaken an enormously expensive shipbuilding program designed to place the Kaiserliche Marine on an equal footing with the Royal Navy. After a number of smaller engagements, major elements of

Dramatic, illustrated account of the biggest naval battle of the First World War. On 31 May, 1916, the great battle fleets of Britain and Germany met off Jutland in the North Sea. It was a climactic encounter, the culmination of a fantastically expensive naval race between the two countries, and expectations on both sides were high. For the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet, there was the chance to win another Trafalgar. For the German High Seas Fleet, there was the opportunity to break the British blockade and so change the course of the war. But Jutland was a confused and controversial encounter. Tactically, it was a draw; strategically, it was a British victory. Naval historians have pored over the minutiae of Jutland ever since. Yet they have largely ignored what the battle was actually like for its thousands of participants. Full of drama and pathos, of chaos and courage, JUTLAND, 1916 describes the sea battle in the dreadnought era from the point of view of those who were there.

The Battle of Jutland: At the end of May 1916, a chance encounter with Admiral Hipper's battlecruisers has enabled Beatty to lead the German Battle Fleet into the jaws of Jellicoe's greatly superior force, but darkness had allowed Admiral Scheer to extricate his ships from a potentially disastrous situation. Though inconclusive, at the Battle of Jutland the German Fleet suffered so much damage that it made no further attempt to challenge the Grand Fleet, and the British blockade remained unbroken. Captain Bennett has used sources previously unavailable to historians in his reconstruction of this controversial battle, including the papers of Vice-Admiral Harper explaining why his official record of the battle was not published until 1927, and the secret "Naval Staff Appreciation" of 1922 whose criticism were so scathing that it was never issued to the Fleet. Also included are numerous battle plans, photographs and an introduction by Bennett's son. 2006 is the 90th anniversary of the battle.