Battle of Jutland
From 31st May to 1st June 1916, the Battle of Jutland was fought between the Royal Navy and the Imperial German Navy. Although not as decisive as both sides would have wished, the battle has recently been termed 'the battle that won the war' by some historians.
Although losing more ships and men, the Royal Navy claimed a tactical victory as the Imperial German Navy sailed back to harbor and never threatened British supremacy at sea again in the Great War.
One of the ships lost that day was HMS Invincible, the world's first battlecruiser. During the Battle of Jutland she was the flagship of the Third Battlecruiser Squadron. On board HMS Invincible was an Old Gregorian, John Henry Grattan Esmonde, who was one of 1026 men who lost their lives when she sank.
John Henry Grattan Esmonde was the younger son of Sir Thomas Henry Grattan Esmonde MP, and was born on 2nd May, 1899. He came to Downside in January 1910 and left in December 1911. He began a period of training at Osborne Naval Training College on the Isle of Wight, before moving to the Britannia Royal Naval Training College at Dartmouth.
His training was barely completed when war broke out in August 1914, and he was immediately gazetted midshipman and joined HMS Invincible aged just 16. Esmonde was involved in several naval engagements onboard including Heligoland and the Falkland Islands, where Invincible sank the German cruiser Scharnhorst.
Of this battle Esmonde wrote a letter which was published in several newspapers and the Downside Review. Writing of HMS Invincible's battle with Scharnhorst, he wrote, 'We hit again and again. First our left gun sent her big crane spinning over the side. then our right gun blew her funnel to atoms and then another shot from the left gun sent her bridge and part of the forecastle sky high.' Esmonde was stationed in a gun turret, and from his letter, one which operated quite effectively.
'When the smoke cleared, she [Scharnhorst] was on her side, and her propellers were lashing the water round into foam; then she capsized altogether and went to the bottom! So that the German flagship, sank with Admiral von Spee and 900 German sailors, not a man being saved.'
At the Battle of Jutland, HMS Invincible was hit by shells from Lutzow and Derfllinger and she was sunk in 90 seconds after a shell penetrated a magazine and she exploded. A survivor, Commander Hubert Dannreuther, wrote to Esmonde's father, saying 'Death must have been almost instantaneous and painless to your son, and his end was one you may well be proud to think of.'
A naval chaplain also wrote to Esmonde's father. 'He was always on the spot for Confession and Mass, and went to no end of trouble to make arrangements, and to induce his men to come to the Sacraments.'
The Daily News wrote of Esmonde's death,' One of the personal losses in Wednesday's action that calls for more than ordinary sorrow, in that it involves the sudden ending of a life of much more than ordinary promise, is that of Midshipman John H. G. Esmonde, of the Invincible.'
