Book description
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. Peter Hart was born in
1955. He went to Liverpool University before joining the Sound Archive
at the Imperial War Museum in 1981. He is now Oral Historian at the
Archive. Nigel Steel is head of the Imperial War Museum's Research and
Information Department. He and Peter Hart have collaborated on several
titles, including works on Gallipoli, Passchendaele and the First World
War in the air.
