Andrew Gordon, The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996)
Decisive naval engagements hold a special place in the pantheon of “great battles.” In the late 19th-century, the famous naval theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan stressed the importance of concentrated fleets decisively defeating their enemy to maintain command of the sea. For more than 100 years after Lord Admiral Nelson’s great victory in 1805, the Royal Navy sought its next Trafalgar—a decisive battle that would continue to reinforce worldwide British naval supremacy. On May 31, 1916, off the Danish coast, they got their chance—but the battle was far from conclusive. In The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command, Andrew Gordon presents a thorough analysis of British naval command and control to answer why the battle of Jutland turned out to be a disappointing draw. Gordon is a historian and reader in the Defence Studies Department at Kings College London, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1982. A former reserve Royal Navy officer, Gordon has published widely on British maritime history in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Organizational culture and learning forms the central underlying theme of this book. Gordon’s primary thesis is that over the course of a century of peace between 1805 and 1916, during which it never engaged in combat or faced significant challenges, the Royal Navy became a conservative, risk-averse organization wedded to a stultifying communications system that resulted in centralized direction and micromanagement of fleet encounters. The passing of the admirals who earned the Royal Navy’s victory at Trafalgar in 1805 allowed the service to neglect the need to adjust to the changing conditions of war. Gordon argues that this meant a refutation of Nelsonian doctrine in favor of peacetime procedures that helped Britain achieve worldwide hegemony during the 19th-century. Therefore, the Battle of Jutland highlights the Royal Navy’s inability to adapt to the changing nature of propulsion, communication, and fleet management. Gordon thus underlines the problems inherent in using new technology without considering how to change doctrinal and organizational concepts to take full advantage of them. In short, the institutional culture of the Royal Navy was resistant to change and ignorant of history. Throughout the book, Gordon charts the Royal Navy’s evolution toward an increasingly centralized command style that emphasized strict adherence to orders while marginalizing commanders who showed initiative.
This institutional opposition to ingenuity is encapsulated by the command styles of those in charge at Jutland. Admiral Sir John Jellicoe’s detailed Grand Fleet Battle Orders (GFBOs) demonstrated his desire to micromanage every aspect of the battle. The GFBOs serve as a critical artifact pointing to an overall service culture that stymied decentralized decision making. However, the dichotomy of old and new Royal Navy thinking is best illustrated in the difference in styles between Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty and Rear Admiral Hugh Evan-Thomas. Beatty seems an outlier who practiced a more initiative-based command style with his Battle Cruiser Fleet. Favoring a system that allowed his subordinates to respond to the exigencies of battle, Beatty was able to catch portions of the German fleet in disadvantageous positions on multiple occasions. However, Evan-Thomas’s more conservative leadership style reflected that of Jellicoe. This meant that his 5th Battle Squadron failed to follow and support in a timely fashion—leaving Beatty’s Battle Cruiser Fleet to bear the brunt of enemy fire while also appearing overly aggressive. During the Battle of Jutland, these command styles resulted in a fleet too slow to react and which allowed the German High Seas Fleet to escape before delivering the decisive blow.
To produce this tome, Gordon relies on multiple sources, from ship’s logs to officers’ diaries, memoirs, and institutional reports. His analysis reflects his training as a naval officer as he parses out otherwise hidden anecdotes, especially as eye-witness accounts and ship logs rarely match. Gordon sprinkles historiographical analysis throughout the book rather than in a dedicated section. The book suffers from often highly technical and jargon-filled prose, natural for a work written by a professional historian with two decades of service at sea, but is otherwise readable.
The Rules of the Game is an essential contribution to the historiography on the battle and naval command writ large as it is an exceptional account of the Royal Navy’s evolution, the intricacies of the fight off the coast of Denmark, and the postwar controversy. Its organization is different, insofar as he begins with the battle itself before taking the reader back in time to describe the previous century and the long lead up to Jutland. Gordon finishes the work by attempting to draw broader lessons about inculcating a culture of adaptation. This book is ideal for historians of the First World War, those wanting a more complex understanding of the Battle of Jutland, and anyone wishing to understand how a service culture can lead to problems when it becomes too rigid for serious introspection and change. As he is writing for currently serving officers, this is a must-read for naval professionals and policymakers.
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