STIRRING WAR STORY

Evening Star, Issue 19615, 22 July 1927, Page 2

STIRRING WAR STORY

A JUTLAND INCIDENT An epic of the North Bea has become known through a German report that has now appeared. It concerns the stand mad© in the battle _ of Jutland by the British destroyer Spitfire, of 935 tons, under Commander C. W. B. Trelawny, against a squadron of Admiral Tirpita’s battleships and cruisers, _ each from six to twenty times as big as itself. It was like the famous encounter said to have taken place oif tne Azores in 1591, when the little, galleon Revenge, under Sir Richard Grenville, fought the entire treaisure fleet of Spain, and in Alfred Tennyson’s words: And the sun went down and the stars came out far over the summer eea, Put never a moment ccas.ed the fight of the one and the fifty-three. The German report on Jutland pays generous tribute to ■ what the Spitfire accomplished in torpedoing and sinking the cruiser Rostock, ramming the battleship Nassau, and getting away itself in the darkness, damaged, but able to reach port, • , It appears that the fourtn flotilla, under Captain C J. Wintour, to which the Spitfire belonged, was at 11.30 p.mpn fimy 31', 1916, covering the rear of the British Grand Fleet when it sighted to starboard, half a mile distant, a long ‘line of big ships. Immediately the strangers—a division of German Dreadnoughts and cruisers—switched their lights on to the leading British vessels, the Tipperary and Broke, and smothered them with shell. One ship alone, the Westfalen, fired no fewer than 137 ■projectiles, according to the German statement. It was at this stag© that the Spitfire was able to come to the rescue of its companions, launching torpedoes from its solitary pair of tubes at point-blank rang© and opening rapid fire with its three little 4in guns. One torpedo struck the Rostock and ■eat it to. the bottom. At the same time the searchlights of the Dreadnoughts were 50 peppered that the bombardment of the Spitfire’s companion vessels became less effective, and the Broke "as able to get clear for the time befwg, though it was too late to lave t!m Tipperary. The Nassau, a ift-000-ton Dreadnought, mounting twelve llin guns and a similar' number of Bin quick-firers, then turned to ram ita tiny opponent, which accepted the challenge, the two vessels meeting almost head-on to one another, but in such A way that it was the Spitfire’s ram and not that of the Nassau which took effect. The Nassau heeled over to such an extent that its great guns thundered comparatively harmlessly over Tthe decks of the Spitfire, which was afterward lost sight of by the.Gerwpn igunherp,. jvho supposed it sunk..