Charles Edward Dixon

(British, 1872-1934)

H.M.S. Cardiff leading the surrendered German High Seas Fleet through the allied lines, 21st November 1918

Footnotes

LITERATURE:
Stuart Boyd, Charles Dixon and the Golden Age of Marine Painting, Wellington, 2009 (see p. 91 for the oil version of the same subject).

Despite the colossal cost of building Imperial Germany's High Seas Fleet in the eight years following the completion of Britain's revolutionary Dreadnought in 1906, the Kaiser's dream of humbling the Royal Navy was never fulfilled. Leaving aside the two smaller scale engagements off Heligoland Bight (28th August 1914) and the Dogger Bank (24th January 1915), the only occasion which tempted the entire German battlefleet out of its safe harbours was the indecisive fleet action at Jutland (31st May – 1st June 1916), after which it ran for home and was never put to sea again. As a result, ships' crews faced seemingly endless boredom and growing frustration which eventually came to a head in the closing weeks of the Great War. Early in November 1918, sailors in the naval ports began openly demonstrating for peace and, on the 5th, the Kaiser's brother Prince Heinrich was forced to abandon his post at Kiel. Unrest and disorder spread and on the 9th, Admiral Scheer was compelled to tell the Kaiser that the loyalty of the navy could no longer be relied upon. Later that same day the Kaiser abdicated and fled into exile in the Netherlands; two days later the Germans signed the Armistice and the War finally came to an end.

As no neutral nation was willing to intern the German fleet, it was agreed that the surface ships – there were separate arrangements for the U-boats would sail into the Firth of Forth on 21st November where they would surrender to Admiral Beatty before being interned. Beatty, in command of a huge allied flotilla reportedly numbering 370 ships, put to sea in H.M.S. Queen Elizabeth to meet them and ordered his fleet into two columns of thirteen squadrons. The light cruiser Cardiff, already assigned, then led the German fleet comprising 9 dreadnoughts, 5 battle cruisers, 7 light cruisers and 49 destroyers between the two lines of allied warships and into the waters of the Firth of Forth where the formal surrender was concluded off Rosyth.

H.M.S. Cardiff, one of the five 'Ceres' class light cruisers ordered in 1916, was built by Fairfields at Govan and completed in June 1917. After extensive service in both war and peace, she became a training ship in 1940 and was finally scrapped in 1946.