Residents of Cheyenne were waking up to the shocking news that the British had a "naval disaster", something that was far from the truth.
This is interesting in several respects. One is that it still took some time for news of naval engagements, not surprisingly, to hit the wire services. That isn't surprising. The other interesting thing is, of course, the matter of perception. Today we'd regard the Battle of Jutland as a British victory or, at worst, a draw, albeit one with some serious British losses. At the time, however, the press, at least locally, was weighing the British losses to conclude the Royal Navy had been beaten.
It's also important to note, however, the propaganda aspect of this.
As noted, the British effort at Jutland was to keep the German High Seas Fleet in harbor, or to sink it. Either way, the British had to keep it from breaking out into the North Atlantic. If the Germans had managed to do that, the Germans may have seriously contested for control of the North Atlantic. Indeed, what would have occurred is a big spike in the loss of commercial shipping, the probable near complete shut down of the sea life line to the Allies at this critical point in the war, and a massive game of cat and mouse until one or the other of the fleets got the advantage of the other. There's no real way to tell how that would have come out.
So, the British effort, as we know, was to keep the Germans from breaking out, either by keeping them bottled up, or destroying the fleet. An outright destruction of an opposing force would have been a great thing for the navy achieving it, but very risky at the same time.
It's widely assumed now that the Royal Navy had such an advantage in the final maneuvers at Jutland that it could have in fact destroyed the German Navy. But what it it had? It would have made little difference to the war effort, as the Allies could not effect a sea landing on the German coast. So the risk entailed in achieving that had to be weighed against the risk of loosing the British fleet. If that had occurred, the Germans, absent a sudden American intervention, would have won the war within a matter of months. Even in the highly unlikely scenario of the United States intervening in 1916, it's quite uncertain that the US could have swept the Germans from the North Atlantic. Jellicoe was right not to risk it.
In not risking it, of course, he was risking a later German outbreak, and the British had to live with that. But, hindsight being 20/20, what actually occurred is that the German navy became an expensive liability to Germany. It was impossible, in those days, not to keep the ships basically ready to put to sea at any time, which meant that the Germans had to consume expensive resources simply to keep the fleet. Having determined not to use it again, the Germans would have been better off simply docking the entire thing and walking away from it, but no nation can do that. So, the Germans consumed fuel, oil and rations for something it could ill afford and didn't need. German sailors, in turn, became radicalized and actually sparked the rebellion in 1918 that would bring Imperial Germany down.
The only part of the German Navy that remained viable was the submarine wing of it. But it was primitive and figured outside the morals of the Edwardian world. Indeed, it quite frankly figures outside the morals of the world of 2016 as well. Primitive ships that were barely able to engage in combat underwater, they relied upon stealth and darkness for cover, and normally attacked on the surface. Tiny ships, they couldn't pick up the survivors of their attacks as a rule, and a single merchant seaman determining to fight on with small arms could sink them. And yet Imperial Germany had to turn to them.
Before that, however, its High Seas Fleet would go back into harbor. Germany would report the British losses, which were truly grater than its own, and the Press would react as if it was a German victory, as seen here.
It wasn't.
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