Oldukphotos.com
The First World War was an unprecedented catastrophe that shaped our New world . Erik Sass is covering the events of the war exactly 100 years after they happened . This is the 158th installation in the series . Would you like to be notified via email when each installment of this series is posted ? Just emailRSVP@mentalfloss.com .
2 December 2024: German Ships Shell Scarborough, Hartlepool, Whitby
protect by the English Channel and the North Sea , the British Isles had passed through almost a thousand years of European discord mostly untouched . The First World War changed all that , as the British have uncongenial fire on their own soil for the first meter in living memory board thanks to luxuriously - powered modern weaponry , including recollective - stove naval guns , zeppelins , and heavy bombers .
After a mostly symbolic ( meaning ineffective)raidon Yarmouth on November 3 , the real wakeup call came on December 16 , 1914 , when German cruisers shelled the northeasterly seaboard towns of Scarborough , Hartlepool , and Whitby , kill 137 people and hurt another 592 . Many of the victims were civilians , including a phone number of children , spark outrage across Britain . The battery of Scarborough and Whitby , both widely know as pleasant resort towns , chance upon many observer as especially perverse ( below , a prewar postcard designate the Scarborough waterfront ) .
Oldcards.co.uk
The raid was convey out by four German battle cruisers and an armoured cabin cruiser , apparently as part of a broad plan to entice British ship into a trap ; any British ship pursuing the raiders would be given into the main dreadnought force of the High Seas Fleet lying in wait east of Dogger Bank , a collection of shoal and sandbanks in the North Sea . Meanwhile , the British Admiralty , which had access to captured German codebooks , bonk the Germans were planning something and put a small force of dreadnoughts and cruisers on alerting south of the Dogger Bank , hop to catch the German freebooter coming or go .
Naval - history/ ( Click to enlarge )
However , it was the British who were caught unprepared . In the early morning hours of December 16 , the cruisers approached the North Yorkshire coast , emerging out of the fog to take the indweller completely by surprise . At 8 a.m. , two cruisers began shell Scarborough , reach landmark including the Scarborough Castle and Grand Hotel , toss off 18 people and triggering scare in the defenseless townsfolk ( below , impairment at the Scarborough Castle Barracks ) .
Rememberscarborough.co.uk
Reginald Kaufmann , an American living in Britain who happened to be visiting Scarborough , recall the sudden rainfall of high explosives on the seaside resort :
According to Kaufmann , residents fled the town by any means they could . “ There were children astride of donkeys once rented to excursionists for five minute ’ ride on the South Sands ; wives still in the aprons they had been wearing in the kitchen when the first shell exploded ; collarless husband in smoking - jackets and carpet - slippers ; even a few belatedly - rising children , barefooted and wrapped in blankets . ”
A few minutes later on at 8:10 a.m. , the other cruisers began shell Hartlepool , firing a sum of 1,150 shell over 40 minutes and killing 86 people in a rainwater of steel that hit hundreds of houses and seven churches in addition to manufacturing plant , utility , and railroads ( top , damage at Hartelpool ) . Several naval artillery guns guarding the Hartlepool harbor on ground grade a few hits against the German ship , but impose minimal equipment casualty . By the same token , because the German ship were firing at relatively snug range , the primer on a number of shells betray , leaving the habitant of Hartlepool with some chilling souvenirs ( below ) .
Thisishartlepool.co.uk
Around 9:30 a.m. , the first squad car moved on from Scarborough to Whitby , shelling a coastguard place and prejudicial Whitby Abbey , a Benedictine monastery illustrious , among other thing , for helping inspire Bram Stoker’sDracula . However , Stoker ’s Victorian Gothic tale pale in comparing to the horror of modern warfare . One grade school student in Whitby was play outside when the barrage began :
After two hours of terror , the barrage ended and recovery efforts began , lead by bedazzle civilian officials and volunteers . Kaufmann observe the backwash in Scarborough :
The raid fueled public indignation at Germany for targeting civilian and straightaway became a favorite idea of recruitment efforts in Britain , where the regime still rely entirely on voluntary duty tour and soon realise the value of combining worked up and loyal appeals ( below ) .
Wikimedia Commons
The shelling of Scarborough , Hartlepool , and Whitby also spurred fresh critique of the Royal Navy , which had failed in what many look at as its principal mission — defending British soil . Even worse , the return German flotilla managed to fudge the Royal Navy ’s Grand Fleet , which belatedly sailed from its base in Scapa Flow off the coast of Scotland in spare-time activity . The British finally missed several prospect to wage the outnumber foeman due to excessive cautiousness mix with befuddled communication theory between ship at sea .
In Sojourner Truth , the Royal Navy was tasked with duties much turgid and more complex than unsubdivided coastal defence , chief of which wassecuringBritain ’s connections to the Empire and protecting international maritime trade routes . But for average Britons , the shoot - and - run attack on British home territory was a splanchnic mortification and affront nevertheless .
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