IX - The Autobiography of Chief Gunner Alexander Grant: HMS Lion at the Battle of Jutland, 1916

Summary

One of the most important documents to become available to Naval historians in recent years has been the memoir of Captain Alexander Grant who, as a Chief Gunner, was the Warrant Officer in charge of the armament of HMS Lion before and during the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916. What his account revealed was the shockingly lackadaisical manner in which ammunition was handled in the Battle Cruiser Fleet and in the Grand Fleet as a whole at the time of Jutland. This, more recent historians have argued, rather than intrinsically poor protection was the reason the three battle cruisers, Indefatigable, Queen Mary and Invincible, blew up when hit in their ammunition systems. Only Grant's courageous insistence on proper precautions in Lion prevented the flagship and Battle Cruiser Fleet's ebullient commander David Beatty sharing the same fate. The effect of such a loss, coming in addition to the losses actually suffered, would have made Jutland even more of a disappointment than it was. It is also a sign of the less than perfect staff system in the BCF that Grant's improved system was not imposed on the other ships of the Fleet before the battle. Leaving those vessels to continue in their old and dangerous ways allowed the Germans their major successes of the engagement.

Grant came from the whisky area of Speyside in North East Scotland. Born on 7 March 1872, the son of a poor but upright miller forced into other work by ill health, Grant was able to exploit Scotland's educational opportunities before his family's financial problems forced him to begin work on the land at the age of 11. Grant's imagination was caught when a temporary farm hand who knew an old sailor in the Coastguard Station at Lossiemouth showed him a booklet about the Royal Navy. In 1888 Grant went to the Station to enlist being sent to the boys’ training ship HMS Lion on the Tamar via HMS Clyde, guardship at Aberdeen, sea passage to London and train to Plymouth. After two years of rigorous training that he always regarded as ‘most valuable’ he was drafted in 1890 to HMS Penguin, a composite sail and steam sloop being used for surveying duties on the Australia Station.