They wanted to escape, seeing the fight was
hopeless. But they could not take the quickest way, that of turning
all together--each ship turning right round where she was and making
off as hard as she could--because this would have changed the places of
the admirals and put the battle cruisers in the rear as well. Nor
could they safely turn right back on their course, while keeping the
same line-ahead, because some ships would then be masking the fire of
others till the whole line had been reversed; and they sorely needed
every gun they had. So the only way left was to keep parallel with
Beatty till a chance came to turn sharply enough to get away, but not
sharply enough to mask any of their own fire.
Imagine the whole enormous battlefield as something like a target, with
the Germans circling round the bull's-eye, Beatty round the inner, and
Jellicoe just coming into the outer. From Beatty's reports and his own
observation Jellicoe could not know even that before six. So he sent
out his own battle cruiser squadron under Admiral Hood to lengthen
Beatty's line and overlap the Germans.
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