The British ship fleet had been pummelled during the Run to the South, and their trouble was only just beginning. They were not just fighting Hipper and his battle-cruisers, but the entire German High Seas Fleet. Beatty turns his ships and begins the run to the north, but while this was going on there was another battle taking place between the flotillas of torpedo boats, and torpedo boat destroyers, know to the Germans as the Sea Cossacks. 

The Battle of Jutland can be separated into three main sections. The first of these was the clash between the Battle Cruisers under Admiral Beatty and those under Admiral Hipper known as the Run to the South. An annotated script and all of the sources can be found on our website

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder said that: "no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force". However, no force can go into action without one, even in World War One, and the Battle of Jutland is no different.

The sea is a big place. Before you can fight an enemy at sea you first need to be able to find them. You also need to take them by surprise. Both of these relied on an information war being waged out of Room 40 at the Admiralty.

The Battle of Dogger Bank was the battle before the battle of Jutland when the Royal Navy turned a German trap into a trap for the Germans, who then learned a very very important lesson about ammunition storage.

The script and sources can be found on our website

At the start of WW1 German Navy was trying to lure part of the Royal Navy out so that they could wage a war of attrition at sea similar to the one happening in the fields of Flanders. They planned a the raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby. It would earn them the label of "baby killers" in the British press, but there would be a surprise waiting for them as they headed home.

The British devised a plan to ambush German destroyers on their daily patrols. The Germans send out cruisers to thinking that it is just a raid by British destroyers, not understanding quite how much force the Royal Navy had committed to the raid.

The script and sources for this video can be found on our website https://www.thebluejackets.co.uk/video/BattleHeligolandBightRoyalNavyOffensive

In 1914 a former ferry set out on a secret mission with a deadly cargo, which would lead to the first British shots fired during the First World War.

An annotated version of the script and all of the source can be found on the Bluejackets Reenactment Society website 

As the Victorian period went on the net tightened around the Atlantic slave trade. Cudjo Lewis was on the last ship that managed to make the trip from Africa to America. This is his story.

The United States banned the slave trade in the same year that Britain did. It Looking at why demonstrates the reason that the West African Squadron was so important.

An annotated script and sources can be found on our website: https://www.thebluejackets.co.uk/video/WestAfricaSquadronSeeingStarsStripes