page_title: Francis Harvey
section_title: Jutland
hierarchical_section_title: Francis Harvey / First World War / Jutland
caption_attribution_description: Damage to Q turret of British battlecruiser HMS Lion after the Battle of Jutland. Front armour plate has been removed.
context_page_description: Major Francis John William Harvey, VC was an officer of the British Royal Marine Light Infantry during the First World War. Harvey was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest military award for gallantry in the face of the enemy given to British and Commonwealth forces, for his actions at the height of the Battle of Jutland. A long-serving Royal Marine officer descended of a military family, during his career Harvey became a specialist in naval artillery, serving on many large warships as gunnery training officer and gun commander. Specially requested for HMS Lion, the flagship of the British battlecruiser fleet, Harvey fought at the battles of Heligoland Bight, Dogger Bank and Jutland.
  At Jutland, Harvey, although mortally wounded by German shellfire, ordered the magazine of Q turret on the battlecruiser Lion to be flooded. This action prevented the tons of cordite stored there from catastrophically detonating in an explosion that would have destroyed the vessel and all aboard her.
context_section_description: Beatty's battlecruisers led the British fleet in its attack, casting south into the North Sea to find the enemy during the afternoon of 31 May 1916. At 14:15, scouting cruisers spotted the German vanguard and Beatty closed to attack the enemy with his main force. Given time to prepare, Hipper was ready for Beatty with his battlecruisers in line to face Beatty's approaching ships with their full broadsides. Hipper was also encouraged by the main German battleship fleet under Vice-Admiral Reinhard Scheer, which was steaming northwards close behind him. At 15:45 Beatty came within range of the German fleet and the vanguards engaged one another with their opening fusillades. As the two squadrons closed, the Germans found the range better and faster than the British, who were silhouetted against the sun. As a result, German shells pounded the British ships while the German ships remained untouched for the first 10 minutes of the engagement. During this stage of the battle Lion was hit by nine shells from SMS Lützow. One shell at 16:00 struck the right upper corner of the left hand gun port at the junction of the face plate and the roof, and punched a piece of the 9-inch face plate into the turret before detonating, blowing off the armoured roof of the turret and starting a fire, which a damage control party working from outside the turret fought to put out.
  The initial explosion killed or wounded everyone stationed in the gun house itself. Harvey, despite severe wounds and burns, realised that the shell hoist leading to the ship's main forward magazine was jammed open. With the hatch open, the flash fire would rapidly travel down to the main magazine resulting in an explosion that would tear the ship in two and kill everyone on board. Staggering across the wreckage of the turret, Harvey gave orders down the voice pipe for the magazine doors to be closed and the magazine compartments to be flooded, an action which would prevent the cordite in the magazines detonating.  Turning to his sergeant, the one man still standing, Harvey instructed him to proceed to the bridge and give a full report to the ship's captain Ernle Chatfield (a standard drill in damage exercises). Seconds later, Harvey collapsed and died from  his wounds. The sergeant went immediately to the bridge and notified the captain of Harvey's actions before being taken below to have his wounds dressed.
  As soon as the turret had been hit the captain had ordered Q magazine doors closed and the magazine flooded, the order passing to the Transmitting Station below the armoured deck where Stoker 1st Class William Yeo was entrusted with passing the order on. The magazine was consequently flooded and locked up within minutes of the hit.  However the cordite charges which had fallen down from gun house after the hit were not removed to safety, and there were still ready charges in the working chamber.  A large number of crewmen still remained in the shell room, magazine handing room and working chamber.  The fire which was thought to have been put out after the hit on the turret gained strength and ignited the remaining cordite charges, setting off a large explosion at 16:28 which killed the turret crewmen, the flame of the explosion reaching as high as the top of the ship's masts.  Even with the precautions taken in hand, the magazine doors were later found to be severely buckled – only the seawater in the magazine behind it prevented the blast reaching inside. Other ships of the battlecruiser fleet were less lucky; at about the same time as Harvey's death, HMS Indefatigable was torn to pieces by a series of magazine explosions that claimed 1,013 lives and just minutes after that HMS Queen Mary exploded "like a puffball" in one huge column of grey smoke, killing 1,275 sailors. Hours later during the main battlefleet engagement, Rear-Admiral Horace Hood's flagship HMS Invincible was destroyed with 1,032 lives. All three ships were lost as the result of magazine explosions similar to the one narrowly avoided on Lion.
caption: Q turret with damaged armour roof plate removed after the battle
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