Distant Victory: The Battle of Jutland and the Allied Triumph in the First World War

by Daniel Allen Butler

Distant Victory is an examination of the great sea fight at Jutland that is more than a mere balance sheet of ships sunk and lives lost, or an account of which fleet fled before the other. Rather, it is an a retelling of the battle that reveals its long-term consequences set in motion by the decisions both the Germans and the British made as a result of each fleet's experience at Jutland. While the German High Seas Fleet could claim a tactical victory because it sank more ships and inflicted higher casualties on the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet than the British did to the Germans, the British could rightly claim that strategically they won the battle, for when it was over the German warships had retreated to the safety of their harbors, having failed in their objective of defeating the Grand Fleet in detail.

For the past nine decades the Battle of Jutland has been history's most hotly debated and least understood naval action. Treated usually as a tactical German victory or else as a draw, and dismissed as strategically indecisive, it has been remembered by historians as for its lost opportunities, mistakes, and sheer scale, the largest naval surface action ever fought and the greatest clash of battleships the world would ever see. The Battle of Jutland has never been seen as one of the decisive battles of the First World War.

Genres: Nonfiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published July 30, 2006

About the author

Daniel Allen Butler is a maritime and military historian, the author (through September 2011) of nine books. Some of his previous works include Unsinkable: the Full Story of RMS Titanic (1998); Distant Victory: The Battle of Jutland and the Allied Triumph in the First World War (2006); The Age of Cunard (2003); The Other Side of the Night: The Carpathia, theCalifornian, and the Night the Titanic was Lost (2009); The Burden of Guilt: How Germany Shattered the Last Days of Peace, Summer 1914 (2010); and Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm: the Destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (2011).



Educated at Hope College, Grand Valley State University, and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Butler served in the United States Army before becoming a full-time author. He is an internationally recognized authority on maritime subjects and a popular guest speaker, having given presentations at the National Archives in Washington, DC, the Mariners’ Museum, and in the United Kingdom. He has also been frequently included in the on-board enrichment series of Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth 2 andQueen Mary 2, as well as the ships of the Royal Caribbean and Norwegian cruise lines.



Butler is currently at work on three new projects: The Field Marshal, a biography of Erwin Rommel; The Last Field of Glory: Waterloo, 1815, a history of the Hundred Days; and But for Freedom Alone, the story of the Declaration of Arbroath.



A self-proclaimed “semi-professional beach bum,” Butler divides what little time he spends away from his writing between wandering long stretches of warm, sandy beaches, his love of woodworking, his passion for British sports cars, and his fascination with building model ships. After living and working in Los Angeles, California, for several years, Butler has recently relocated—permanently, he hopes!—to Atlantic Beach, Florida, where the beaches are better.

Reviews

[Ryan Wulfsohn]

Actually I didn't finish it I just gave up. Must get hold of Andrew Gordon's "The Rules of the Game".