Lately, I’ve been studying up on the battle of Jutland and I’ve come across countless stories about the loss of British ships there. I want to further understand the technical and tactical reasons for why British losses were so high when they supposedly had the advantage. Can anyone point me to some good resources for learning more? I’d also apperciate sources of first hand accounts of the battle. Thank you.
As I don't have enough time to fully answer this question, I'm going to point you to a few of my earlier answers on this topic here and here and also to the podcasts I did on the topic here and here. There's a good selection of works on Jutland, especially given the relatively recent centenary. For basic introductory works, Angus Konstam's Jutland 1916: Twelve Hours to Win the War, or Nick Jellicoe's Jutland: The Unfinished Battle are serviceable popular works - they'll tell you how the battle went, but aren't especially deep. The latter also does try to paint Jellicoe in glowing terms, which he might not deserve. Andrew Gordon's The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command is also well worth a read, focusing mainly on issues within the British command structure and their roots in 19th Century naval thought, though some of Gordon's descriptions of the RN in the 19th Century don't quite stand up to modern scholarship. For more scholarly works, Volume III of Marder's From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow is the classic example; focused entirely on the battle, it provides what was, for many years, the defining account of the engagement. More recently published is John Brooks' The Battle of Jutland. While this is the most comprehensive work I've read on the topic, covering every aspect of the battle in depth, and explaining in detail why it happened as it did, it does expect a certain degree of familiarity with naval warfare in WWI; I'd recommend reading a few other books before approaching it. I'd recommend avoiding older works, like Harper's The Jutland Scandal, Corbett's History of the Great War - Naval Operations, or the recently republished Naval Staff Appreciation. The early historiography of the battle (in English) was dominated by conflict between partisans of Beatty and Jellicoe. Both sides sought to maximise the glory of their chosen patron, and disparage the actions of the rival admiral. This means that the narratives of these works tend to be biased to these ends, at the cost of accuracy. For first-hand accounts, we can look to The fighting at Jutland; the personal experiences of forty-five officers and men of the British Fleet, which has been digitised on archive.org. Also, if you're OK with listening to your sources rather than reading them, the Imperial War Museum has digitised just under a thousand oral histories given by British sailors from WWI, which can be found here. The oral history given by Rear-Admiral Dannreuther is particularly notable, as Dannreuther was gunnery officer aboard Invicible at Jutland, one of just six survivors.