CHAPTER XI
THE CRUISE OF THE “GLASGOW”
Part I.—Rio to Coronel
(July 27th to Nov. 1st, 1914)
Everyone has heard of the light cruiser Glasgow, how she fought at Coronel, and then escaped, and is now the sole survivor among the warships which then represented Great Britain and Germany; how she fought again off the Falkland Islands, and with the aid of the Cornwall sank the Leipzig; how after many days of weary search she discovered the Dresden in shelter at Juan Fernandez, and with the Kent finally brought that German cruiser to a last account. These things are known. But of her other movements and adventures between the declaration of war in August of 1914 and that final spectacular scene in Cumberland Bay, Juan Fernandez, upon March 14th, 1915, nothing has been written. It is a very interesting story, and I propose to write it now. I will relate how she began her fighting career as the forlorn solitary representative of English sea power in the South Atlantic, and how by gradual stages, as if endowed with some compelling power of magnetic attraction, she became the focus of a British and German naval concentration which at last extended over half the world. This scrap of a fast light cruiser, of 4,800 tons, in appearance very much like a large torpedo-boat destroyer, with her complement of 370 men, worthily played her part in the Empire’s work, which is less the fighting of great battles than the sleepless policing of the seas. The battleships and battle cruisers are the fount of power; they by their fighting might hold the command of the seas, but the Navy’s daily work in the outer oceans is done, not by huge ships of the line, but by light cruisers, such as the Glasgow, of which at the outbreak of the war we had far too few for our needs.
In July, 1914, the Glasgow was the sole representative of British sea power upon the Atlantic coast of South America. She had the charge of our interests from a point some 400 miles north of Rio, right down to the Falkland Islands in the cold south. She was a modern vessel of 4,800 tons, first commissioned in 1911 by Captain Marcus Hill, and again in September, 1912, by Captain John Luce, and the officers and men who formed her company in July nearly four years ago, when the shadow of war hung over the world. She was well equipped to range over the thousands of miles of sea of which she was the solitary guardian. Her turbine engines, driving four screws, could propel her at a speed exceeding twenty-six knots (over thirty miles an hour) when her furnaces were fed with coal and oil; and with her two 6-inch and ten 4-inch guns of new pattern she was more than a match for any German light cruiser which might have been sent against her.
Upon July 27th, 1914, while lying at Rio de Janeiro her captain received the first intimation that the strain in Europe might result in war between England and Germany. Upon July 29th the warning became more urgent, and upon July 31st the activity of the German merchant ships in the harbour showed that they also had been notified of the imminence of hostilities. They loaded coal and stores into certain selected vessels to their utmost capacity, and clearly purposed to employ them as supply ships for any of their cruisers which might be sent to the South Atlantic. At that time there were, as a matter of fact, no German cruisers nearer than the east coast of Mexico. The Karlsruhe had just come out to relieve the Dresden, which had been conveying refugees of the Mexican Revolution to Kingston, Jamaica. Thence she sailed for Haiti, met there the Karlsruhe, and made the exchange of captains on July 27th. Both these cruisers were ordered to remain, but a third German cruiser in Mexican waters, the Strassburg, rushed away for home and safely got back to Germany before war was declared on August 4th. Thus the Dresden and Karlsruhe were left, and over against them in the West Indies lay Rear-Admiral Cradock with four “County” cruisers—Suffolk, Essex, Lancaster, and Berwick (sisters of the Monmouth)—and the fast cruiser Bristol, a sister of the Glasgow. Though the Glasgow, lying alone at Rio, had many anxieties—chiefly at first turning upon that question of supply which governs the movements of war ships in the outer seas—she had no reason to expect an immediate descent of the Dresden and Karlsruhe from the north. Cradock could look after them if they had not the good luck to evade his attentions. Upon August 1st, the Glasgow was cleared for war, and all luxuries and superfluities, all those things which make life tolerable in a small cruiser, were ruthlessly cast forth and put into store at Rio. She was well supplied with provisions and ammunition, but coal, as it always is, was an urgent need—not only coal for the immediate present, but for the indefinite future. For immediate necessities the Glasgow bought up the cargo of a British collier in Rio, and ordered her captain to follow the cruiser when she sallied forth. Upon August 3rd, the warnings from home became definite, the Glasgow coaled and took in oil till her bunkers were bursting, made arrangements with the English authorities in Rio for the transmission of telegrams to the secret base which she proposed to establish, and late in the evening of August 4th, crept out of Rio in the darkness with all lights out. During that fourth day of August the passing minutes seemed to stretch into years. The anchorage where the Glasgow lay was in the outer harbour, and she was continually passed by German merchant steamers crowding in to seek the security of a neutral port. War was very near.
THE CRUISE OF THE “GLASGOW.”
Captain Luce had already selected a secret base, where he hoped to be able to coal in shelter outside territorial waters. His collier had been ordered to follow as soon as permitted, and he headed off to inspect the barren rocks, uninhabited except by a lighthouse-keeper, which were to be his future link with home. His luck held, for the first ship he encountered was a big English steamer bound for Rio with coal for the Brazilian railways. In order to be upon the safe side, he commandeered this collier also, and made her attend him to his base. There, to his relief, he found that shelter from the surf could be found, and that it was possible to use the desolate spot as a coaling base and keep the supply ships outside territorial waters. He used it then and afterwards; so did the other cruisers, Good Hope and Monmouth, which came out to him, so also did that large squadron months later which made of this place a rendezvous and an essential storehouse on the journey to the Falklands and to the end of von Spee. We were always most careful to keep on the right side of the Law.
I will not give to this base of the Glasgow its true name; let us call it the Pirates’ Lair, and restore to it the romantic flavour of irresponsible buccaneering which I do not doubt that it enjoyed a century or so earlier. In the Glasgow’s day it mounted a lighthouse and an exceedingly inquisitive keeper whom German Junkers would have terrorised, but whom the kindly English, themselves to some extent trespassers, left unharmed to the enjoyment of his curiosity. He, lucky man, did not know that there was a war on.
Realise, if you can, the feelings of the officers and men of this small English cruiser lying isolated from the world in her Pirates’ Lair. Their improvised base, not far from the main trade routes, might at any moment have been discovered—as indeed it was before very long; it was the territory of a neutral country, a country most friendly then and afterwards, but bound to observe its declaration of neutrality. They knew that coal and store ships from England would be sent out, but did not know whether they would arrive. They were in wireless touch with the British representatives at Rio, Pernambuco, and Montevideo, but authentic news came in scraps intermingled with the wildest rumour. They, or rather their captain, had to sort the grains of essential fact from the chaff of fiction. As the month of August unfolded, their news of the war came chiefly from German wireless, and those of us who lived through and remember those early weeks of war also remember that the news from enemy sources had no cheerful sound. For some weeks they were free from anxiety for supplies, provided that their base could be retained, yet the future was blank. I do not think that they worried overmuch; the worst time they had lived through was during those few days in Rio before war broke out, and those days immediately afterwards, when they were seeking those corners of their Lair least exposed to gales and surf. Very often coaling was impossible; more often it was both difficult and dangerous.
It may seem strange that for many weeks—until well into September—the Glasgow heard nothing of Cradock and his West Indies Squadron. Yet it was so. Cradock in the Suffolk had on August 5th met the Karlsruhe coaling at sea, and signalled to the fast Bristol to look after her. The Bristol got upon the chase and fired a shot or two, but, speedy though she was, the Karlsruhe ran away from her and was seen no more and heard of no more until she began her ravages upon steamers to the South of Pernambuco. Cradock, thinking she had gone north, and moreover having charge of the whole North Atlantic trade on its western side, became farther and farther separated from the Glasgow, and even went so far away as Halifax. Meanwhile the Dresden slipped down and entered the Glasgow’s sea area on August 9th, though her movements were not yet known. On the 13th Captain Luce learned that the Monmouth was coming out to him under a captain who was his junior, so that upon himself would still rest the responsibility for the South Atlantic. He was now beginning to get some news upon which he could act, and already suspected that the Dresden or the Karlsruhe, or both, had broken away for the south. He could hear the Telefunken wireless calls of the Dresden to her attendant colliers from somewhere in the north a thousand miles away. During his cruises from the Lair he was always on the look out for her, and once, on the 16th, thought that he had her under his guns. But the warship which he had sighted proved to be a Brazilian, and the thirst of the Glasgow’s company for battle went for a while unslaked. The Dresden, for which the Glasgow was searching, had coaled at the Rocas Islands, there met the Baden, a collier of twelve knots, carrying 5,000 tons of coal, and together the two vessels made for the south and remained together until after the Falkland Islands action had been fought. The Dresden picked up a second collier, the Preussen, and set her course for the small barren Trinidad Island, another old Pirates’ Lair some 500 miles from that of the Glasgow, at which she in her turn established a temporary base. At one moment the Dresden and Glasgow were not far apart, the wireless calls sounded near, yet they did not meet. This was on the 18th, when the Glasgow was coaling at her base, and two days before she went north to join up with the Monmouth off Pernambuco.
This journey to the north coincided in time with the Dresden’s passage to Trinidad Island, so that by the 20th the two cruisers were again a thousand miles apart, but with their positions reversed. While the Glasgow had been going up, the Dresden had been going south and east. For awhile we will leave the Dresden, which after spending two days under the lee of Trinidad Island went on her way to the south, drawing farther and farther away from the Glasgow and more and more out of our picture. Her movements were from time to time revealed by captures of British ships, of which the crews were sent ashore. Her captain, Lüdecke, at no time made a systematic business of preying upon merchant traffic and upon him rests no charge of inhumanity. It may be that commerce raiding and murder did not please him; it may be that he was under orders to make his way at the leisurely gait of his collier Baden—he left the Preussen behind at Trinidad Island—towards the Chilean coast, and the ultimate meeting with von Spee.
At sea off Pernambuco on August 20th, the Glasgow met the Monmouth, which had been commissioned on August 4th, mainly with naval reservists, and hastily despatched to the South Atlantic. Rumour still pointed to the presence of the Dresden in the vicinity, and it seemed likely that she might meditate an attack upon our merchant shipping in the waters afterwards greatly favoured by the Karlsruhe. The two English cruisers remained in the north for a week, hearing much German wireless, which was that of the Karlsruhe, and not of the Dresden. On the night of the 27th the armed liner Otranto heralded her approach, and on the following day the Glasgow met her at the Rocas Islands. Captain Luce had now progressed from the command of one cruiser to the control of quite a squadron, three ships. Already the concentration about the small form of the Glasgow had begun.
The bigness of the sea and the difficulty of finding single vessels, though one may be equipped with all the aids of cable and wireless telegraphy, will begin to be realised. I have told how the Dresden passed the Glasgow on the 18th. She had been at the Rocas Islands on the 14th. The Karlsruhe, too, had been at the Rocas Islands on the 17th. She, also, had come south, though Cradock, with his squadron, was hunting for her in the north up to the far latitudes of Halifax. The two German cruisers, which had seemed so far away from the Glasgow when she was at Rio calculating possibilities on August 1st, had both evaded the West Indies squadron and penetrated into her own slenderly guarded waters.
Upon August 30th the Glasgow, Monmouth, and Otranto were back at their Pirates’ Lair, which they could not leave for long, since it formed their rather precarious base of supply, and there they learned that the Dresden had sunk the British steamer Holmwood far to the south off Rio Grande do Sul and must be looked after at once, since she might have it in mind to raid our big shipping lines with the River Plate. Here on the 31st they learned also of the action in the Heligoland Bight, and of the German invasion of France, and of the retreat from Mons. The land war seemed very far off, but very ominous to those Keepers of the South Atlantic in their borrowed base upon a foreign shore thousands of miles away.
My readers, especially those who are the more thoughtful, may ask how the Glasgow was able with a clear conscience to hie away to the north and leave during all those weeks our big shipping trade to Brazil, Uruguay, and the Argentine uncovered from the raiding exploits of all the German liners lying there which might have issued forth as armed commerce raiders. The answer is that none of the German liners had any guns. The spectre of concealed guns which might upon the outbreak of war be mounted, proved to be baseless. The German liners had no guns, not even the Cap Trafalgar, sunk later, September 14th, off Trinidad Island by the Carmania. The Cap Trafalgar’s guns came from the small German gunboat Eber, which had arranged a meeting with her at this unofficial German base. The project of arming the Cap Trafalgar was quite a smart one, but, unfortunately for her, the first use to which she put her borrowed weapons was the last, and she went down in one of the most spirited fights of the whole war. The Carmania had come down from the north in the train of Rear-Admiral Cradock.
At the beginning of September the Glasgow and the Monmouth shifted down south, in the hope of catching the Dresden at work off the River Plate. There they arrived on the 8th, but found no prey, though rumours were many, and unrewarded searches as many. The Otranto came down to join them, and down also came the news that Cradock in his new flagship, the Good Hope, sent out to him from England, was also coming to take charge of the operations. Upon September 11th the Dresden was reported to be far down towards the Straits of Magellan and for the time out of reach, so the Glasgow’s squadron returned to its northern Lair and the junction with the Good Hope. From Cradock the officers learned that the Cornwall and Bristol, with the Carmania and Macedonia, had arrived on the station, and that the old battleship Canopus was coming out. At the beginning of the war there had been one ship only in the South Atlantic, the Glasgow; now there were no fewer than five cruisers and three armed liners, and a battleship was on the way. One ship had grown into eight, was about to grow into nine, and before long was destined to become the focus of the most interesting concentration of the whole war.
We have now reached September 18th, by which date the Dresden was far off towards the Pacific. She reached an old port of refuge for whalers near Cape Horn, named Orange Bay, on the 5th, and rested there till the 16th. At Punta Arenas she had picked up another collier, the Santa Isabel, and, accompanied by her pair of supply vessels passed slowly round the Horn. At the western end of the Magellan Straits she met with the Pacific liner Ortega, which, though fired upon and called to stop, pluckily bolted into a badly charted channel and conveyed the news of the Dresden’s movements to the English squadron, which for awhile had lost all trace of her.
It was not yet clear to Cradock, who was now in command of the Southern Squadron—to distinguish it from the Northern Squadron, which presently consisted of the armoured cruiser Carnarvon (Rear-Admiral Stoddart), the Defence, the Cornwall, the Kent, the Bristol, and the armed liner Macedonia—it was not yet clear that the Dresden was bound for the Pacific, and a rendezvous with von Spee. It seemed more probable that her intention was to prey upon shipping off the Straits of Magellan. In order to meet the danger, he set off with the Good Hope, Monmouth, Glasgow, and the armed liner Otranto to operate in the far south, employing the Falkland Islands as his base. The Glasgow’s Lair of the north now remained for the use of Stoddart’s squadron.
In the light of after-events one cannot but feel regret that the old battleship Canopus was attached to the Southern Squadron—Cradock’s—instead of the armoured cruiser Defence, a much more useful if less powerfully armed vessel. The Defence was comparatively new, completed in 1908, had a speed of some twenty-one to twenty-two knots, and was more powerful than either the Scharnhorst or the Gneisenau. The three sisters, Defence, Minotaur, and Shannon, had indeed been laid down as replies to the building of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and carried four 9.2-inch guns and ten 7.5-inch as against the eight 8.2-inch and six 6-inch guns of the German cruisers.
I have reached a point in my narrative when it becomes necessary to take up the story from the German side, and to indicate how it came about that five cruisers, which at the beginning of the war were widely scattered, became concentrated into the fine hard-fighting squadron which met Cradock at Coronel. The permanent base of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau was Tsing-tau in China, but it happened that at the end of July, 1914, they were more than 2,000 miles away in the Caroline Islands. The light cruisers Nürnberg and Leipzig were upon the western coast of Mexico, and, as I have already told, the Dresden was off the eastern coast of Mexico. The Emden, which does not concern us, was at Tsing-tau. The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were kept out of China waters by the Japanese fleets and hunted for and chased to Fiji by the Australian Unit. On September 22nd von Spee bombarded Tahiti, in the Society Islands, at the moment when the Dresden, having safely passed through the Atlantic, was creeping up the Chilean coast and the Nürnberg and Leipzig were coming down from the north. All the German vessels had been ordered to concentrate at Easter Island, a small remote convict settlement belonging to Chili and lost in the Pacific far out (2,800 miles) to the west of Valparaiso.
While, therefore, Cradock and his Southern Squadron were steering for the Falkland Islands to make of it a base for their search for the Dresden, von Spee’s cruisers were slowly concentrating upon Easter Island. There was no coal at the Falklands—they produce nothing except sheep and the most abominable weather on earth—but it was easy for us to direct colliers thither, and to transform the Islands into a base of supplies. The Germans had a far more difficult task. All through the operations which I am describing, and have still to describe, we were possessed of three great advantages. We had the coal, we had the freedom of communications given by ocean cables and wireless, and we had the sympathy of all those South American neutrals with whom we had to deal. Admiral von Spee and his ships were all through in great difficulties for coal, and would have failed entirely unless the German ships at South American ports had run big risks to seek out and supply him. He was to a large extent cut off from the outside world, for he had no cables, and received little information or assistance from home. The slowness of his movements, both before and after Coronel, may chiefly be explained through his lack of supplies and his ignorance of where we were or of what we were about to do.
It is comparatively easy for me now to plot out the movements of the English and German vessels, and to set forth their relative positions at any date. But when the movements were actually in progress the admirals and captains on both sides were very much in the dark. Now and then would come a ray of light which enabled their imagination and judgment to work. Thus the report from the Ortega that she had encountered the Dresden with her two colliers at the Pacific entrance of the Magellan Straits showed that she might be bound for some German rendezvous in the Pacific Ocean. A day or two later came word that the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had bombarded Tahiti, and that these two powerful cruisers, which had seemed to be so remote from the concern of the South Atlantic Squadron, were already half-way across the wide Pacific, apparently bound for Chili. It was also, of course, known that the Leipzig and Nürnberg were on the west coast of Mexico to the north. Any one who will take a chart of the Pacific and note the positions towards the end of September of von Spee, the Dresden, and the Nürnberg and Leipzig, will see that the lonely dot marked as Easter Island was pretty nearly the only spot in the vast stretch of water towards which these scattered units could possibly be converging. At least so it seemed at the time, and, in fact, proved to be the case. The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau reached Easter Island early in October, the Nürnberg turned up on the 12th, and later upon the same day the Dresden arrived with her faithful collier the Baden. Upon the 14th down came the Leipzig accompanied by colliers carrying 3,000 tons of coal. The German concentration was complete; it had been carried through with very considerable skill aided by no less considerable luck. The few inhabitants of the lonely Easter Island, remote from trade routes, cables, and newspapers, regarded the German squadron with complete indifference. They had heard nothing of the world war, and were not interested in foreign warships. The island is rich in archæological remains. There happened to be upon it a British scientific expedition, but, busied over the relics of the past, the single-minded men of science did not take the trouble to cross the island to look at the German ships. They also were happy in their lack of knowledge that a war was on.
THE PACIFIC: VON SPEE’S CONCENTRATION.
I have anticipated events a little in order to make clear what was happening on the other side of the great spur of South America while Admiral Stoddart’s squadron was taking charge of the Brazilian, Uruguayan, and upper Argentine coasts, and Admiral Cradock, with the Good Hope, Glasgow, Monmouth, and Otranto—followed by the battleship Canopus—were pressing to the south after the Dresden. Stoddart’s little lot had been swept up from regions remote from their present concentration. The Carnarvon had come from St. Vincent, the Defence from the Mediterranean, where she had been Troubridge’s flagship in the early days of the war; the Kent had been sent out from England, and the Cornwall summoned from the West Coast of Africa. The Bristol, as we know, was from the West Indies and her fruitless hunt for the elusive Karlsruhe. The South Atlantic was now in possession of two considerable British squadrons, although two months earlier there had been nothing of ours carrying guns except the little Glasgow.
After the news arrived from the Ortega about the Dresden’s movements, Cradock took his ships down to Punta Arenas, and thence across to Port Stanley, in the Falkland Islands, where he was joined by the Canopus, a slow old ship of some thirteen to fourteen knots, which had straggled down to him. I have never been able to reconcile the choice of the old Canopus, despite her formidable 12-inch guns, with my sense of what was fitting for the pursuit and destruction of German cruisers with a squadron speed of some twenty-one knots. From Port Stanley the Glasgow and Monmouth were despatched round the Horn upon a scouting expedition which was to extend as far as Valparaiso. Already the Southern Squadron was beginning to suffer from its remoteness from the original Pirates’ Lair of the Glasgow. The Northern Squadron, collected from the corners of the earth, were receiving the supply ships first and skimming the cream off their cargoes before letting them loose for the service of their brethren in arms to the south. It was all very natural and inevitable, but rather irritating for those who had now to make the best of the knuckle end of the Admiralty’s joints.
The trip round the Horn of the Glasgow and Monmouth was very rough indeed; the English cruisers rolled continually gunwhale under, and had they chanced to encounter the Dresden—which was not then possible, for she was well up the Chilean coast—neither side could have fired a shot at the other. At Orange Bay, where they put in, they discovered evidence of the recent presence of the Dresden in rather a curious way. It had long been the custom of vessels visiting that remote desolate spot to erect boards giving their names and the date of their call. Upon the notice board of the German cruiser Bremen, left many months before, was read in pencil, partially obliterated by a cautious afterthought, the words “Dresden, September 11th, 1914.”
During the early part of October, the two cruisers Glasgow and Monmouth worked up the Chilean coast and reached Valparaiso about October 17th. It was an expedition rather trying to the nerves of those who were responsible for the safety of the ships. Perhaps the word “squirmy” will best describe their feelings. Already the German concentration had taken place at Easter Island to the west of them; they did not positively know of it, but suspected, and felt apprehensive lest their presence in Chilean waters might be reported to von Spee and themselves cut off and overwhelmed before they could get away. Coal and provisions were running short, the crew were upon half rations, and any imprudence might be very severely punished.
During October the Glasgow and Monmouth were detached from the Good Hope, and it was not until the 28th that Cradock joined up with them at a point several hundred miles south of Coronel, whither they had descended for coal and stores after their hazardous northern enterprise. Here also was the Otranto, but the Canopus, though steaming her best, had been left behind by the Good Hope, and was, for all practical purposes, of no account at all. She was 200 miles away when Coronel was fought. On October 28th, after receiving orders from Cradock, the Glasgow left by herself bound north for Coronel, a small Chilean coaling port, there to pick up mails and telegrams from England. The Glasgow arrived off Coronel on the 29th, but remained outside patrolling for forty-eight hours. The German wireless about her was very strong indeed, enemy ships were evidently close at hand, and at any moment might appear. They were indeed much nearer and more menacing than the Glasgow knew, even at this eleventh hour before the meeting took place. On October 26th Admiral von Spee was at Masafuera, a small island off the Chilean coast, on the 27th he left for Valparaiso itself, and there on the 31st he learned of the arrival in the port of Coronel of the English cruiser Glasgow. The clash of fighting ships was very near.
On October 31st the Glasgow entered the harbour of Coronel, a large harbour to which there are two entrances, and a rendezvous off the port had been arranged with the rest of the squadron for November 1st. Her arrival was at once notified to von Spee at Valparaiso. The mails and telegrams were collected, and at 9.15 on the 1st the Glasgow backed out cautiously, ready, if the Germans were in force outside, to slip back again into neutral waters and to take the fullest advantage of her twenty-four hours’ law. She emerged seeing nothing, though the enemy wireless was coming loudly, and met the Good Hope, Monmouth, and Otranto at the appointed rendezvous some eighty miles out to sea. Here the mails and telegrams were transferred to Cradock by putting them in a cask and towing it across the Good Hope’s bows. The sea was rough, and this resourceful method was much quicker and less dangerous than the orthodox use of a boat. Cradock spread out his four ships, fifteen miles apart, and steamed to the north-west at ten knots. Smoke became visible to the Glasgow at 4.20 p.m., and as she increased speed to investigate, there appeared two four-funnelled armoured cruisers and one light cruiser with three funnels. Those four-funnelled ships were the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and until they were seen at that moment by the Glasgow they were not positively known to have been on the Chilean coast. To this extent the German Admiral had taken his English opponents by surprise. “When we saw those damned four funnels,” said the officers of the Glasgow, “we knew that there was the devil to pay.”
I have already told the story of the Coronel action and I will not tell it again. Von Spee held off so long as the sun behind the English gave them the advantage of light, and did not close in until the sun had set and the yellow afterglow made his opponents stand out like silhouettes. He could see them while they could not see him. During the action, the light cruiser Glasgow, with which I am mainly concerned, had a very unhappy time. The armed liner Otranto cleared off, quite properly, and the Glasgow, third in the line, was exposed for more than an hour to the concentrated fire of the 4.1-inch guns of both the Leipzig and Dresden, and afterwards, when the Good Hope had blown up and the Monmouth been disabled, for about a quarter of an hour to the 8.2-inch guns of the Gneisenau. Her gunnery officers could not see the splashes of their own shells, and could not correct the ranges. When darkness came down it was useless to continue firing blindly, and worse than useless, since her gun flashes gave some guidance to the enemy’s gunners. At the range of about 11,000 yards, a long range for the German 4.1-inch guns, the shells were falling all around very steeply, the surface of the sea was churned into foam, and splinters from bursting shells rained over her. It is a wonderful thing that she suffered so little damage and that not a single man of her company was killed or severely wounded. Four slight wounds from splinters constituted her total tally of casualties. At least 600 shells, great and small, were fired at her, yet she was hit five times only. The most serious damage done was a big hole between wind and water on the port quarter near one of the screws. Yet even this hole did not prevent her from steaming away at twenty-four knots, and from covering several thousand miles before she was properly repaired. I think that the Glasgow must be a lucky ship. After the Good Hope had blown up and the Monmouth, badly hurt, was down by the bows and turning her stern to the seas, the Glasgow hung upon her consort’s port quarter, anxious to give help and deeply reluctant to leave. Yet she could do nothing. The Monmouth was clearly doomed, and it was urgent that the Glasgow should get away to warn the Canopus, then 150 miles away and pressing towards the scene of action, and to report the tragedy and the German concentration to the Admiralty at home. During that anxious waiting time, when the enemy’s shells were still falling thickly about her, the sea, to the Glasgow’s company, looked very, very cold! At last, when the moon was coming up brightly, and further delay might have made escape impossible, the Glasgow sorrowfully turned to the west, towards the wide Pacific spaces, and dashed off at full speed. It was not until half an hour later, when she was twelve miles distant, that she counted the seventy-five flashes of the Nürnberg’s guns which finally destroyed the Monmouth. I am afraid that the story of the cheers from the Monmouth which sped the Glasgow upon her way must be dismissed as a pretty legend. No one in the Glasgow heard them, and no one from the Monmouth survived to tell the tale. Captain Grant and his men of the Canopus must have suffered agonies when they received the Glasgow’s brief message. They had done their utmost to keep up with the Good Hope, and the slowness of their ship had been no fault of theirs. Grant had, I have been told, implored the Admiral to wait for him before risking an engagement.
The journey to the Straits and to her junction with the Canopus was a very anxious one for the Glasgow’s company. They did their best to be cheerful, though cheerfulness was not easy to come by. They had witnessed the total defeat of an English by a German squadron, and before they could get down south into comparative safety the German ships, running down the chord of the arc which represented the Glasgow’s course, might arrive first at the Straits. That there was no pursuit to the south may be explained by the one word—coal. Von Spee could get coal at Valparaiso or at Coronel—though the local coal was soft, wretched stuff—but he had no means of replenishment farther south. One does not realize how completely a squadron of warships is tied to its colliers or to its coaling bases until one tries to discover and explain the movements of warships cruising in the outer seas.
While running down towards the Straits—for twenty-four hours she kept up twenty-four knots—the Glasgow briefly notified the Canopus of the disaster of Coronel and of her own intention to make for the Falkland Islands. Beyond this, she refrained from using the tell-tale wireless which might give away her position to a pursuing enemy. Upon the evening of the 3rd she picked up the German press story of the action, but kept silence upon it herself. On the morning of the 4th, very short of stores—her crew had been on reduced rations for a month—she reached the Straits and, to her great relief, found them empty of the enemy. She did not meet the Canopus until the 6th, and then, with the big battleship upon her weather quarter, to keep the seas somewhat off that sore hole in her side, she made a fortunately easy passage to the Falkland Islands and entered Port Stanley at daylight upon November 8th. Thence the Glasgow despatched her first telegram to the authorities at home, and at six o’clock in the evening set off with the Canopus for the north. But that same evening came orders from England for the Canopus to return, in order that the coaling base of the Falklands might be defended, so the Glasgow, alone once more after many days, pursued her solitary way towards Rio and to her meeting with the Carnarvon, Defence, and Cornwall, which were at that time lying off the River Plate guarding the approaches to Montevideo and Buenos Ayres. The Glasgow had done her utmost to uphold the Flag, but the lot of the sole survivor of a naval disaster is always wretched. The one thing which counts in the eyes of English naval officers is the good opinion of their brethren of the sea; those of the Glasgow could not tell until they had tested it what would be the opinion of their colleagues in the Service. It was very kind, very sympathetic; so overflowing with kindness and sympathy were those who now learned the details of the disaster, that the company of the Glasgow, sorely humiliated, yet full of courage and hope for the day of reckoning, never afterwards forgot how much they owed to it. At home men growled foolishly, ignorantly, sank to the baseness of writing abusive letters to the newspapers, and even to the Glasgow herself, but the Service understood and sympathised, and it is the Service alone which counts.