CHAPTER XII
THE CRUISE OF THE “GLASGOW”
Part II.—Coronel to Juan Fernandez
(Nov. 1st, 1914, to March 14th, 1915)
We left the British cruiser Glasgow off the River Plate, where she had arrived after her escape, sore at heart and battered in body, from the disaster of Coronel. The battleship Canopus remained behind at Port Stanley to defend the newly established coaling-station at the Falkland Islands. Her four 12-inch guns would have made the inner harbour impassable to the lightly armoured cruisers of Admiral von Spee had he descended before the reinforcements from the north arrived; and the colliers, cleverly hidden in the remote creeks of the Islands, would have been most difficult for him to discover. It was essential to our plans that there should be ample stores of coal at the Falklands for the use of Sturdee’s punitive squadron when it should arrive, and every possible precaution was taken to ensure the supply. As it happened, von Spee did not come for five weeks. He was at his wits’ end to find coal, and was, moreover, short of ammunition after the bombardment of Tahiti and the big expenditure in the Coronel fight. So he remained pottering about off the Chilean coast until he had swept up enough of coal and of colliers to make his journey to the Falklands, and to provide for his return to the Lair which he had established in an inlet upon the coast.
At the English Bank, off the River Plate, the Glasgow had joined up with the Carnarvon, Defence, and Cornwall, and her company were greatly refreshed in spirit by the kindly understanding and sympathy of their brothers of the sea. The officers and men of the Glasgow, who had by now worked together for more than two years, had come through their shattering experiences with extraordinarily little loss of morale. They had suffered a material defeat, but their courage and confidence in the ultimate issue burned as brightly as ever. Even upon the night of the disaster, when they were seeking a safe road to the Straits, uncertain whether the Germans would arrive there first, they were much more concerned for the safety of the Canopus than worried about their own skins. Their captain and navigating lieutenant had thrust upon them difficulties and anxieties of which the others were at first ignorant. The ship’s compasses were found to be gravely disturbed by the shocks of the action, their magnetism had been upset, and not until star sights could be taken were they able to correct the error of fully twenty degrees. The speed at which the cruiser travelled buried the stern deeply, and the water entering by the big hole blown in the port quarter threatened to flood a whole compartment and make it impossible for full speed to be maintained. The voyage to the Straits was, for those responsible, a period of grave anxiety. Yet through it all the officers and men did their work and maintained a cheerful countenance, as if to pass almost scatheless through a tremendous torrent of shell, and to get away with waggling compasses and a great hole between wind and water, was an experience which custom had made of little moment. No one could have judged from their demeanour that never before November 1st had the Glasgow been in action, and that not until November 6th, when she had beside her the support of the Canopus’s great guns, did she reach comparative safety.
The Glasgow’s damaged side had been shored up internally with baulks of timber, but if she were to become sea- and battle-worthy it was necessary to seek for some more permanent means of repair. So with her consorts she made for Rio, arriving on the 16th, and reported her damaged condition to the Brazilian authorities. Under the Hague Convention she was entitled to remain at Rio for a sufficient time to be made seaworthy, and the Brazilian Government interpreted the Convention in the most generous sense. The Government floating dock was placed at her disposal, and here for five days she was repaired, until with her torn side plating entirely renewed she was as fit as ever for the perils of the sea. Her engineers took the fullest advantage of those invaluable days; they overhauled the boilers and engines so thoroughly that when the bold cruiser emerged from Rio she was fresh and clean, ready to steam at her own full speed of some twenty-six knots, and to fight anything with which she could reasonably be classed in weight of metal. By this time the Glasgow had learned of the great secret concentration about to take place at her old Pirates’ Lair to the north, and of those other concentrations which were designed to ensure the destruction of von Spee to whatsoever part of the wide oceans he might direct his ships.
The disaster of Coronel had set the Admiralty bustling to very good and thorough purpose. No fewer than five squadrons were directed to concentrate for the one purpose of ridding the seas of the German cruisers. First came down Sturdee with the battle cruisers Invincible and Inflexible to join the Carnarvon, Glasgow, Kent, Cornwall, and Bristol at the Pirates’ Lair. Upon their arrival the armoured cruiser Defence was ordered to the Cape to complete there a watching squadron ready for von Spee should he seek safety in that direction. One Japanese squadron remained to guard the China seas, and another of great power sped across the Pacific towards the Chilean coast. In Australian waters were the battle cruiser Australia and her consorts of the Unit, together with the French cruiser Montcalm. Von Spee’s end was certain; what was not quite so certain was whether he would fall to the Japanese or to Sturdee. Our Japanese Allies fully understood that we were gratified at his falling to us; he had sunk our ships and was our just prey. Yet if he had loitered much longer off Chili, and had not at last ventured upon his fatal Falklands dash, the gallant Japanese would have had him. Luck favoured us now, as it had favoured us a month earlier when the Emden was destroyed at the Cocos-Keeling Islands. Those who have read my story of the Emden in Chapter IX will remember that but for the fortune of position which placed the Sydney nearest to the Islands when their wireless call for help went out, the famous raider would in all probability have fallen to a Japanese light cruiser which was with the Australian convoy.
The mission of the Invincible and Inflexible, and the secrecy with which it was enshrouded, is one of the most romantic episodes of the war. I have already dealt fully with it. But there has since come to me one little detail which reveals how very near we were, at one time, to a German discovery of the whole game. The two battle cruisers coaled at St. Vincent, Cape Verde Islands—Portuguese territory, within which we had no powers of censorship—and at the Pirates’ Lair off the Brazilian coast. Their movements began to be talked about in Rio and the River Plate. Men knew of the Coronel disaster and shrewdly suspected that the two great ships were on their way to the South Atlantic. A description of their visit had been prepared, and was actually in type. It was intended for publication in a local South American paper. That it was not published, when urgent representations were made on our behalf, reveals how scrupulous was the consideration with which our friends of Brazil and the Argentine regarded our interests. There were no powers of censorship, the appeal was as man to man, and Englishman to Portuguese, and the appeal prevailed—even over the natural thirst of a journalist for highly interesting news. The battle cruisers coaled and passed upon their way, and no word of their visit went forth to Berlin or to von Spee.
The Glasgow was among the British cruisers which greeted Sturdee at the Pirates’ Lair, and as soon as ammunition and stores had been distributed and coal taken in, the voyage to the Falkland Islands began. The squadron arrived in the evening of December 7th, and at daybreak of the 8th von Spee ran upon his fate. The part played by the Glasgow in the action was less spectacular than that which fell to the battle cruisers, but it was useful and has some features of interest. Among other things it illustrates how little is known of the course of a naval action—spread over hundreds of miles of sea—while it takes place, and for some time even after it is over.
On the morning of December 8th, at eight o’clock, the approach of the German squadron was observed, and at this moment the English squadron was hard at work coaling. By 9.45 steam was up and the pursuit began. The Glasgow was lying in the inner harbour with banked fires, ready for sea at two hours’ notice, but her Engineer Lieutenant-Commander Shrubsole and his staff so busied themselves that in little over an hour from the signal to raise steam she was under weigh, and an hour later she was moving in chase of the enemy at a higher speed than she obtained in her contractors’ trials when she was a brand-new ship three years earlier. Throughout the war the engineering staff of the Royal Navy has never failed to go one better than anyone had the right to expect of it. It has never failed to respond to any call upon its energies or its skill, never.
In order that we may understand how the Dresden was able to make her escape unscathed from her pursuers—she bolted without firing a shot in the action—I must give some few details of the position of the ships when the German light cruisers were ordered by von Spee to take themselves off as best they might. Shortly before one o’clock the Glasgow, a much faster ship than anything upon our side except the two battle cruisers, was two miles ahead of the flagship Invincible, and it was Sturdee’s intention to attack the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau—hull down on the horizon—with his speediest ships, the Invincible, Inflexible, and Glasgow. Our three other cruisers—Carnarvon, Cornwall, and Kent—were well astern of the leaders. At 1.04 the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau turned to the eastward to accept battle and to cover the retreat of their light cruisers, which were then making off towards the south-east. Admiral Sturdee, seeing at once that the light cruisers might make good their escape unless the speedy Glasgow were detached in pursuit, called up the Carnarvon (Rear-Admiral Stoddart) to his support, and ordered Captain Luce in the Glasgow to take charge of the job of rounding up and destroying the Leipzig, Nürnberg, and Dresden. The Glasgow, therefore, began the chase at a grave disadvantage. She first had to work round the stern of the Invincible, pass the flagship upon her disengaged side, and then steam off from far in the rear after the Cornwall and Kent, which had already begun the pursuit. The Leipzig and Nürnberg were a long way off, and the Dresden was even farther. This cruiser, Dresden, though sister to the Emden, was, unlike her sister and the others of von Spee’s light cruisers, fitted with Parsons’ turbine engines. She was much the fastest of the German ships at the Falkland Islands, and beginning her flight with a start of some ten miles quickly was lost to sight beyond the horizon. The Cornwall and Kent had no chance at all of overtaking her, and the Glasgow, whose captain was the senior naval officer in command of the pursuing squadron of the three English cruisers, could not overtake a long stern chase by herself so long as the Leipzig and Nürnberg were in his course and had not been disposed of. He was obliged first to make sure of them. Steaming at twenty-four and a half knots, the Glasgow drew away from the battle cruisers and began to overhaul the Leipzig and Nürnberg. She decided to attack the Leipzig, which was nearest to her, and to regulate her speed so that the Cornwall and Kent—both more powerful but much slower ships than herself—would not be left behind. As it happened the engineering staffs of these not very rapid “County” cruisers rose nobly to the emergency, the Cornwall was able to catch the Leipzig and to take a large part in her destruction, while the Kent kept on after the Nürnberg and, as it proved, was successful in destroying her also. One of the ten boilers of the Nürnberg had been out of action for weeks past and her speed was a good deal below its best.
The sea is a very big place, but that portion of it contained within the ring of the visible horizon is very small. To those in the Glasgow, pressing on in chase of the Leipzig, the scene appeared strange and even ominous. They could see the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau far away, moving apparently in pursuit of themselves, but the battle cruisers hidden below the curve of the horizon they could not see. When firing from the Invincible and Inflexible ceased for a while—as it did at intervals—it seemed to the Glasgow’s company that they were sandwiched between von Spee’s armoured cruisers and his light cruisers, and that the battle cruisers, upon which the result of the action depended, had disappeared into space. The telegraph room and the conning-tower doubtless knew what was happening, but the ship’s company as a whole did not. To this brevity of vision, and to this detachment from exact information, one must set down the extraordinarily conflicting stories one receives from the observers of a naval action. They see what is within the horizon but not what is below it, and that which is below is not uncommonly far more important than that which is above.
Shortly after three o’clock the Glasgow opened upon the Leipzig with her foremost 6-inch gun at a range of about 12,000 yards (about seven miles), seeking to outrange the lighter 4.1-inch guns carried by the German cruiser. The distance closed down gradually to 10,000 yards, at which range the German guns could occasionally get in their work. They could, as the Emden showed in her fight with the Sydney, and as was observed at Coronel, do effective shooting even at 11,000 yards, but hits were difficult to bring off, owing to the steepness of the fall of the shells and the narrowness of the mark aimed at. For more than an hour the Glasgow engaged the Leipzig by herself, knocking out her secondary control position between the funnels, and allowing the Cornwall time to arrive and to help to finish the business with her fourteen 6-inch guns. At one time the range fell as low as 9,000 yards, the Leipzig’s gunners became very accurate, and the Glasgow suffered nearly all the casualties which overtook her in the action.
About 4.20 the Cornwall was able to open fire, and the Glasgow joined her, so that both ships might concentrate upon the same side of the Leipzig. Just as Admiral Sturdee in his fight with the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau could not afford to run risks of damage far from a repairing base, so the Glasgow and the Cornwall with several hours of daylight before them were not justified in allowing impatience to hazard the safety of the ships. They had to regard the possible use of torpedoes and to look out for dropped mines. Neither torpedoes nor mines were, in fact, used by the Germans, though at one time in the course of the action drums, mistaken for mines, were seen in the water and carefully avoided. They were cases in which cartridges were brought from the magazines, and which were thrown overboard after being emptied. As the afternoon drew on the weather turned rather misty, and the attacking ships were obliged to close in a little and hurry up the business. This was at half-past five.
From the first the Leipzig never had a chance. She was out-steamed and utterly out-gunned. Her opponents had between them four times her broadside weight of metal, and the Cornwall was an armoured ship. She never had a chance, yet she went on, fired some 1,500 rounds—all that remained in her magazines after Coronel—and did not finally cease firing until after seven o’clock. For more than four hours her company had looked certain death in the face yet gallantly stood to their work. From first to last von Spee’s concentrated squadron played the naval game according to the immemorial rules, and died like gentlemen. Peace be to their ashes. In success and in failure they were the most gallant and honourable of foes. At seven o’clock the Leipzig was smashed to pieces, she was blazing from stem to stern, she was doomed, yet gave no sign of surrender.
At this moment, when the work of the Glasgow and the Cornwall had been done—the Cornwall, it should be noted, bore the heavier burden in this action—she was hit eighteen times, though little hurt, and played her part with the utmost loyalty and devotion—at this moment flashed the news through the ether that the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had been sunk. The news spread, and loud cheers went up from the English ships. To the doomed company in the Leipzig those cheers must have carried some hint of the utter disaster which had overtaken their squadron. It was not until nine o’clock (six hours after the Glasgow had begun to fire upon her) that she made her last plunge—if a modern compartment ship does not blow up, she takes a powerful lot of shell to sink her—and the English ships did everything that they could to save life. The Glasgow drew close up under her stern and lowered boats, at the same time signalling that she was trying to save life. There was no reply. Perhaps the signals were not read; perhaps there were not many left alive to make reply. The Leipzig, still blazing, rolled right over to port and disappeared. Six officers, including the Navigating Lieutenant-Commander, and eight men were picked up by the Glasgow’s boats. Fourteen officers and men out of nearly 300! The captives were treated as honoured guests and made much of. Our officers and men took their gallant defeated foes to their hearts and gave them of their best. It was not until two days later, when news arrived that the Leipzig’s sister and consort the Nürnberg had been sunk by the Kent, that these brave men broke down. Then they wept. They cared little for the Dresden—a stranger from the North Atlantic—but the Nürnberg was their own consort, beside whom they had sailed for years, and beside whom they had fought. They had hoped to the last that she might make good her escape from the wreck of von Spee’s squadron. When that last hope failed they wept. When I think of von Spee’s gallant men, so human in their strength and in their weakness, I cannot regard them as other than worthy brothers of the sea.
In the Coronel action the Glasgow, exposed to the concentrated fire of the Leipzig and Dresden for an hour, and to the heavy guns of the Gneisenau for some ten minutes, did not lose a single man. There were four slight wounds from splinters, that was all. But in her long fight with the Leipzig alone, assisted by the powerful batteries of the Cornwall, the Glasgow suffered two men killed, three men severely wounded, and six slightly hurt. Such are the strange chances of war. After Coronel, though they had seen two of their own ships go down and were in flight from an overwhelming enemy, the officers and men were wonderfully cheerful. The shrewder the buffets of Fate the stiffer became their tails. But after the Falklands, when success had wiped out the humiliation of failure, there came a nervous reaction. Defeat could not depress the spirit of these men, but victory, by relieving their minds from the long strain of the past months, made them captious and irritable. Perhaps their spirits were overshadowed by the prospect of the weary hunt for the fugitive Dresden.
By wondrous accident perchance one may
Grope out a needle in a load of hay.
THE CRUISE OF THE “GLASGOW.”
Four German cruisers had been sunk, but one, the Dresden, had escaped, and the story of the next three months is the story of a search—always wearisome, sometimes dangerous, sometimes even absurd. The Straits of Magellan, the islands of Tierra del Fuego and of the Horn, and the west coast of the South American spur are a maze of inlets, many uncharted, nearly all unsurveyed. The hunt for the elusive Dresden among the channels, creeks, and islands was far more difficult than the proverbial grope for a needle in a load of hay. A needle buried in hay cannot change its position; provided that it really be hidden in a load, patience and a magnet will infallibly bring it forth. The Dresden could move from one hiding place to another, no search for her could ever exhaust the possible hiding-places, and it was not positively known until after she had been run down and destroyed where she had been in hiding. That she was found after three weary months may be explained by that one word which explains so much in naval work—coal. The Dresden after her flight from the Falkland Islands action was short of coal; von Spee’s attendant colliers, Baden and Santa Isabel, had been pursued and sunk by the Bristol and the armed liner Macedonia, and she was cast upon the world without means of replenishing her bunkers. This was, of course, known to her pursuers, so that they expected, and expected rightly, that she would hang about in some secluded creek until her dwindling supplies drove her forth upon the seas to hunt for more. Which is what happened.
Upon the evening of December 8th, after the Glasgow and Cornwall had disposed of the Leipzig, there were one English and two German cruisers unaccounted for. The Kent had last been seen chasing the Nürnberg towards the south-east, while the Dresden was disappearing over the curve of the horizon to the south. Upon the following morning no news had come in from the Kent, and some anxiety was felt; it was necessary to find her before proceeding with the pursuit of the Dresden, and much valuable time was lost. It happened that during her fight with the Nürnberg, which she sank in a most business-like fashion, the Kent’s aerials were shot away and she lost wireless contact with Sturdee’s squadron. The Glasgow was ordered off to search for her, but fortunately the Kent turned up on the morning of the 10th deservedly triumphant. She had performed the great feat of catching and sinking a vessel which on paper was much faster than herself, and she had done it though short of coal and at the sacrifice of everything wooden on board, including the wardroom furniture. She was compelled with the Glasgow and Cornwall to return to Port Stanley for coal, and this delay was of the utmost service to the fugitive Dresden. Though the movements of that cruiser, in the interval, were not learned until much later, it will be convenient if I give them now, so that the situation may be made clear. The Dresden had owed her escape to her speed and to the occupation of the Glasgow—the only cruiser upon our side which could catch her—with the Leipzig. She got clear away, rounded the Horn on the 9th, and on December 10th entered the Cockburn Channel on the west coast of Tierra del Fuego. At Stoll Bay she passed the night, and her coal-bunkers being empty sent men ashore to cut enough wood to enable her to struggle up to Punta Arenas. She ran a great risk by making for so conspicuous a port, but she had no choice. Coal must be obtained somehow or her number would speedily go up. She was not entitled to get Chilean coal, for she had managed to delude the authorities into supplying her upon five previous occasions during the statutory period of three months. Once in three months a belligerent warship is permitted, under the Hague Rules, to coal at the ports of a neutral country; once she claims this privilege she is cut off from getting more coal from the same country for three months. But the Dresden again managed, as she had already done four times before, to secure supplies illegitimately. She coaled at Punta Arenas, remained there for thirty-one hours—though after twenty-four hours she was liable to internment—and left at 10 p.m. on the 13th. It was this disregard for the Hague Rules which led to the destruction of the Dresden in Chilean territorial waters at Juan Fernandez three months later. We held that she had broken international law deliberately many times, she was no longer entitled to claim its protection. She could not disregard it when it knocked against her convenience, and shelter herself under it when in need of a protective mantle. She had by her own violations become an outlaw.
At 2.30 a.m. on the 13th, Sturdee learned that the Dresden was at Punta Arenas. The Bristol, which was ready, jumped off the mark at once; the Inflexible and the Glasgow, which were not quite ready, got off at 9.15. Thus it happened that the Bristol reached Punta Arenas seventeen hours after the Dresden had left, to vanish, as it were, into space, and not to be heard of again for a couple of months. What she did was to slip down again into the Cockburn Channel and lie at anchor in Hewett Bay near the southern exit. On December 26th she shifted her quarters to an uncharted and totally uninhabited creek, called the Gonzales Channel, and there she lay in idle security until February 4th.
During the long weeks of the Dresden’s stay in Hewett Bay and the Gonzales Channel, the English cruisers were busily hunting for her among the islets and inlets of the Magellan Straits, Tierra del Fuego, and the west coast of the South American spur. The Carnarvon, Cornwall, and Kent took charge of the Magellan Straits, the Glasgow and Bristol ferreted about the recesses of the west coast with the Inflexible outside of them to chase the sea-rat should she break cover for the open. The battle cruiser Australia came in from the Pacific and with the “County” cruiser Newcastle, from Mexico, kept watch off Valparaiso. The Dresden, lying snug in the Gonzales Channel, was not approached except once, on December 29th, when one of the searchers was within twenty miles of her hiding-place. The weather was thick and she was not seen. The big ships did not long waste their time over the search. It was one better suited to light craft, for lighter craft even than the Glasgow or Bristol, for which the uncharted channels often threatened grave dangers. Armed patrols or picket boats, of shallow draught, were best suited to the work, and in its later stages were furbished up and made available.
On December 16th the battle cruisers Invincible and Inflexible were recalled to England, and the Canopus went north to act as guardship at the precious Pirates’ Lair which has figured so often in these pages. The Australia passed on her way to the Atlantic, across which the Canadian contingents were in need of convoy, and the supervision of the Dresden search devolved upon Admiral Stoddart of the Carnarvon. The Admiral with the Carnarvon and Cornwall remained in and out of the Magellan Straits, while the captain of the Glasgow, with him the Kent, Bristol, and Newcastle, was put in charge of the Chilean Archipelago. Gradually as time went on and the Dresden lay low—all this while in the Gonzales Channel—other ships went away upon more urgent duties and the chase was left to the Glasgow, Kent, and an armed liner Orama. The Bristol had butted herself ashore in one of the unsurveyed channels and was obliged to seek a dock for repairs. The great concentration of which the Glasgow had been the focus was over, she was now back at her old police work, though not upon her old station. She had begun the war in sole charge of the South Atlantic; the wheel of circumstance had brought her, with her consorts, to the charge of the South Pacific.
Although the Glasgow’s company had had many experiences of the risks of war, they had never felt in action the strain upon their nerves which was always with them day in day out during that long weary hunt for the Dresden in the Chilean Archipelago. They explored no less than 7,000 miles of narrow waters, for the most part uncharted, feeling their way by lead and by mother wit, becoming learned in the look of the towering rocks which shut them in, and in the kelp growing upon their sea margins. The channels wound among steep high cliffs, around which they could not see. As they worked stealthily round sharp corners, they were always expecting to encounter the Dresden with every gun and torpedo tube registered upon the narrow space into which they must emerge. Their own guns and torpedoes were always ready for instant action, but in this game of hide-and-seek the advantage of surprise must always rest with the hidden conscious enemy. This daily strain went on through half of December and the whole of January and February! One cannot feel surprised to learn that in the view of the Glasgow’s company the actions of Coronel and the Falklands were gay picnics when set in comparison with that hourly expectation throughout two and a half months of the sudden discovery of the Dresden, and that anticipated blast of every gun and mouldy which she could on the instant bring to bear. Added to this danger of sudden attack was the ever-present risk of maritime disaster. It is no light task to navigate for three months waters to which exist no sailing directions and no charts of even tolerable accuracy. Upon Captain Luce and upon his second in command, Lieutenant-Commander Wilfred Thompson, rested a load of responsibility which it would be difficult to overestimate.
It was not until early in March that any authentic news of the movements of the Dresden became available. Upon February 4th she had issued forth of the Gonzales Channel and crept stealthily up the Chilean coast. To the Glasgow had come during the long weeks of the Dresden’s hiding many reports that she was obliged to investigate. Many times our own cruisers were seen by ignorant observers on shore and mistaken for the Dresden; out would flow stories which, wandering by way of South American ports—and sometimes by way of London itself—would come to rest in the Glasgow’s wireless-room and increase the burden thrown upon her officers. More than once she was taken by shore watchers to be the Dresden, and urgently warned from home to be on the look-out for herself!
At last the veil lifted. The Dresden, with her coal of Punta Arenas approaching exhaustion, was sighted at a certain spot well up the Chilean coast where had been situated von Spee’s secret Lair. The news was rushed out to the Glasgow, and since her consort, the Kent, was nearest to the designated spot this cruiser was despatched at once to investigate. As at the Falklands action, her engineers rose to the need for rapid movement. For thirty-six hours continuously she steamed northwards at seventeen knots, and arrived just before daybreak on the 7th. Nothing was then in sight, nor until three o’clock in the afternoon of the following day, the 8th. While in misty weather the Kent was waiting and watching out at sea, a cloud bank lifted and the Dresden was revealed. She had not been seen by us since the day of her flight, December 8th, exactly three months before! The Dresden was a shabby spectacle, her paint gone, her sides raw with rust and standing high out of the water. She was evidently light, and almost out of coal. The Kent at once made for her quarry, but the Dresden, a much faster ship, drew away. Foul as she was, for she had not been in dock since the war began, the Kent was little cleaner. The Dresden drew away, but the relentless pursuit of the indefatigable Kent kept her at full speed for six hours, and left her with no more than enough fuel to reach Masafuera or Juan Fernandez. By thus forcing the Dresden to burn most of the fuel which still remained in her bunkers, the Kent performed an invaluable service. This was on March 8th. Juan Fernandez was judged to be the most likely spot in which she would take refuge, and thither the Glasgow, Kent, and Orama foregathered, arriving at daybreak on the 14th. In Cumberland Bay, 600 yards from the shore, the Dresden lay at anchor; the chase was over. She had arrived at 8.30 a.m. on the 9th; she had been in Chilean waters for nearly five days. Yet her flag was still flying, and there was no evidence that she had been interned. Cumberland Bay is a small settlement, and there was no Chilean force present capable of interning a German warship.
I will indicate what happened. The main facts have been told in the correspondence which took place later between the Chilean and British Governments. I will tell the story as I have myself gathered it, and as I interpret it.
The Dresden lay in neutral Chilean waters, yet her flag was flying, and she had trained her guns upon the English squadron which had found her there. There was nothing to prevent her—though liable to internment—from making off unless steps were taken at once to put her out of action. She had many times before broken the neutrality regulations of Chili, and was rightly held by us to be an outlaw to be captured or sunk at sight. Acting upon this just interpretation of the true meaning of neutrality, Captain Luce of the Glasgow, the senior naval officer, directed his own guns and those of the Kent to be immediately fired upon the Dresden. The first broadside dismounted her forecastle guns and set her ablaze. She returned the fire without touching either of the English ships. Then, after an inglorious two and a half minutes, the Dresden’s flag came down.
Captain Lüdecke of the Dresden despatched a boat conveying his “adjutant” to the Glasgow for what he called “negotiations,” but the English captain declined a parley. He would accept nothing but unconditional surrender. Lüdecke claimed that his ship was entitled to remain in Cumberland Bay for repairs, that she had not been interned, and that his flag had been struck as a signal of negotiation and not of surrender. When the Englishman Luce would not talk except through the voices of his guns, the German adjutant went back to his ship and Lüdecke then blew her up. His crew had already gone ashore, and the preparations for destroying the Dresden had been made before her captain entered upon his so-called “negotiations.”
It was upon the whole fortunate that Lüdecke took the step of sinking the Dresden himself. It might have caused awkward diplomatic complications had we taken possession of her in undoubted Chilean territorial waters, and yet we could not have permitted her any opportunity of escaping under the fiction of internment. Nothing would have been heard of internment if the English squadron had not turned up—the Dresden had already made an appointment with a collier—and if we had not by our fire so damaged the cruiser that she could not have taken once more to the sea. Her self-destruction saved us a great deal of trouble. In the interval between the firing and the sinking of the Dresden, the Maritime Governor of Juan Fernandez suggested that the English should take away essential parts of the machinery and telegraph for a Chilean warship to do the internment business. Neither of these proceedings was necessary after the explosion. The Dresden was at the bottom of Cumberland Bay, and the British Government apologised to the Chileans for the technical violation of territorial waters. The apology was accepted, and everyone was happy—not the least the officers and men of the Dresden who, after months of aimless, hopeless wanderings, found themselves still alive and in a sunny land flowing with milk and honey. After their long stay in Tierra del Fuego the warmth of Chili must have seemed like paradise. The Dresden yielded to the Glasgow one item of the spoils of war. After the German cruiser had sunk, a small pig was seen swimming about in the Bay. It had been left behind by its late friends, but found new ones in the Glasgow’s crew. That pig is alive still, or was until quite recently. Grown very large, very hairy, and very truculent, and appropriately named von Tirpitz, it has been preserved from the fate which waits upon less famous pigs, and possesses in England a sty and a nameplate all to its distinguished self.
With the sinking of the Dresden the cruise of the Glasgow, which I have set out to tell, comes to a close. She returned to the South Atlantic, and for a further stretch of eighteen months her officers and men continued their duties on board. But life must for them have become rather dull. There were no more Coronels, or Falkland Islands actions, or hunts for elusive German cruisers. Just the daily work of a light cruiser on patrol duty in time of war. When in the limelight they played their part worthily, and I do not doubt continued to play it as worthily, though less conspicuously, when they passed into the darkness of the wings, and other officers, other men, and other ships occupied in their turn the bright scenes upon the naval stage.