These conditions were first brought about when, at twenty minutes past one, the Leipzig turned away toward the southwest, soon to be followed by the Nürnberg and Dresden, with the Glasgow, Kent, and Cornwall in pursuit. With them had started the Carnarvon, but the rear-admiral in command of her, finding his speed insufficient to keep up with the light cruisers, had to give up the chase, and joined the Invincible and Inflexible in engaging the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Leaving the action of the smaller cruisers in the capable hands of Captain Luce of the Glasgow, let us follow the fortunes of the other three in the most immediate and important task. Of these the ten-year-old Carnarvon, pushing on as stoutly as she could, was still trying vainly to keep up with her swifter sisters; and the first encounter was reduced, therefore, to a four-cornered fight lasting for about fifty minutes.
Beginning at twenty minutes past one, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, after five minutes of a running battle, turned a little to port, began to close the range, and accepted the challenge; and, five minutes later, opened fire themselves. Though of smaller calibre, their guns, firing very rapidly, were as usual handled with extreme ability; and, in the words of the flag-lieutenant—half-way up the Invincible's foremast, in the director-tower with Admiral Sturdee—they shot indeed "fiendishly well." "We went on hammering away," he wrote, "for some time, getting closer and closer, and they were hitting us pretty badly. I thought that our foremast had gone once. The Admiral and I were half-way up so as to get a good view. One of the legs of the mast was shot away. Shell fire is unpleasant, to put it mildly. Exploding shells, when they hit the ship, are worse, as one wonders how many she will stand. The Admiral was wonderfully cool and collected, and I bobbed my head at every shell, and got a stiff neck from doing it!"
At a quarter to two the Invincible was being straddled—the Scharnhorst's shells, that is to say, were exploding on both sides of her—and Admiral Sturdee, consistently with his plan of action, drew away a little to avoid undue risks. The Scharnhorst had by this time been hit on several occasions, but had not been disabled, though she broke off the action; and, at ten minutes past two, the fight became a chase again, the Invincible reopening fire at a quarter to three. For eight minutes, again out-ranging them, the Invincible and Inflexible hammered the two German cruisers, forcing them round to port once more to reply as best they could. The heavier British guns had now begun definitely to tell, however, and the Scharnhorst was already on fire forward. "We hit again and again," wrote Midshipman John Esmonde in a letter to his father after the action. "First our left gun sent her big crane spinning over the side. Then our right gun blew her funnel to atoms, and then another shot from the left gun sent her bridge and part of the forecastle sky-high. We were not escaping free, however. Shots were hitting us repeatedly, and the spray from the splashes of their shells was hiding the Scharnhorst from us.... Down came the range—11,000, 10,000, 9,000, to 8,800. We were hitting the Scharnhorst very nearly every time. One beauty from our right gun got one of her turrets fair and square and sent it whistling over the side. Suddenly our right gun misfired—we had got a jamb and one gun was out of action. The breech had caught against one of the cages and would neither open nor shut. We opened up the trap hatch, and I jumped out, and down the ladder with two men to try and find a crowbar. The 12-inch guns were firing all round us, and our left gun was doing work for two now that the right was jambed. The German shells were whistling unpleasantly close and there were splinters flying all over the place. The Scharnhorst was firing heavily, but I could see she was in a bad way. She was down by the bows and badly on fire amidships. I got the crowbar and brought it in, but they wanted a hacksaw as well, so I jumped out again, and just as I was coming back I saw the Scharnhorst's ensign dip (never knew whether it came down or not, because just then one of the lyddite shells hit her and there was a dense cloud of smoke all over her).[[1]] When it cleared she was on her side, and her propellers were lashing the water round into foam. Then she capsized altogether, going to the bottom."
[[1]] As a matter of fact, the Scharnhorst's ensign was not lowered, but, as Admiral Sturdee afterward remarked, "Von Spee met his fate like a brave Admiral, though our foe."
That was at a quarter past four; her consort the Gneisenau was still firing with all her guns; and, by this time, the old Carnarvon had at last arrived upon the scene—she had in fact fired a couple of shots at the Scharnhorst. The three cruisers, therefore, now turned their attention to the Gneisenau, who, after a moment's hesitation, turned and stood at bay. Nothing in the whole day, indeed, was more gallant than her vain but desperate resistance. At half-past four she was still straddling the Invincible, though without causing casualties or serious damage. A few minutes after five, her forward funnel was knocked out and remained lolling against the second. Seven minutes later, just as she hit the Invincible for the last time, she was herself badly damaged again between the third and fourth funnels; and how accurate the British fire had become can be gathered from the notebook of one of her officers, afterward rescued. "Five ten," he wrote, "hit, hit; 5.12, hit; 5:14, hit, hit, hit again; 5:20, after-turret gone; 5:40, hit, hit—on fire everywhere; 5:41, hit, hit—burning everywhere and sinking; 5:45, hit—men lying everywhere; 5:46, hit, hit."
Listing heavily to starboard, and with her engines stopped, Admiral Sturdee had ordered the "Cease Fire" signal at about half-past five. But, before it could be hoisted, the Gneisenau began to shoot again, though now only spasmodically and with a single gun. She seems to have fired, indeed, until her ammunition was exhausted, when, at ten minutes to six, Admiral Sturdee ordered the "Cease Fire" again and, twelve minutes later, she turned on her side. "Then at last," wrote another officer, "away first and second cutters, man sea-boat. For the Gneisenau is heeling right over on her side in the water. The beggars are done for. All our efforts will now be to save life, having done our utmost for five hours to destroy it.... Three of our boats are away picking up survivors. The Inflexible's boats are doing the same, and so are the Carnarvon's. The sea, which, so different from its state at noonday, is now quite angry, is strewn with floating wreckage supporting drowning men. To add to the misery, a drizzling rain is falling. We cast overboard every rope's end we can, and try our hands at casting to some wretch feebly struggling within a few yards of the ship's side. Missed him! Another shot. He's farther off now! Ah! The rope isn't long enough. No good, try someone else. He's sunk now.... Many such do we see. Now we lend a hand hauling at a rope, pulling some poor devil out of the water. As they are hauled on deck they are taken below into the wardroom ante-room, or the Admiral's spare cabin. Here with knives we tear off their dripping clothing. Then with towels we try to start a little warmth in their ice-cold bodies. They are trembling, violently trembling from the iciness of their immersion. Some of them had stuck it for thirty minutes in a temperature of 35 degrees Fahrenheit!"
"The Invincible alone," reported Admiral Sturdee, "rescued 108 men, fourteen of whom were found to be dead after being brought on board. These men were buried at sea the following day with full military honours." Few will say that they were undeserved.
By now the battle had been distributed over many leagues of sea; the units engaged were not only out of sight of each other, but even beyond the sound of each other's guns; and it is time to return to Captain Luce in his war-scarred Glasgow, who, with the Kent and Cornwall, was pursuing the three light cruisers. More perhaps than to any others of the officers and crews engaged did their part in this struggle mean to those of the Glasgow. The sole survivors of Coronel, they had lived, as none of their comrades had done, for a bitter five weeks, with the picture of it before them. When all would fain have stayed and fought to the last, they had been compelled, in the interests of their service, to take the harder way. They had a peculiar debt to discharge, and now, if they could but seize it, their hour had come to repay it with interest.
It was at about twenty minutes past one when the three German cruisers had broken away toward the southwest, the Dresden leading with the Nürnberg and Leipzig following her on each quarter. The distance then separating them from the Glasgow, Kent, and Cornwall, was from nine to eleven miles; all were speedy, the Dresden being the fastest; and a long, stern chase therefore ensued. Of the three British cruisers, the Glasgow, in spite of her late experiences, was still considerably the swiftest; and she soon drew away from them, overhauling the Leipzig and Nürnberg, until at three o'clock she was within seven miles of the former. Her idea was now, if possible, so to outrange the Leipzig as to turn and delay her until the arrival of the Kent and Cornwall, far slower vessels even than the Leipzig, but carrying fourteen 6-inch guns to the Glasgow's two. At three o'clock, therefore, she opened fire with her 6-inch guns, and, for more than an hour, engaged the Leipzig until the arrival of the Cornwall. By that time she had already hit her many times over, but had had to draw away on several occasions, owing to the accuracy of the Leipzig's gunners. With time and speed and the range on his side, Captain Luce, like his admiral, could afford to be deliberate; and yet even so, with a little more luck, the Leipzig might have damaged the Glasgow rather severely. Two of her officers stationed in the control-top had a very narrow escape from losing their lives, a shell passing between them, and carrying away the hand of a signalman—three other men being wounded and one killed at about the same time. After an hour and a quarter, and having had an early tea, the Cornwall arrived on the scene, and was soon, as one of the Glasgow's seamen, admitted, "shooting very well."
We have last seen the Cornwall, not wholly to her liking, upon the quarter of the even slower Carnarvon; but, a little after noon, to her great satisfaction, she had received orders to go ahead. When the three light cruisers had broken to the south in their endeavour to escape, she had turned after them, as we have said, with her sister ship, the Kent, in the wake of the nimbler Glasgow. Now, thanks to the Glasgow and the superhuman efforts of their two engine-room staffs, both the Kent and Cornwall were at last in action, the former being ordered in pursuit of the Nürnberg—where we may leave her for a moment performing imperishable conjuring-tricks in the way of stoking and engine-driving, while her luckier consorts, already at close grips, were battering the Leipzig to pieces.