A matter of considerable technical interest is, that though two armoured cruisers kept firing for a considerable period, it is quite clear from Von Spee’s despatch that their fire was completely ineffective. Everyone has agreed in explaining this largely by the extreme difficulty of gunnery conditions, but it is surely highly probable that the chief cause is to be found in the fire of the German ships having, so far as the power of offence is concerned, put Good Hope and Monmouth out of action within very few minutes of action beginning. All accounts agree in the Scharnhorst’s salvo having found Good Hope within five minutes, and it is not likely that Monmouth fared any better at the hands of Gneisenau. What seems to me remarkable is the length of time the ships kept afloat after being militarily useless. The explosion in Good Hope took place after she was in action fifty minutes, and it is not known when she sank. The Monmouth survived the opening salvoes by two hours and twenty minutes, and to the last seemed to have her engines in perfect working order. It is impossible, I think, to resist the inference, that all the German hitting, except the shell that caused the explosion in Good Hope, was done in the first few minutes of action, while the light was at its best, though the range was at its longest.
CHAPTER XII
Battle of the Falkland Islands (I)
THE CAREER OF VON SPEE (II)
The Battle of the Falkland Islands was fought on December 8th by a squadron under Vice-Admiral Sir F. Doveton Sturdee, K.C.B., C.V.O., C.M.G., against the German China Squadron—less Emden, but strengthened by the addition of the cruiser Dresden. Admiral Sturdee’s despatch was not published until about three months after the action, but in the meantime several accounts appeared in various newspapers, and since the despatch was published others have been printed in different magazines. Of no other action in the war have we such various or full information as about this. It will perhaps be a convenient way of dealing with this extremely instructive and important engagement to reproduce the Vice-Admiral’s despatch textually, and to supplement it by explanatory notes, and incorporate in these what is most material of the additional information which is available.
The despatch begins with the tabulation of the sections into which the despatch is divided:
A. Preliminary Movements.
B. Action with the Armoured Cruisers.
C. Action with the Light Cruisers.
D. Action with the Enemy’s Transports.