The British Navy in Battle

by Arthur Joseph Hungerford Pollen

“The Glasgow weighed and proceeded at 9:40 A.M. with orders to join the Kent and observe the enemy’s movements.”

The Germans, as we have seen, expected possibly to find Canopus at the Falkland Islands, but not that she would be concealed from their fire behind the low-lying ground. Their astonishment then to find themselves under the fire of 12-inch guns at twenty minutes past nine was considerable. They therefore turned, not with the intention of running away but clearly to throw out the fire control that was directing the big guns at them, for it must have been about this time that they saw the county cruiser Kent in the offing, and their first thought was to go in and finish her off. But a very few moments after there opened up over the line of vision the tripod masts of the two battle-cruisers, and the Gneisenau and Nürnberg, that had been coming due north for the attack, now turned round to the east, and went full speed to join their approaching consorts, who were cutting off the corner made by the first two ships.

Two quite important questions arise at this point. Was it good policy on the part of Admiral Sturdee to allow Canopus to open fire and so drive the Germans away? If, indeed, it was Canopus that drove them off. He knew, of course, that it would take him at least half an hour to forty minutes before all his squadron could be clear of the harbour, and ready to begin the chase. Would it have been wiser if he had allowed the Germans to come right up and so to have made sure of having them within easy range when he did come out? The answer to this criticism is obvious. Gneisenau was a great deal more than a match for Kent, and no British ship could have got out to her assistance in time to prevent her destruction if Gneisenau had been allowed to close. The speed of Admiral Sturdee’s battle-cruisers was such—he had certainly a five, if not a six knot advantage over the armoured cruisers—that he knew he had it well within his power with the whole day before him, to give the Germans forty minutes’ start, and catch them and finish them off before evening. And it was his business to do this, if he could, with the smallest possible loss of life and the least possible damage to his ships. That is the first point. But next, it was quite within the possibilities of the case that Canopus’s guns would make a hit either on Gneisenau or Nürnberg. Indeed, so close did the fourth and fifth rounds go that it was thought on shore that there had been a hit; but this was afterwards proved to be a mistake. There was a good chance then of laming one of them and so making a quick capture certain. Finally, it was not altogether the fire of Canopus but the sight of the battle-cruisers’ masts that decided Von Spee, or rather the Captain of Gneisenau, to retreat.

It is more pertinent to ask whether it would not have been better policy on the part of the Germans to have got inside the range of Canopus—for obviously if she had fired over the hills she would not be able to use her guns at short range—and then bring the British squadron under an accurate bombardment just when they were coming out of harbour and unable to use their armament to effect. The same considerations that weighed with Admiral Sturdee in deciding to allow Canopus to open fire with the possible result of driving them off, should have weighed with the German captain and made him realize that once the battle-cruisers were out of harbour, there was no possible escape either for his ship or for the flagship. And it is undoubtedly certain that whether they could have succeeded in sinking and destroying any British ships before being destroyed themselves, they must have done vastly greater damage than they were, in fact, able to inflict in an action which, as we shall see, the British Admiral was able to fight on his own conditions from first to last. The main features of the final issue—that is, the destruction of the two armoured cruisers—could certainly not have been prevented, but had they closed the range, and fought the British ships as they came out, the complete escape of the light cruisers could have been assured, and it is certain that they could have done very great damage before being destroyed themselves.

4. “At 9:45 A.M. the squadron—less the Bristol—weighed, and proceeded out of harbour in the following order: Carnarvon, Inflexible, Invincible, and Cornwall. On passing Cape Pembroke Light, the five ships of the enemy appeared clearly in sight to the southeast, hull down. The visibility was at its maximum, the sea was calm, with a bright sun, a clear sky, and a light breeze from the northwest.”

At 9:45, when the squadron got clear of the harbour and was working up to full speed, the Germans, whose main squadron was about 8½ sea miles off at 9:30, while Gneisenau and Nürnberg were three miles closer in, were probably about twelve or thirteen miles off. There was then a gap of five or six miles to be made up before action range could be reached, and to make this good in three hours the British squadron would have to produce a speed greater by some two knots.

“At 10:20 A.M. the signal for a general chase was made. The battle-cruisers quickly passed ahead of the Carnarvon and overtook the Kent. The Glasgow was ordered to keep two miles from the Invincible, and the Inflexible was stationed on the starboard quarter of the flagship. Speed was eased to twenty knots at 11:15 A.M. to enable the other cruisers to get into station. At this time the enemy’s funnels and bridges showed just above the horizon.”

It will be observed that the British Admiral was carrying on his chase on a wide front and at full speed—probably twenty-four knots. Only Glasgow, Kent, and the two battle-cruisers could maintain this, which meant that Carnarvon and Cornwall were falling very much behind. The Admiral therefore, after an hour, dropped his speed to twenty knots to enable his two cruisers to catch up. Why did he do this?

In the first place, his burst at full speed had probably shown him that instead of having an advantage of only two knots in speed over his enemy, he could beat him by at least five knots when he chose. And he reasoned that if he drove at the five German ships with only four of his own, it was possible for the German ships to scatter and so for one or more of them to escape. It was of the essence of his tactics that the enemy should keep his fleet together as long as possible, and it was a vital matter that when the dispersion took place the pursuit of the light cruisers should be undertaken by his own light cruisers with the best possible prospects of bringing all of them to action. As we shall see by the next paragraph, this measure did not attain its desired end.

“The enemy were still maintaining their distance, and I decided at 12:20 P.M. to attack with the two battle-cruisers and the Glasgow.