CHAPTER XV
Battle of the Falkland Islands (IV)
STRATEGY—TACTICS—GUNNERY
Von Spee’s mistakes we have seen in the course of my comment on the narrative. They were broadly fourfold. Three arose from an inability to realize from the very beginning the true character of the situation, the fourth from want of resolution to fight an unequal action on the only conditions in which any success was to be gained.
Von Spee’s initial blunder was approaching the Falkland Islands with the whole of his force instead of making a reconnaissance by a single fast, light cruiser. It was obvious that he could gain nothing by surprise. For it was beyond the power of the colony to extemporize defence. It was equally obvious that he stood to lose everything if he was himself surprised. And however improbable it might have seemed to him that a force superior to his had reached the Falkland Islands by this date, he should yet have realized that there was nothing impossible in such a force being there very much earlier. For from the North Sea to the Falkland Islands is only a little over 7,000 miles. He might have credited the British Admiralty with a willingness to avenge Cradock’s defeat and with ingenuity enough to arrange the most secret coaling of any force that was sent out. When all allowances were made, there should have been no difficulty in battle-cruisers reaching the South Atlantic three weeks after they were despatched. Nor was there any reason why the despatch should be delayed more than two weeks after the news of the disaster.
If Gneisenau, instead of turning away when the tripod masts of the battle-cruisers were seen, had persisted in the advance towards Kent; had Scharnhorst joined her at top speed, it is morally certain that Kent and Macedonia would have been destroyed before either of the battle-cruisers could come to their rescue. It would not have been difficult to have found dead ground that the guns of Canopus could not reach, and from such a point to have subjected the battle-cruisers to a most damaging succession of salvoes, as they emerged from the narrow channel, before there was any possibility of their replying. It was indeed possible that the motive power of each might have been so injured that a pursuit by the battle-cruisers would have been impossible. At the worst, Von Spee would have paid no higher price than he ultimately paid, and he might have won an exchange entirely beneficial to German arms. Certainly, an action fought in these conditions would have given ample time for the light cruisers to make their way into the winding and uncharted fjords of Patagonia. Here Dresden maintained herself for many weeks, and who knows but that the others might have lasted longer still? Had it been possible for the three to keep together they would have been formidable opponents for any single cruiser in search of them. Had they scattered and been able to maintain their coal supply, they could have held up British trade for a considerable time.
Just as Von Spee missed this real opportunity, so, later on, he first of all kept his light cruisers with him far too long, and then, throughout the action, accepted battle far too much on Admiral Sturdee’s conditions. But the initial mistake was the greatest.
BRITISH STRATEGY
The battle of the Falkland Islands was an event of enormous importance and interest, and I propose to discuss a few of its more obvious bearings. Let us first consider its immediate direct and indirect effects upon the course of the war. The overseas naval situation at the end of October, while not in the larger sense at all threatening or dangerous, afforded nevertheless grounds for very great anxiety. Emden had made a series of sensational captures in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. Karlsruhe was working havoc with the British trade off the northeast corner of South America. The German China squadron had evaded the Japanese and British and Allied fleets in the East, and Australia and her consorts had obtained no news of its whereabouts when cruising between the Antipodes and the German islands. A few British ships had been taken by Dresden on her passage down to the Straits of Magellan, and the public was entirely without information which led them to suppose that either Von Spee or any of the raiding cruisers were the subject of any effective pursuit. Though the loss of ships by hostile cruisers was absurdly smaller than experts had anticipated, it was quite large enough to disconcert and alarm the public, who knew, after all, very little about the character of those anticipations. Suddenly in the first week of November came two thunderclaps. Admiral Cradock, with a preposterously weak force, had been engaged and been defeated by the lost Von Spee. Of the four ships composing his squadron, the armed liner Otranto and the light cruiser Glasgow had escaped, but Good Hope and Monmouth had gone down, lost with all hands. Then on November 3rd came the bombardment of Lowestoft by certain German cruisers. It was the first attack of any kind on the people of these islands, and it was hastily explained to us by the Admiralty—and quite rightly—that the thing was without a military objective or military importance, and as if to forestall naval criticism, we were further told that it would not be allowed to disturb any previously made Admiralty plans. We were asked to believe that it was a mere piece of frightfulness.
But it is not certain that this was the only motive of the adventure. May it not have been done in the express hope that the British higher command, face to face with a shocked and outraged public opinion, would hesitate about diminishing those forces at home which were best calculated to intercept and bring to action the fast vessels which alone could be employed with any chance of safety on these bombarding expeditions? Is it not more than possible that the German staff, knowing the prospects of the rebellion in South Africa, was most desperately anxious to give Von Spee an added chance of crossing the Atlantic in security and lending the tremendous support of his squadron to the German forces in South-West Africa, who, with this added prestige, could be counted upon to attract all the disaffected South African sentiment to its side? Were not these bombardments, in short, undertaken solely to compel us to keep our stronger units concentrated?