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And after that the dark.

During the years 1912 and 1913 the Captain of the British cruiser Monmouth, the senior English Naval Officer on the China Station, and Admiral Count von Spee, commanding the German Far-Eastern Squadron, were close and intimate friends.

The intimacy of the chiefs extended to the officers and men of the two squadrons. The English and Germans discussed with one another the chances of war between their nations, and wished one another the best of luck when the scrap came. The German Squadron, which has since been destroyed, was like no other in the Kaiser’s Navy. It was commanded by professional officers and manned by long-service ratings. It had taken for its model the English Navy, and it had absorbed much of the English naval spirit. Count von Spee, though a Prussian Junker, was a gentleman, and with Captain von Müller, who afterwards made the name of the Emden immortal, was worthy to serve under the White Ensign. Let us always be just to those of our foes who, though they fight with us terribly, yet remain our chivalrous friends. I will tell a pretty story which will illustrate the spirit of comradeship which existed between the English and German squadrons during those two years before the war.

In December 1912 the Monmouth was cruising in the Gulf of Pechili, which resembles a long flask with a narrow bottle neck. Admiral von Spee, who was lying with his powerful squadron off Chifu, in the neck of the bottle, received word from a correspondent that the second Balkan War had brought England and Germany within a short distance of “Der Tag.” Von Spee and his officers did not clink glasses to “The Day”; they were professionals who knew the English Navy and its incomparable power; they left silly boastings to civilians and to their colleagues of Kiel who had not eaten of English salt. Count von Spee thought first of his English friend who, in his elderly cruiser, was away up in the Gulf at the mercy of the German Squadron, which was as a cork in its neck. He at once dispatched a destroyer to find the Monmouth’s captain and to warn him that though there might be nothing in the news it were better for him to get clear of the Gulf. “There may be nothing in the yarn,” he wrote, “I have had many scares before. But it would be well if you got out of the Gulf. I should be most sorry to have to sink you.” When the destroyer came up with the Monmouth she had returned to Wei-hai-wei, and the message was delivered. Her skipper laughed, and sent an answer somewhat as follows: “My dear von Spee, thank you very much. I am here. J’y suis, J’y reste. I shall expect you and your guns at breakfast to-morrow morning.” War did not come then; when von Spee did meet and sink the Monmouth she had another captain in command, but the story remains as evidence of the chivalrous naval spirit of the gallant and skilful von Spee.

In November 1913 the Monmouth left the China Station, and before she went, upon November 6th, her crew were entertained sumptuously by von Spee and von Müller. She was paid off in January 1914, after reaching home, but was recommissioned in the following July for the test mobilisation, which at the moment meant so much, and which a few weeks later was to mean so much more. When the war broke out, the Monmouth, with her new officers and men, half of whom were naval reservists, was sent back to the Pacific. The armoured cruiser Good Hope, also commissioned in July, was sent with her, and the old battleship Canopus was despatched a little later. Details of the movements of these and of other of our warships in the South Atlantic and Pacific are given in the chapters entitled “The Cruise of the Glasgow.” The Glasgow had been in the South Atlantic at the outbreak of war, and was joined there by the Good Hope and Monmouth.

Meanwhile war had broken out, and we will for a few moments consider what resulted. The Emden, Captain von Müller, was at the German base of Tsing-tau, but Admiral von Spee, with the armoured cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, was among the German Caroline Islands far to the south of the China Sea. The Dresden was in the West Indies and the Leipzig and Nürnberg on the West Coast of Mexico (the Pacific side). The Japanese Fleet undertook to keep von Spee out of China waters to the north, and the Australian Unit—which then was at full strength and included the battle cruiser Australia with her eight 12-⁠inch guns and the light cruisers Melbourne and Sydney, each armed with eight sixes—made themselves responsible for the Australian end of the big sea area. The Emden, disguised as an English cruiser, with four funnels—the dummy one made of canvas—got out of Tsing-tau under the noses of the Japanese watchers, made off towards the Indian Ocean, and pursued that lively and solitary career which came to its appointed end at the Cocos-Keeling Islands, as will be described fully later on in this book. The Australian Unit, burning with zeal to fire its maiden guns at a substantial enemy, sought diligently for von Spee and requisitioned the assistance of the French armoured cruiser Montcalm, an old slow and not very useful vessel which happened to be available for the hunt. Von Spee was discovered in his island retreat and pursued as far as Fiji, but the long arm of the English Admiralty then interposed and upset the merry game. We were short of battle cruisers where we wanted them most—in the North Sea—so the Australia was summoned home and the remaining ships of the Unit, no longer by themselves a match for von Spee, were ordered back to Sydney in deep disgust. “A little more,” declared the bold Australians, who under their English professional officers had been hammered into a real Naval Unit, “and we would have done the work which the Invincible and Inflexible had to do later. If we had been left alone there would not have been any disaster off Coronel.” While one can sympathise with complaints such as this from eager fire-eaters, one has to accept their assertions with due caution. The German High Seas Fleet was at that time a more important objective than even von Spee. So the Australia sailed for England to join up with the Grand Fleet, and von Spee had rest for several weeks. He was not very enterprising. Commerce hunting did not much appeal to him, though his light cruisers, the Dresden and Leipzig, did some little work in that line when on their way to join their Chief at Easter Island where the squadron ultimately concentrated. On the way across, von Spee visited Samoa, from which we had torn down the German flag, but did no damage there. On September 22nd, he bombarded Tahiti, in the Society Islands, a foolish proceeding of which he repented later on when the Coronel action left him short of shell with no means of replenishment. For eight days he stayed in the Marquesas Islands taking in provisions, thence he went to Easter Island and Masafuera, and so to Valparaiso, where the Chilean Government, though neutral, was not unbenevolent. He was for three weeks at Easter Island (Chilean territory), coaling from German ships there, and in this remote spot—a sort of Chilean St. Kilda—remained hidden both from the Chilean authorities and from our South Atlantic Squadron.

We must now return to the British Squadron which had been sent out to deal with von Spee as best it might. Cradock with such a squadron, all, except the light cruiser Glasgow, old and slow, had no means of bringing von Spee to action under conditions favourable to himself, or of refusing action when conditions were adverse. Von Spee, with his concentrated homogeneous squadron, all comparatively new and well-armed cruisers, all of about the same speed of twenty-one or twenty-two knots, all trained to a hair by constant work during a three years’ commission, had under his hand an engine of war perfect of its kind. He could be sure of getting the utmost out of co-operative efforts. The most powerful in guns of the English vessels was the battleship Canopus, which, when the action off Coronel was fought, was 200 miles away to the south. She bore four 12-⁠inch guns in barbettes—in addition to twelve sixes—but she was fourteen years old and could not raise more than about thirteen to fourteen knots except for an occasional burst. Any one of von Spee’s ships, with 50 per cent. more speed, could have made rings round her. Had Cradock waited for the Canopus,—as he was implored to do by her captain, Grant,—and set the speed of his squadron by hers, von Spee could have fought him or evaded him exactly as he pleased. “If the English had kept their forces together,” wrote von Spee after Coronel, “then we should certainly have got the worst of it.” This was the modest judgment of a brave man, but it is scarcely true. If the English had kept their forces together von Spee need never have fought; they would have had not the smallest chance of getting near him except by his own wish. Admiral Cradock flew his flag in the armoured cruiser Good Hope, which, though of 14,000 tons and 520 feet long, had only two guns of bigger calibre than 6-⁠inch. These were of 9.2 inches, throwing a shell of 380 lb., but the guns, like the ship, were twelve years old. Her speed was about seventeen knots, four or five knots less than that of the German cruisers she had come to chase! The Monmouth, of the “County Class,” was as obsolete as the Good Hope. Eleven years old, of nearly 10,000 tons, she carried nothing better than fourteen 6-⁠inch guns of bygone pattern. She may have been good for a knot or two more than the Good Hope, but her cruising and fighting speed was, of course, that of the flagship.

The one effective ship of the whole squadron was the Glasgow, which curiously enough is the sole survivor now of the Coronel action, either German or English. Out of the eight warships which fought there off the Chilean coast on November 1st, 1914, five German and three English, the Glasgow alone remains afloat. She is a modern light cruiser, first commissioned in 1911. The Glasgow is light, long and lean. She showed that she could steam fully twenty-five knots and could fight her two 6-⁠inch and ten 4-⁠inch guns most effectively. She was a match for any one of von Spee’s light cruisers, though unable to stand up to the Scharnhorst or Gneisenau. The modern English navy has been built under the modern doctrine of speed and gun-power—the Good Hope, Monmouth, and Canopus, the products of a bad, stupid era in naval shipbuilding, had neither speed nor gun-power. The result, the inevitable result, was the disaster of Coronel in which the English ships were completely defeated and the Germans barely scratched. The Germans had learned the lesson which we ourselves had taught them.

When one considers the two squadrons which met and fought off Coronel, in the light of experience cast by war, one feels no surprise that the action was over in fifty-two minutes. Cradock and his men, 1,600 of them, fought and died.