When the two cruisers first see one another they are 20,000 yards distant, but as both are closing in the range comes quickly down to 10,500 yards (six land miles). To the astonishment both of the Captain and Gunnery Lieutenant of the Sydney, who are together looking out from the upper fore bridge, von Müller opens fire at this very long range for his small 4.1-⁠inch guns and gets within a hundred yards at his first salvo. It is wonderful shooting. His next is just over and with the third he begins to hit. At the long range the Emden’s shells fall steeply—at an angle of thirty degrees—rarely burst and never ricochet from the sea. They whine overhead in torrents, plop into the sea on all sides, and now and then smash on board. One reaches the upper fore bridge, passes within a foot of Lieutenant Rahilly’s head, strikes the pedestal of the big range-finder, glances off without bursting, cuts off the leg of the operator who is sitting behind, and finishes its career overboard. If that shell had burst Glossop and his Gunnery Lieutenant, together with their colleague at the rate-of-change instrument, must have been killed or seriously wounded and the Second in Command would have been released from his thick steel prison. Not one of them was six feet distant from where the shell struck in their midst. The range-finder is wrecked and its operator killed, but the others are untouched. A few minutes later two, possibly three, shells hit the after control, wound everyone inside, and wipe that control off the effective list.

But meanwhile the officers of the Sydney and their untried but gallant and steady men have not been idle. Their first salvo fired immediately after the Emden opened is much too far, their second is rather wild and ragged, but with the third some hits are made. The Sydney had fortunately just secured her range when the principal range-finder was wrecked and the after control scattered, and Gunnery Lieutenant Rahilly is able to keep it by careful spotting and rate-of-change observations. Glossop, who has the full command given by superior speed, manœuvres so as to keep out to about 8,000 yards, to maintain as nearly constant a rate of change as is possible, and to present the smallest danger space to the enemy. The Emden’s first effort to close in has failed, and now that the Sydney’s 100-pound shells begin to burst well on board of her the Emden’s one chance upon which von Müller has staked everything has disappeared. During the first fifteen minutes the Sydney was hit ten times, but afterwards not at all; the Emden was hit again and again during the long-drawn-out two hours of the hopeless struggle. After twenty minutes the Emden’s forward funnel went and she caught fire aft. Her steering gear was wrecked and she became dependent upon the manipulation of her propellers, and the inevitable falling off in speed to about thirteen knots. During the early critical minutes of the action the Sydney had the Emden upon her port side, but all her casualties were suffered upon the starboard or disengaged side due to the steepness with which the German shells were falling. Once she was hit upon the two-⁠inch side armour over the engine room and the shell, which this time burst, left a barely discernible scratch. Another shell fell at the foot of a starboard gun pedestal in the open space behind the shield, burst and wounded the gun’s crew but left the gun unhurt except for a spattering of a hundred tiny dents. The electric wires were not even cut. It is remarkable that during the whole of the action no electric wires in any part of the Sydney were damaged. As I have told both gun controls of the Sydney were hit during the first few minutes though only the after one was put out of action; the Emden, less fortunate, had both her controls totally destroyed and all the officers and men within them killed.

After the lapse of about three-quarters of an hour the Emden had lost two funnels and the foremast; she was badly on fire aft and amidships, so that at times nothing more than the top of the mainmast could be seen amid the clouds of steam and smoke. Her guns, now occasionally firing, gave out a short yellow flash by which they could be distinguished from the long dark red flames of the Sydney’s bursting lyddite. Once she disappeared so completely that the cry went up from the Sydney that she had sunk, but she appeared again, blazing, almost helpless. Glossop, who had been circling round to port, then drew in to a range of 5,500 yards—which in the absence of the range-finder was wrongly estimated at under 5,000—and determined to try a shot with a torpedo. It was a difficult shot as the torpedo gunner was obliged to set his gyroscope to a definite angle and then wait until the rapidly turning Emden came upon his bearing. But in spite of the difficulties it was very good; the torpedo ran straight for its mark and then stopped short at the distance of 5,000 yards for which it had been set. The torpedo crews, naturally enough, wanted forthwith to let off all their mouldies, just to show the gunners how the business should be done with, but the hard-hearted Glossop forbade. The moment after the one had been fired he swung the ship round to starboard, opened out his range, and resumed the distressful game of gun-pounding. The Emden also went away to starboard for about four miles and then von Müller, finding that his ship was badly pierced under water as well as on fire, put about again and headed for the North Keeling Island, where he ran aground. The Sydney followed, saw that her beaten enemy was irretrievably wrecked, and went away to deal with the Emden’s collier—a captured British ship Buresk—which had hovered about during the action but upon which Glossop had not troubled to fire. The Emden fired no torpedoes in the action, for though von Müller had three left his torpedo flat was put out of business early in the fight.

Though the Emden was beaten and done for, the gallantry and skill with which she had fought could not have been exceeded. She was caught by surprise, and to some extent unprepared, yet within twenty minutes of the Sydney’s appearance upon the sky line von Müller was pouring a continuous rain of shell upon her at over 10,000 yards range and maintaining both his speed of fire and its accuracy until the hundred-pound shots bursting on board of him had smashed up both his controls, knocked down his foremast, and put nine of his ten guns out of action. Even then the one remaining gun continued to fire up to the last. The crew of the Sydney, exposed though many of them were upon the vessel’s open decks—a light cruiser has none of the protection of a battleship—bore themselves as their Anzac fellow-countrymen upon the beaches and hills of Gallipoli. At first they were rather ragged through over-eagerness, but they speedily settled down. The hail of shell which beat upon them was unceasing, but they paid as little heed to it as if they had passed their lives under heavy fire instead of experiencing it for the first time. Upon Glossop and his lieutenants on the upper bridge, and in the transmission room below, was suddenly thrown a new and urgent problem. With the principal range-finder gone and the after-control wrecked in the first few minutes, they were forced to depend upon skilful manœuvring and spotting to give accuracy to their guns. They solved their problem ambulando, as the Navy always does, and showed that they could smash up an opponent by mother wit and sea skill when robbed by the aid of science. It is good to be equipped with all the appliances which modern ingenuity has devised; it is still better to be able at need to dispense with them.

I love to write of the cold fierce energy with which our wonderful centuries-old Navy goes forth to battle, but I love still more to record its kindly solicitude for the worthy opponents whom its energy has smashed up. Once a fight is over it loves to bind up the wounds of its foes, to drink their health in a friendly bottle, and to wish them better luck next time. When he had settled with the collier Buresk, and taken off all those on board of her, Glossop returned to the wreck of the Emden lying there helpless upon the North Keeling Island. The foremast and funnels were gone, the brave ship was a tangle of broken steel fore and aft, but the mainmast still stood and upon it floated the naval ensign of Germany. Until that flag had been struck the Sydney could not send in a boat or deal with the crew as surrendered prisoners. Captain Glossop is the kindliest of men; it went against all his instincts to fire at that wreck upon which the forms of survivors could be seen moving about, but his duty compelled him to force von Müller into submission. For a quarter of an hour he sent messages by International code and Morse flag signals, but the German ensign remained floating aloft. As von Müller would not surrender he must be compelled, and compelled quickly and thoroughly. In order to make sure work the Sydney approached to within 4,000 yards, trained four guns upon the Emden, and then when the aim was steady and certain smashed her from end to end. The destruction must have been frightful, and it is probable that von Müller’s obstinacy cost his crew greater casualties than the whole previous action. These last four shots did their work, the ensign came down, and a white flag of surrender went up. It was now late in the afternoon, the tropical night was approaching, and the Sydney left the Emden to steam to Direction Island some fifteen miles away and to carry succour to the staff of the raided cable and wireless station. Before leaving he sent in a boat and an assurance that he would bring help in the morning.

Although the distance from Direction Island, where the action may be said to have begun, to North Keeling Island, where it ended, is only fifteen miles the courses followed by the fighting vessels were very much longer. They are shown upon the von Müller-⁠Glossop plan, printed on page [193]. The Emden was upon the inside and the Sydney—whose greatly superior speed gave her complete mastery of manœuvre—was upon the outside. The Emden’s course works out at approximately thirty-five miles and the Sydney’s at fifty miles. The officers and men who are fighting a ship stand, as it were, in the midst of a brilliantly lighted stage and may receive more than their due in applause if one overlooks the sweating engineers, artificers, and stokers who, hidden far below, make possible the exploits of the stars. At no moment during the whole action, though ventilating fans might stop and minor pipes be cut, did the engines fail to give Glossop the speed for which he asked. His success and his very slight losses—four men killed and sixteen wounded—sprang entirely from his speed, which, when required, exceeded the twenty-five knots for which his engines were designed. When, therefore, we think of Glossop and Rahilly, who from that exposed upper bridge were manœuvring the ship and directing the guns, we must not forget Engineer Lieutenant-Commander Coleman and his half-naked men down below, who throughout that broiling day in the tropics nursed those engines and toiled at those fires which brought the guns to fire upon the enemy.

True to his promise Glossop brought the Sydney back to the Emden at eleven o’clock on the morning of November 10th, having borrowed a doctor and two assistants from Direction Island, and then began the long task—which the Navy loves only less than actual battle—of rescue and care for the sufferers by its prowess. North Keeling Island is an irregular strip of rock, boulders and sand almost entirely surrounding a large lagoon. It is studded with cocoanut palms and infested with red land-crabs. An unattractive spot. The Emden was aground upon the weatherside and the long rollers running past her stern broke into surf before the mainmast. Lieutenant R. C. Garsia, going out to her in one of the Sydney’s boats, was hauled by the Germans upon her quarter-deck, where he found Captain von Müller, whose personal luck had held to the last, for he was unwounded. Von Müller readily gave his parole to be amenable to the Sydney’s discipline if the surviving Germans were transshipped. The Emden was in a frightful state. She was burned out aft, her decks were piled with the wreck of three funnels and the foremast, and within her small space of 3,500 tons, seven officers and 115 men had been killed by high-explosive shell and splinters. Her condition may be suggested by the experience of a warrant officer of the Sydney who, after gravely soaking in her horrors, retailed them in detail to his messmates. For two days thereafter the warrant officers’ mess in the Sydney lost their appetites for meat: one need say no more! The unwounded and slightly wounded men were first transferred to the boats of the Sydney and Buresk, but for the seriously wounded Neil-Robertson stretchers had to be used so that they might be lowered over the side into boats. This had to be done during the brief lulls between the rollers. By five o’clock the Emden was cleared of men and Captain von Müller went on board the Sydney, which made at once for the only possible landing place on the island in order to take off some Germans who had got ashore. To the surprise of everyone it was then discovered that several wounded men, including a doctor, had managed to reach the shore and were somewhere among the scrub and rocks. Night was fast coming on, the wounded ashore were without food and drink—except what could be obtained from cocoanuts—and were cut off from all assistance except that which the Sydney could supply. The story of how young Lieutenant Garsia drove in through the surf after dark—at the imminent hazard of his whaler and her crew—hunted for hours after those elusive Germans, was more than once hopelessly “bushed,” and finally came out at the original landing place, is a pretty example of the Navy’s readiness to spend ease and risk life for the benefit of its defeated enemies. In the morning the rescue party of English sailors and unwounded Germans, supplied with cocoanuts and an improvised stretcher made of bottom boards and boathooks, at last discovered the wounded party, which had not left the narrow neck of land opposite the stranded Emden. Lieutenant Schal of the Emden, who was with them, eagerly seized upon the cocoanuts and cut them open for the wounded, who had been crying for water all night and for whom he had not been able to find more than one nut. The wounded German doctor had gone mad the previous afternoon, insisted upon drinking deeply of salt water, and so died. The four wounded men who remained alive were laboriously transferred to the Sydney and the dead were covered up with sand and boulders. “A species of red land-crab with which the ground is infested made this the least one could do.” The reports of Navy men may seem to lack grace, but they have the supreme merit of vivid simplicity. That short sentence, which I have quoted, makes us realise that waterless crab-haunted night of German suffering more vividly than a column of fine writing.

THE “SYDNEY-EMDEN” ACTION.