Part I.—Rio to Coronel
(July 27th to Nov. 1st, 1914)
Everyone has heard of the light cruiser Glasgow, how she fought at Coronel, and then escaped, and is now the sole survivor among the warships which then represented Great Britain and Germany; how she fought again off the Falkland Islands, and with the aid of the Cornwall sank the Leipzig; how after many days of weary search she discovered the Dresden in shelter at Juan Fernandez, and with the Kent finally brought that German cruiser to a last account. These things are known. But of her other movements and adventures between the declaration of war in August of 1914 and that final spectacular scene in Cumberland Bay, Juan Fernandez, upon March 14th, 1915, nothing has been written. It is a very interesting story, and I propose to write it now. I will relate how she began her fighting career as the forlorn solitary representative of English sea power in the South Atlantic, and how by gradual stages, as if endowed with some compelling power of magnetic attraction, she became the focus of a British and German naval concentration which at last extended over half the world. This scrap of a fast light cruiser, of 4,800 tons, in appearance very much like a large torpedo-boat destroyer, with her complement of 370 men, worthily played her part in the Empire’s work, which is less the fighting of great battles than the sleepless policing of the seas. The battleships and battle cruisers are the fount of power; they by their fighting might hold the command of the seas, but the Navy’s daily work in the outer oceans is done, not by huge ships of the line, but by light cruisers, such as the Glasgow, of which at the outbreak of the war we had far too few for our needs.
In July, 1914, the Glasgow was the sole representative of British sea power upon the Atlantic coast of South America. She had the charge of our interests from a point some 400 miles north of Rio, right down to the Falkland Islands in the cold south. She was a modern vessel of 4,800 tons, first commissioned in 1911 by Captain Marcus Hill, and again in September, 1912, by Captain John Luce, and the officers and men who formed her company in July nearly four years ago, when the shadow of war hung over the world. She was well equipped to range over the thousands of miles of sea of which she was the solitary guardian. Her turbine engines, driving four screws, could propel her at a speed exceeding twenty-six knots (over thirty miles an hour) when her furnaces were fed with coal and oil; and with her two 6-inch and ten 4-inch guns of new pattern she was more than a match for any German light cruiser which might have been sent against her.
Upon July 27th, 1914, while lying at Rio de Janeiro her captain received the first intimation that the strain in Europe might result in war between England and Germany. Upon July 29th the warning became more urgent, and upon July 31st the activity of the German merchant ships in the harbour showed that they also had been notified of the imminence of hostilities. They loaded coal and stores into certain selected vessels to their utmost capacity, and clearly purposed to employ them as supply ships for any of their cruisers which might be sent to the South Atlantic. At that time there were, as a matter of fact, no German cruisers nearer than the east coast of Mexico. The Karlsruhe had just come out to relieve the Dresden, which had been conveying refugees of the Mexican Revolution to Kingston, Jamaica. Thence she sailed for Haiti, met there the Karlsruhe, and made the exchange of captains on July 27th. Both these cruisers were ordered to remain, but a third German cruiser in Mexican waters, the Strassburg, rushed away for home and safely got back to Germany before war was declared on August 4th. Thus the Dresden and Karlsruhe were left, and over against them in the West Indies lay Rear-Admiral Cradock with four “County” cruisers—Suffolk, Essex, Lancaster, and Berwick (sisters of the Monmouth)—and the fast cruiser Bristol, a sister of the Glasgow. Though the Glasgow, lying alone at Rio, had many anxieties—chiefly at first turning upon that question of supply which governs the movements of war ships in the outer seas—she had no reason to expect an immediate descent of the Dresden and Karlsruhe from the north. Cradock could look after them if they had not the good luck to evade his attentions. Upon August 1st, the Glasgow was cleared for war, and all luxuries and superfluities, all those things which make life tolerable in a small cruiser, were ruthlessly cast forth and put into store at Rio. She was well supplied with provisions and ammunition, but coal, as it always is, was an urgent need—not only coal for the immediate present, but for the indefinite future. For immediate necessities the Glasgow bought up the cargo of a British collier in Rio, and ordered her captain to follow the cruiser when she sallied forth. Upon August 3rd, the warnings from home became definite, the Glasgow coaled and took in oil till her bunkers were bursting, made arrangements with the English authorities in Rio for the transmission of telegrams to the secret base which she proposed to establish, and late in the evening of August 4th, crept out of Rio in the darkness with all lights out. During that fourth day of August the passing minutes seemed to stretch into years. The anchorage where the Glasgow lay was in the outer harbour, and she was continually passed by German merchant steamers crowding in to seek the security of a neutral port. War was very near.
THE CRUISE OF THE “GLASGOW.”
Captain Luce had already selected a secret base, where he hoped to be able to coal in shelter outside territorial waters. His collier had been ordered to follow as soon as permitted, and he headed off to inspect the barren rocks, uninhabited except by a lighthouse-keeper, which were to be his future link with home. His luck held, for the first ship he encountered was a big English steamer bound for Rio with coal for the Brazilian railways. In order to be upon the safe side, he commandeered this collier also, and made her attend him to his base. There, to his relief, he found that shelter from the surf could be found, and that it was possible to use the desolate spot as a coaling base and keep the supply ships outside territorial waters. He used it then and afterwards; so did the other cruisers, Good Hope and Monmouth, which came out to him, so also did that large squadron months later which made of this place a rendezvous and an essential storehouse on the journey to the Falklands and to the end of von Spee. We were always most careful to keep on the right side of the Law.