It was not yet clear to Cradock, who was now in command of the Southern Squadron—to distinguish it from the Northern Squadron, which presently consisted of the armoured cruiser Carnarvon (Rear-Admiral Stoddart), the Defence, the Cornwall, the Kent, the Bristol, and the armed liner Macedonia—it was not yet clear that the Dresden was bound for the Pacific, and a rendezvous with von Spee. It seemed more probable that her intention was to prey upon shipping off the Straits of Magellan. In order to meet the danger, he set off with the Good Hope, Monmouth, Glasgow, and the armed liner Otranto to operate in the far south, employing the Falkland Islands as his base. The Glasgow’s Lair of the north now remained for the use of Stoddart’s squadron.
In the light of after-events one cannot but feel regret that the old battleship Canopus was attached to the Southern Squadron—Cradock’s—instead of the armoured cruiser Defence, a much more useful if less powerfully armed vessel. The Defence was comparatively new, completed in 1908, had a speed of some twenty-one to twenty-two knots, and was more powerful than either the Scharnhorst or the Gneisenau. The three sisters, Defence, Minotaur, and Shannon, had indeed been laid down as replies to the building of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and carried four 9.2-inch guns and ten 7.5-inch as against the eight 8.2-inch and six 6-inch guns of the German cruisers.
I have reached a point in my narrative when it becomes necessary to take up the story from the German side, and to indicate how it came about that five cruisers, which at the beginning of the war were widely scattered, became concentrated into the fine hard-fighting squadron which met Cradock at Coronel. The permanent base of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau was Tsing-tau in China, but it happened that at the end of July, 1914, they were more than 2,000 miles away in the Caroline Islands. The light cruisers Nürnberg and Leipzig were upon the western coast of Mexico, and, as I have already told, the Dresden was off the eastern coast of Mexico. The Emden, which does not concern us, was at Tsing-tau. The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were kept out of China waters by the Japanese fleets and hunted for and chased to Fiji by the Australian Unit. On September 22nd von Spee bombarded Tahiti, in the Society Islands, at the moment when the Dresden, having safely passed through the Atlantic, was creeping up the Chilean coast and the Nürnberg and Leipzig were coming down from the north. All the German vessels had been ordered to concentrate at Easter Island, a small remote convict settlement belonging to Chili and lost in the Pacific far out (2,800 miles) to the west of Valparaiso.
While, therefore, Cradock and his Southern Squadron were steering for the Falkland Islands to make of it a base for their search for the Dresden, von Spee’s cruisers were slowly concentrating upon Easter Island. There was no coal at the Falklands—they produce nothing except sheep and the most abominable weather on earth—but it was easy for us to direct colliers thither, and to transform the Islands into a base of supplies. The Germans had a far more difficult task. All through the operations which I am describing, and have still to describe, we were possessed of three great advantages. We had the coal, we had the freedom of communications given by ocean cables and wireless, and we had the sympathy of all those South American neutrals with whom we had to deal. Admiral von Spee and his ships were all through in great difficulties for coal, and would have failed entirely unless the German ships at South American ports had run big risks to seek out and supply him. He was to a large extent cut off from the outside world, for he had no cables, and received little information or assistance from home. The slowness of his movements, both before and after Coronel, may chiefly be explained through his lack of supplies and his ignorance of where we were or of what we were about to do.
It is comparatively easy for me now to plot out the movements of the English and German vessels, and to set forth their relative positions at any date. But when the movements were actually in progress the admirals and captains on both sides were very much in the dark. Now and then would come a ray of light which enabled their imagination and judgment to work. Thus the report from the Ortega that she had encountered the Dresden with her two colliers at the Pacific entrance of the Magellan Straits showed that she might be bound for some German rendezvous in the Pacific Ocean. A day or two later came word that the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had bombarded Tahiti, and that these two powerful cruisers, which had seemed to be so remote from the concern of the South Atlantic Squadron, were already half-way across the wide Pacific, apparently bound for Chili. It was also, of course, known that the Leipzig and Nürnberg were on the west coast of Mexico to the north. Any one who will take a chart of the Pacific and note the positions towards the end of September of von Spee, the Dresden, and the Nürnberg and Leipzig, will see that the lonely dot marked as Easter Island was pretty nearly the only spot in the vast stretch of water towards which these scattered units could possibly be converging. At least so it seemed at the time, and, in fact, proved to be the case. The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau reached Easter Island early in October, the Nürnberg turned up on the 12th, and later upon the same day the Dresden arrived with her faithful collier the Baden. Upon the 14th down came the Leipzig accompanied by colliers carrying 3,000 tons of coal. The German concentration was complete; it had been carried through with very considerable skill aided by no less considerable luck. The few inhabitants of the lonely Easter Island, remote from trade routes, cables, and newspapers, regarded the German squadron with complete indifference. They had heard nothing of the world war, and were not interested in foreign warships. The island is rich in archæological remains. There happened to be upon it a British scientific expedition, but, busied over the relics of the past, the single-minded men of science did not take the trouble to cross the island to look at the German ships. They also were happy in their lack of knowledge that a war was on.
THE PACIFIC: VON SPEE’S CONCENTRATION.
I have anticipated events a little in order to make clear what was happening on the other side of the great spur of South America while Admiral Stoddart’s squadron was taking charge of the Brazilian, Uruguayan, and upper Argentine coasts, and Admiral Cradock, with the Good Hope, Glasgow, Monmouth, and Otranto—followed by the battleship Canopus—were pressing to the south after the Dresden. Stoddart’s little lot had been swept up from regions remote from their present concentration. The Carnarvon had come from St. Vincent, the Defence from the Mediterranean, where she had been Troubridge’s flagship in the early days of the war; the Kent had been sent out from England, and the Cornwall summoned from the West Coast of Africa. The Bristol, as we know, was from the West Indies and her fruitless hunt for the elusive Karlsruhe. The South Atlantic was now in possession of two considerable British squadrons, although two months earlier there had been nothing of ours carrying guns except the little Glasgow.
After the news arrived from the Ortega about the Dresden’s movements, Cradock took his ships down to Punta Arenas, and thence across to Port Stanley, in the Falkland Islands, where he was joined by the Canopus, a slow old ship of some thirteen to fourteen knots, which had straggled down to him. I have never been able to reconcile the choice of the old Canopus, despite her formidable 12-inch guns, with my sense of what was fitting for the pursuit and destruction of German cruisers with a squadron speed of some twenty-one knots. From Port Stanley the Glasgow and Monmouth were despatched round the Horn upon a scouting expedition which was to extend as far as Valparaiso. Already the Southern Squadron was beginning to suffer from its remoteness from the original Pirates’ Lair of the Glasgow. The Northern Squadron, collected from the corners of the earth, were receiving the supply ships first and skimming the cream off their cargoes before letting them loose for the service of their brethren in arms to the south. It was all very natural and inevitable, but rather irritating for those who had now to make the best of the knuckle end of the Admiralty’s joints.