The trip round the Horn of the Glasgow and Monmouth was very rough indeed; the English cruisers rolled continually gunwhale under, and had they chanced to encounter the Dresden—which was not then possible, for she was well up the Chilean coast—neither side could have fired a shot at the other. At Orange Bay, where they put in, they discovered evidence of the recent presence of the Dresden in rather a curious way. It had long been the custom of vessels visiting that remote desolate spot to erect boards giving their names and the date of their call. Upon the notice board of the German cruiser Bremen, left many months before, was read in pencil, partially obliterated by a cautious afterthought, the words “Dresden, September 11th, 1914.”
During the early part of October, the two cruisers Glasgow and Monmouth worked up the Chilean coast and reached Valparaiso about October 17th. It was an expedition rather trying to the nerves of those who were responsible for the safety of the ships. Perhaps the word “squirmy” will best describe their feelings. Already the German concentration had taken place at Easter Island to the west of them; they did not positively know of it, but suspected, and felt apprehensive lest their presence in Chilean waters might be reported to von Spee and themselves cut off and overwhelmed before they could get away. Coal and provisions were running short, the crew were upon half rations, and any imprudence might be very severely punished.
During October the Glasgow and Monmouth were detached from the Good Hope, and it was not until the 28th that Cradock joined up with them at a point several hundred miles south of Coronel, whither they had descended for coal and stores after their hazardous northern enterprise. Here also was the Otranto, but the Canopus, though steaming her best, had been left behind by the Good Hope, and was, for all practical purposes, of no account at all. She was 200 miles away when Coronel was fought. On October 28th, after receiving orders from Cradock, the Glasgow left by herself bound north for Coronel, a small Chilean coaling port, there to pick up mails and telegrams from England. The Glasgow arrived off Coronel on the 29th, but remained outside patrolling for forty-eight hours. The German wireless about her was very strong indeed, enemy ships were evidently close at hand, and at any moment might appear. They were indeed much nearer and more menacing than the Glasgow knew, even at this eleventh hour before the meeting took place. On October 26th Admiral von Spee was at Masafuera, a small island off the Chilean coast, on the 27th he left for Valparaiso itself, and there on the 31st he learned of the arrival in the port of Coronel of the English cruiser Glasgow. The clash of fighting ships was very near.
On October 31st the Glasgow entered the harbour of Coronel, a large harbour to which there are two entrances, and a rendezvous off the port had been arranged with the rest of the squadron for November 1st. Her arrival was at once notified to von Spee at Valparaiso. The mails and telegrams were collected, and at 9.15 on the 1st the Glasgow backed out cautiously, ready, if the Germans were in force outside, to slip back again into neutral waters and to take the fullest advantage of her twenty-four hours’ law. She emerged seeing nothing, though the enemy wireless was coming loudly, and met the Good Hope, Monmouth, and Otranto at the appointed rendezvous some eighty miles out to sea. Here the mails and telegrams were transferred to Cradock by putting them in a cask and towing it across the Good Hope’s bows. The sea was rough, and this resourceful method was much quicker and less dangerous than the orthodox use of a boat. Cradock spread out his four ships, fifteen miles apart, and steamed to the north-west at ten knots. Smoke became visible to the Glasgow at 4.20 p.m., and as she increased speed to investigate, there appeared two four-funnelled armoured cruisers and one light cruiser with three funnels. Those four-funnelled ships were the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and until they were seen at that moment by the Glasgow they were not positively known to have been on the Chilean coast. To this extent the German Admiral had taken his English opponents by surprise. “When we saw those damned four funnels,” said the officers of the Glasgow, “we knew that there was the devil to pay.”
I have already told the story of the Coronel action and I will not tell it again. Von Spee held off so long as the sun behind the English gave them the advantage of light, and did not close in until the sun had set and the yellow afterglow made his opponents stand out like silhouettes. He could see them while they could not see him. During the action, the light cruiser Glasgow, with which I am mainly concerned, had a very unhappy time. The armed liner Otranto cleared off, quite properly, and the Glasgow, third in the line, was exposed for more than an hour to the concentrated fire of the 4.1-inch guns of both the Leipzig and Dresden, and afterwards, when the Good Hope had blown up and the Monmouth been disabled, for about a quarter of an hour to the 8.2-inch guns of the Gneisenau. Her gunnery officers could not see the splashes of their own shells, and could not correct the ranges. When darkness came down it was useless to continue firing blindly, and worse than useless, since her gun flashes gave some guidance to the enemy’s gunners. At the range of about 11,000 yards, a long range for the German 4.1-inch guns, the shells were falling all around very steeply, the surface of the sea was churned into foam, and splinters from bursting shells rained over her. It is a wonderful thing that she suffered so little damage and that not a single man of her company was killed or severely wounded. Four slight wounds from splinters constituted her total tally of casualties. At least 600 shells, great and small, were fired at her, yet she was hit five times only. The most serious damage done was a big hole between wind and water on the port quarter near one of the screws. Yet even this hole did not prevent her from steaming away at twenty-four knots, and from covering several thousand miles before she was properly repaired. I think that the Glasgow must be a lucky ship. After the Good Hope had blown up and the Monmouth, badly hurt, was down by the bows and turning her stern to the seas, the Glasgow hung upon her consort’s port quarter, anxious to give help and deeply reluctant to leave. Yet she could do nothing. The Monmouth was clearly doomed, and it was urgent that the Glasgow should get away to warn the Canopus, then 150 miles away and pressing towards the scene of action, and to report the tragedy and the German concentration to the Admiralty at home. During that anxious waiting time, when the enemy’s shells were still falling thickly about her, the sea, to the Glasgow’s company, looked very, very cold! At last, when the moon was coming up brightly, and further delay might have made escape impossible, the Glasgow sorrowfully turned to the west, towards the wide Pacific spaces, and dashed off at full speed. It was not until half an hour later, when she was twelve miles distant, that she counted the seventy-five flashes of the Nürnberg’s guns which finally destroyed the Monmouth. I am afraid that the story of the cheers from the Monmouth which sped the Glasgow upon her way must be dismissed as a pretty legend. No one in the Glasgow heard them, and no one from the Monmouth survived to tell the tale. Captain Grant and his men of the Canopus must have suffered agonies when they received the Glasgow’s brief message. They had done their utmost to keep up with the Good Hope, and the slowness of their ship had been no fault of theirs. Grant had, I have been told, implored the Admiral to wait for him before risking an engagement.
The journey to the Straits and to her junction with the Canopus was a very anxious one for the Glasgow’s company. They did their best to be cheerful, though cheerfulness was not easy to come by. They had witnessed the total defeat of an English by a German squadron, and before they could get down south into comparative safety the German ships, running down the chord of the arc which represented the Glasgow’s course, might arrive first at the Straits. That there was no pursuit to the south may be explained by the one word—coal. Von Spee could get coal at Valparaiso or at Coronel—though the local coal was soft, wretched stuff—but he had no means of replenishment farther south. One does not realize how completely a squadron of warships is tied to its colliers or to its coaling bases until one tries to discover and explain the movements of warships cruising in the outer seas.
While running down towards the Straits—for twenty-four hours she kept up twenty-four knots—the Glasgow briefly notified the Canopus of the disaster of Coronel and of her own intention to make for the Falkland Islands. Beyond this, she refrained from using the tell-tale wireless which might give away her position to a pursuing enemy. Upon the evening of the 3rd she picked up the German press story of the action, but kept silence upon it herself. On the morning of the 4th, very short of stores—her crew had been on reduced rations for a month—she reached the Straits and, to her great relief, found them empty of the enemy. She did not meet the Canopus until the 6th, and then, with the big battleship upon her weather quarter, to keep the seas somewhat off that sore hole in her side, she made a fortunately easy passage to the Falkland Islands and entered Port Stanley at daylight upon November 8th. Thence the Glasgow despatched her first telegram to the authorities at home, and at six o’clock in the evening set off with the Canopus for the north. But that same evening came orders from England for the Canopus to return, in order that the coaling base of the Falklands might be defended, so the Glasgow, alone once more after many days, pursued her solitary way towards Rio and to her meeting with the Carnarvon, Defence, and Cornwall, which were at that time lying off the River Plate guarding the approaches to Montevideo and Buenos Ayres. The Glasgow had done her utmost to uphold the Flag, but the lot of the sole survivor of a naval disaster is always wretched. The one thing which counts in the eyes of English naval officers is the good opinion of their brethren of the sea; those of the Glasgow could not tell until they had tested it what would be the opinion of their colleagues in the Service. It was very kind, very sympathetic; so overflowing with kindness and sympathy were those who now learned the details of the disaster, that the company of the Glasgow, sorely humiliated, yet full of courage and hope for the day of reckoning, never afterwards forgot how much they owed to it. At home men growled foolishly, ignorantly, sank to the baseness of writing abusive letters to the newspapers, and even to the Glasgow herself, but the Service understood and sympathised, and it is the Service alone which counts.
CHAPTER XII
THE CRUISE OF THE “GLASGOW”