Part II.—Coronel to Juan Fernandez
(Nov. 1st, 1914, to March 14th, 1915)
We left the British cruiser Glasgow off the River Plate, where she had arrived after her escape, sore at heart and battered in body, from the disaster of Coronel. The battleship Canopus remained behind at Port Stanley to defend the newly established coaling-station at the Falkland Islands. Her four 12-inch guns would have made the inner harbour impassable to the lightly armoured cruisers of Admiral von Spee had he descended before the reinforcements from the north arrived; and the colliers, cleverly hidden in the remote creeks of the Islands, would have been most difficult for him to discover. It was essential to our plans that there should be ample stores of coal at the Falklands for the use of Sturdee’s punitive squadron when it should arrive, and every possible precaution was taken to ensure the supply. As it happened, von Spee did not come for five weeks. He was at his wits’ end to find coal, and was, moreover, short of ammunition after the bombardment of Tahiti and the big expenditure in the Coronel fight. So he remained pottering about off the Chilean coast until he had swept up enough of coal and of colliers to make his journey to the Falklands, and to provide for his return to the Lair which he had established in an inlet upon the coast.
At the English Bank, off the River Plate, the Glasgow had joined up with the Carnarvon, Defence, and Cornwall, and her company were greatly refreshed in spirit by the kindly understanding and sympathy of their brothers of the sea. The officers and men of the Glasgow, who had by now worked together for more than two years, had come through their shattering experiences with extraordinarily little loss of morale. They had suffered a material defeat, but their courage and confidence in the ultimate issue burned as brightly as ever. Even upon the night of the disaster, when they were seeking a safe road to the Straits, uncertain whether the Germans would arrive there first, they were much more concerned for the safety of the Canopus than worried about their own skins. Their captain and navigating lieutenant had thrust upon them difficulties and anxieties of which the others were at first ignorant. The ship’s compasses were found to be gravely disturbed by the shocks of the action, their magnetism had been upset, and not until star sights could be taken were they able to correct the error of fully twenty degrees. The speed at which the cruiser travelled buried the stern deeply, and the water entering by the big hole blown in the port quarter threatened to flood a whole compartment and make it impossible for full speed to be maintained. The voyage to the Straits was, for those responsible, a period of grave anxiety. Yet through it all the officers and men did their work and maintained a cheerful countenance, as if to pass almost scatheless through a tremendous torrent of shell, and to get away with waggling compasses and a great hole between wind and water, was an experience which custom had made of little moment. No one could have judged from their demeanour that never before November 1st had the Glasgow been in action, and that not until November 6th, when she had beside her the support of the Canopus’s great guns, did she reach comparative safety.
The Glasgow’s damaged side had been shored up internally with baulks of timber, but if she were to become sea- and battle-worthy it was necessary to seek for some more permanent means of repair. So with her consorts she made for Rio, arriving on the 16th, and reported her damaged condition to the Brazilian authorities. Under the Hague Convention she was entitled to remain at Rio for a sufficient time to be made seaworthy, and the Brazilian Government interpreted the Convention in the most generous sense. The Government floating dock was placed at her disposal, and here for five days she was repaired, until with her torn side plating entirely renewed she was as fit as ever for the perils of the sea. Her engineers took the fullest advantage of those invaluable days; they overhauled the boilers and engines so thoroughly that when the bold cruiser emerged from Rio she was fresh and clean, ready to steam at her own full speed of some twenty-six knots, and to fight anything with which she could reasonably be classed in weight of metal. By this time the Glasgow had learned of the great secret concentration about to take place at her old Pirates’ Lair to the north, and of those other concentrations which were designed to ensure the destruction of von Spee to whatsoever part of the wide oceans he might direct his ships.
The disaster of Coronel had set the Admiralty bustling to very good and thorough purpose. No fewer than five squadrons were directed to concentrate for the one purpose of ridding the seas of the German cruisers. First came down Sturdee with the battle cruisers Invincible and Inflexible to join the Carnarvon, Glasgow, Kent, Cornwall, and Bristol at the Pirates’ Lair. Upon their arrival the armoured cruiser Defence was ordered to the Cape to complete there a watching squadron ready for von Spee should he seek safety in that direction. One Japanese squadron remained to guard the China seas, and another of great power sped across the Pacific towards the Chilean coast. In Australian waters were the battle cruiser Australia and her consorts of the Unit, together with the French cruiser Montcalm. Von Spee’s end was certain; what was not quite so certain was whether he would fall to the Japanese or to Sturdee. Our Japanese Allies fully understood that we were gratified at his falling to us; he had sunk our ships and was our just prey. Yet if he had loitered much longer off Chili, and had not at last ventured upon his fatal Falklands dash, the gallant Japanese would have had him. Luck favoured us now, as it had favoured us a month earlier when the Emden was destroyed at the Cocos-Keeling Islands. Those who have read my story of the Emden in Chapter IX will remember that but for the fortune of position which placed the Sydney nearest to the Islands when their wireless call for help went out, the famous raider would in all probability have fallen to a Japanese light cruiser which was with the Australian convoy.
The mission of the Invincible and Inflexible, and the secrecy with which it was enshrouded, is one of the most romantic episodes of the war. I have already dealt fully with it. But there has since come to me one little detail which reveals how very near we were, at one time, to a German discovery of the whole game. The two battle cruisers coaled at St. Vincent, Cape Verde Islands—Portuguese territory, within which we had no powers of censorship—and at the Pirates’ Lair off the Brazilian coast. Their movements began to be talked about in Rio and the River Plate. Men knew of the Coronel disaster and shrewdly suspected that the two great ships were on their way to the South Atlantic. A description of their visit had been prepared, and was actually in type. It was intended for publication in a local South American paper. That it was not published, when urgent representations were made on our behalf, reveals how scrupulous was the consideration with which our friends of Brazil and the Argentine regarded our interests. There were no powers of censorship, the appeal was as man to man, and Englishman to Portuguese, and the appeal prevailed—even over the natural thirst of a journalist for highly interesting news. The battle cruisers coaled and passed upon their way, and no word of their visit went forth to Berlin or to von Spee.
The Glasgow was among the British cruisers which greeted Sturdee at the Pirates’ Lair, and as soon as ammunition and stores had been distributed and coal taken in, the voyage to the Falkland Islands began. The squadron arrived in the evening of December 7th, and at daybreak of the 8th von Spee ran upon his fate. The part played by the Glasgow in the action was less spectacular than that which fell to the battle cruisers, but it was useful and has some features of interest. Among other things it illustrates how little is known of the course of a naval action—spread over hundreds of miles of sea—while it takes place, and for some time even after it is over.
On the morning of December 8th, at eight o’clock, the approach of the German squadron was observed, and at this moment the English squadron was hard at work coaling. By 9.45 steam was up and the pursuit began. The Glasgow was lying in the inner harbour with banked fires, ready for sea at two hours’ notice, but her Engineer Lieutenant-Commander Shrubsole and his staff so busied themselves that in little over an hour from the signal to raise steam she was under weigh, and an hour later she was moving in chase of the enemy at a higher speed than she obtained in her contractors’ trials when she was a brand-new ship three years earlier. Throughout the war the engineering staff of the Royal Navy has never failed to go one better than anyone had the right to expect of it. It has never failed to respond to any call upon its energies or its skill, never.
In order that we may understand how the Dresden was able to make her escape unscathed from her pursuers—she bolted without firing a shot in the action—I must give some few details of the position of the ships when the German light cruisers were ordered by von Spee to take themselves off as best they might. Shortly before one o’clock the Glasgow, a much faster ship than anything upon our side except the two battle cruisers, was two miles ahead of the flagship Invincible, and it was Sturdee’s intention to attack the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau—hull down on the horizon—with his speediest ships, the Invincible, Inflexible, and Glasgow. Our three other cruisers—Carnarvon, Cornwall, and Kent—were well astern of the leaders. At 1.04 the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau turned to the eastward to accept battle and to cover the retreat of their light cruisers, which were then making off towards the south-east. Admiral Sturdee, seeing at once that the light cruisers might make good their escape unless the speedy Glasgow were detached in pursuit, called up the Carnarvon (Rear-Admiral Stoddart) to his support, and ordered Captain Luce in the Glasgow to take charge of the job of rounding up and destroying the Leipzig, Nürnberg, and Dresden. The Glasgow, therefore, began the chase at a grave disadvantage. She first had to work round the stern of the Invincible, pass the flagship upon her disengaged side, and then steam off from far in the rear after the Cornwall and Kent, which had already begun the pursuit. The Leipzig and Nürnberg were a long way off, and the Dresden was even farther. This cruiser, Dresden, though sister to the Emden, was, unlike her sister and the others of von Spee’s light cruisers, fitted with Parsons’ turbine engines. She was much the fastest of the German ships at the Falkland Islands, and beginning her flight with a start of some ten miles quickly was lost to sight beyond the horizon. The Cornwall and Kent had no chance at all of overtaking her, and the Glasgow, whose captain was the senior naval officer in command of the pursuing squadron of the three English cruisers, could not overtake a long stern chase by herself so long as the Leipzig and Nürnberg were in his course and had not been disposed of. He was obliged first to make sure of them. Steaming at twenty-four and a half knots, the Glasgow drew away from the battle cruisers and began to overhaul the Leipzig and Nürnberg. She decided to attack the Leipzig, which was nearest to her, and to regulate her speed so that the Cornwall and Kent—both more powerful but much slower ships than herself—would not be left behind. As it happened the engineering staffs of these not very rapid “County” cruisers rose nobly to the emergency, the Cornwall was able to catch the Leipzig and to take a large part in her destruction, while the Kent kept on after the Nürnberg and, as it proved, was successful in destroying her also. One of the ten boilers of the Nürnberg had been out of action for weeks past and her speed was a good deal below its best.