The sea is a very big place, but that portion of it contained within the ring of the visible horizon is very small. To those in the Glasgow, pressing on in chase of the Leipzig, the scene appeared strange and even ominous. They could see the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau far away, moving apparently in pursuit of themselves, but the battle cruisers hidden below the curve of the horizon they could not see. When firing from the Invincible and Inflexible ceased for a while—as it did at intervals—it seemed to the Glasgow’s company that they were sandwiched between von Spee’s armoured cruisers and his light cruisers, and that the battle cruisers, upon which the result of the action depended, had disappeared into space. The telegraph room and the conning-tower doubtless knew what was happening, but the ship’s company as a whole did not. To this brevity of vision, and to this detachment from exact information, one must set down the extraordinarily conflicting stories one receives from the observers of a naval action. They see what is within the horizon but not what is below it, and that which is below is not uncommonly far more important than that which is above.
Shortly after three o’clock the Glasgow opened upon the Leipzig with her foremost 6-inch gun at a range of about 12,000 yards (about seven miles), seeking to outrange the lighter 4.1-inch guns carried by the German cruiser. The distance closed down gradually to 10,000 yards, at which range the German guns could occasionally get in their work. They could, as the Emden showed in her fight with the Sydney, and as was observed at Coronel, do effective shooting even at 11,000 yards, but hits were difficult to bring off, owing to the steepness of the fall of the shells and the narrowness of the mark aimed at. For more than an hour the Glasgow engaged the Leipzig by herself, knocking out her secondary control position between the funnels, and allowing the Cornwall time to arrive and to help to finish the business with her fourteen 6-inch guns. At one time the range fell as low as 9,000 yards, the Leipzig’s gunners became very accurate, and the Glasgow suffered nearly all the casualties which overtook her in the action.
About 4.20 the Cornwall was able to open fire, and the Glasgow joined her, so that both ships might concentrate upon the same side of the Leipzig. Just as Admiral Sturdee in his fight with the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau could not afford to run risks of damage far from a repairing base, so the Glasgow and the Cornwall with several hours of daylight before them were not justified in allowing impatience to hazard the safety of the ships. They had to regard the possible use of torpedoes and to look out for dropped mines. Neither torpedoes nor mines were, in fact, used by the Germans, though at one time in the course of the action drums, mistaken for mines, were seen in the water and carefully avoided. They were cases in which cartridges were brought from the magazines, and which were thrown overboard after being emptied. As the afternoon drew on the weather turned rather misty, and the attacking ships were obliged to close in a little and hurry up the business. This was at half-past five.
From the first the Leipzig never had a chance. She was out-steamed and utterly out-gunned. Her opponents had between them four times her broadside weight of metal, and the Cornwall was an armoured ship. She never had a chance, yet she went on, fired some 1,500 rounds—all that remained in her magazines after Coronel—and did not finally cease firing until after seven o’clock. For more than four hours her company had looked certain death in the face yet gallantly stood to their work. From first to last von Spee’s concentrated squadron played the naval game according to the immemorial rules, and died like gentlemen. Peace be to their ashes. In success and in failure they were the most gallant and honourable of foes. At seven o’clock the Leipzig was smashed to pieces, she was blazing from stem to stern, she was doomed, yet gave no sign of surrender.
At this moment, when the work of the Glasgow and the Cornwall had been done—the Cornwall, it should be noted, bore the heavier burden in this action—she was hit eighteen times, though little hurt, and played her part with the utmost loyalty and devotion—at this moment flashed the news through the ether that the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had been sunk. The news spread, and loud cheers went up from the English ships. To the doomed company in the Leipzig those cheers must have carried some hint of the utter disaster which had overtaken their squadron. It was not until nine o’clock (six hours after the Glasgow had begun to fire upon her) that she made her last plunge—if a modern compartment ship does not blow up, she takes a powerful lot of shell to sink her—and the English ships did everything that they could to save life. The Glasgow drew close up under her stern and lowered boats, at the same time signalling that she was trying to save life. There was no reply. Perhaps the signals were not read; perhaps there were not many left alive to make reply. The Leipzig, still blazing, rolled right over to port and disappeared. Six officers, including the Navigating Lieutenant-Commander, and eight men were picked up by the Glasgow’s boats. Fourteen officers and men out of nearly 300! The captives were treated as honoured guests and made much of. Our officers and men took their gallant defeated foes to their hearts and gave them of their best. It was not until two days later, when news arrived that the Leipzig’s sister and consort the Nürnberg had been sunk by the Kent, that these brave men broke down. Then they wept. They cared little for the Dresden—a stranger from the North Atlantic—but the Nürnberg was their own consort, beside whom they had sailed for years, and beside whom they had fought. They had hoped to the last that she might make good her escape from the wreck of von Spee’s squadron. When that last hope failed they wept. When I think of von Spee’s gallant men, so human in their strength and in their weakness, I cannot regard them as other than worthy brothers of the sea.
In the Coronel action the Glasgow, exposed to the concentrated fire of the Leipzig and Dresden for an hour, and to the heavy guns of the Gneisenau for some ten minutes, did not lose a single man. There were four slight wounds from splinters, that was all. But in her long fight with the Leipzig alone, assisted by the powerful batteries of the Cornwall, the Glasgow suffered two men killed, three men severely wounded, and six slightly hurt. Such are the strange chances of war. After Coronel, though they had seen two of their own ships go down and were in flight from an overwhelming enemy, the officers and men were wonderfully cheerful. The shrewder the buffets of Fate the stiffer became their tails. But after the Falklands, when success had wiped out the humiliation of failure, there came a nervous reaction. Defeat could not depress the spirit of these men, but victory, by relieving their minds from the long strain of the past months, made them captious and irritable. Perhaps their spirits were overshadowed by the prospect of the weary hunt for the fugitive Dresden.
By wondrous accident perchance one may
Grope out a needle in a load of hay.