THE CRUISE OF THE “GLASGOW.”
Four German cruisers had been sunk, but one, the Dresden, had escaped, and the story of the next three months is the story of a search—always wearisome, sometimes dangerous, sometimes even absurd. The Straits of Magellan, the islands of Tierra del Fuego and of the Horn, and the west coast of the South American spur are a maze of inlets, many uncharted, nearly all unsurveyed. The hunt for the elusive Dresden among the channels, creeks, and islands was far more difficult than the proverbial grope for a needle in a load of hay. A needle buried in hay cannot change its position; provided that it really be hidden in a load, patience and a magnet will infallibly bring it forth. The Dresden could move from one hiding place to another, no search for her could ever exhaust the possible hiding-places, and it was not positively known until after she had been run down and destroyed where she had been in hiding. That she was found after three weary months may be explained by that one word which explains so much in naval work—coal. The Dresden after her flight from the Falkland Islands action was short of coal; von Spee’s attendant colliers, Baden and Santa Isabel, had been pursued and sunk by the Bristol and the armed liner Macedonia, and she was cast upon the world without means of replenishing her bunkers. This was, of course, known to her pursuers, so that they expected, and expected rightly, that she would hang about in some secluded creek until her dwindling supplies drove her forth upon the seas to hunt for more. Which is what happened.
Upon the evening of December 8th, after the Glasgow and Cornwall had disposed of the Leipzig, there were one English and two German cruisers unaccounted for. The Kent had last been seen chasing the Nürnberg towards the south-east, while the Dresden was disappearing over the curve of the horizon to the south. Upon the following morning no news had come in from the Kent, and some anxiety was felt; it was necessary to find her before proceeding with the pursuit of the Dresden, and much valuable time was lost. It happened that during her fight with the Nürnberg, which she sank in a most business-like fashion, the Kent’s aerials were shot away and she lost wireless contact with Sturdee’s squadron. The Glasgow was ordered off to search for her, but fortunately the Kent turned up on the morning of the 10th deservedly triumphant. She had performed the great feat of catching and sinking a vessel which on paper was much faster than herself, and she had done it though short of coal and at the sacrifice of everything wooden on board, including the wardroom furniture. She was compelled with the Glasgow and Cornwall to return to Port Stanley for coal, and this delay was of the utmost service to the fugitive Dresden. Though the movements of that cruiser, in the interval, were not learned until much later, it will be convenient if I give them now, so that the situation may be made clear. The Dresden had owed her escape to her speed and to the occupation of the Glasgow—the only cruiser upon our side which could catch her—with the Leipzig. She got clear away, rounded the Horn on the 9th, and on December 10th entered the Cockburn Channel on the west coast of Tierra del Fuego. At Stoll Bay she passed the night, and her coal-bunkers being empty sent men ashore to cut enough wood to enable her to struggle up to Punta Arenas. She ran a great risk by making for so conspicuous a port, but she had no choice. Coal must be obtained somehow or her number would speedily go up. She was not entitled to get Chilean coal, for she had managed to delude the authorities into supplying her upon five previous occasions during the statutory period of three months. Once in three months a belligerent warship is permitted, under the Hague Rules, to coal at the ports of a neutral country; once she claims this privilege she is cut off from getting more coal from the same country for three months. But the Dresden again managed, as she had already done four times before, to secure supplies illegitimately. She coaled at Punta Arenas, remained there for thirty-one hours—though after twenty-four hours she was liable to internment—and left at 10 p.m. on the 13th. It was this disregard for the Hague Rules which led to the destruction of the Dresden in Chilean territorial waters at Juan Fernandez three months later. We held that she had broken international law deliberately many times, she was no longer entitled to claim its protection. She could not disregard it when it knocked against her convenience, and shelter herself under it when in need of a protective mantle. She had by her own violations become an outlaw.
At 2.30 a.m. on the 13th, Sturdee learned that the Dresden was at Punta Arenas. The Bristol, which was ready, jumped off the mark at once; the Inflexible and the Glasgow, which were not quite ready, got off at 9.15. Thus it happened that the Bristol reached Punta Arenas seventeen hours after the Dresden had left, to vanish, as it were, into space, and not to be heard of again for a couple of months. What she did was to slip down again into the Cockburn Channel and lie at anchor in Hewett Bay near the southern exit. On December 26th she shifted her quarters to an uncharted and totally uninhabited creek, called the Gonzales Channel, and there she lay in idle security until February 4th.
During the long weeks of the Dresden’s stay in Hewett Bay and the Gonzales Channel, the English cruisers were busily hunting for her among the islets and inlets of the Magellan Straits, Tierra del Fuego, and the west coast of the South American spur. The Carnarvon, Cornwall, and Kent took charge of the Magellan Straits, the Glasgow and Bristol ferreted about the recesses of the west coast with the Inflexible outside of them to chase the sea-rat should she break cover for the open. The battle cruiser Australia came in from the Pacific and with the “County” cruiser Newcastle, from Mexico, kept watch off Valparaiso. The Dresden, lying snug in the Gonzales Channel, was not approached except once, on December 29th, when one of the searchers was within twenty miles of her hiding-place. The weather was thick and she was not seen. The big ships did not long waste their time over the search. It was one better suited to light craft, for lighter craft even than the Glasgow or Bristol, for which the uncharted channels often threatened grave dangers. Armed patrols or picket boats, of shallow draught, were best suited to the work, and in its later stages were furbished up and made available.
On December 16th the battle cruisers Invincible and Inflexible were recalled to England, and the Canopus went north to act as guardship at the precious Pirates’ Lair which has figured so often in these pages. The Australia passed on her way to the Atlantic, across which the Canadian contingents were in need of convoy, and the supervision of the Dresden search devolved upon Admiral Stoddart of the Carnarvon. The Admiral with the Carnarvon and Cornwall remained in and out of the Magellan Straits, while the captain of the Glasgow, with him the Kent, Bristol, and Newcastle, was put in charge of the Chilean Archipelago. Gradually as time went on and the Dresden lay low—all this while in the Gonzales Channel—other ships went away upon more urgent duties and the chase was left to the Glasgow, Kent, and an armed liner Orama. The Bristol had butted herself ashore in one of the unsurveyed channels and was obliged to seek a dock for repairs. The great concentration of which the Glasgow had been the focus was over, she was now back at her old police work, though not upon her old station. She had begun the war in sole charge of the South Atlantic; the wheel of circumstance had brought her, with her consorts, to the charge of the South Pacific.
Although the Glasgow’s company had had many experiences of the risks of war, they had never felt in action the strain upon their nerves which was always with them day in day out during that long weary hunt for the Dresden in the Chilean Archipelago. They explored no less than 7,000 miles of narrow waters, for the most part uncharted, feeling their way by lead and by mother wit, becoming learned in the look of the towering rocks which shut them in, and in the kelp growing upon their sea margins. The channels wound among steep high cliffs, around which they could not see. As they worked stealthily round sharp corners, they were always expecting to encounter the Dresden with every gun and torpedo tube registered upon the narrow space into which they must emerge. Their own guns and torpedoes were always ready for instant action, but in this game of hide-and-seek the advantage of surprise must always rest with the hidden conscious enemy. This daily strain went on through half of December and the whole of January and February! One cannot feel surprised to learn that in the view of the Glasgow’s company the actions of Coronel and the Falklands were gay picnics when set in comparison with that hourly expectation throughout two and a half months of the sudden discovery of the Dresden, and that anticipated blast of every gun and mouldy which she could on the instant bring to bear. Added to this danger of sudden attack was the ever-present risk of maritime disaster. It is no light task to navigate for three months waters to which exist no sailing directions and no charts of even tolerable accuracy. Upon Captain Luce and upon his second in command, Lieutenant-Commander Wilfred Thompson, rested a load of responsibility which it would be difficult to overestimate.
It was not until early in March that any authentic news of the movements of the Dresden became available. Upon February 4th she had issued forth of the Gonzales Channel and crept stealthily up the Chilean coast. To the Glasgow had come during the long weeks of the Dresden’s hiding many reports that she was obliged to investigate. Many times our own cruisers were seen by ignorant observers on shore and mistaken for the Dresden; out would flow stories which, wandering by way of South American ports—and sometimes by way of London itself—would come to rest in the Glasgow’s wireless-room and increase the burden thrown upon her officers. More than once she was taken by shore watchers to be the Dresden, and urgently warned from home to be on the look-out for herself!