At last the veil lifted. The Dresden, with her coal of Punta Arenas approaching exhaustion, was sighted at a certain spot well up the Chilean coast where had been situated von Spee’s secret Lair. The news was rushed out to the Glasgow, and since her consort, the Kent, was nearest to the designated spot this cruiser was despatched at once to investigate. As at the Falklands action, her engineers rose to the need for rapid movement. For thirty-six hours continuously she steamed northwards at seventeen knots, and arrived just before daybreak on the 7th. Nothing was then in sight, nor until three o’clock in the afternoon of the following day, the 8th. While in misty weather the Kent was waiting and watching out at sea, a cloud bank lifted and the Dresden was revealed. She had not been seen by us since the day of her flight, December 8th, exactly three months before! The Dresden was a shabby spectacle, her paint gone, her sides raw with rust and standing high out of the water. She was evidently light, and almost out of coal. The Kent at once made for her quarry, but the Dresden, a much faster ship, drew away. Foul as she was, for she had not been in dock since the war began, the Kent was little cleaner. The Dresden drew away, but the relentless pursuit of the indefatigable Kent kept her at full speed for six hours, and left her with no more than enough fuel to reach Masafuera or Juan Fernandez. By thus forcing the Dresden to burn most of the fuel which still remained in her bunkers, the Kent performed an invaluable service. This was on March 8th. Juan Fernandez was judged to be the most likely spot in which she would take refuge, and thither the Glasgow, Kent, and Orama foregathered, arriving at daybreak on the 14th. In Cumberland Bay, 600 yards from the shore, the Dresden lay at anchor; the chase was over. She had arrived at 8.30 a.m. on the 9th; she had been in Chilean waters for nearly five days. Yet her flag was still flying, and there was no evidence that she had been interned. Cumberland Bay is a small settlement, and there was no Chilean force present capable of interning a German warship.
I will indicate what happened. The main facts have been told in the correspondence which took place later between the Chilean and British Governments. I will tell the story as I have myself gathered it, and as I interpret it.
The Dresden lay in neutral Chilean waters, yet her flag was flying, and she had trained her guns upon the English squadron which had found her there. There was nothing to prevent her—though liable to internment—from making off unless steps were taken at once to put her out of action. She had many times before broken the neutrality regulations of Chili, and was rightly held by us to be an outlaw to be captured or sunk at sight. Acting upon this just interpretation of the true meaning of neutrality, Captain Luce of the Glasgow, the senior naval officer, directed his own guns and those of the Kent to be immediately fired upon the Dresden. The first broadside dismounted her forecastle guns and set her ablaze. She returned the fire without touching either of the English ships. Then, after an inglorious two and a half minutes, the Dresden’s flag came down.
Captain Lüdecke of the Dresden despatched a boat conveying his “adjutant” to the Glasgow for what he called “negotiations,” but the English captain declined a parley. He would accept nothing but unconditional surrender. Lüdecke claimed that his ship was entitled to remain in Cumberland Bay for repairs, that she had not been interned, and that his flag had been struck as a signal of negotiation and not of surrender. When the Englishman Luce would not talk except through the voices of his guns, the German adjutant went back to his ship and Lüdecke then blew her up. His crew had already gone ashore, and the preparations for destroying the Dresden had been made before her captain entered upon his so-called “negotiations.”
It was upon the whole fortunate that Lüdecke took the step of sinking the Dresden himself. It might have caused awkward diplomatic complications had we taken possession of her in undoubted Chilean territorial waters, and yet we could not have permitted her any opportunity of escaping under the fiction of internment. Nothing would have been heard of internment if the English squadron had not turned up—the Dresden had already made an appointment with a collier—and if we had not by our fire so damaged the cruiser that she could not have taken once more to the sea. Her self-destruction saved us a great deal of trouble. In the interval between the firing and the sinking of the Dresden, the Maritime Governor of Juan Fernandez suggested that the English should take away essential parts of the machinery and telegraph for a Chilean warship to do the internment business. Neither of these proceedings was necessary after the explosion. The Dresden was at the bottom of Cumberland Bay, and the British Government apologised to the Chileans for the technical violation of territorial waters. The apology was accepted, and everyone was happy—not the least the officers and men of the Dresden who, after months of aimless, hopeless wanderings, found themselves still alive and in a sunny land flowing with milk and honey. After their long stay in Tierra del Fuego the warmth of Chili must have seemed like paradise. The Dresden yielded to the Glasgow one item of the spoils of war. After the German cruiser had sunk, a small pig was seen swimming about in the Bay. It had been left behind by its late friends, but found new ones in the Glasgow’s crew. That pig is alive still, or was until quite recently. Grown very large, very hairy, and very truculent, and appropriately named von Tirpitz, it has been preserved from the fate which waits upon less famous pigs, and possesses in England a sty and a nameplate all to its distinguished self.
With the sinking of the Dresden the cruise of the Glasgow, which I have set out to tell, comes to a close. She returned to the South Atlantic, and for a further stretch of eighteen months her officers and men continued their duties on board. But life must for them have become rather dull. There were no more Coronels, or Falkland Islands actions, or hunts for elusive German cruisers. Just the daily work of a light cruiser on patrol duty in time of war. When in the limelight they played their part worthily, and I do not doubt continued to play it as worthily, though less conspicuously, when they passed into the darkness of the wings, and other officers, other men, and other ships occupied in their turn the bright scenes upon the naval stage.
CHAPTER XIII
THE BATTLE OF THE GIANTS: SOME IMPRESSIONS
AND REFLECTIONS