Days to Remember: The British Empire in the Great War

by John Buchan; Sir Henry John Newbolt

In so doing it suffered some losses and achieved stirring successes, of which one or two are related in the pages which follow. But it must always be remembered that these are but incidents; the business of the British Navy is the right use of the sea, and not conquest or display. For it, therefore, victory is not the affair of a day here or a day there, however rousing to the blood: it lies rather in what is neither spectacular nor resounding—in the monotonous but manifold perfection of an indispensable service.

CHAPTER XXII.

CORONEL.

The battle of Coronel will always have a peculiar interest for us: there is a mystery about it which can never be finally cleared up. At the outbreak of war a British admiral, Sir Christopher Cradock, was in charge of a large and important area off the coast of South America. It was his business to keep this area clear of the enemy squadron under Admiral Graf von Spee, which was much stronger than his own, but was believed to be scattered on the trade routes. In the end Cradock found the enemy squadron united and in much superior force. He instantly attacked, and went down in the action, with two of his ships.

The problem is to ascertain what were his motives for this swift decision to fight against overwhelming odds. Not a man in the flagship survived, and we must do the best with what evidence we have before us. We know the admiral's general idea of the work he had to do; we know what his instructions were, what force he asked for and what was given him; we know the speed and gun-power of the enemy ships, and what he as an experienced commander must have thought of them. Finally, we know the nature of the choice which was open to him; and in face of all this the mystery remains.

The key to it probably lies in the character of the man who had to make the decision; and from this point of view the story is a fine one. While every one is free to form an opinion on the facts, the judgment of those who knew Cradock best is the simplest and the most favourable one. A certain margin of discretion must be allowed to every admiral in time of war; and at the moment of crisis a man of powerful character and vision may go even further, and take the great responsibility of departing from the line of strict obedience to orders. To Cradock's friends it seems clear that he saw himself and his squadron as representing the prestige of his country in combat with a superior force which might be disabled, if it could not be destroyed; he saw that duty might be fulfilled, and honour and success attained, though victory should be impossible. So he hunted his great enemy both skilfully and fearlessly, but relied at a pinch rather on courage than on caution.

From the outbreak of war the German China Squadron, as we now know, was never wholly dispersed: Spee detached ships from time to time to the coast of South America, but remained himself with the strongest part of his force in the Pacific, where he was heard of only at intervals. He might possibly be intending to go westwards and raid the Indian Ocean, as the Emden actually did. He moved, in fact, on Samoa, but when he arrived there on September 14, 1914, he found Apia already safe in the hands of the New Zealanders, and not a ship in the harbour. He left again for Suvarov Island, coaled in the Society Islands, bombarded the French capital Papieté on the 22nd September, and appeared to be making for South America; he might be thinking of a dash through the Magellan Straits to attack our trade on the eastern coast.

The British Admiralty knew the danger of this. Spee's two principal ships—the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau—were fast ships and well armed, with prize gunnery crews. To hunt them satisfactorily a pair of battle-cruisers were required, and these could not well be spared from the Grand Fleet. The Indefatigable was therefore ordered out from the Mediterranean, with the fast cruiser Defence; but the Cabinet refused to spare the Indefatigable, and the Canopus, an old and slow battleship, with 12-inch guns, was sent, with the Defence to follow. Admiral Cradock was ordered to concentrate meanwhile at the Falkland Islands, with his flagship, the Good Hope, the cruisers Monmouth and Glasgow, and some ships of inferior armament.

The Canopus was a whole week late in arriving. Cradock was most anxious to prevent Spee from coming round the Horn to raid the east coast, and he feared that if he kept the old 12-knot battleship with him he might be too late to bar the enemy's passage. In this crisis he took his first great risk: he sent the Canopus by the shorter way, through Magellan's Straits, and took the weaker ships boldly round the Horn. Spee, however, was not in the south; he had spent six days in concentrating at Easter Island, and was at this moment making for the island of Mas-a-Fuera, 500 miles west of Valparaiso.

Cradock now had the Canopus with him again. His instructions were that he was not expected to act without her; but her slow speed continued to hamper him in carrying out his definite orders to search for the enemy and destroy them. He accordingly ordered the Defence to join him from the east coast, where she had been sent by the Admiralty, and went north in the meantime to find the cruiser Leipzig, which was believed to be in front of him, operating alone. Unfortunately the Canopus was once more in need of repairs, and had to be left behind for twenty-four hours.