Stories of the Ships

by Lewis R. Freeman

"''Twas from the 'Uns' last salvo but one, sir,' said the signalman, grinning down at me over the range-finder. ''Twould 'a' jest about plugged you in the knees. You was jest too late in comin' up, sir.'

"I believe I told him," said the Captain with a laugh, "that, while I should hate to be setting an example for unpunctuality on my own ship, I sincerely hoped and trusted that I should continue being equally late for 'appointments' of that kind. He was a brave chap, that one, and I'm glad to say my recommendation brought him a D.C.M. for the way he carried on that afternoon.

"It's very funny the things one 'imagines' in the course of an action, one in which you are being hit, I mean. There isn't a lot of your ship that you can see from a conning-tower, and so when anything happens—like the explosion of a shell, for instance—you (generally more or less sub-consciously, for your whole active mind is engrossed with fighting the ship) have to speculate on where it struck and what damage it did. Here is an example of one of my efforts in this line that afternoon. A terrific smashing-banging followed the explosion of a shell somewhere amidships, and from the nature of the racket I instantly jumped to the conclusion that it could be only one thing. 'After funnel carried away,' I announced to my Staff Paymaster, whom I had kept standing by to take notes and the time of any incidents I thought worth recording, though just why I concluded it was the after one I don't remember. 'After funnel carried away,' he repeated, and jotted down the entry against the time the disaster had occurred.

"Well, I carried on for the next hour or two with the distinct idea in my mind that one of the funnels was gone, and I even recall wondering several times in the course of the next hour or two whether any damage had been caused in the engine-room, or whether the wreckage was likely to get afire, or whether the smoke would be getting in the way of the guns. Indeed, it is quite possible I tried to get some assurance on these points by voice-pipe. I don't remember precisely. At any rate, it was quite definitely fixed in my mind that that funnel was gone, so that when the next time I poked out to have a look round, I found that it was not even dented, I could hardly believe my eyes. I really am not quite sure to this day what it was that made the infernal banging which I took to be that funnel going over the side.

"Everything considered, the Leipzig made as gallant a fight as it is possible to conceive. Under the fire of two ships, either of which was faster and more heavily gunned than herself, knowing all the time that her sister ships—almost as completely outclassed as herself—could never be counted upon to come to her aid, and, finally, desperately short of ammunition, the way in which she carried on to the end was worthy of the traditions of any navy. Indeed, it has often occurred to me that Von Spee and his officers—from their long service on the China station—had kept themselves entirely free of the contaminating influences of Potsdam which have made the names of the High Sea and the U-boat fleet words anathema. British Naval Officers who had met those of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the Orient still speak of them with kindness, and even occasionally with affection, and certainly no one could have faced defeat and death with a finer or more resolute spirit than they did at the Falklands. Perhaps, for the sake of their souls, it was fortunate that they never got nearer home than the South Atlantic.

"As I have told you, it was about our third salvo which made our first hit upon the Leipzig, a shell of this carrying away her topmast. The latter, in falling, appears to have killed the Gunnery Lieutenant, which must inevitably have made it at least a temporary interference with the control. The Torpedo Lieutenant, whom we picked up among the survivors, took over the direction of the firing from the foretop from that time on.

"There was no appreciable falling off in the Leipzig's firing until the fight had been in progress about two hours. Then the hammering from our shells began to tell rapidly, and at about six-thirty, when I noted that both her mainmast and after funnel had been carried away, and that she was blazing with heavy fires in several places—the firing became spasmodic, and finally, with the exception of a single gun, ceased altogether. At this juncture, as I learned subsequently, there were but eighteen unwounded men left in the ship, and it was a 'scratch' crew of these who, bringing up odd shells from wherever they could find them, continued the fight as long as they had anything to fire. Then they lit their pipes, sat down on the deck and waited for the end.

"At seven-fifteen, seeing her engines had failed her and that she was lying an apparently helpless hulk in the trough of the now rising sea, I gave the order to cease firing. Scarcely had I done so, however, when there came another flash from that one unsilenced gun, and its well-placed shell pierced the paint-room in the Cornwall's forepeak. The ensuing clouds of smoke were so dense that I gave orders for the fire to be extinguished with all despatch. Luckily, the fumes proved to have come almost entirely from the shell itself. It was only afterwards, of course, that I learned in what desperate straits the Leipzig was at this moment. At the time, as she still appeared desirous of carrying on the fight, I had no choice but to commence firing again. This last salvo or two was quite thrown away, however, that is, so far as settling the fate of the enemy was concerned. Indeed, the injury done to her in the first two hours of the fighting would ultimately have sent her to the bottom, while the fact that her shells—except for the odd ones chivvied together for the one gun—must have been at an end about the same time would have left her quite incapable of doing us much harm save with a torpedo. As I have said, however, I did not know these things then, and so could only continue trying to inflict the heaviest damage possible as long as she kept firing.

"That shot through my paint-lockers was the last fired by the Leipzig, and I have good reason to believe that the shell was literally the last four-point-one left on the ship. Two or three of Von Spee's ships had wasted a good bit of their quite irreplaceable munitions in what must have been an almost useless bombardment of Papeete, in the French Societies, while on their way across the Pacific, and Coronel made still further inroads into the magazines. I do not know whether any other ship, like the Leipzig, exhausted all its heavy shells before being sunk, but all of them must have been very low in any case. This fact fully vindicates the decision (which I told you of some time ago) resolved upon by those responsible for the disposition of the greatly inferior force of British ships in South American waters before the intention of sending out the battle cruisers was known, to seek out and fight Von Spee, regardless of the odds, in the hope of clipping his claws for the future by compelling him to fire away as many as possible of his remaining shells.