Stories of the Ships

by Lewis R. Freeman

"As soon as it became evident that the Leipzig was incapable of further resistance, the Glasgow (as the senior ship) signalled 'Do you surrender?' but to this there was no reply. Whether this failure to respond was fortuitous or deliberately intentional I was never able to learn definitely, but, from the fact that her flag was kept flying to the last, I am inclined to the belief that it was the latter. It is still possible, however, that she had no halyards, flags, lights, or anything else to signal with, even had she so desired. She did send up a Verey light at this juncture, but whether that was intended to convey some message to us, in lieu of any other means of doing so, or whether it was a sort of gesture of farewell to any of her sisters that might still be afloat, we never knew. If the latter, it failed of its purpose, for the Dresden, the only one of Von Spee's ships still above water, had melted into the mists of the horizon hours before.

"On the chance that the rocket was meant as a distress signal, we steamed in as close as seemed wise, considering the fact that even a sinking ship may launch a torpedo most effectively, and lowered away our boats with all despatch. The fact that, with a seven per cent. list to port due to being holed twice below the water-line on that side, it was difficult to lower the boats to starboard, as well as the fact that several of our port boats had been smashed by shellfire, hampered the work of relief, and the Leipzig had gone down, while the nearest whaler was still some distance away. Any of the wounded that may have got clear of the sinking ship succumbed quickly to the icy coldness of the water, but of the eighteen unwounded men remaining after the action closed, sixteen were picked up—eleven by the boats of the Glasgow, and five by those of the Cornwall.

"One burly Hun, picked up by my coxswain whom I had sent in charge of my galley, gave the lad the surprise of his life, when he exclaimed (in impeccable Cockney English), the instant he was safe aboard: 'G'blyme, myte, but ein't it bally cold?' I found out later that he had been for a number of years an interpreter in the Law Courts of Sydney, Australia. An extremely significant admission that he made me in the burst of confidence induced by thankfulness at finding himself safe and sound after the hell he had been through, was to the effect that he had received notice of mobilisation toward the end of June. One could not ask for better evidence than that of the deliberation with which Germany prepared for the war which she has made such frantic efforts to delude the world into thinking was 'forced' upon her by the Allies—in August!

"My greatest surprise of the day, and certainly the most welcome, came when I asked for a report on our casualties. There were none, or rather only one—the ship's canary, killed in its cage when a shell exploded in the wardroom pantry. This, considering the fact that the Cornwall had been hit eighteen times by four-point-one shell, was indeed good luck, and fully vindicated the plan I had followed of fighting the earlier stages of the battle at a range which, while short enough to allow my heavier guns to do deadly execution, was still somewhat extreme for the lighter ones of the enemy. The latter, it is true, were sighted up to a very considerable range, but both their accuracy and effectiveness fell off greatly as the angle at which they had to be elevated to carry these long distances was increased.

"The battle cruisers had opened fire on the enemy armoured cruisers somewhere about noon. As it was not for an hour or two after that time that our divergent courses had taken us out of sight of each other, we had a good view of the early stages of the action. Here again the Huns opened with their usual spectacularity, and I think I am correct in saying that I saw one of their eight-point-twos crash home on the Invincible before either of them had been struck by a twelve-inch shell from the battle cruisers. The balance was redressed a few minutes later, and long before the action became to us four lines of flame-splashed smoke on the distant horizon, it was plain that the Huns were already beaten. The Scharnhorst, Von Spee's Flagship, which had come in for rather more than her share of the fire up to that time, went down with her flag flying at about four o'clock. The Gneisenau kept up a brave but unequal fight for two hours longer, which gave the Carnarvon time to come up and help administer the coup de grâce.

"Until our closing up on the Leipzig made it necessary to call the men to action stations, those who were free to do so had swarmed over the ship in search of the best points of vantage from which to watch the fight between the heavy cruisers. They couldn't have cheered with more enthusiasm if it had been a football game and the flame-shot smoke-spurts when the battle cruisers' shells exploded on the Huns were goals for the ship's team. They went down eagerly enough when 'Action Stations!' sounded, but it was because I knew that, even in the heat of their own fight, they must be wondering how that other one was progressing that I had the word passed round to them when, about six-thirty, the wireless brought the stirring news that the battle cruisers had finished their work and the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were no more. Well—it was a great moment when the Leipzig went down an hour later, but I am not sure that even that sight stirred me more deeply than did those muffled but still ringing cheers that came welling up to my ears from those brave lads, sweating in their stuffy 'tween decks stations, when they heard of the success of the Invincible and Inflexible.

"When the last of the survivors of the Leipzig had been picked up in the gathering darkness, we put the old Cornwall about and headed back to Port Stanley. Short of coal, and with a heavy list to port where the Leipzig's shells had let water into the bunkers, ten knots was about as fast as I cared to steam her. That, and a thick fog for a part of the time, was responsible for the fact that we were twenty-four hours in returning a distance we had negotiated, with all our zigzaging, in less then ten on the way to the fight. The day following our arrival I found 'rest and change' in a wild-goose hunt in the marshes not far from Port Stanley."

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Admiral Sturdee has since assured me that he distinctly recalls seeing his Flagship cut down a drifting lighter as he put to sea in pursuit of Von Spee.