The Emden was the most wonderful raider of modern times; and her captain, von Müller, behaved much better than the general run of Germans. Arrived in the Indian Ocean he bagged six ships in five days, sending all the crews into Calcutta in the sixth after sinking the rest. But he soon beat this by twice taking no less than seven ships in a single day! Then he dashed into Penang and sank the unready Russian cruiser Jemchug on his way in and the ready little French destroyer Mousquet on his way out. The Mousquet hadn't the ghost of a chance. But she went straight for the Emden and fought till she sank; her heroic captain, with both legs blown off, commanding her to the very last gasp. By this time, however, the net was closing in; and twelve days later the big Australian cruiser Sydney finished the Emden on Cocos Island Reef.
Meanwhile von Spee's five cruisers had been pressed south by the clever network of Japanese warships working over the vast area of the Pacific under the orders of a staff officer watching every move from his desk at Tokyo. Sir Christopher Cradock was waiting to catch the Germans. But his slow battleship Canopus had not yet joined him when (November 1), with only three cruisers and one armed merchantman, he attacked them off Coronel on the coast of Chili; though they were very hard to see, being against the mountains, while his own ships were clearly outlined against a brilliant sunset. Ordering the armed merchantman away he began the fight between the armoured cruisers: Good Hope and Monmouth against Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The German ships were newer, faster, better armed, and the best shooting vessels of the German fleet. The first of their salvoes (volleys) to get home set the Good Hope blazing fore and aft. There was a gale blowing and big seas running; so the end soon came. Cradock's last signal was for the light cruiser Glasgow to save herself, as she could do no further service. But she stood by the Monmouth, whose own captain also ordered her away with the signal that, being too hard hit to escape himself, he would try to close the enemy so as to give the Glasgow a better chance. Suddenly, like a volcano, the Good Hope was rent by a shattering explosion. Then the Monmouth began sinking by the head, and her guns ceased firing. No boat could live in those mountainous seas. So the Glasgow, now under the fire of the whole German squadron, raced away for her life.
Von Spee then swept the coast; and British vessels had to take refuge in Chilean harbours. But Captain Kinnear, a merchant skipper, ran the gauntlet with a skill and courage which nothing could surpass. Off the dreaded Straits of Magellan a German cruiser chased him at twenty-one knots, his own Ortega's regular full speed being only fourteen. But he called for volunteers to help the stokers, whereupon every one of the two hundred Frenchmen going home to fight at once stepped forward, stripped to the waist, and whacked her up to eighteen. Yet still the cruiser kept closing up. So Kinnear turned into Nelson's Channel, the very worst channel in the very worst straits in the world, unlit, uncharted, and full of the wildest currents swirling through pinnacle rocks and over hidden reefs. The cruiser stopped, dumbfounded. The Ortega then felt her way ahead, got through without a scratch, and took her Frenchmen safe to France.
Von Spee presently rounded the Horn and made for the Falkland Islands, the British naval base in the South Atlantic. But, only a month after the news of Coronel had found Sir Doveton Sturdee sitting at his desk in London as the Third Sea Lord of the Admiralty, his avenging squadron had reached the Falklands more than eight thousand miles away. Next morning von Spee also arrived; whereupon Sturdee's much stronger squadron sprang out of Port Stanley and began a chase which could only have one ending. Von Spee turned to fight, with his two armoured cruisers against the two over-powering battle cruisers of the British, so that his three light cruisers might "star away" at their utmost speed, on three divergent courses, in an effort to escape. Vain hope! Sturdee's battle cruisers sank the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, while his other cruisers sank two of the three German cruisers. All the Germans went down with colours flying and fighting to the very last. Only the little Dresden escaped; to be sunk three months later by two British cruisers at Robinson Crusoe's island of Juan Fernandez, four hundred miles off the coast of Chili.
From this time forward not a single enemy warship sailed the outer seas. The Austrians were blockaded in the Adriatic, the Germans in the North Sea, and the Turks at the east end of the Mediterranean. Now and then a German merchantman would be armed in the German colonies or in some friendly neutral harbour and prey on British trade routes for a time. But very few of these escaped being sunk after a very short career; and those that did get home never came out again. So 1914 closed with such a British command over the surface of the sea as even Nelson had never imagined. The worst of the horrible submarine war was still to come. But that is a different story.
The joint expedition of French and British against the Turks and Germans in the Dardanelles filled 1915 with many a deed of more or less wasted daring. Victory would have meant so much: joining hands with Russia in the Black Sea, getting the Russian wheat crop from Odessa, driving the Turks from Constantinople, and cutting right through the Berlin-to-Bagdad line. But, once the Allied Governments had given the enemy time to hold the Dardanelles in full force, the only right way to reach Constantinople was the back way round by land through Greece and Turkey, combined with attacks on the Dardanelles. This, however, needed a vastly larger army than the Governments could spare. So, despite the objections of Fisher, their naval adviser, they sent fleets and armies to wear themselves out against the Dardanelles, till Kitchener, their military adviser, got leave to take off all that were left.
[Illustration: A PARTING SHOT FROM THE TURKS AT GALLIPOLI.]
The politicians had blundered badly over the whole campaign. But the French and British soldiers and sailors, after fighting gloriously against long odds, managed their retirement in a way which might serve as the perfect model of what such retirements should be. The Turks and Germans, though eager to crown their victorious defence by smashing the fleet and army which had so long attacked them, were completely hoodwinked. The French and British kept up the cleverest show of force till the last streak of daylight had died away. Then, over the worst of broken ground, down terrific slopes, and across the puzzling beaches, the gallant armies marched, silent as the grave and regular as clock-work. The boats were loaded and taken off to their appointed places as skilfully as Wolfe's were brought down the St. Lawrence the night before the Battle of the Plains. Next morning the astounded enemy found an empty land in front of them; while the sea was swarming with crowded transports, safe beyond the retiring men-of-war.