Rear-Admiral Cradock to Admiralty.
Good Hope. 26th October, 7 p.m. At sea.
Admiralty telegram received 7th October. With reference to orders to search for enemy and our great desire for early success, I consider that owing to slow speed of Canopus it is impossible to find and destroy enemy’s squadron.
Have therefore ordered Defence to join me after calling for orders at Montevideo.
Shall employ Canopus on necessary work of convoying colliers.
We were then in the throes of the change in the office of First Sea Lord, and I was gravely preoccupied with the circumstances and oppositions attending the appointment of Lord Fisher. But for this fact I am sure I should have reacted much more violently against the ominous sentence: ‘Shall employ Canopus on necessary work of convoying colliers.’ As it was I minuted to the Naval Secretary (Admiral Oliver) as follows:—
‘This telegram is very obscure, and I do not understand what Admiral Cradock intends and wishes.’
I was reassured by his reply on the 29th October:—
‘The situation on the West Coast seems safe. If Gneisenau and Scharnhorst have gone north they will meet eventually Idzumo, Newcastle, and Hizen moving south, and will be forced south on Glasgow and Monmouth who have good speed and can keep touch and draw them south on to Good Hope and Canopus, who should keep within supporting distance of each other.’
The half fear which had begun to grow in my mind that perhaps the Admiral would go and fight without the Canopus which I thought was so improbable that I did not put it on paper, was allayed. It would, of course, be possible for him to manœuvre forty or fifty miles ahead of the Canopus and still close her before fighting. To send the Defence to join Admiral Cradock would have left Admiral Stoddart in a hopeless inferiority. Indeed, in a few hours arrived Admiral Stoddart’s protest of the 29th October:—