CHAPTER 12

The Battle of Coronel

Leipzig was not alone off Coronel that afternoon. Vice Admiral Count Maximilian von Spee was there with the whole strength of the German East Asia Sqaudron. Once Glasgow was sighted to the southwest, Spee moved to intercept her. He ordered all boilers lighted, summoned his two lagging light cruisers, Dresden and Nürnberg, and, without waiting for them, began to chase. Black smoke belched from Scharnhorst’s funnels; “In a quarter of an hour,” Spee wrote later, “we were steaming at twenty knots against a heavy sea, throwing up clouds of spray which soaked to the bones the men in the forward turret and the magazine below.” Meanwhile, Leipzig had also seen Monmouth and Otranto and had informed the admiral.

The chase phase of the action continued for ninety minutes. Once the British had reversed direction, the two squadrons were steaming south on almost parallel courses separated by 15,000 yards. Spee, aware that he had the superior force, made his preparations calmly. “Does my smoke disturb you?” he signaled to Gneisenau and made adjustments to Scharnhorst’s course to give her sister a clear view of the targets. “When the sun was sufficiently low on the horizon not to dazzle the gunners,” wrote an officer on board the Gneisenau, “and the enemy ships were sharply outlined against the blaze of the setting sun, while the lofty Chilean coast, dark and cloud-capped, formed our background . . . [we], on signal from Scharnhorst, moved . . . towards the enemy. The distance, then about 13,500 yards, began to diminish more rapidly. The eyes of the range-finders were glued to the rubber eyelets of their long-range field glasses, through which they perceived the enemy magnified ten times.” Spee opened fire at 7:04 p.m., at 11,000 yards. Each German ship was instructed to fire at the corresponding ship in the enemy line: Scharnhorst at Good Hope, Gneisenau at Monmouth, Leipzig at Glasgow, and Dresden at Otranto. After the first salvo, Scharnhorst fired three salvos a minute, and at 7:09 p.m. observed her first hit on Good Hope. Soon afterward, Cradock’s ships began to fire back.

The sun was sinking in the western sky at 4:20 p.m., when Luce, heading north, saw smoke on his starboard bow, toward the coast. Otranto, then only two miles west of Glasgow, signaled that she, too, had seen the smoke on the horizon. Luce reported this to Cradock, fifty miles away in Good Hope, then rang for full speed and turned to investigate. The smoke cloud expanded as he approached; soon, from a distance of twelve miles (24,000 yards), he identified a three-funneled light cruiser and then, farther off, two four-funneled armored cruisers. Luce knew instantly what they were: “We had in sight the two German armored cruisers.” Until that moment, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were not positively known to be on the Chilean coast. “But when we saw those damned four funnels,” said another Glasgow officer, “we knew there was the devil to pay.”

Luce steamed closer to establish Spee’s course. “Enemy steering between southeast and south,” he signaled, and then turned away to gather up Monmouth and Otranto and join Good Hope, still out of sight to the west. Cradock, who had learned of Leipzig’s presence about the same time that Spee was informed of Glasgow’s, immediately turned toward the enemy. For a few minutes, when the two squadrons first made contact, both admirals were surprised, each believing that he had been closing in on a solitary enemy light cruiser. This impression was sustained by the coincidence that Leipzig, the single German light cruiser that Cradock expected to find, was the first to be sighted by the British force, while Glasgow, the light cruiser that Spee had hoped to trap in Coronel, was the first to be seen by the German squadron.

Before Cradock, steaming north, turned toward the enemy, he had the entire Pacific Ocean on his port bow, with ample sea room to escape. Good Hope, Monmouth, and Glasgow all could make more than 20 knots and thus were faster than Von Spee’s two armored cruisers, but Otranto’s best speed that afternoon was 16 knots, inferior to all of the German ships. Thus, while Cradock with his three warships might have run for protection back to the 12-inch guns of Canopus, he could have done so only by leaving Otranto behind. Later, critics asked why Otranto was present at all with the British squadron at Coronel. The answer is that Cradock had not expected to meet the East Asia Squadron that afternoon. He was hunting one light cruiser, and in this effort, Otranto, by extending his search line, had a useful part to play. Once Scharnhorst and Gneisenau appeared, however, Otranto became a heavy liability: if Cradock slowed down to her speed, he surrendered 6 or 7 knots; if he left her behind she could fall prey to any one of the German ships. “We all thought he would leave Otranto,” wrote Glasgow’s gunnery officer, “[but] he did not like leaving [her] to look after herself. . . . She is such an enormous hulk she can be seen for miles on the darkest night.” Cradock made his choice, signaling his squadron, “I cannot go down and engage the enemy at present leaving Otranto.”

Cradock now knew that the long anticipated encounter with Spee was at hand. At 5:10 p.m., he signaled all ships to head toward Glasgow, the ship nearest the enemy. Having decided to fight and because Royal Navy ships were not trained for battle at night, he decided to force an action while daylight remained. He formed his ships into a single line—Good Hope lead-ing, then Monmouth, Glasgow, and Otranto—on a southeasterly course at 16 knots, the highest speed of which Otranto was capable. His intention was to bring the Germans within range of his squadron’s numerous 6-inch guns; unfortunately, this course also headed the ships diagonally across a heavy sea on the side toward the enemy. Here, the waves rolling up against the closed casements of Good Hope’s and Monmouth’s lower port gun batteries rendered these guns useless. With these gun ports closed and because of the shorter range of all of the British 6-inch guns, Spee’s sixteen 8.2-inch guns were opposed at this stage only by the two 9.2-inch guns of Good Hope.

Thereafter for almost an hour, the two lines of ships swept south on a roughly parallel course, 14,000 yards apart. To British sailors looking across the water, the German squadron gave an intimidating impression of con-fidence and power. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, their red, gold, and black battle flags stiff in the wind, black smoke billowing from their funnels, the waves racing along their towering white sides, seemed to ride irresistibly over the seas. To the west, the British line presented a hodgepodge assembly, wallowing and plunging through the swells, green water breaking over their bows, their main deck guns awash, their telescopes and gun sights drenched by icy spray and encrusted with salt.

Nevertheless, Cradock believed that he had a chance. His position to the west of Spee offered a great advantage in terms of light. The British squadron was between the enemy and the setting sun, putting the low afternoon rays directly into the Germans’ eyes. As the British closed the range, the sun would blind the German gun layers while at the same time lighting up the German ships as targets. Conversely, Cradock realized, after the sun went down, this advantage would be reversed. Rather than having the setting sun in their eyes, the enemy gunners would be looking—for at least half an hour after sunset—at the black shapes of his ships starkly silhouetted against the afterglow in the western sky. The Germans, meanwhile, would be lost in the gray obscurity of the inshore twilight. Cradock decided to force an immediate action, To have a chance, he knew that he must come close enough to effectively use his armored cruisers’ seventeen 6-inch guns. At 6:18 p.m., he increased speed to 16 knots, hoisted the signal “Follow in the admiral’s wake,” and turned closer toward the enemy. At the same moment, he wirelessed Canopus, laboring up the coast 250 miles to the south, “I am going to attack the enemy now.”

Admiral von Spee refused to have it so. He realized as well as Cradock the danger of having his gun layers blinded by glare from the setting sun, and he had no intention of letting his enemy come within range until the sun had set. His squadron speed was now 20 knots, giving him the power to dictate time and range, and he deliberately refused immediate action. Edging away to port, keeping himself between Cradock and the coast, he established a new range of 18,000 yards. Thwarted, Cradock turned back to a parallel southerly course. Then, as the sun slid into the sea and evening crept over the sky, the German ships became indistinct against the background of gathering darkness. To the west, the four British ships, steaming in a neat line one behind the other, were sharp-etched in black silhouette against the red-gold panorama of the afterglow.

At 6:50 p.m., the sun sank beneath the horizon. “And now began the saddest naval action in the war,” Winston Churchill wrote. “Of the officers and men in both the squadrons that faced each other in these stormy seas so far from home, nine out of ten were doomed to perish. The British were to die that night; the Germans a month later.” Once the advantage of light had abandoned Cradock, Spee immediately altered course and brought his ships to within 12,300 yards of the British squadron. At 7:04 p.m., he hoisted the signal to open fire, and orange flashes blossomed from Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Soon gray-white mushrooms, beautifully grouped, rose from the sea 500 yards short of the British flagship. From the beginning, despite the fact that the ships on both sides were rolling, the shooting of the two German armored cruisers was not merely superior; it was remarkable. It was as if they were at peacetime gunnery practice; Scharnhorst’s first salvo landed 500 yards short; her second was 500 yards over; then, with an awful inevitability, the third salvo smashed into the British flagship. Within five minutes, Spee had achieved decisive hits on both British armored cruisers. Scharnhorst’s third salvo struck Good Hope’s forward 9.2-inch gun tur-ret, and her foredeck exploded in flames. Thus, even before he fired his first shot, Cradock was deprived of one of his squadron’s two big guns. Meanwhile, Gneisenau fired rapid salvos at Monmouth, striking her forecastle. As Good Hope and Monmouth steamed through a forest of water spouts, men on Glasgow observed the curious effect of sheets of flame continuously bathing the sides of both ships with the heavy sea sliding along the sides seeming to have no effect.

Cradock decided to move in closer. And with every minute, the tactical disadvantage of the British ships increased. The Germans now were almost invisible. Heavy seas pounding against their ships were sending bursts of spray into the faces of the British gunners, telescopes were blurred, and in the growing darkness, spotters could not mark the fall of shots. There was nothing at which to aim except the flashes of the German guns, while Spee’s gun layers continued to hit their well-defined targets with salvos fired three a minute. The battle quickly became, in the words of one British survivor, “the most rotten show imaginable.” Two relatively new German cruisers, winners of competitive gunnery tests in the German navy and manned by 2,200 trained German sailors, were pitted against two obsolete ships manned by scratch crews of Britons, the vast majority of whom had been happily pursuing civilian lives less than six months before. The lower deck guns of the German armored cruisers were able to fire, but the main deck casements of Good Hope and Monmouth had to be kept closed lest the guns be smothered by the sea. Not that the German ships faced no difficulties. “The waves rose high in the strong wind,” said one German officer. “Water foamed up over the cruisers’ forecastles and then flowed streaming over the upper decks. The crews and ammunition carriers found it difficult to keep their feet.” An English 6-inch shell penetrated on the starboard side of Gneisenau into the officers’ wardroom where it burst. Water poured in rapidly, but the ship’s carpenters, up to their necks in water, stopped the leak. A British shell hit the after turret between the guns and temporarily jammed the mechanism that enabled the turret to rotate. It was repaired and the guns reopened fire. But for the British, it was infinitely worse. Glasgow never observed any gunfire at all from the lower gun casements of the two British armored cruisers. That meant that sixteen German 8.2-inch guns were opposed by only one 9.2-inch gun and a few 6-inch guns. The German salvos thundered rhythmically at twenty-second intervals, whereas, Spee reported, the British gunners fired only one salvo to his three.

Otranto played no active part in the battle. Dresden had fired briefly at the armed merchant cruiser and Otranto’s Captain Edwards, seeing that his ship could do nothing useful, signaled Cradock to ask if he should keep out of range. Cradock’s reply was garbled and provided no clear orders. Then Gneisenau put two shells over Edwards’s bridge and a column of water spouted up fifty yards off his starboard bow. Unable to reply with his 4-inch guns, Edwards prudently drew out of line onto Glasgow’s starboard quarter. Even here, owing to her huge bulk and the short range of her guns, Otranto could serve no purpose except as a looming target, which the enemy could use to determine the range to the British line. Realizing this, Captain Edwards took her away to the west as fast as she would go.

The main action lasted only fifty-two minutes. With the early loss of Good Hope’s forward 9.2-inch gun, Cradock’s chances of harming the enemy at anything but 6-inch-gun range had been cut in half. Even his smaller guns had little effect: Monmouth’s 6-inch gunfire was at first very rapid, but because Gneisenau was out of range the British shells landed in the sea. And once Gneisenau turned her full attention on Monmouth, the British shooting quickly became ragged. Her gun crews fought their guns, but the foredeck was burning and black smoke billowed along her exposed port side. Outranged by the German guns that were straddling the British line along its length, and with his own 6-inch guns having difficulty reaching the enemy, Cradock had a single thought: to come still closer. As he led his squadron across the shell-torn seas to bring his 6-inch guns to bear, he was punished fiercely and Good Hope’s masthead and foretop repeatedly glowed red as shells from Scharnhorst burst against them. By 7:23 p.m., the range was down to 6,600 yards and still Cradock came on. Spee, fearing that this was a torpedo attack, edged away to the east. At 7:35 p.m., Cradock still plunged toward the German line 5,500 yards away. “The enemy had the range perfectly and all their salvos straddled our lines. The scene was appalling,” said a Glasgow officer.

As the British kept coming, Gneisenau’s guns shortened the range and the execution became terrible. One shell struck Monmouth’s fore 6-inch turret and blew off the roof. As flames licked up out of the steel shell, a second, larger explosion shattered the entire forward part of the ship; when the flames subsided, the forward turret had completely disappeared. Still Gneisenau’s shells crashed through her decks; heavy seas were flooding into her gaping bows and she began heeling to port. Then, as though beaten out of line by sheer weight of metal, Monmouth began to lose speed and yaw away to starboard. For a while, it seemed to those watching from Glasgow that she was having some success in overcoming her fires, but she never rejoined the line and gradually her guns lapsed into silence.

Darkness settled, the moon came up behind the clouds, and the Germans, except for the relentless flashes of their guns, were invisible to their enemies. Not so Good Hope and Monmouth, which flared like twin beacons. Frequently, both ships, already bright with flames, flashed into vivid orange as another shell detonated against their superstructures. In the dark, the German gun layers used the fires in the British ships as aiming points. “As the two big enemy ships were in flames,” noted one German officer, “we were able to economize [on use of] our searchlights.”

Good Hope was in forlorn condition. Although the single 9.2-inch gun on her stern continued to fire once a minute, the shells crashing into the flagship had ripped away her upper works and decks and the smoke pouring from her funnels was an incandescent red. Still, she pushed stubbornly ahead, her upper port 6-inch battery defiant. At 7:42 p.m., Good Hope, as though in a final desperate effort to sell her life dearly, gathered all her remaining strength, turned directly toward her tormentors, and charged them, trailing fiery clouds of flame behind her. Spee ordered his ships out of her path and then, at a range of less than 5,000 yards, poured in rapid-fire broadsides from both Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. His salvos blanketed Good Hope; she staggered under the rain of blows and came to a halt with her upper deck a sea of flame.

It was now quite dark, with the moon intermittently obscured by clouds and occasional rain squalls. By 7:50 p.m., the stricken British flagship, which had absorbed at least thirty-five direct hits from Scharnhorst, could be seen, silent and burning, close to the enemy. A Glasgow midshipman, watching Good Hope, saw “her funnels illuminated by a fire burning near the bridge. A moment later, there was a tremendous detonation . . . and the whole of her forepart shot up in a fan-shaped sheet of flame.” A broad column of flame rose from amidships where it illuminated a cloud of debris flung still higher in the air. “She looked,” said Spee, “like a splendid firework display against a dark sky. The glowing white flames, mingled with bright green stars, shot up to a great height.” Then the column of fire broke and fell, to wash along the decks and cover the hull with waves of flame. Debris crashed into the sea and the forward section of the ship silently detached itself and slid down into oblivion. Incredibly, two 6-inch guns of the after port battery each fired twice more into the darkness. Then her fire ceased and she lay drifting, a low, dark, gutted hull, illuminated by a red glare. After this, all was black and, despite her proximity, she was never seen again. Ironically, so close had Good Hope been to the German line that for a moment Glasgow’s gunners thought it was the German flagship, not their own, that had exploded.

In contrast to the horrors that descended on Good Hope and Monmouth, Glasgow bore a charmed existence. At 7:05, she had begun firing her two 6-inch guns over 10,000 yards, first at Leipzig and then at Dresden. Glasgow’s gun layers, firing from a rolling platform only eight feet above the waterline, could hardly see their targets, and the smoke of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, driven by the wind, made them even more difficult to see. Nevertheless, Glasgow continued firing while her gunnery officer searched in the darkness for signs of the fall of shot. The effort was fruitless and Glasgow hit neither Leipzig nor Dresden.

Meanwhile, the two German light cruisers were firing back. Leipzig’s initial salvo fell short of Glasgow and her fire remained ineffective until 7:15 p.m., when the British cruiser came within range of the German 4.1-inch guns. From that point on, Luce’s ship was engaging both German light cruisers, and, at times, also Gneisenau. All this time, Glasgow could see the two bigger British ships being cruelly punished. No one on board Glasgow actually saw Good Hope founder, but everyone knew that she could not have survived. Once the British flagship was gone, Scharnhorst switched her fire to Monmouth, and Gneisenau to Glasgow; huge splashes began erupting around the unarmored British light cruiser. Moonlight gave Glasgow an occasional glimpse of the enemy ships and, shifting fire from Leipzig to Gneisenau, she scored at least one hit with her forward 6-inch gun on Gneisenau’s after turret. For a few minutes the turret could not be trained, but the armor was not pierced and soon the German guns returned to action.

By eight o’clock, Luce knew that he was tempting fate by continuing the action. For an hour, his ship had been exposed to the fire of both Leipzig and Dresden and for ten minutes he was the target of the 8.2-inch shells of Gneisenau. His own guns could do little against this adversary and his gunnery officer was unable even to see the splashes of his shells in order to correct ranges. “The moon was rising behind the enemy, dimly showing him up at times while he could no longer see us, and they only fired when they could see the flash of our guns,” Luce said. “We kept up our fire a little longer until I realized that each time we fired we brought on ourselves the combined fire of the whole [German] squadron.” Accordingly, at 8:05, Luce ordered his ship to cease fire.

Luce’s ship had been extraordinarily lucky. In part, this was due to the difficulties Dresden and Leipzig had faced in fighting their guns while pitching and rolling in the heavy seas. Together, the two German light cruisers had fired more than 600 shells at Glasgow, but had hit her only five times. Three shells had lodged harmlessly in coal bunkers, where the lumps of coal had squelched their explosive force; one broke up, without bursting, against a conning tower support. The only significant hit came from a 4.1-inch shell from Leipzig that burst aft on the waterline just above the port outer propeller and tore a large hole about six feet square. One compartment was flooded but there was no spreading or damage to the adjacent compartments and the ship’s speed was not affected. Glasgow was still able to steam away at 24 knots and cover 5,000 miles before she was repaired. Remarkably, not a single man of Glasgow’s crew was killed or severely wounded. Four slightly wounded seamen returned to duty within a few days.

Glasgow’s parrots were not as lucky. As the ship went into action, it was decided that it would be unkind to leave the birds in their cages and, although the vessel was fifty miles from the coast, the parrots were released. For a while, each time the guns were fired, they rose, flew about, then settled back on Glasgow’s upper deck. As the battle wore on, the parrots became dazed and perched apathetically about the ship. Hirst saw two perched on a gun barrel just before it fired; others lined up on the funnel stays and the edges of boats. Only ten parrots survived the battle.

Once Luce ceased firing, he turned to see what he could do for the stricken Monmouth. At 8:15 p.m., he found the battered armored cruiser, listing and down by the bow. The fires on her deck had been put out and she was trying to turn to the north, to get her undamaged stern into the large waves rolling up from the south. By the time Glasgow arrived, the moon in the east had risen above the clouds to light up the sea and reveal four enemy ships approaching in line abreast; soon they would sight the British ships. “Are you all right?” Luce signaled by flashing light. Monmouth’s captain, Frank Brandt, replied, “I want to get stern to sea. I am making water badly forward.” “Can you steer northwest?” Luce asked, hoping that the Monmouth could limp to the Chilean coast. “The enemy are following us astern,” he added.

For almost ten minutes, Glasgow hung off Monmouth’s port quarter, but there was nothing Luce could do. The enemy was near, the area was flooded with moonlight, and Luce had to decide whether to share Monmouth’s fate without being able to render any real assistance, or to attempt to escape. “I felt that I could not help her but must be destroyed with her if we remained,” Luce said later. “With great reluctance, I therefore turned to the northwest and increased to full speed.” Before leaving, Glasgow passed under the Monmouth’s stern. As the light cruiser went by for the last time, the crew of the stricken ship was heard cheering and, amid the voices of men, some thought they heard the higher notes of a boy.

Two of Glasgow’s officers later justified Luce’s decision: “It was obvious that Monmouth could neither fight nor fly,” said one. “It was essential that there should be a survivor of the action to turn Canopus which was hurrying at her best speed to join up and, if surprised alone by four or five ships . . . must have shared the fate of the other ships. Monmouth was therefore reluctantly left to her fate.” Another officer agreed. “It was awful having to leave,” he said, “but I don’t see what else the skipper could have done.”

Glasgow headed west at full speed, losing sight of Monmouth astern at 8:50 p.m., and then turned south toward Canopus. Throughout the action, the Germans had ceaselessly jammed British wireless transmissions, and Glasgow had been unable to get any messages through. Now, as she raced south, the jamming effect declined and her wireless was able to tell Canopus the dreadful story. At first, as Glasgow rushed south at 24 knots, there was hope that Monmouth might have eluded the enemy and be limping to safety. Then, half an hour later, the men on Glasgow’s decks saw a searchlight beam flickering on the northern horizon. Distant firing broke out again and seventy-five gun flashes were counted. Then, silence. Glasgow knew that the Germans had found Monmouth. Later, one Glasgow officer remembered that “utterly dispirited and sick at heart . . . I went down to my cabin to snatch a few hours of sleep. . . . I threw myself onto my bunk, wet clothes and all. . . . We were humiliated to the very depths of our beings. We hardly spoke to one another for the first twenty-four hours. We felt so bitterly ashamed of ourselves for we had let down the King; we had let down the Admiralty; we had let down England. What would the British public think of the Royal Navy?”

By 8:15 p.m., with the ocean shining under bright moonlight broken by clouds and scattered rain squalls, Admiral von Spee had lost contact with his enemies. Scharnhorst slowed, and with his flagship lying athwart the sea and rolling heavily, Spee signaled his light cruisers: “Both British armored cruisers severely damaged. One light cruiser apparently fairly intact. [German] light cruisers to pursue and attack with torpedoes.” Upon receiving this order, Leipzig turned at 18 knots toward a glare visible to the northwest that Captain Johannes Haun supposed might be a burning ship. By the time he reached the position, he could see nothing from his bridge, but members of his crew who were on the main deck throwing cartridge cases overboard observed lifeless bodies amid a mass of floating debris. They failed to report this to Haun, who therefore did not pass the information along to Spee; the admiral remained ignorant that he had sunk the British flagship. A few minutes later, Dresden stumbled upon Leipzig and, believing her to be Glasgow, prepared to fire a torpedo. Recognition came just in time.

Meanwhile, Nürnberg, which had been twenty-five miles behind the squadron when the firing began, believed that she had missed the battle. Receiving Spee’s torpedo order, Captain Karl von Schönberg turned his ship in the direction from which he had last heard gunfire. At 8:35 p.m., a lookout reported a column of smoke on the starboard bow and Schönberg steered for it at 21 knots, but it disappeared into the darkness (this was Glasgow, which had just left Monmouth to her fate). Schönberg then observed another, larger ship about two miles farther away on his starboard beam. Here, he found a heavily damaged British armored cruiser, listing 10 degrees to port, but still under way, her guns silent. As Nürnberg approached, the crippled vessel heeled still more so that the guns on her port side were useless. Schönberg closed in, switched on his searchlight, and recognized Monmouth, lacking her forward 6-inch turret. The searchlight also picked out the White Ensign, still flying, and repair parties moving about the shattered decks. Monmouth’s propellers still threshed under her stern, and her steering appeared undamaged. Schönberg waited, his searchlight pointedly illuminating the White Ensign 600 yards away. Monmouth did not fire, but there was no move-ment to lower the flag. At 9:20, Schönberg opened fire, deliberately aiming high; still the White Ensign was not struck. Nürnberg next fired a tor-pedo, which missed. Schönberg ceased fire, switched off his searchlights, and waited. Then, Monmouth began to gather speed and turn toward Nürnberg, possibly, the German believed, intending to ram or to bring her starboard guns to bear. As Monmouth turned, Nürnberg circled and passed under Monmouth’s stern, now rising high out of the sea. At point-blank range, Schönberg fired. No shot could miss; the shells ripped open the unprotected part of the hull. Monmouth shuddered and heeled farther until the sea rolled over the port deck rail and lapped around the funnels. Soon, the ship was lying on her side, her ensigns drooping toward the water, her red keel rising. At 8:58 p.m., Monmouth capsized and went down. Schönberg made no attempt to rescue; the seas were too heavy and his lookouts reported smoke from approaching, unidentified four-funneled ships. Eventually, as the ships came closer, they were recognized as Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.

Later, Captain Schönberg wrote: “I fired until the Monmouth had completely capsized, which . . . proceeded very slowly and majestically, the brave fellows went under with flags flying, an indescribable and unforgettable moment as the masts with the great top flags sank slowly into the water. Unfortunately, there could be no thought of saving the poor fellows. First, I believed that I had an enemy before me, secondly the sea was so high that hardly a boat could have lived in it. Moreover, all my ship’s boats were secured before the action.” Even so, after the battle, many of Nürnberg’s officers were ill at ease about their slaughter of a helpless enemy. “It was terrible to have to fire on poor fellows who were no longer able to defend themselves,” said Lieutenant Otto von Spee, the admiral’s son. “But their colors were still flying and when we ceased fire for several minutes they did not haul them down.”

The battle was over. Nürnberg signaled the flagship, “Have sunk enemy cruiser,” and Spee replied, “Bravo, Nürnberg!” There were no survivors from Monmouth or Good Hope. Sixteen hundred British seamen had died. Christopher Cradock, his wish fulfilled, was one of them.

By 10:15 p.m., Spee decided that Good Hope, Glasgow, and Otranto had escaped. The last two were of little concern, and he believed that Good Hope was so heavily damaged that she would either sink or make for Valparaíso for repairs, in which case he hoped to persuade the Chilean government to disarm and intern her. But there remained the British battleship sighted off Punta Arenas; from signals intercepted by Scharnhorst he knew that the battleship was coming north. Deciding not to risk an encounter with this ship, Von Spee himself turned north at 10:20 p.m.

On Monday morning, November 2, the day after the battle, the sun was shining, the wind had dropped, the sea was calm, and the ships of the East Asia Squadron, steaming at 10 knots, gently rose and fell in the following swell. In the clear air, the Germans could see the distant coastline of Chile and, more important, far and wide an empty ocean. When Spee ordered a diligent search for the shattered hulk of Good Hope or any evidence of her sinking, the observations made by Leipzig’s crew finally reached him. Admiral von Spee now knew that he had command of the sea in the southeast Pacific. To acknowledge the victory, he gave his ships the opportunity to close his flagship and cheer him, responding, “With God’s help, a glorious victory. I express my thanks and congratulations to the crews.” Assessing the damage to his squadron, Spee found that Scharnhorst had been hit only twice and that both shells had failed to explode. One British 6-inch shell had hit forward on the starboard side above the armored belt, making a hole three feet square and penetrating to a storeroom—but it did not explode. “The creature just lay there,” wrote Spee, “as a kind of greeting.” A second shell hit a funnel without doing serious damage. The four shells that struck Gneisenau had not seriously harmed her. The three German light cruisers had not been hit. Not a single German officer or seaman had been killed; three men from Gneisenau had been slightly wounded. For Spee, the most serious consequence of the battle was that he had expended half of his ammunition. At Coronel, Scharnhorst had fired 422 8.2-inch shells and had only 350 left; Gneisenau had fired 244 and had 528 left. The ammunition had been well spent; even in the heavy sea, the gunnery of the armored cruisers had been superb. Scharnhorst, for example, scored at least thirty-five direct hits on Good Hope. But the fact was that there were no more projectiles to feed to the guns, short of Wilhelmshaven or Kiel.

In a private letter written the day after the action, Spee analyzed his victory:

Good Hope, though bigger than Scharnhorst, was not so well armed. She mounted heavy guns, but only two, while Monmouth succumbed to Gneisenau because she had only 6-inch guns. The English have another ship like Monmouth hereabouts and in addition, it seems, a battleship of the Queen class carrying 12-inch guns. Against the latter we can hardly do anything. Had they kept their force together, we should probably have got the worst of it. You can hardly imagine the joy which reigns among us. We have at least contributed something to the glory of our arms—although it might not mean much on the whole in view of the enormous number of English ships.

At dawn on Tuesday, November 3, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Nürnberg entered the bay of Valparaíso. As international law prohibited more than three warships of a belligerent nation visiting a neutral port at the same time, Leipzig and Dresden remained at sea, escorting colliers to Más Afuera. Entering the roadstead in the morning sunshine, the German sailors saw the town spread around the bay, the hills behind, and, in the distance, the high mountains. The harbor was filled with ships, thirty-two of them German merchant vessels driven to seek refuge by the war. News of the victory spread quickly and the large German population of Valparaíso was enthusiastic. The German ambassador to Chile, Dr. Eckart, and the consul general, Dr. Gumprecht, boarded Scharnhorst, followed by officers of the German merchant ships, who crowded the decks. Hundreds of men from the merchant ships offered themselves for enrollment in the squadron, even as stokers. One hundred and twenty-seven were accepted.

Many of the squadron’s officers went ashore, where they visited German bookstores and cafés and admired the “pretty, black-eyed women.” Admiral von Spee did not share in the general enthusiasm. “When I went ashore to call on the local admirals, there were crowds at the landing place,” he said. “Cameras clicked and people cheered. The local Germans wanted to celebrate, but I positively refused.” Nevertheless, he yielded to Gumprecht’s pressure and walked with thirty of his officers to the city’s German Club. This solid yellow building was an outpost of dark wood and German respectability whose hallways and paneled dining rooms were hung with full-length portraits of Kaiser William I, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, and Field Marshal Moltke, the victor of the Franco-Prussian War. Spee and his officers dutifully signed the guest book, then mounted the grand staircase to find themselves confronting a large bust of Kaiser William II, mustache bristling. Under a grand chandelier in the reception hall, the admiral was polite for over an hour until a “drunken, mindless idiot raised a glass and said, ‘Damnation to the British Navy!’ ” Spee gave him a cold stare and declared that neither he nor his officers would drink to such a toast. Instead, he said, “I drink to the memory of a gallant and honorable foe,” put down his glass, picked up his cocked hat, and walked to the door. Outside, in the bright sunlight, a woman stepped forward to present him with a bouquet of flowers. “They will do nicely for my grave,” he said, refusing them. That night, although the masts and decks of the German warships were brilliantly illuminated as in peacetime, Spee did not sleep. He had no illusions as to what was coming. “I am quite homeless,” he confided to an old friend, a retired naval doctor who lived in Valparaíso. “I cannot reach Germany; we possess no other secure harbor; I must plough the seas of the world doing as much mischief as I can until my ammunition is exhausted or a foe far superior in power succeeds in catching me.”

The British consul at Valparaíso learned of Spee’s presence off the Chilean coast on November 2, but he did not know then that a battle had taken place the day before. The consul’s telegram reporting the appearance of the German squadron reached London on November 3, whereupon Fisher, now First Sea Lord, urgently prodded his colleagues to improve the precarious position in which he supposed Cradock to be. That evening, the Admiralty finally sent the orders for which Cradock had waited so long: “Defence has been ordered to join your flag with all dispatch. Glasgow should keep in touch with the enemy. You should keep in touch with Glasgow concentrating the rest of your squadron including Canopus. It is important that you should effect your junction with Defence at earliest possible moment.” In light of the Admiralty’s previous signals to Cradock and of what now had happened, this message offered grim humor. “All dispatch . . . earliest possible moment”—Montevideo is 4,000 miles by sea from Valparaíso; at a constant speed of 15 knots and allowing for coaling stops, it would have taken the Defence two weeks to join Cradock. As Churchill later confessed, “We were already talking to the void.”

The first news of the battle arrived at the Admiralty on the morning of November 4, in the form of sparse accounts from German sources. The following day, the Admiralty issued a preliminary public statement, which was published in that evening’s newspapers: “The Admiralty have no official confirmation [of the news from Germany]. The Admiralty cannot accept these facts as accurate at the present time for the battleship Canopus, which had been specially sent to strengthen Admiral Cradock’s squadron and would have given him a decided superiority, is not mentioned in them.” The next day, the sixth, the Admiralty amplified its disclosure, saying that reports received by the Foreign Office from Valparaíso “state that a belligerent warship is ashore on the Chilean coast and it is possible that this may prove to be the Monmouth. . . . The action appears . . . to have been most gallantly contested, but in the absence of the Canopus, the enemy’s preponderance of force was considerable.” Already, the Admiralty was establishing its line of defense: had the Canopus been present, the disaster would not have occurred.

When more complete accounts arrived and were published, the British public was shocked. Some newspapers blamed Cradock: Why, with an obviously inferior force, had he given battle? Where was Canopus? Other papers and voices asked why the Admiralty had assigned and permitted Cradock to fight a powerful squadron with an inadequate force. This, overwhelmingly, was the navy’s view. “Can you imagine anyone sending such a mixed and unsuitable mob down for the job?” asked Glasgow’s gunnery officer. In the navy, the defeat at Coronel was reckoned in terms of human life and diminished naval prestige rather than as a serious strategic blow. The sinking of two obsolete, second-rate cruisers amounted to a tiny reduction of British naval strength, but 1,600 men including the admiral had died; in exchange, three Germans had been wounded. And Coronel came only six weeks after the loss of Aboukir, Hogue, and Cressy. In the two disasters, 3,000 British sailors had died.

Professionally, the question became not Why was the battle lost? but Why was it fought? Who blundered, the admiral or the Admiralty? Captain William Sims, an Anglophile American naval officer who, when his country entered the war twenty-nine months later, would become the senior U.S. naval officer in Europe, declared that “the British have allowed their . . . old cruisers to be caught in the presence of a much more powerful enemy and have suffered the penalty. They have committed the grave mistake of despising the enemy.” Beatty had no doubt as to where responsibility lay: “Poor old Kit Cradock has gone, poor old chap,” he wrote to Ethel. “He had a glorious death, but if only it had been in victory instead of defeat. . . . His death and the loss of his ships and the gallant lives in them can be laid to the door of the incompetency of the Admiralty. They have . . . broken over and over again the first principles of strategy.”

The worst that could be said of Cradock was that he was impetuous, a trait for which, along with courage, he was well known. Luce of Glasgow said, “He had no clear plan or doctrine in his head, but was always inclined to act on the impulse of the moment. . . . Cradock was constitutionally incapable of refusing or even postponing action if there was the smallest chance of success.” Beatty, Cradock’s friend of many years, added ruefully, “I fear he saw red and did not wait for his proper reinforcement, the Canopus.” Churchill’s explanation to Jellicoe was that Cradock had “let himself be caught or has engaged recklessly with only Good Hope and Monmouth.” This became the official Admiralty version, which Churchill presented to the Cabinet. It was adopted by that body at its November 4 meeting, and Asquith subsequently reported it to the king. Indeed, the condemnation went further: Cradock was declared to have been acting in disobedience of express orders to concentrate his whole squadron including Canopus and to run no risk of being caught by a superior force.

The principal exponent of this position was Winston Churchill, who, even after the war, rejected all criticism of his role in the Coronel disaster. “I cannot accept for the Admiralty any share of the responsibility for what followed,” the former First Lord declared. “The first rule of war is to concentrate superior strength for decisive action and to avoid division of forces or engaging in detail. . . . With Canopus, Admiral Cradock’s squadron was safe. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau would never have ventured to come within range of her four 12-inch guns. To do so would have been to subject themselves to very serious damage without any prospect of success. The old battleship, with her heavy armor and artillery, was in fact a citadel around which all our cruisers in those waters could find absolute security.” In the view of the former First Lord, the whole responsibility for what happened at Coronel rested on Cradock, who, he insisted, had been expressly instructed to operate in company with Canopus. Churchill bore down hard on this point: “It ought not to be necessary to tell an experienced admiral to keep concentrated and not to be brought to action in circumstances of great disadvantage by superior forces. Still, in telegram after telegram, the importance of not being separated from Canopus, especially sent him for his protection, was emphasized.” In fact, however, this command was not emphasized—indeed, it was not even mentioned—in the Admiralty’s October 28 signal to Cradock, which came in response to the admiral’s announcement that he had relegated Canopus to convoy duty. Later, Churchill conceded that with Canopus holding them back it would have been impossible for Cradock’s cruisers to catch the Germans, but he argued that at least the presence of the battleship would have prevented the Germans from catching and killing the British ships. From within the shelter of this floating fortress, Churchill declared, Cradock could have raised the alarm. Then, once the Admiralty had been informed of Spee’s whereabouts, “we could instantly concentrate upon them from many quarters.” Logical in retrospect, this was neither the substance nor the tenor of the orders sent to Cradock in the weeks preceding Coronel.

Cradock, of course, did not see Canopus as a citadel or a place of shelter; he saw her as an incubus. From his point of view, it was not the old battleship’s guns that mattered; it was her speed. He had been told that she could make no more than 12 knots. That her engineer commander was deranged and that, aided by a following sea and a gale wind, she made 15 knots in a frantic effort to reach the battle area, are immaterial; Cradock was never to know. What he did know was that if he followed the tactics prescribed by the Admiralty—drawing the Germans south to fight a battle involving Canopus—he might well find himself placed in the dreadful position of watching the enemy circle around him and steam unmolested around the Horn. There, naked, lay the main British coaling station in the South Atlantic, the Falkland Islands. Nor was that all. For if Spee, arriving in the South Atlantic, could announce to the world that he had come simply by steaming around a Royal Navy squadron too cowardly to fight, the shame would be unbearable. It would never be forgotten that a Royal Navy squadron had refused battle—or that the officer in command was Christopher Cradock.

Cradock, in short, was not the man to seek “absolute security” in the shelter of a “citadel.” He had been told that he had a “sufficient force” to deal with Spee. Because Canopus could not keep up, he had informed the Admiralty that he was leaving her behind. Apparently aware of this, the Admiralty had not revoked its order to search and fight. Perhaps if Cradock had received the Admiralty’s November 3 telegram in time, he would have understood that his mission had been changed from searching and fighting to shadowing and reporting. In that case, he might have ordered the speedy Glasgow to investigate the smoke off the Chilean coast that afternoon while he himself fell back on Canopus. And then—perhaps—sheltered beneath the guns of the old battleship, he might have been content merely to signal that Spee’s squadron had been located. But this Admiralty telegram was dispatched from London forty-eight hours after the battle and Cradock’s death. The admiral knew that afternoon that the odds were against him, but he believed that he had no choice. “The Defence had been refused him and he was as good as told that he was skulking at Port Stanley,” said a Glasgow officer. “What else was there for him to do except go and be sunk? He was a very brave man and they were practically calling him a coward. If we hadn’t attacked that night, we might never have seen them again and then the Admiralty would have blamed him for not fighting.” This was Cradock’s meaning when he wrote to Meux, “I will take care I do not suffer the fate of poor Troubridge.”

The tragedy can be blamed, in part, on a failure of clarity in language. Cradock never put his requirements and apprehensions clearly before a busy War Staff. He was candid when he told the governor before leaving the Falklands that with such a weak force he had no hope of success, but his protests to the Admiralty were in the form of hints rather than declarations. Cradock should have understood that London had failed to comprehend his situation, but admirals of his generation had not been brought up to question orders, particularly if the questions seemed to suggest the admiral’s concern for his own personal safety. Cradock had protested as much as a British admiral could.

In defeat, Cradock became a hero. Confronting this new situation, Churchill, ever resourceful with language, found a way simultaneously to honor and praise the hero, deplore his judgment, and shroud Admiralty responsibility. In anticipation of a parliamentary question after the battle, Churchill prepared a statement declaring that Cradock had consciously and bravely sacrificed his squadron in a vain effort to cripple Spee. “We are of the opinion,” Churchill wrote, “that feeling he could not bring the enemy immediately to action as long as he kept with Canopus, he decided to attack them with his fast ships alone, in the belief that even if he himself were destroyed . . . he would inflict damage on them which . . . would lead to their certain subsequent destruction. . . . Though the Admiralty have no responsibility for this decision, they considered it was inspired by the highest devotion.”

This explanation of Cradock’s behavior was clothed in further eloquence by Arthur Balfour, the former prime minister and Churchill’s successor as First Lord. At the 1916 dedication of the Cradock memorial at York Minster, Balfour asked:

Why did . . . [Cradock] attack, deliberately, a force which he could not have reasonably hoped either to destroy or put to flight? Remember what the circumstances of the German squadron were. The German admiral in the Pacific was far from any port where he could have refitted. If he therefore suffered damage, even though he inflicted far greater damage than he received, his power might be utterly destroyed. If Admiral Cradock judged that his squadron, that he himself and those under him, were well sacrificed if they destroyed the power of this hostile fleet, then I say that there is no man, sailor or civilian, but would say that such a judgement showed . . . only the highest courage . . . in the interests of his country. If I am right there never was a nobler act. We shall never know the thoughts of Admiral Cradock when it became evident that, outgunned and outranged, success was an impossibility. He must have realized that his hopes were dashed forever. . . . His body is separated from us by half the world and he and his gallant comrades lie far from the pleasant homes of England. Yet they have their re-ward . . . theirs is an immortal place in the great roll of naval heroes.

When the first volume of The World Crisis appeared in 1923, Churchill was severely criticized by many retired officers for acquitting the Admiralty of all blame for Coronel. Churchill responded, attempting to justify himself in the Morning Post, but so unconvincing were his arguments that an editorial declared that “by attacking the memory of an heroic martyr to his duty and his orders” the former First Lord cast the blame “upon the principal victim of his own error of judgment. . . . He would have been wiser to have left the reputation of the dead sailor alone.”

Two British ships were sunk at Coronel, but three escaped. Canopus picked up Glasgow’s message at 2:00 a.m. on November 2 and immediately reversed course. Heading south for the Magellan Straits, she soon slowed to 9 knots as she exchanged a following sea under her stern for heavy seas over her bow. Otranto eluded her enemies by steaming 200 miles west into the Pacific, then turning south and east and rounding Cape Horn. Glasgow on the morning after the battle was running south at 20 knots with green water over the forecastle while carpenters worked in the stern to shore up damage. On November 4, three days after the battle, Glasgow entered the Magellan Straits and that night, without stopping, passed Punta Arenas. At the eastern end of the Straits, she anchored and awaited Canopus, which appeared on the sixth. Then, together, the old battleship and the light cruiser sailed for the Falkland Islands, 300 miles away. For the crew of the damaged Glasgow, the sight of the old Canopus wallowing behind was reassuring. Not everyone aboard the light cruiser knew that the old battleship twice had signaled, “Not under control.”

At dawn on Sunday, November 8, seven days after the battle, the two ships anchored at Port Stanley. At that moment, the outlook for the Falklands, no longer protected by the guns of Cradock’s squadron, was bleak. The 200 barren islands, with their rugged, indented coastlines, dozens of remote harbors, and treeless brown moors, made up one of the loneliest outposts of the British empire. The little town of Port Stanley, on the south side of East Falkland, consisted of two streets of houses constructed of timber and corrugated iron. The town’s population was a little over a thousand and another thousand farmers and shepherds were scattered through the remainder of the islands, living on the moors or in tiny villages. On this rugged terrain, swept by rain and wind throughout the year, the inhabitants, mostly of Scottish ancestry, raised sheep. During breeding season, millions of penguins, seals, and sea lions congregated on the rocky shores. Despite the economic insignificance of the islands, their defense was crucial to Britain; no other protected harbor and coaling station was available to the British navy in the South Atlantic. As soon as Canopus and Glasgow arrived, seventy islander volunteers, sheep farmers or fishermen, came out to help with coaling. From the population, a rifle militia of 300 men had been formed. Women and children had been sent to the hills, valuables were buried, and an earth rampart had been raised around the wireless station. Glasgow contributed to the defense by sending ashore a small field gun with ammunition. Then, having taken aboard enough coal to reach the river Plate, the two ships sailed at 6:00 p.m. During the night, however, Grant signaled that Canopus was again near breakdown and that he must have five days to repair his engines. In London, Fisher realized that this “citadel” would be useless in a sea battle. He ordered her to return to Port Stanley, where she was to run herself aground on the mud flats at the eastern end of the inner harbor and transform herself into a stationary steel fort to protect the harbor and the town.

Lame old Canopus now became an immobile, unsinkable gun platform. From where she lay, behind the low peninsula of rocks and sand that separates Port Stanley from the South Atlantic, she was almost invisible from the sea. To further blend her into the landscape, the crew took down her topmasts and splashed brown and green camouflage paint across her funnels and upper works. A line of crude mines made from empty oil barrels and filled with explosives to be detonated by electric wires from the shore was strung across the entrance to the outer harbor. Seventy Royal Marines from the battleship landed with small artillery pieces and constructed beach defenses at three possible landing sites. A lookout station was established on Sapper Hill, a 400-foot hill two miles south of the village with a sweeping view of the sea to the south and east. On a smaller promontory nearer the harbor, a fire control station was manned by ship’s officers. Telephone lines were strung from both of these observation points to the battleship. Thus the Falklands and Canopus awaited Admiral von Spee.

Meanwhile on November 11, Glasgow reached the river Plate where she found Defence, whose crew lined the rails and cheered. On the twelfth, Glasgow and Defence left the Plate together for Abrolhos Rocks, in accordance with an Admiralty decision to withdraw all British naval forces from the South Atlantic until reinforcements could arrive. On November 14, a sunny warm day, with the nightmare of Coronel two weeks behind them, Glasgow’s crew appeared on deck wearing white summer uniforms.