By the end of October Admiral Ingenohl was on the horns of a dilemma. The U-boat sinkings made excellent reading for the German public, but the High Seas Fleet had achieved very little and its morale was deteriorating as it swung idly around its anchors in obedience to the Kaiser’s diktat. What made the position even more difficult was the fact that those isolated German naval units still at sea were, so far, giving a good account of themselves. Off East Africa, for instance, the light cruiser Konigsberg had engaged and sunk the elderly British cruiser Pegasus in Zanzibar harbour. It had not been much of a fight as Pegasus was engaged in cleaning her boilers and was therefore nothing more than a stationary hulk whose guns were outranged by 1,000 yards. For the moment, Konigsberg had vanished as completely as if she had never existed.
In the Far East another light cruiser, the Emden, commanded by Captain Karl von Müller, had sunk the Russian cruiser Yemtschuk (sometimes spelled Zemchug) and the French destroyer Mousquet in Penang harbour. Müller had then gone on a rampage around the Indian Ocean, sinking 21 Allied merchant ships, destroying cargo valued at £3 million and even bombarding Madras. The Emden was still at large and was being hunted as a matter of urgency by the British and Australian navies. At large in the Pacific was Vice Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee’s East Asiatic Squadron, consisting of the armoured cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and several light cruisers. In time of peace, the squadron was based at Tsingtao, which was then a German treaty port and naval base on the coast of China. It was now believed to be replenishing its coal somewhere off the west coast of South America prior to rounding Cape Horn and entering the Atlantic.
In the circumstances, therefore, it was incumbent upon Ingenohl to devise one or more operations that would avoid placing the High Seas Fleet in danger yet have a profound effect on British and German public opinion. These would involve raids on England’s east coast towns using the fleet’s fast battle cruisers, cruisers and minlayers. The British Grand Fleet was not large enough to protect the entire coastline and many areas were covered by elderly or light naval units. Nevertheless, the Grand Fleet would have to react to such a raid and if part of it could be ambushed and destroyed, this would bring the respective strengths of the two fleets closer together. In time, Ingenohl hoped, sufficient parity would be achieved for the High Seas Fleet to win a significant victory. Moreover, even if major elements of the Grand Fleet could not be lured into an ambush after specific raids, the fact was that the High Seas Fleet was able to carry out such raids at all was proof that Britannia no longer ruled the waves and that the Royal Navy was incapable of doing its job. This aspect as much as any other appealed to the Kaiser, who gave Ingernohl permission to proceed.
The first objective was the seaside resort and port of Great Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast. More commonly known simply as Yarmouth, the harbour also provided limited naval facilities. Commanding the raiding force was Vice Admiral Franz Hipper, a Bavarian who had been appointed commander of the High Seas Fleet’s Scouting Forces. On this occasion his force included the battle cruisers Seydlitz, Von der Tann and Moltke, the armoured cruiser Blücher and the four light cruisers Strassburg, Graudenz, Kolberg and Stralsund, the last with 100 mines aboard.
The raiding force left the Jade River at 16:30 on 2 November, followed later by two battleship squadrons whose task was to ambush any British warships that were pursuing the battle cruisers on their return journey. At 06:30 the following morning the raiders swept past a buoy which was identified as the Smith’s Knoll marker and were able to confirm their precise position. As they closed in on Yarmouth, a flashing light challenged two of the German cruisers. They immediately opened fire on its source, the minesweeper Halcyon, which was soon surrounded by fountains of water thrown up by bursting German shells of all calibres, although the damage inflicted was slight and only three of her crew were injured. On this occasion German gunnery was extremely poor due to inefficient fire discipline. Instead of allowing one ship to fire ranging salvos, all the battle cruisers blazed away at once so that none of them were able to identify their own splashes. Consequently, they were unable to adjust their range settings with any degree of accuracy. At this point two British destroyers, Lively and Leopard, entered the scene, causing further confusion when Lively began to make smoke that concealed the target behind an oily black fog. At 07:40 Hipper ordered the battle cruisers to shift their fire from Lively to Yarmouth itself. The result resembled nothing so much as pure opera bouffe for, once again, gunnery officers failed to provide their gun crews with an accurate range. Explosions erupted along the shoreline and tons of sand were blown skywards, but little or no damage was done.
Stralsund now signalled Hipper that she had completed laying her mines in the area of Smith’s Knoll and the admiral gave the order for the raiding force to withdraw, which it did at speed. In the meantime Halcyon despatched a radio signal reporting the presence of the raiders. A third destroyer, Success, joined Lively and Leopard, while three more raised steam inside the harbour. Simultaneously, three submarines, E-10, D-3 and D-5, glided past the mole and out into the open sea in the hope of sinking one at least of Hipper’s ships. In was a vain hope, for the latter were now running for home at full speed. During the pursuit, D-5 struck one of Stralsund’s mines and sank, taking 21 of her crew with her.
Despite Halcyon’s warning, it was 09:55 before Admiral Beatty’s battle cruisers were ordered south from their Scottish anchorage, followed by the Grand Fleet’s battle squadrons. Part of the reason for the delay was that news had just been received that on 1 November an action had taken place between the German East Asia Squadron and a much smaller British squadron under Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock off Coronel on the west coast of South America. Two old cruisers, Monmouth and Good Hope, had been sunk with all hands. The reasons for the defeat were simple. Slow, under-gunned ships could not hope to get within range of faster, more powerfully armed opponents. The latter would dictate the range at which the battle would be fought, and as the former could neither fight nor flee, their end was inevitable. Cradock was dead but his squadron’s survivors, the light cruiser Glasgow and the armed merchant cruiser Otranto, had made good their escape, as he had ordered them to. He was, however, criticised for discarding a fifth warship prior to the action. This was the pre-dreadnought battleship Canopus with a main armament of four 12-inch guns but a maximum speed of only 12 knots, well below that of any of Spee’s ships. At first Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, commanding the Grand Fleet, could not be contacted because he was aboard a train, but as soon as he was advised of the situation he sanctioned the despatch of two battle cruisers, Invincible and Inflexible, to the South Atlantic under the command of Vice Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee. The fact that the Royal Navy had actually lost a battle created a sense of shock that completely eclipsed what had taken place off Yarmouth. However, from his perspective as First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill was unable to see anything more in the German attack than a badly executed raid.
By the time Beatty’s battle cruisers were at sea, Hipper’s ships were 50 miles from Yarmouth and well on their way home, but thanks to a dense fog both they and the ambush force were unable to enter harbour that night and were forced to heave to in the approach area known as Schillig Roads. This resulted in the most serious loss of the entire operation. Aboard the armoured cruiser Yorck, part of the ambush force, typhus was believed to be present in the ship’s drinking water tanks and her commander, a Captain Peiper, requested leave to return to port. He was given permission to do so, subject to visibility improving. He subsequently denied receiving the condition attached to the approval. The result was that on the way into Wilhelmshaven, Yorck was steered past the wrong side of a buoy and into a defensive minefield in which she struck two mines, then capsized and sank. Fortunately, she went down in shallow water, permitting the rescue of 381 survivors sitting on the up-turned hull, but a further 336 men were drowned. It was a poor exchange for one small British submarine that was approaching obsolescence. Peiper survived but could not be described as a lucky captain as the previous year he had been dismissed from the Blücher for running her aground. Following his court martial for losing the Yorck he was sent to manage a munitions factory in Turkey, an appointment that must have raised a number of eyebrows.
Naturally, the Kaiser was delighted with the result of the Battle of Coronel, but the fact that the High Seas Fleet had actually carried out a raid into British home waters, despite its dubious results, almost certainly gave Wilhelm equal pleasure, for he awarded Hipper the Iron Cross. Hipper, well aware that far more was required to merit the decoration than blowing holes in someone’s holiday beach, declined to wear it as he had no wish to be regarded as a laughing stock.