Castles of Steel

by Robert K. Massie

  The Admiralty decided to follow Cradock’s suggestion. The admiral obviously was right in saying that if he took his present squadron up the Chilean coast and Spee went around him into the South Atlantic, the Germans could create havoc on the river Plate. The Admiralty’s decision, transmitted on October 14, was to form a strong, new east coast squadron, as Cradock had recommended. This new squadron would include the old ar-mored cruisers Carnarvon and Cornwall, the new light cruiser Bristol (a sister of Glasgow), two armed merchant cruisers, and Defence, which now was once again summoned from the Mediterranean. The new squadron would be based at the river Plate, not at the Falklands, and it would be commanded by another rear admiral, not by Cradock.

  Had Cradock been left to decide whether, where, and when the two squadrons should be concentrated, he might have beaten the enemy. But with no additional ships and no single commander to determine how the available ships should be deployed, the plan was inadequate. Luce was to write:

  It always appeared to me that we fell between two stools. There was not force available at the moment to form two squadrons of sufficient strength and speed and we should not have advanced into the Pacific until this was forthcoming, but [should] have concentrated in the Straits using the Falklands as a base. The [British] trade on the west coast was not of vital importance and could have been kept in harbor until von Spee’s position was revealed—which was bound to happen if he was to do anything. Cradock seems to have thought, however, that the Admiralty were pressing him to attack and his ardent fighting spirit could not brook anything in the nature of defensive strategy.

  Much of the confusion in London and the Falklands can be blamed on the lack of clarity in the signals passing between the two points. Churchill, forwarding Cradock’s October 11 message to Prince Louis, clearly did not understand Cradock’s thinking: he minuted his copy to the First Sea Lord, “It would be best for the British ships to keep within supporting distance of one another, whether in the Straits or near the Falklands, and to postpone the cruise along the west coast until the present uncertainty about Scharnhorst-Gneisenau is cleared up. They and not the trade are our quarry for the moment. Above all, we must not miss them.” Battenberg, satisfied that Cradock knew this, replied to Churchill’s note with the single word, “Settled.” Nevertheless, from this memorandum, it is obvious that Churchill was unaware that three of Cradock’s four ships were already far up the Chilean coast. Then two days later, Churchill and Battenberg again discussed the situation and the First Lord subsequently minuted to the First Sea Lord:

  I understand from our conversation that the dispositions you proposed for the South Pacific and South Atlantic were as follows: 1) Cradock to concentrate at the Falklands Canopus, Monmouth, Good Hope and Otranto. 2) To send Glasgow to look for Leipzig and attack and protect trade on west coast of South America as far north as Valparaiso. 3) Defence to join Carnarvon in forming a new combat squadron on the trade route from Rio. . . . These arrangements have my full approval. I presume Cradock is aware of the possibility of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau arriving on or after the 17th in his neighborhood and that if not strong enough to attack he will do his utmost to shadow them, pending the arrival of reinforcements.

  There was much in these two memoranda that would have confused and upset Admiral Cradock had he been able to read them. He had never been told merely to “shadow” Scharnhorst and Gneisenau; on the contrary, on September 14, he had been given an order, never countermanded, to “destroy the German cruisers.” Churchill spoke to Battenberg of “pending . . . reinforcements”; Cradock long ago had asked for reinforcement and Defence had been promised, then, without his knowledge, withdrawn. The memorandum makes clear that the Admiralty now believed that Canopus was sufficient reinforcement.

  The Admiralty’s October 14 signal reached Cradock at Port Stanley on October 15. Defence, he now learned, was to join Stoddart, not him, but at least Defence was coming to the South Atlantic. As Stoddart was junior to him on the Navy List, he still might order Stoddart to send Defence to join him at the Falklands. And with Defence in mind, Cradock had not yet begun to protest against the Admiralty’s exaggerated opinion of the value of Canopus. It was Canopus’s four 12-inch guns that encouraged Churchill to believe that Cradock would have superiority over Spee’s two armored cruisers. All other considerations—her age, her tired boilers and machinery, her raw crew—were set aside. In fact, Canopus’s 12-inch shells certainly would have harmed the German armored cruisers—if they had hit them. Many doubted their ability to do that. The battleship’s two 12-inch turrets were in the charge of Royal Navy Reserve lieutenants who, before the war, had never stepped inside a battleship gun turret. Nevertheless, Churchill, in sending Canopus to Cradock, colorfully described the old battleship as “a citadel around which all our cruisers in those waters could find absolute security.” With Canopus in company, the First Lord proclaimed, Admiral Cradock’s squadron was safe; Scharnhorst and Gneisenau would never dare venture within range of those 12-inch guns. Lieutenant Hirst of Glasgow held “entirely a contrary opinion. . . . [Canopus] was seventeen years old. Her antique 12-inch guns . . . had a maximum range of . . . three hundred yards less than those of the German heavy cruisers, and they were difficult to load and lay on the heavy sea way prevalent in the South Pacific.”

  The Admiralty had told Admiral Cradock on September 14 that he was to “break up German trade and destroy the German cruisers.” On October 5, he was instructed, “You must be prepared to meet them [Scharnhorst and Gneisenau] in company . . . Canopus to accompany Glasgow, Monmouth and Otranto.” But how could he accomplish this with a squadron tied to Canopus? The old battleship’s best official speed was 16 knots; the speed of the German armored cruisers was over 20. Then came the discovery that Canopus could not make even 16 knots. The Admiralty had calculated that Canopus would reach the Falklands on October 15, but she did not leave the river Plate until October 17. The following day, her captain, Heathcoat Grant, signaled Cradock at Port Stanley that he hoped to arrive on the twenty-second and that his ship’s best speed was 12 knots.

  [Soon after sending this signal to Cradock, Grant discovered that his engineer officer was a sick man whose health had been so undermined by the strain of maintaining the battleship’s ancient machinery with a scratch crew that he had deliberately exaggerated her mechanical difficulties. This engineer commander, William Denbow, who for two years had been responsible for Canopus’s engines while she was laid up in Care and Maintenance, was unwillingly sent off to war along with the old ship and her old engines. When he found himself bound on a long voyage for the South Atlantic, his nerves failed. During the voyage, he never left his cabin, never inspected the engines, and never spoke to his subordinates. Captain Grant, apparently, knew nothing of this. Not until after Cradock had been told that the ship’s engines were suffering from faulty condensers and could produce no more than 12 knots did a junior officer find the courage to tell the captain that Denbow “lived in his cabin. The day before we reached Port Stanley, I sent to the Captain . . . a written report about the Engineer Commander’s strange behavior.” By the time Grant knew, Cradock had sailed from Port Stanley, and Grant decided not to pass along the story. Denbow was placed under medical surveillance and, at Vallenar on the Chilean coast, he was transferred to a supply ship, to be invalided out of the navy.]

  Dismayed, Cradock passed this news to the Admiralty on October 18, advising, “I trust circumstances will enable me to force an action, but fear that strategically, owing to Canopus, the speed of my squadron cannot exceed twelve knots.”

  Cradock may have assumed that the absurdity implicit in the idea of a 12-knot British squadron attempting to intercept and “force an action” with a 20-knot German squadron was so obvious that someone at the Admiralty would grasp it. Then, either London would issue a new set of orders, assigning him a different mission, or send him immediate reinforcements, instructing him to await their arrival before accepting action. Unfortunately, the Admiralty simply took
Cradock at his word, interpreting his message to mean that the admiral intended to keep Canopus with him as he had been told to do and that he would travel at her best speed. Churchill confirmed this after the war, writing, “It is clear that up to this date the admiral fully intended to keep concentrated on the Canopus, even though his squadron speed should be reduced to twelve knots.” Cradock thus faced a painful choice: he could obey Admiralty instructions and operate in company with Canopus, thereby forfeiting any chance of bringing the Germans to action; or he could fight without Canopus and face the probability of defeat. Churchill considered the second alternative—fighting without presence of Canopus—illogical and disobedient; Cradock considered the first—letting the Germans slip by unmolested—cowardly and unthinkable.

  When Canopus finally appeared at Port Stanley on October 22, Captain Grant confirmed to Cradock that his old battleship’s best speed was 12 knots. Worse, Grant reported that he could not leave port at any speed until he repaired his leaking condensers and cleaned his boilers; even then, he would be restricted to 12 knots. Disgusted, Cradock ordered Canopus to remain at Port Stanley until she was ready and then to follow him—he would pause to allow her to catch up—and escort his colliers around to the west coast. That afternoon, Cradock himself sailed in Good Hope to join the rest of his squadron. The time for Spee’s appearance was already past; he felt that he could not leave his detached ships—Glasgow, Monmouth, and Otranto—exposed any longer on the Chilean coast without the support of Good Hope. Before leaving, he sent a simple report to London: “Good Hope left [Port Stanley] 22 October via Cape Horn. Canopus following on 23rd via Magellan Straits with three colliers for west coast of South America.”

  At fifty-two, Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock was a small, immaculately dressed bachelor with wide-set eyes and a neatly trimmed, pointed beard; a diplomat’s wife in Mexico described him as “shining with that special, well-groomed English look.” He lived alone except for his dog, who accompanied him everywhere, but he thrived on human society. Often on board Good Hope, he left his admiral’s quarters and joined the ship’s officers for a drink in the wardroom. An aide to the governor of the Falklands remembered that while Cradock was at Port Stanley, he and his dog “would come wandering up to Government House every day for a yarn and a meal or else the Governor would go off to Good Hope. He was a dear old bloke and keen as a terrier.”

  Kit Cradock had joined the navy at thirteen and had served afloat and ashore for forty years. In 1900, as an officer in the China Squadron, Cradock was playing polo in Hong Kong with his friends Beatty and Keyes when the Boxer Rebellion broke out. He went ashore with the British naval brigade to capture the Taku forts and, under heavy fire, led a company of British, German, and Japanese sailors across a sunbaked mud flat to storm the west gate of a fort. For this, the kaiser gave him the Prussian Order of the Crown with Swords. In 1910, Fisher, as First Sea Lord, announced that Captain Cradock is “one of our very best officers.” He was promoted to rear admiral and knighted, and in February 1913 took command of the prestigious North American and West Indies Station.

  The navy was Cradock’s life. The majesty and invincibility of the Royal Navy formed the bedrock of empire and the cornerstone of his beliefs. For him, said the contemporary naval writer Sir Archibald Hurd, “the navy was not a mere collection of ships, but a community of men with high purpose”; in this brotherhood, tradition, courage, honor, and discipline counted more than ships, boiler power, and gun calibers. In his leisure, Cradock wrote three books about the navy, including Whispers from the Fleet, a volume of avuncular advice for young officers. Among topics considered, Cradock counseled on burials at sea: “When a hammock is being used as a shroud, the last stitch of the sailmaker’s needle is neatly popped through the tip of the nose. Then there can be no mistake.”

  Cradock was known in the fleet as a man who “fought hard, played hard, and did not suffer fools gladly.” His favorite signal was said to be “Engage the enemy more closely.” Home from the sea in his native Yorkshire, he hunted with near recklessness and he told a friend and fellow admiral that he hoped when his time came it would be in action at sea or by breaking his neck on the hunting field. By 1914 when he went to war, Cradock was one of the Royal Navy’s most decorated admirals. Among the three rows of ribbons on the left breast of his jacket, however, one was stained with ink. “That ribbon,” he told the governor’s aide at Port Stanley, “belongs to the First Class Order of the Blue Ape, or something, that the kaiser gave me. I couldn’t tear it out without ruining all the others; so I got an ink bottle and made it look as unpleasant as possible.”

  According to Luce, Cradock knew when he left Port Stanley that he was going to his doom. Sir William Allardyce, the governor of the Falklands, later told Luce that “Cradock thought his chances were small and that he had been let down by the Admiralty especially when his request for Defence had been denied.” Bidding Allardyce farewell, Cradock said that he would never see him again and gave him a large sealed packet to be sent home to the Admiralty as soon as his death was confirmed. The packet contained a letter to his friend Admiral Hedworth Meux, to be forwarded “only in case . . . my squadron disappears—and me too—completely. I have no intention, after forty years at sea, of being an unheard victim.” To Meux he vowed, “I will take care I do not suffer the fate of poor Troubridge.” The governor’s aide at the Falklands had a similar recollection of Cradock’s mood: “The admiral was a very brave old man; he knew that he was going to almost certain death in fighting these new and powerful ships and it seemed to be quite all right as far as he was concerned. . . . He knew what he was up against and asked for a fast cruiser with big guns to be added to his squadron for he had nothing very powerful and nothing very fast, but the Admiralty said he’d have to go without. So old Cradock said, ‘All right; we’ll do without,’ and he slipped off quietly early one morning and left Canopus to look after the colliers and transports and picked up Glasgow and Monmouth and set off to look for these crack Germans.”

  On October 26, as Good Hope was steaming north up the coast of Chile, Cradock signaled his intentions to the Admiralty. He confirmed his determination to find and to fight Spee, but he also made clear his distaste for Canopus and his desire for Defence: “With reference to orders to search for the enemy and our great desire for early success, I consider it impractical on account of Canopus[’s] slow speed to find and destroy enemy squadron. Have therefore ordered Defence to join me after calling for orders at Montevideo. Canopus will be employed in necessary work of convoying colliers.” This message arrived on October 27, at a time of turmoil at the Admiralty. Battenberg was about to resign and, on October 30, Churchill recalled Fisher. Thus it was that on the days when Glasgow was off Coronel, Good Hope, Monmouth, and Otranto were steaming north to join her, and Canopus was laboring up from the Magellan Straits, Churchill was, in his own words, “gravely preoccupied.” He passed Cradock’s signal to the War Staff with the minute, “This telegram is very obscure and I do not understand what Cradock intends or wishes.” In fact, Cradock’s message angered the First Lord. The admiral appeared either to have obtusely misunderstood or to be deliberately thwarting Admiralty orders. Cradock was saying that Canopus, the “citadel” around which he had been told to concentrate his squadron, was useless to him and that he was relegating this “citadel” to convoy work. Further, Cradock was telling Stoddart to send him Defence, the ship around which the new east coast squadron was to be built. Indeed, Stoddart immediately protested that if Defence was taken from him, he must immediately be sent two additional fast cruisers to replace her. On the evening of Octo-ber 28, Churchill abruptly countermanded Cradock’s orders to Stoddart to send him Defence: “Defence is to remain on east coast under orders of Stoddart,” decreed the Admiralty. “This will leave sufficient force on each side in case the hostile cruisers appear there on the trade route.” Regarding Cradock’s decision to relegate Canopus to convoy work, the Admiralty made no comment.

  Th
e words “sufficient force” emphasized that the Admiralty did not consider that Cradock required any addition to his squadron in order to fulfill his mission. But had Defence been present at Coronel, the outcome might have been different. Her guns matched those of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and her presence would have given Cradock a second regular Royal Navy ship and a second fully trained Royal Navy crew. It still would been two professionally manned British ships against five Germans, but with Good Hope and Monmouth adding their guns, the scale might have been balanced. This was Cradock’s view.

  [In the end, Defence was an unlucky ship. As Troubridge’s flagship in the Mediterranean, she had played an unheroic role in the Goeben fiasco. Now as Cradock went to meet Spee, Defence remained idle at the river Plate. Eighteen months later, she blew up and sank at Jutland.]

  The Admiralty’s message probably reached the admiral around one p.m. on November 1, when Glasgow brought it out to the flagship from Coronel. If he read it, the signal would explain his subsequent behavior. His decision to leave Canopus behind apparently had been approved for the Admiralty had made no comment. Defence had again been denied him. And he had been assured that, without these two ships, his squadron still constituted a “sufficient force.”

  Thus, five ships, of which only one—the smallest—was ready to fight a modern, well-trained foe, represented the Royal Navy off the west coast of South America on November 1, 1914. “The words ‘sufficient force’ must have seared the soul of a fearless and experienced officer whose impetuous character was well-known at the Admiralty,” Hirst wrote later. Churchill was to argue that the “sufficient force” signal never reached Cradock, who was therefore not influenced by it in reaching his bold and suicidal decision. But Hirst said it reached Glasgow during her visit to Coronel, that his ship brought it out to Good Hope just before the action, and that he was certain that Cradock read it. Thereafter, “tired of protesting his inferiority, the receipt of this telegram would be sufficient to spur Cradock to hoist, as he did half an hour later, his signal, ‘Spread fifteen miles apart and look for the enemy.’ ” Three hours later he met the East Asia Squadron. Cradock’s last signal, wirelessed to Canopus, was a proper epitaph for a man who had always hoped he would break his neck on the hunting field or be killed in battle: “I am going to attack the enemy now.”