Churchill later admitted that, had he not been distracted by the Admiralty upheaval over Battenberg’s departure and Fisher’s arrival, “I am sure I should have reacted much more violently to the ominous sentence ‘shall employ Canopus convoying colliers.’ ” October 30 was Fisher’s first day back in office as First Sea Lord and Churchill gave the old admiral a two-hour briefing on the worldwide deployment of the Royal Navy. “The critical point,” Churchill recalled, was in South American waters. “Speaking of Admiral Cradock’s position, I said, ‘You don’t suppose he would try to fight them without the Canopus?’ He did not give any decided reply.”
On the morning of October 27, Good Hope joined Glasgow, Monmouth, and Otranto in the remote fjord of Vallenar roads, where Cradock was beyond wireless contact with the Admiralty. Still hoping to receive further clarification or modification of his orders by way of Montevideo, he dispatched Glasgow back to Coronel to collect any waiting messages that might have come over land wire. Before Glasgow left, she sent a boat around the anchorage to collect outgoing mail from the other ships. Visiting in the wardrooms of the armored cruisers, Hirst found most officers expecting a battle and fatalistic about their prospects. “Two of the lieutenant commanders in Monmouth, both old shipmates, took me aside to give me farewell messages to their wives,” he said. “Glasgow has got the speed,” they told him, “so she can get away; but we are for it.” When the light cruiser departed at 6:30 p.m., she carried Cradock’s last signal to the Admiralty: “Monmouth, Good Hope and Otranto coaling at Vallenar. Glasgow patrolling vicinity of Coronel to intercept German shipping, joining flag later on. I intend to proceed northward secretly with squadron after coaling and keep out of sight of land.” Canopus, then plowing through the Straits of Magellan, was not mentioned.
Two days later, as Cradock and his squadron were leaving Vallenar, Canopus and her two colliers appeared in the fjord. The old battleship, her captain reported, could go no farther without spending another twenty-four hours repairing her high-pressure piston glands. Cradock told Captain Grant to anchor, do the work, and follow as soon as possible. Grant, however, never reported to Cradock that his ship’s potential speed now was higher than 12 knots. Later, he explained that, knowing the admiral’s opinion of his ship, he doubted the squadron would wait for him to catch up. Whether Cradock, knowing the truth about Canopus’s marginally higher speed, would have waited and fought the battle in her company will never be known.
Meanwhile, Glasgow was steaming north, “alone this time, much to my satisfaction,” said Luce. On the afternoon of the twenty-ninth, the wireless office began to intercept heavy traffic in German code, indicating that a warship—the signals indicated Leipzig—was not far away. The signals were so strong, Luce said, “that we expected to sight the enemy at any moment.” As a result, Luce hesitated to take his ship into Coronel. He worried that if he entered the neutral port, he might be trapped in a place where his ship’s greater speed would be useless. He signaled Cradock, who gave permission to delay entering the harbor. Accordingly, for two days, Glasgow waited outside Coronel. On the night of the thirtieth, Luce again heard Leipzig’s call sign broadcast from no more than 150 miles away, but at daybreak the ocean was empty.
At twilight on October 31, Glasgow entered Coronel harbor and Hirst, the intelligence officer, went ashore to collect and send messages and mail. In handing over papers, the worried British consul stressed to Hirst the existence of both a strongly German and pro-German minority along the Chilean coast, and the consequent probability that the light cruiser’s presence already had been reported. That night, in full view of the anchored Glasgow, the German consulate and the German merchant ships in the harbor blazed with light. One of these vessels was Göttingen, a supply ship that Spee had sent into Coronel, which promptly signaled her admiral: “British light cruiser anchored in Coronel Roads at 7:00 p.m. on 31 October.” At 2:00 a.m., Glasgow’s wireless room was listening to almost continuous, high-pitched Telefunken signal notes that indicated the presence of enemy ships in the vicinity. The number of wireless messages convinced Luce that the German squadron was approaching, and he decided to sail at nine o’clock the next morning. Cradock, sweeping up from the south and hoping to catch Leipzig, ordered Luce to rendezvous with the squadron forty miles west of Coronel at noon the next day, November 1.
Admiral von Spee, leaving Más Afuera on October 27, had been informed by a German port agent at Punta Arenas that a “British Queen class battleship” had been seen that day headed west through the Straits of Magellan.
[In fact, the ship was Canopus. It was an understandable mistake; the two classes had similar profiles and similar armament. But the Queens were five years younger and the 2,000 additional tons they carried had gone into armor and engines.]
He also knew from other German agents that ships of Admiral Cradock’s squadron had appeared farther up the Chilean coast. Accordingly, soon after his men saw the peaks of the Andes, he ordered his two armored cruisers to remain out of sight of the coast and instructed that all wireless communications between warships be preceded by Leipzig’s call sign. Spee realized that the presence of this light cruiser was known and he hoped that this duplicity would keep the presence of his other ships a secret. On October 30, he began sending his supply ships into Valparaíso and Coronel to take on supplies and coal. On the thirty-first, the admiral himself was at sea in Scharnhorst fifty miles off Valparaíso when he learned from Göttingen that Glasgow had slipped into Coronel. As the British ship could not remain in port for more than twenty-four hours without violating Chilean neutrality, Spee decided to trap and destroy this relatively small enemy. If Glasgow used all of her twenty-four hours, she would sail by the end of the afternoon on November 1; accordingly, Spee planned to arrive off Coronel before five p.m. Nürnberg was assigned to steam past the harbor entrance to see whether the British cruiser was there; the remaining ships were to spread in an arc outside with Scharnhorst to the north and Gneisenau to the south. Both admirals, thus, suffered from the same misunderstanding; each believed himself to be pursuing a single enemy light cruiser and neither was aware of the presence of other, larger enemy ships.
Sunday, November 1, was All Saints’ Day, and Spee’s seamen, coming down from Valparaíso toward Coronel, rejoiced in a clear early-spring morning. The sea was dark green and the strong wind from the south tipped the crests of the waves with white foam that sparkled in the sunlight. At 10:30 a.m., the crew of Gneisenau went to church service on deck, but the hymn “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” (“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”) was muffled by the sound of the wind howling in the rigging and sending bursts of spray back from the foredeck. The midday meal included special allowances of cocoa and bread spread with marmalade. By noon, the wind, moving around to the southwest, had reached Force Seven—28 to 33 knots, or 31 to 37 miles, per hour—and the ships, plunging south at 14 knots through the heavy swell, began to pitch and roll. The squadron was strung out; Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Leipzig were in front and the other two lightcruisers behind. Toward noon, when Nürnberg stopped to examine two Chilean ships, she fell back twenty-five miles astern of the flagship. At 4:00 p.m., when British wireless signals became very loud, Nürnberg was ordered to rejoin. At 4:17 Leipzig sighted smoke and masts across the stormy seas far to starboard and at 4:20, a drum thundered the order “Clear the decks for action.” Coming closer, the Germans could see the funnels and then the hulls of the British light cruiser Glasgow and the armed merchant cruiser Otranto.
The morning of November 1 dawned bright on board Glasgow in Coronel harbor. Patches of fog lingering on the hilltops around the bay blew away in a strong wind that tempered the warmth of a spring day. At 9:15 a.m., having collected messages and mail for the admiral and the squadron, Glasgow carefully slipped out of the harbor. Out in the open sea, Luce saw nothing. He took his ship north until he was out of sight of land, then turned southwest. As the light cruiser’s bow plunged into the rising sea, green water swept the foredeck, a
nd spray whipped over the bridge. Four hours later, forty miles west of Coronel Bay, Luce sighted Good Hope, Monmouth, and Otranto, coming north at 15 knots. The flagship and Monmouth were already rolling like barrels and Otranto, with the sail area of her tall side broadside to the wind, was even worse. At the rendezvous point, the strong wind and heavy sea made it impossible for any ship to lower a boat. In order to transfer to Cradock the messages and intelligence he had brought out from Coronel, Luce placed the papers in a 6-inch cartridge case, which Glasgow towed slowly across the bows of the flagship, which had come to a halt. Using a grapnel, Good Hope’s crew plucked the case from the sea, an effort that earned both ships Cradock’s signal “Maneuver well executed.”
Meanwhile, strong wireless signals indicated that Leipzig was not far to the north. Having heard nothing from the German armored cruisers, Cradock assumed that they were not nearby. At 1:50 p.m., the admiral signaled his squadron to form a line of search spreading fanwise, east to west, fifteen miles between ships, and to head north at 10 knots. Nearest the coast was Glasgow, with her professional, regular navy crew; next to her was Monmouth, with a reserve crew and twelve young naval cadets; beyond, the thin-skinned Otranto looming like a haystack out of the sea; and farthest west, carrying the only two heavy guns in the British squadron, Good Hope. On board the flagship, as his squadron swept north over the tumultuous seas, Cradock went to his cabin to study his messages and go through his mail.
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 l
ow 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.
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