by John Keegan
On 4 October the wireless station at Suva, in British Fiji, had picked up a message from Scharnhorst in the German mercantile code, reading, “Scharnhorst on the way between the Marquesas and Easter Island.”22 As is now known, the information was correct. The Admiralty anyhow instructed Cradock on 7 October “to be prepared to have to meet them in company . . . Canopus should accompany Glasgow, Monmouth and Otranto, the ships to search and protect trade in combination . . . If you propose Good Hope to go, leave Monmouth on the east coast.”23
The question nevertheless remains whether the Admiralty was yet able to read Scharnhorst’s code transmissions. A copy of the German mercantile code had indeed been seized in Australian waters early in the war but it did not apparently reach the Admiralty until the end of October.24 Perhaps the book was already being used locally. More mysterious are Cradock’s reactions to the Admiralty’s quite clear instructions of 7 October. In his reply on the 8th, he showed that he recognised the likelihood of von Spee’s heavy ships being joined by the light cruisers, making a formidable force. He also advised that he had summoned his old slow battleship Canopus to join him at the Falklands, where he intended “to concentrate and avoid division of forces.” Yet despite his resolve not to divide his forces, he had sent Glasgow, Monmouth and Otranto into the Pacific, under the feebly limiting instruction “not to go north of Valparaiso until German cruisers are located.” He also enquired after the whereabouts of Defence, previously promised to him but retained in the Mediterranean; and he was clearly unsettled by the idea that von Spee might go north, pass through the Panama Canal, if the Americans would so permit, and thus either get home to Germany or open up another commerce war in the Gulf of Mexico.
In the last two weeks of October, the Admiralty and Cradock got disastrously, ultimately tragically, at cross-purposes. The Admiralty made new dispositions in the Atlantic designed to backstop Cradock if von Spee evaded him and broke out of the Pacific; they included the deployment of Defence—at last—and other cruisers from the African station under Admiral Stoddart to the Brazilian bulge. London was also counting on the disposition of the Japanese fleet in the central and western Pacific to limit von Spee’s ability to do harm in that ocean. Over the deployment of strength in what was to prove the critical area—the South Pacific between Valparaiso and Cape Horn—the Admiralty and its admiral on the spot succeeded in misunderstanding each other.
The grit in the works was the condition of Canopus and Cradock’s misunderstanding of his authority over Defence. Defence was an ultimate example of the armoured cruiser idea, bigger, faster, as heavily armoured and more heavily gunned than either Scharnhorst or Gneisnau; had she joined Cradock, as he believed she would, she would have seen off either of her German equivalents. Canopus, though a battleship, was inferior to all three armoured cruisers, British and German alike. She was thinly armoured, and her 12-inch guns barely outranged those of the Germans. Moreover, her timorous chief engineer had persuaded her captain and Cradock that she could not make better than twelve knots, a cripple’s speed. Cradock accordingly went on ahead from the Falklands into the Pacific, signalling the Admiralty on 27 October that “Canopus’s slow speed” made it “impracticable to find and destroy the enemy squadron. Consequently have ordered Defence to join me . . . Canopus will be employed on necessary convoying of colliers.”25 Unfortunately, the Admiralty misinterpreted the picture, concluding—by a misunderstanding of the role of Canopus or of Cradock’s intentions—that von Spee’s squadron was blocked. If he went north he would fall under the guns of the powerful Japanese fleet. If he went south he would eventually run into Cradock’s cruisers, which the Admiralty appeared to believe would have Canopus in company. It was apparently disbelieved that Cradock would risk an engagement without the support of her 12-inch guns. It therefore concluded that “the situation on the west coast [of South America] is safe” and ordered Defence, which had both the speed and guns to defy von Spee, to remain in the Atlantic. Cradock, a sailor in the Elizabethan tradition who was determined not to repeat Milne’s mistake during the Goeben and Breslau episode of letting any German opponent escape, pushed ahead with his collection of weak ships, leaving Canopus to limp along 300 miles behind. In the late afternoon of 1 November, the two squadrons made contact off the Chilean port of Coronel.
Wireless had already revealed to them each other’s presence. Cradock’s progress up the coast had been reported to von Spee by German merchant ships in southern ports, while the British had been picking up distinctive German Telefunken transmissions for some days. While von Spee now knew, however, that Cradock was approaching with several ships, Cradock had been misled by the Germans’ clever use of Leipzig’s wireless alone to believe that only one German cruiser lay in his path.26 He appears to have thought that the von Spee squadron as a whole was moving northward towards the Galapagos Islands, with a view to traversing the Panama Canal from west to east. In order to verify his supposition, and to send and receive telegrams by cable, he detached Glasgow, his fast light cruiser, to Coronel on 31 October, with orders to rejoin next day.27
Had Glasgow arrived a few hours later, or stayed a little longer, the impending defeat might have been averted. In London, where the veteran Admiral Sir John Fisher had just resumed the post of First Sea Lord, the Admiralty was revising its assessment of the South American situation, had seen the danger that portended, had ordered Defence to join Cradock post-haste and had stressed that he should meanwhile not fight without Canopus. Glasgow sailed too soon to bring Cradock his fresh instructions. When she rejoined Good Hope, Monmouth and Otranto, the squadron was receiving strong German wireless signals, apparently transmitted at close range. Since current technology did not permit direction-finding, Cradock decided to form a line of search, with his ships disposed fifteen miles apart—intervals scarcely altered since Nelson’s line-of-sight days—and began to look for the transmitting source.
He believed he was seeking a single ship. Ironically, von Spee, who was now nearby, had the same impression. Having left his island coaling base of Más Afuera, part of the Juan Fernandez group, in the Pacific between Coronel and Valparaiso, on 27 October, he had cruised for three days off the coast, awaiting Cradock’s arrival, but on receipt of news of Glasgow’s visit, moved to cut her off, as he believed, from the main squadron. He, too, was deploying his ships in a line of search when his smoke was sighted by Glasgow, which had just taken up station in Cradock’s formation. A few minutes later the British ships were seen by the German, and both squadrons moved to form a line of battle.28
News of the presence of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau was wirelessed by Glasgow to Cradock over the fifty miles of sea that separated them. The admiral might have decided even then to avoid action. Monmouth and Good Hope were faster than the German armoured cruisers, Glasgow no slower than the German light cruisers. Cradock might have turned away and escaped, but he was encumbered by Otranto, which would have had to be sacrificed; and there were other considerations of honour. The Royal Navy always fought. Cradock ordered his ships to form on Glasgow and headed towards the Germans.
A South Pacific summer in Cape Horn latitudes can be a bitter season. So it was on 1 November 1914. Though the sky was clear and the sun bright, a Force 6 wind was blowing, seas were breaking over the smaller ships and the air was very cold. Cradock’s tactical scheme at the outset of the action was to keep out of range until the sinking sun behind him blinded the German gunners. Von Spee hoped to close the range as soon as the twilight protected his ships but silhouetted the British on the western horizon. At eighteen minutes past six, Cradock wirelessed Canopus, 250 miles away, “I am now going to attack the enemy”; it may have been meant as a farewell message.
The Germans, who were waiting for the sun to sink, did not open fire for nearly an hour; meanwhile, the two squadrons slowly converged on a southerly course. About seven o’clock, an officer in Glasgow recorded, “We were silhouetted against the afterglow with a clear horizon behind us to show up the splashes from
falling shells while the [enemy] ships were smudged into low black shapes scarcely discernible against the background of gathering darkness.”29 The German big guns, twelve in all, outranged all but Good Hope’s two 9.2-inch; the British 6-inch guns did not have the range to touch Scharnhorst or Gneisenau, which carefully kept their distance. “Sharply silhouetted against the red gold evening sky,” Good Hope and Monmouth were hit repeatedly, and an officer on Glasgow recorded that “by 1945, by which time it was quite dark, Good Hope and Monmouth were obviously in distress. Monmouth yawed off to starboard burning furiously . . . Good Hope . . . was firing only a few of her guns. The fires on board were increasing their brilliance. At 1950 there was a terrible explosion . . . between her mainmast and her after funnel; the gust of flames reached a height of over 300 feet, lighting up a cloud of debris that was flung still higher in the air. She lay between the lines a low black hull lighted by a dull glow. No one . . . actually saw her founder, but she could not have survived many minutes.”30
Monmouth, though the weaker ship, was still fighting and was able to reply to Glasgow’s lamp-signal enquiring “Are you all right?” with the message “I want to get stern to sea. I am making water badly forward.” Those were her last words. Glasgow observed that “[she was] badly down by the bows, listing to port with the glow of her ignited interior brightening the portholes below her quarterdeck.”
At that point Glasgow’s captain decided to leave the scene, on the grounds that a warning needed to be taken to Canopus, steaming up from the south at her best speed; the radio waves were filled by German jamming. As Glasgow fled, seventy-five flashes of shell-fire directed against Monmouth were counted before the horizon blanked off observation. That was not the last sight of the sinking ship. Shortly before nine o’clock the light cruiser Nürnberg found her “with her flag still flying” and reopened the attack. “The Monmouth still kept her flag flying and turned towards the Nürnberg, either to ram or to bring her starboard guns to bear. Captain von Schönberg therefore opened fire again . . . The unprotected parts of the Monmouth’s hull and also her deck were torn open by the shells. She heeled over further and further and at 2128 she slowly capsized and went down. Von Schönberg subsequently learned that two officers, who had been standing on deck, heard the Monmouth’s officers call the men to the guns; [they] were apparently engaged in stopping leaks.”31
Loss of life in Good Hope and Monmouth was total: of the 1,600 men aboard, those not killed in the gunnery duel drowned in the darkness of the cold South Pacific. Three Germans were wounded; Glasgow, though hit five times, had suffered no casualties at all. Nor had Otranto, which had prudently withdrawn from the action, apparently with Cradock’s endorsement, early on. She was quite unfit to have taken part. The two survivors escaped southward at best speed to find Canopus and, in company, make their way back to the Falklands. The Battle of Coronel, 1 November 1914, was the first British naval defeat since the American war of 1812 and the first defeat of a formation of British ships since the Virginia Capes in 1781. News of it appalled the Royal Navy, the British public, the Admiralty but above all, those in high command, Churchill and Fisher. From the moment they got word of the disaster, they were bent on revenge.
THE SEARCH FOR THE EMDEN
Indignation at the defeat at Coronel was enhanced in the homeland by the humiliations currently being suffered at the hands of von Spee’s detached commerce raider, von Müller’s Emden. Since parting company with the East Asiatic Cruiser Squadron at Pagan Island in the Marianas, east of the Philippines, on 13 August, von Müller had slowly made his way westward into the Indian Ocean, where he correctly estimated the richest pickings were to be found. The passages between the islands of the Dutch East Indies were a major shipping route, leading from Calcutta and Singapore to Hong Kong and Shanghai. The Indian Ocean itself was a British lake, always filled with liners and merchantmen and now also with government-chartered ships carrying men and war materials from the ports of the Indian empire to Egypt and Europe.
Von Müller began what was to prove the most sensational commerce-raiding campaign since the eighteenth century at modest tempo. Having been warned out of Dutch imperial but neutral waters by a local coast-defence battleship in late August, he made his way into the Indian Ocean by 5 September, en route avoiding HMS Hampshire, a more powerful cruiser, whose presence he detected by wireless interception, but meanwhile capturing a neutral ship, Pontoporos, loaded with British government coal. He took her into company, to join his own collier, Markomannia. On 10 September he captured, plundered and sank Indus, a troop transport which had not yet loaded her passengers. Indus had a wireless set, unusual for a ship of only 3,993 tons, but von Müller got control of the bridge before she could send off a warning. On 11 September, Kabinga was the victim. Von Müller used her to offload his captives and sent her away, the beginning of a chivalrous practice that would win him international admiration, even from his enemies. On 13 September, Emden intercepted Killin, loaded with poor-quality coal; she was sunk by gunfire. The same day Diplomat, a fine ship carrying tin, was intercepted and sunk. Her loss affected prices on the London commodity market.
Emden’s next encounter was with a neutral, the Italian Loredano, which was released. As soon as it was out of sight of the Germans, at the entrance to the port of Calcutta, it signalled by semaphore to the British City of Rangoon, which had wireless, news of its experience. City of Rangoon wirelessed back to the Calcutta authorities, who held up three ships leaving port, and passed the intelligence on. Via the Royal Navy’s intelligence officer at Colombo, the naval base in the island of Ceylon, it reached the Admiralty in London on 14 September and was relayed to Admiral Jerram, commanding at the China station, on the night of the 15th–16th. Next day HMS Hampshire, which Emden had eluded in the Dutch East Indies at the beginning of the month, was sailed from Singapore in pursuit, together with HMS Yarmouth; also alerted were HMS Minotaur and the Japanese battlecruiser Ibuki and cruiser Chikuma. All five ships mounted heavier guns than Emden, and several could exceed her speed.
None, however, got a smell of her in the course of a concerted search, although Emden kept close to the shipping lanes. On 14 September she sank the empty British merchantman Trebboch and, soon afterwards, the Clan Matheson, which was run down while attempting to escape. The need then was to coal, and von Müller set off towards the Andaman Islands, in the middle of the Bay of Bengal, to load from Pontoporos, which was still in company. En route Emden intercepted wireless signals announcing his recent sinkings, some from the released Kabinga. Near Rangoon he stopped but released a neutral Norwegian ship, Dovre, which warned him of the presence of two French cruisers, Dupleix and Montcalm, and two British armed merchant cruisers.
Von Müller, feeling the pressure of the chase in the upper Bay of Bengal, now decided to steam south to attack the oil storage tanks at the port of Madras. This was a gesture of sheer bravado, tweaking the lion’s tail, and it risked an encounter with one of the stronger ships searching for him; but, as he wrote in his after-action report, “I had this shelling in view simply as a demonstration to arouse interest among the Indian population, to disturb English commerce, to diminish English prestige.”32 On the night of 22 September, the Emden approached to within 3,000 yards of the harbour, illuminated the six storage tanks of the Burmah Oil Company by searchlight and opened fire. In ten minutes five of the six tanks were hit and 346,000 gallons of fuel destroyed. Emden then retreated into the darkness and got clean away.
During the next five weeks, from 23 September to 28 October, Emden had an extraordinary run of luck, though luck was combined with cunning and skill. Von Müller, who closely questioned any captive who would talk, and pored over shipping news in captured newspapers, planned his wanderings across the shipping lanes with care and forethought. His intention in late September was to head back to the Dutch East Indies, where local agents would have arranged for him to coal and resupply out of sight of the authorities in that vast archipelago. After the success of his ra
id on Madras, however, he decided on a sweep of the shipping lanes in the western Indian Ocean, which carried the traffic from British Africa and the Suez Canal to the Bay of Bengal and the China Seas. The remote atolls of the Chagos, Laccadive and Maldive Islands also provided shelter for coaling, and he contrived to keep a collier with him. He was soon to capture several more, among the thirteen ships he took in this period. Most he sank, finding them either in ballast or loaded with cargo he could not use, but on 27 September he took Buresk, loaded with 6,600 tons of the best Welsh coal destined for the Royal Navy’s China station, and on 19 October the Exford, with 5,500 tons. The cargoes of these two ships were sufficient, if he could escape pursuit, to keep him cruising for a whole year. He took them into convoy, having sent Markomannia off to the Dutch islands to await his arrival. The ships he did not sink were loaded with captives and sent off to British ports; most cheered the “Gentleman-of-War” on parting company.
Von Müller now decided on another provocative gesture, a descent on Penang, in the British Malay States, which he had been informed was used by enemy warships. So it was; in the early morning of 28 October Emden found in the harbour the Russian light cruiser Zhemchug, the French light cruiser d’iberville and the French destroyers Fronde, Mousquet and Pistolet. Zhemchug, whose captain had gone ashore on pleasure, was quite unprepared to defend itself and was overwhelmed by gunfire and torpedo. D’iberville, Fronde and Pistolet were in dockyard and out of action. Mousquet put up a brave fight but was sunk with a few salvoes. Emden picked up the survivors, later transferred to a stopped British steamer, and made off into Dutch waters.