A Naval History of World War I
Page 13
The Germans had a substantial number of ships sheltering in neutral harbors. By mid-September 1914, there were more than one hundred, and approximately thirty more were actually in use as supply ships. There were also, perhaps inevitably, certain neutrals willing to take the risk of supplying the Germans for profit. They, like the potential auxiliary cruisers, had to be watched. The number of suitable anchorages in many areas also was limited, and once uncovered they would be visited regularly by Allied patrols. The Etappe system tended to be a diminishing asset: strict enforcement of neutrality regulations by the Dutch in the Netherlands East Indies or by the United States in North American and Caribbean waters—although the British complained of American laxness at Manila—curtailed German endeavors. The activities of the Etappen remain one of the lesser-known stories of the war; indeed, an American historian was recently informed by the current Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv that the records of the service were burned for security reasons in 1919—a statement one hopes some historian will accept as a challenge.4
The Germans naturally established an intelligence service to complement the Etappe system. Modern technology in one sense had made the conduct of cruiser warfare much more difficult. The presence of a raider could be quickly signaled by wireless or cable. This often happened; it resulted, for example, in the destruction of the Emden. But wireless could be used two ways. The Germans became very adept at interpreting wireless messages to estimate the positions of Allied cruisers. Powerful wireless signals could indicate an enemy was close, even if the Germans could not establish the direction. Allied wireless operators, especially in India, were almost incredibly lax in divulging call signs and other vital information. Wireless was new technology, and in the early stages of the war the British had much to learn. The Germans also derived a considerable amount of intelligence from ordinary newspapers, which contained shipping mails giving the time and date of departures and arrivals of steamers. The captain of the Emden could assume an omnipotent air with captured officers, hinting at vast knowledge and an immense intelligence network, when the information actually had been gathered through close reading of the press.5
The objective of cruiser warfare, in addition to actually sinking merchant ships, would have been to drive marine insurance rates to prohibitive heights, thereby paralyzing trade. The British were prepared for the threat, and before the war the British government undertook a very farsighted move to reduce the potential danger of panic and paralysis of trade. In May 1913 the prime minister appointed a subcommittee of the Committee of Imperial Defence to study the question of war risks insurance. The committee, under the chairmanship of the Rt. Hon. Huth Jackson, director of the Bank of England, issued its report on 30 April 1914, and when the crisis came shortly afterwards, the Government accepted the recommended scheme, with modifications, which was published on 4 August. In general terms, the government would reinsure 80 percent of all war risks, and would in turn receive 80 percent of the premiums. Insurance clubs, such as the Liverpool and London War Risks Association, would assume the remaining 20 percent of the risks and would receive 20 percent of the premiums. The scheme was, in effect, a partnership between the state and the shipowners for running risks and sharing losses, and the participation of the insurance associations in setting values was supposed to be a safeguard against fraud or negligence. The standard forms of insurance policy adopted were also a convenient form of control because they contained a clause stating that ships sailing under the policy had to obey all Admiralty directions regarding routes and ports of call. The French, Russian, and German governments adopted similar schemes.6
British plans for the defense of trade were based on the principle that it could best be achieved by a concentration of force in the main theater of war, which would reduce to a minimum the chances for enemy cruisers getting out on the trade routes. The Admiralty recognized that German ships would be at sea when the war began and that mercantile losses during the period they were being hunted down would occur. The Royal Navy could not hope to adequately patrol all the trade routes, and the Admiralty therefore concentrated its attention on those focal points where the routes converged. British shipping was ordered to disperse from its usual routes, and the Admiralty trusted that the vast extent of the ocean would provide a certain measure of protection. Losses might occur, but they would be kept in acceptable proportions. Concentration of patrols on the focal points, however, conflicted with the necessity of watching those ports where there were German liners capable of being turned into auxiliary cruisers.7
The decision to disperse British merchantmen meant there was no attempt at convoy. The Admiralty opposed the idea, for it would have tied down cruisers they considered better employed hunting for German warships. The idea of convoy, the traditional and time-honored way of protecting merchant shipping in the age of sail, was in disfavor in the early part of the twentieth century. The authorities believed the use of steam made it easier for a merchant ship to escape from hostile cruisers by enabling it to choose its route without regard to the wind, and thereby pass through danger areas at times of its own choosing and as rapidly as possible. The introduction of the telegraph also made it much more difficult to keep the assembly of a convoy secret, and the enemy would have ample opportunity to prepare an attack. The mass of smoke would also attract enemy cruisers. Moreover, modern commercial pressures worked against the convoy: valuable time was lost waiting for escorts, and the speed of the convoy was reduced to that of the slowest vessel. Delays associated with convoys did not occur only as they started out. The sudden arrival of a large convoy caused serious congestion in ports, leading to still further delay. The fear of inordinate delays was a very real consideration for profit-conscious shipowners, and for a long time masters and shipowners were probably even more opposed to the idea of convoys than was orthodox naval opinion at the Admiralty.8
There was one major exception to the neglect of convoys. Troopships were almost always escorted or gathered in convoys, and in the first few months of the war, there were the great “imperial convoys” from Canada, India, Australia, and New Zealand. They absorbed considerable naval forces to escort them, if only because regardless of what the Admiralty might have preferred, the dominion governments did not stand for letting the troops sail unprotected. Furthermore, very soon after the opening of the war, the Admiralty found itself forced to support a number of overseas expeditions against German colonies, launched perhaps prematurely through the pressure of the dominions. These expeditions, joined with the need to escort the troop convoys, drained forces that might have been used for the protection of trade or for hunting German cruisers. This stretching of British resources resulted in two major weak spots in the system of defending focal points. They were the focal points off Colombo in the Indian Ocean and between Pernambuco and the island of Fernando Noronha off the northeast coast of Brazil in the South Atlantic. These points were where the Emden and Karlsruhe, respectively, enjoyed some of their greatest success.9
GERMAN FORCES OVERSEAS: COLONIES AND CRUISERS
In 1912 and 1913, the British and French commanders in chief in the Far East, Rear Admiral Alfred Winsloe and Contre-amiral H. de Kerillis, had engaged in similar informal nonbinding discussions to those held at home on the subject of cooperation in case Britain and France should find themselves allies in the event of war. With little likelihood that French Indo-China would be attacked, French naval forces (armored cruisers Montcalm and Dupleix, torpedo gunboat D’Iberville, and three destroyers) would join the British. However, Winsloe’s successor, Vice Admiral Martyn Jerram, who became commander in chief of the China Station in March 1913, considered the French ships “very broken reeds to rely on” because of their age and lack of speed.10
British naval forces on the China Station included: the battleship Triumph with nucleus crew at Hong Kong; armored cruisers Minotaur and Hampshire; light cruisers Newcastle and Yarmouth; eight destroyers; three submarines; and smaller craft such as torpedo boats and gunboats. Withou
t the demobilized battleship Triumph, Jerram’s superiority over his potential German foes was questionable. The armored cruiser Minotaur, armed with four 9.2-inch and ten 7.5-inch guns, was certainly equal to the Scharnhorst, but the Hampshire, with only four 7.5-inch and six 6-inch guns, was weaker than the Gneisenau. The British concentration in home waters and other pressing problems, such as the Mediterranean, prevented Jerram from being reinforced. Moreover, when the war broke out, his French counterpart, Contre-amiral Huguet, was off on a cruise to the South Pacific in his flagship Montcalm (two 7.6-inch and eight 6.5-inch guns), his exact location unknown beyond the fact that he had left Tahiti for Samoa, where he was due on 7 August. He could not be contacted by wireless, and there was some apprehension that in his ignorance of the fact that war had broken out, he conceivably could have blundered into Spee’s squadron and annihilation. On the other hand, the French armored cruiser Dupleix (eight 6.5-inch and four 3.9-inch guns) promptly joined the British at Hong Kong early on the morning of 5 August. The ancient D’Iberville and three small French destroyers proceeded according to the prewar plans to assist in guarding the Strait of Malacca.11
The British also began fitting out the Canadian Pacific liners Empress of Asia, Empress of Japan, and Empress of Russia and the P. & O. liner Himalaya as armed merchant cruisers, and the majority of the river gunboats in China were laid up so that their crews could join the Triumph. Neither the crews from the gunboats nor the mobilized reservists at Hong Kong were enough to man the battleship, and the navy turned to the local commanding general for assistance. There was a flood of enthusiastic volunteers; two officers, one hundred rank and file, and six signalers of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry joined the ship, which was able to sail the afternoon of 6 August. There were also difficulties manning the armed merchant cruisers, and the Empress of Asia’s crew was complemented by an officer and twenty men of the Royal Garrison Artillery and twenty-five men of the Fortieth Pathans when she left on 9 August. The Empress of Russia, the last of the armed merchant vessels to be ready, did not sail until the 28th, and by this time there were few naval ratings left. Consequently, her crew included Chinese from her mercantile crew, volunteers from shore, the island guard of marines from Weihaiwei, and crews from French gunboats in China that also had been laid up. The Admiralty study intriguingly described it as a “miscellaneous and possibly unique crew, who throughout worked together in perfect—though occasionally vociferous—harmony.”12
Admiral Spee was actually far from Chinese waters when the war began, and his squadron was scattered. The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had sailed from Tsingtau at the end of June for a long cruise through the German possessions in the Pacific and were not scheduled to return until September. The Leipzig was even farther away, looking after German interests on the troubled Pacific coast of Mexico, and the Nürnberg was en route to relieve her. The Emden was the sole cruiser at Tsingtau, and her captain, Karl von Müller, was senior officer on the station. He was joined during the period of tension preceding the war by the lonely representative of the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine in the Far East, the old protected cruiser Kaiserin Elisabeth. The Austrian cruiser—in which Archduke Franz Ferdinand had once cruised around the world—was too slow, consumed too much coal, and was too weakly armed (six 5.9-inch guns) for the Germans to use with their squadron, and some of her guns and their crews were landed to help in the defense of Tsingtau. Of the other German ships in the Far East, the gunboats Jaguar and Luchs and the torpedo boat S.90 managed to get back to Tsingtau before the war broke out; another gunboat and three river gunboats had to be laid up in Chinese ports.
The Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, the supply ship Titania, and the chartered Japanese collier Fukoku Maru were at Ponape in the eastern Carolines, where Spee learned of the different declarations of war. He was joined by the hastily recalled Nürnberg on the 6th. She replenished her coal from the Japanese collier, which was then released according to the peacetime plan. To avoid her betrayal of the anchorage, however, Spee sailed at night for Pagan in the Marianas. This location had the advantage of being roughly equidistant from northern Japan, Tsingtau, Shanghai, and Manila—all points from which he expected supplies—and here Spee awaited the colliers, supply ships, and auxiliary cruisers that had been ordered to join him.13
What were Spee’s plans? The major German operations plan was for commerce warfare in East Asia, and later, if the occasion arose and if coal supplies could be secured, in Australian and Indian waters. The squadron would be supplied at first from Tsingtau, would avoid being shut in, and only under especially favorable circumstances would it promptly attack enemy naval forces for the purpose of winning sea supremacy. Unfortunately the entire situation would change if Japan entered the war. Cruiser warfare in East Asian waters would be impossible, and the cruiser squadron would have to move to another area. Spee ruled out the Indian Ocean, and coal supplies from the Dutch East Indies would be too insecure. He decided to take the squadron to the west coast of America, where the supply of coal would be most secure and where he could maintain the squadron for the longest time.14
Fregattenkapitän Karl von Müller of the Emden, an exceptionally able officer, promptly sailed on 31 July in accordance with his orders to avoid being trapped. He proceeded to the shipping lanes between Nagasaki and Vladivostok, where he captured the Russian steamer Rjasan (3,500 tons) on 4 August and brought the prize back to Tsingtau. The ship was renamed the Cormoran and armed with guns taken from the old gunboat Cormoran, then under refit at Tsingtau and useless for serious work at sea. Müller did not linger long at Tsingtau, sailing on the 6th for the rendezvous with Spee at Pagan along with the Prinz Eitel Friedrich (8,797 tons), a North German Lloyd liner converted into an auxiliary cruiser with crews of laid-up gunboats, and the Hamburg-Amerika line steamer Markomannia (4,505 tons), used as a collier and supply ship. Spee himself was reluctant to be drawn back to Tsingtau with the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, because of the uncertain attitude of Japan. The Cormoran sailed on 10 August. She was the last German warship to leave Tsingtau, where the German garrison and torpedo boat S.90, gunboat Jaguar, and Austrian cruiser Kaiserin Elisabeth faced an uncertain future.
By the time the Emden, Prinz Eitel Friedrich, and Markomannia reached Pagan on the 12th, Spee had a small fleet of colliers and storeships—eight including the Titania. Nevertheless, four others sent out from Tsingtau had been captured by the British and French, underscoring how precarious the coal situation was likely to be. The Japanese decided Spee’s future course for him when he learned of their threatening attitude on 12 August. He had been ready to forgo operations in East Asian waters to try to preserve their neutrality; now operations in these waters were out of the question. He held a meeting of his captains in his flagship on the 13th. Here he explained why it would not be feasible for the squadron to act in East Asian, Australian, or Indian waters: lack of bases and coal was the overriding consideration, and the coal consumption of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau was too high. The Germans decided to send a single cruiser to the Indian Ocean to disrupt trade and possibly acquire coal from her prizes. The logical choice was the Emden, newest and fastest. The Prinz Eitel Friedrich and Cormoran were sent to Australian waters, but Spee did not expect much from them. Their speed was too low and their coal consumption too high.
Spee and his small armada sailed eastward from Pagan and away from the Japanese on the evening of 13 August, and the Emden, together with the supply ship Markomannia carrying 5,400 tons of Shantung coal, 45 tons of lubricating oil, and provisions, parted company shortly afterward. Spee disappeared into the vast emptiness of the Pacific Ocean. Müller fulfilled his mission brilliantly; he had, as we shall see, one of the most famous cruises of the war.15
The Emden might not have gotten away if Admiral Jerram had been allowed to follow his original war orders, which had been approved by the Admiralty. His plan had been to concentrate his forces north of the Saddle Islands at the mouth of the Yangtze and to keep his squadron generally to the north of
a line from there to the south of Japan. The objective would have been to keep the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau from returning to Tsingtau from the south. This deployment would also have cut off the Italian protected cruiser Marco Polo, then at Kobe, from seeking refuge at Tsingtau. Italy, which also had a river gunboat at Shanghai, was still considered an ally of Germany and Austria, although the Marco Polo was very old and not well armed (six 6-inch guns). The Italian declaration of neutrality on 2 August solved the problem. Most of Jerram’s squadron was conveniently located at the British station at Weihaiwei on the Shantung Peninsula, and the cruisers Minotaur, Hampshire, and Yarmouth and four destroyers could have been at the rendezvous on 31 July. Then, “to my horror”—as Jerram later wrote his wife—just before leaving Weihaiwei he received an order from the Admiralty to concentrate at Hong Kong. He wrote in his report: “I must confess that I was reluctant to do so, as it placed me almost 900 miles from what I conceived to be my correct strategical position. I assumed, however, that their Lordships had good reason for sending me there, and proceeded accordingly, at a speed of 10 knots, in order to economize coal.” Jerram told his wife, “I was so upset I very nearly disobeyed the order entirely. I wish now that I had done so.” He reported his action, deliberately giving the Admiralty a chance to cancel their order. They did not. He complained, “Here was a definite plan of action formed in peacetime after mature consideration thrown to the winds by one peremptory telegram.”16