THE IMPERIAL CONVOYS
The most urgent problem for Patey was the Australian and New Zealand convoys. The combined convoy, sometimes referred to as the Australasian Convoy, was one of largest of the great imperial convoys. The New Zealand contingent, approximately 8,300 men and 3,800 horses in ten transports, was due to leave Wellington for Fremantle on 25 September. Somewhere on the route it would join the Australian Expeditionary Force, some twenty thousand men in twenty-six transports, which was concentrating at King George Sound on the southwestern tip of Australia. Patey would meet the convoy with the Australia, Melbourne, and Sydney, reinforced by the Hampshire from the China Squadron, and escort it across the Indian Ocean to Aden. The China Squadron, on the east and north of the route, would act as a distant screen.
The situation changed drastically when the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau appeared off Apia on 17 September and then made off in a northwesterly direction, that is, apparently heading back toward Asian waters. At the same time, the Emden had appeared in the Bay of Bengal. The Admiralty felt obliged to order the Australia, Sydney, and Montcalm back to Simonshafen to protect the New Britain expedition. The armored cruiser Minotaur and the Japanese battle cruiser Ibuki would cover the convoy across the Indian Ocean. The New Zealand government, however, was very concerned that its contingent would have only the three old P-class cruisers as an escort on its 3,000-mile voyage to western Australia. What if Spee turned to the south? The Admiralty took the position that the Germans would not know of the convoy arrangements and that it was not likely they would steam over 2,000 miles southward to an area where they were not apt to find coal. The Admiralty considered Spee’s goal much more likely to be New Guinea and New Britain, and they would not abandon that expedition by withdrawing the Australia.
These questions reflected a potentially serious disagreement between Great Britain and Australia and New Zealand. The phenomenon of public opinion played a large role. The Royal Navy had not appeared to be very successful in the Pacific. Almost two months after the war had begun, the German Squadron was still on the loose, while in the Indian Ocean the Emden seemed to be making fools of the British. The destruction of the large Australian-New Zealand convoy seemed an obvious goal to the public, whether or not it would have been practical for the Germans to have attempted it, or if they even had sufficient intelligence of the date of departure or route. It seemed monstrous that Australia’s own battle cruiser, Australia, and the other ships of the Australian Squadron were not used for the direct protection of their own men. The New Zealanders had equally strong feelings, and their battle cruiser, New Zealand, was on the other side of the world with the Grand Fleet.
To satisfy New Zealand public opinion, the Admiralty had to send the Minotaur and Ibuki to Wellington to join the old P-class cruisers in escorting the New Zealand contingent to Australia. The convoy could not sail until 16 October despite the fact that on 30 September the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau bombarded Papeete, the capital of the French island of Tahiti. This was more than 2,000 miles east-northeast of New Zealand, and in both the Admiralty’s and Admiral Jerram’s opinion, confirmed the fact that Spee was heading eastward toward South America rather than back toward New Guinea or Asia. The New Zealand government, however, regarded the bombardment as another failure of the navy to counter the German menace and refused to agree to the Admiralty’s new request for the transports to sail without waiting for their powerful, and probably unnecessary, escort. The combined Australian-New Zealand convoy left King George Sound on 1 November. After two ships joined at sea, it numbered thirty-eight transports escorted by the Minotaur, Ibuki, Melbourne, and Sydney. A fifth cruiser, the Pioneer, broke down with condenser defects and had to leave the convoy, but the remaining escort was more than enough to handle any possible threat. After intelligence that Spee seemed headed eastward toward Easter Island, the only danger came from the Emden and Königsberg. On the morning of the 8th, the Minotaur received the order to leave the convoy and proceed to South West Africa in case Spee should round Cape Horn and head for South Africa. The next morning the convoy commander, Captain Silver in the Melbourne, intercepted the wireless message that a strange warship was approaching Direction Island in the Cocos group, 55 miles to the south. Captain Silver detached the Sydney, leading to the destruction of the Emden later in the day. By this time the Künigsberg had been located in the Rufigi and placed under a close watch. This ended any real danger to the convoy, which proceeded without incident to Colombo, and then on to Aden and Suez, where the main body arrived on 1 December. The troops did not go on to England, however. Turkey had entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, and the British government decided to land the men in Egypt to complete their training and assist in the defense. The decision was taken as much for lack of suitable training sites in England as for reasons of military necessity.43 They were supposed to move on to the front in France, but in fact were diverted to the Dardanelles campaign in the spring of 1915.
There was substantial shifting of troops within the British Empire, which required a number of convoys. The cabinet decided to bring home the majority of British regular troops from abroad and replace them with territorial battalions from home. Two convoys were devoted to repatriating regular troops from South Africa. The regiments in India were replaced by British troops from North China, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Those Indian battalions that could be spared were sent to Egypt, and some were even sent to the front in France. Other Indian battalions went to East Africa and, after Turkey entered the war, the Persian Gulf. There were seven major Indian convoys from Bombay and Karachi beginning in the second half of August, with the last one arriving at Suez on 2 December. The entry of Turkey into the war created new dangers in the Red Sea area, and from the 9th to the 11 th of November, the Duke of Edinburgh and three fast transports of the sixth Indian convoy were detached on a successful minor operation to destroy the Turkish artillery positions in the Bay of Sheikh Syed, opposite Perim just outside the northern limits of the Aden protectorate. The Duke of Edinburgh bombarded the forts, and under the cover of her fire, troops landed to demolish the Turkish fortifications.44
The Canadian convoys, the last but certainly not the least in this brief survey, had certain similarities to the Australia-New Zealand convoy in the strong objection raised by the Canadian government to the proposed scale of escort. The initial escort was to have been Rear Admiral Wemyss’s four light cruisers from the Western Patrol, and the initial size of the convoy was to have been fourteen ships. The Admiralty relied on the distant protection offered by the Grand Fleet, which was located between the German North Sea bases and the convoy route and the cruisers of Rear Admiral Phipps Hornby’s North American Squadron, which were watching the German liners sheltering in New York and other North American ports. The latter were potential auxiliary cruisers. Wemyss wondered why the Germans did not all try to break out together, for it would have been “an absolute impossibility to prevent some of them from escaping our two ships which were lying off New York watching them.” The Germans, if boldly handled, might have gotten among the convoy at night and caused “much mischief.” Wemyss regarded the large convoy as taking too many risks. Had one of the German cruisers still on the loose attacked, he later wrote, “None of my old tubs had sufficient speed to chase off such an enemy.”45 Wemyss could not know that these fears had little basis in reality. The nearest German cruiser actually at sea was the Karlsruhe, thousands of miles to the south off Pernambuco.
The convoy swelled to thirty-three ships before sailing, and the planned escort seemed utterly inadequate to the Canadians. The Admiralty therefore agreed to allay Canadian concern by ordering the old battleship Glory, then in the Halifax area, to meet the convoy off Cape Race after it left the Saint Lawrence River on 3 October. Admiral Hornby in the armored cruiser Lancaster joined the convoy on its southern flank as far as the limits of his station, leaving the cruiser Suffolk, armed merchant cruiser Caronia, and Canadian cruiser Niobe in the New York area. The ol
d battleship Majestic was sent from the Seventh Battle Squadron of the Channel Fleet to meet the convoy in the mid-Atlantic on the 9th, a day after the Glory and Lancaster turned back. The Majestic was accompanied by a surprise from the Admiralty—the powerful battle cruiser Princess Royal. The Admiralty had kept her departure secret even from Wemyss because of security lapses in the Canadian press concerning the convoy’s composition. This scale of protection was more than enough to handle any single raider that might have slipped through; the only thing likely to have challenged it would have been Hipper’s plan to send all the battle cruisers to sea (see chapter 2). But the ability of Hipper to reach the Atlantic undetected at this particular moment was problematical thanks to Jellicoe’s dispositions. The real protection of the convoy came from the occupation by close to three cruiser squadrons of the cruiser areas in the North Sea. These zones between Peterhead and Norway had been established in September. The light cruisers and battle squadrons of the Grand Fleet were out in support, and there was a second line of protection with the two battle cruiser squadrons to sight any ship that might have passed through the main line at night. Jellicoe kept his screening operation at full force from the 2d to the 10th, and the official history describes the cover as “stronger than it had been at any time during the war.”46
The story of the imperial convoys does not make very exciting reading, for it is really a story of what did not happen. It is also an example of the exercise of sea power. The British and French had been able to move hundreds of ships and thousands of troops throughout the world, and the Germans, as well as their Austrian allies in the Mediterranean, had been powerless to stop them. This was also a period when the Germans had the greatest number of warships at large during the entire war. The worldwide operations had certainly strained the resources of the Royal Navy, which also had to support the overseas expeditions and hunt for raiders. But neither ship nor man in the convoys had been lost due to enemy action.
CORONEL AND THE FALKLANDS
The most powerful and dangerous of the German forces at large in the opening months of the war was Spee’s squadron, and it is time to take up his story once again. The British and French could not rest easily until he had been accounted for. After detaching the Emden, Spee had proceeded eastward through the Marshall Islands. On 22 August he sent the Nürnberg to Honolulu with mails and dispatches and orders for German agents in South America to prepare coal and provisions in anticipation of his arrival. The German Squadron continued eastward at a leisurely pace, conserving as much fuel as possible. Spee learned of the Japanese declaration of war on the 26th. There could be no thought of return to Tsingtau, and great danger now lay to the north and west. The Nürnberg rejoined Spee at sea on 6 September, and he detached the cruiser along with the tender Titania to cut the cable between Fiji and Honolulu at Fanning Island. The Nürnberg, wearing a French ensign when she approached the island, accomplished this on the 7th and rejoined the squadron the following day at Christmas Island, where they coaled.
Spee, who had now learned of the New Zealand occupation of Apia, decided to take the calculated risk of revealing his whereabouts and running into the one ship in the southern Pacific he was really concerned about, the Australia. He turned back to the southwest with the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau for a raid on Apia that he hoped might catch vulnerable British ships at anchor. The Nürnberg escorted his supply ships to a prearranged rendezvous. The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau appeared off Apia on 14 September and found only a three-masted American schooner in the harbor. The Germans had demonstrated the wisdom of the British decision not to leave any small naval force likely to be overwhelmed with the garrison. The Germans refrained from firing on the town, as they did not want to cause casualties among the civilian (and German) population or damage German property. The first officer of the Gneisenau reported that German colonists at the extreme west of the island of Upolu gave valuable intelligence on the situation and offered to serve as guides for an attack on the New Zealand garrison, but this was beyond the scope of the ships’ mission and might have entailed losses that would diminish their fighting efficiency.47 Moreover, the garrison was probably much too strong to be overcome by a landing party from the two cruisers.
Spee had ostentatiously steamed off to the northwest, and this deception had its effect, for we have seen how fears for the safety of the Australian expedition to New Britain and New Guinea had forced the Admiralty to alter Patey’s plans and divert the Australia away from the large Australia—New Zealand convoy to the waters around New Britain to cover the expedition. An Australian force, escorted by the Australia, Montcalm, and Encounter, occupied Friedrich-Wilhemshafen on the mainland of New Guinea on 24 September.
Spee was actually heading in the opposite direction again. There was too much of a swell for him to coal at isolated Suvurov Island, so he proceeded to Bora Bora in the French-owned Society Islands to try and obtain provisions. There was no resistance when the Germans reached Bora Bora on the 21st. They supposedly were careful to have only French- and English-speaking officers deal with the islanders and implied they were English to a gendarme who boarded. The Germans politely paid cash for the provisions they obtained from the islanders, but there was not enough to satisfy their needs, and Spee, who had learned there were stocks of coal at the administrative capital of Papeete, decided to proceed to Tahiti.
The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were off Papeete on the 22d, but there was a small French garrison of colonial infantry here as well as a French gunboat, the Zélée. There were also five thousand tons of Cardiff coal on shore, and more in a German steamer, the Walküre, which had been captured by the Zélée the preceding month. The Zélée (700 tons, with two 100-mm and four 65-mm guns) was another classic example of a colonial ship serving in an isolated location that had no chance against a modern warship. Although the island had learned of the outbreak of war from a British steamer on 6 August, the official notification from France only arrived on the 29th. Lieutenant Destremau, commanding officer of the Zélée, anticipating attack by a gunboat such as the Geier, had already landed his ship’s stern 100-mm gun and 65-mm secondary armament to add to the ancient artillery of the local fortifications on the hill overlooking the town. The French fired warning shots at the German cruisers on their arrival, set fire to the stock of coal, and scuttled the Zélée at her moorings. The guns of the German cruisers completed the job of sinking the gunboat and bombarded the town, but Spee could not disregard the possibility that there were mines at the harbor entrance and, far from any base, he could not run the risk of damage. The Germans steamed off without coal or provisions, having wasted ammunition and once again disclosed their presence.48
The news of the attack on Papeete indicated that Spee had moved eastward again, but the Admiralty feared he might undertake similar attacks on Fiji, Samoa, or even New Zealand, and ordered Patey to make Suva (Fiji) his base and search for the Germans in those waters. Patey received the order to proceed to Suva on 3 October and immediately sailed with the Australia, Montcalm, and Sydney, followed the next day by the light cruiser Encounter, two destroyers, a submarine, and four supply ships. He concluded that New Guinea was not in danger and the German objective was South America and was therefore happy to be heading in what he considered the right direction.
The role of the Japanese fleet in the first few months of the war is sometimes overlooked, possibly because it engaged in no major action with the Germans at sea. Nevertheless it was the steady pressure exerted by Japanese sea power that had much to do with forcing Spee toward South America. Vice Admiral Yamaya with the force designated as the First South Sea Squadron—the second-class battle cruisers Kurama and Tsukuba, the armored cruiser Asama, and a flotilla of destroyers—had sailed from Japan on 14 September to search the Caroline and Marshall islands and to destroy the German facilities at Jaluit in the Marshall group. This squadron reached Truk on 11 October.
On 1 October another Japanese force, Rear Admiral Tsuchiyama’s Second South Sea Squadron�
�the battleship Satsuma (four 12-inch and eight 10-inch guns) and light cruisers Yahagi and Hirado—sailed from Japan for Rabaul. This squadron, according to an agreement reached between the British and Japanese admiralties, would cruise in the area north of 20° south and west of 140° east—an area stretching from Japan to Australia and including Yap, Anguar, and the Philippines. The First South Sea Squadron would cruise north of the equator and east of 140° east, while the Australian Squadron would cruise south of the equator and west of 140° west, to include the French islands. The three squadrons were to communicate whenever possible with each other and their respective admiralties and “by their movements assist each other’s operations.”49 This meant the Japanese Second South Sea Squadron would assist the British Borneo Squadron (sloops Clio and Cadmus, destroyers, and armed merchant cruisers), based at Sandakan and, later, Darvel Bay, in watching Philippine waters to guard against the possibility German ships sheltering in neutral U.S.-controlled territory might put to sea. The Japanese also sent a battleship to North American waters where the Hizen (the former Russian battleship Retvizan, captured in the Russo-Japanese War) reinforced the Allied force (the Newcastle, Rainbow, and Idzumo) protecting trade.
The Japanese were equally ready to intervene in the Indian Ocean where, as we have seen, the armored cruisers Tokiwa and Yakumo were sent to Singapore to serve as a nucleus for a squadron. The battle cruiser Ibuki had been an important part of the Australian-New Zealand convoy’s protection, and for a short time after the destruction of the Emden, she had been the convoy’s sole protection, a situation not without irony because of strong anti-Japanese racial feeling in Australia before the war where the Japanese Empire was seen as the potential enemy. The important Japanese role was recognized by the official historian of the naval war, Sir Julian Corbett. Commenting on the many demands put on the Royal Navy in eastern waters during the first months of the war, he wrote, “Indeed it is not easy to see how the thing could have been done effectively but for the assistance which Japan so opportunely provided.”50
A Naval History of World War I Page 16