The Hunters and the Hunted

by Bryan Perrett

  To the south of Port Stanley was an area of high ground known as Sapper Hill. On this a lookout post had been constructed, connected to the Canopus by land line. At 07.45 on 8 December one of the lookouts spotted a smudge of smoke on the horizon to the south. He called the Officer of the Watch aboard Canopus, who in turn alerted Captain Grant. While the details remained unclear, it was known that there were no British ships in the area and the newcomers must, perforce, be hostile. The Enemy in Sight signal soared up the halyards.

  Within the harbour, Sturdee’s ships were busy about their business. Carnarvon and Glasgow had finished coaling while Kent, Cornwall and Bristol still had to wait their turn with the two colliers, although Kent could produce a head of steam in less than two hours. The colliers had been moored alongside Invincible and Inflexible since 04.00, and in the intervening period 400 tons of coal had been transferred to each of the battle cruisers. Cornwall and Bristol both had parts of their engines stripped down, and the squadron was therefore far from ready for action. At 07.56 the bang of one of Glasgow’s guns drew everyone’s attention to the signal flying from Canopus’s masthead. At 08.00 Sturdee learned from the lookout post on Sapper Hill that the strangers were a four-funnelled and a two-funnelled warship on a bearing south-eastwards from Port Stanley and steering north.

  If there was one characteristic for which Sturdee was famous it was his imperturbability. He ordered Kent to proceed outside the harbour entrance and recalled Macedonia from beyond it, where she had been acting as guard ship. The colliers would cast off from the battle cruisers and all his ships would raise sufficient steam for 12 knots. Then he went to breakfast. Emerging at 08.45 he was pleased to see that Kent was on the move, although it would obviously be some time before the rest of his ships could follow. At 09.00 Sapper Hill reported not only that the two enemy ships were now less than 8 miles distant but also that two more groups of ships had been sighted in the distance. These, of course, were the remainder of Spee’s squadron and its three supply ships. There could no longer be any doubt that Spee intended to attack Port Stanley.

  Sturdee ordered Canopus to open fire as soon as the Gneisenau and Nurnberg came within range of her guns. At 09.20 the Sapper Hill lookout reported that the enemy had trained his guns on the radio station. At about the same time Canopus opened fire at a range of 13,500 yards and, despite being aground, earned her place in history. A long standing rivalry existed between the crews of her fore and aft turrets and when, the previous evening, Grant had ordered a practice shoot the latter decided that they were going to win by fair means or foul. During the night they crept into their turret and loaded the gun’s practice shell. Confronted with a real enemy next morning, they had no time to rectify the position. The result was that the fore turret’s shells exploded as they hit the water short of the target, but one of the aft turret’s practice shells ricocheted and punched a hole in Gneisenau’s rearmost funnel. Horrified, Captain Maerker swung his ship away to the east and Nurnberg conformed. Canopus fired again, only to see her entire salvo splashing down even further from the target. Sturdee instructed Grant to cease firing and Maerker resumed his original course on Port Stanley, this time with his battle ensigns flying. Almost immediately he received a signal from Spee, ordering him to avoid action and proceed east by north at full speed. By 09.30 Port Stanley was no longer in any danger.

  A situation had existed in which Spee might well have been able to inflict serious damage on some, at least, of Sturdee’s ships before they could clear the harbour, so why had he decided to abandon his attack? Two explanations present themselves. This first is that he believed that the two salvos fired by Canopus had actually been fired by two battleships and he was not prepared to engage against such odds. The second was that he believed his squadron possessed sufficient speed to out-distance any pursuit. His supply ships were ordered to proceed to a given rendezvous and Maerker was instructed to come round on to a south-easterly course. By about 11.00 the German cruisers had formed a line ahead on that heading with Gneisenau leading, then Nurnberg, then Scharnhorst, then Dresden and finally Leipzig, doing their best to work up to 22 knots.

  Back in Port Stanley harbour, Glasgow had begun to move at 09.45, followed at 10.00 by Stoddart in Carnarvon, followed by Inflexible, then Sturdee in Invincible, then Cornwall. Last to clear at 11.00 was Bristol, which had been at longer notice to raise steam. The enemy ships might no longer be visible in themselves, but columns of smoke less than 20 miles distant on the south-eastern horizon clearly indicated their position. As Inflexible and Invincible were capable of 27 knots it would only be a matter of three or four hours before they overhauled the German squadron. Without hesitation, Sturdee sent the General Chase order soaring up his signal halyards.

  As the British began to close the gap, details of their ships became clear to Spee. In a moment of sheer horror he realised that the two largest were each equipped with two tripod masts. That could only mean that they were battle cruisers, mounting heavier guns than anything he could reply with and considerably faster than any of his own ships. He was now in precisely the same position that Cradock had been in at Coronel in that he could neither fight nor flee. When, at 12.47, the British battle cruisers opened fire at the maximum range of 16,500 yards and closing, it was apparent to him that it would only be a matter of time before the trailing Leipzig received fatal damage. In the circumstances he took the decision to maintain his south-easterly course with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the hope that the entire British squadron would continue to pursue them, and ordered his light cruisers to break away to the south in the hope that they would escape and continue the war in the Pacific. To Maerker, who had been one of those who had opposed the attack on Port Stanley, he despatched a rueful signal to the effect that he had been proved right after all.

  Observing the German light cruisers peeling away to the south, Sturdee read his opponent’s mind and, with the exception of Carnarvon and Bristol, despatched his own cruisers after them while he pursued Scharnhorst and Gneisenau with Invincible and Inflexible, followed by the slower Carnarvon. Simultaneously, Macedonia was ordered out of Port Stanley to join Bristol in the pursuit of the German supply ships. There were, therefore, three separate actions taking place at the same time.

  The major duel took place between the opposing heavyweights, with Invincible engaging Scharnhorst and Inflexible exchanging broadsides with Gneisenau. Initially, Sturdee found himself to be at something of a disadvantage in that he held the lee position. This meant that the dense clouds of smoke belched by his guns, to say nothing of his funnel smoke, was carried by the wind between the opposing ships so that he was uncertain whether his fire was taking effect or not. On the other hand, the Germans were able to observe their own shell splashes and adjust their fire accordingly. Among the British there was universal admiration for the high standard of the enemy’s gunnery. Fire control was such that the German guns seemed to fire together with accurate grouping around their targets that the British ships were straddled regularly.

  Sturdee’s intention was to fight the battle at the range of his own guns and beyond that of his opponent until the latter’s fighting capacity had been seriously reduced, but at 13.44 Invincible sustained a hit, which fortunately did little damage. Nevertheless, this was not a welcome situation and he swung away to port in order to open the range. Spee surprised him by turning south so that Sturdee had no alternative but to catch up with him once again. Consequently, firing ceased at 14.00 and was not resumed until 14.45. At 14.55, Spee turned towards the British ships until the range had been reduced to 10,000 yards. This not only enabled him to bring his 8.2-inch guns into action, but also his 5.9-inch secondary armament.

  At this stage, Sturdee had no idea of the damage that had been inflicted on the enemy, although it was considerable. He now had two important priorities to attend to. First, he must open the range once more, and second, he must fight from a position at which the enemy was clearly visible. At 15.15 he achieved both by swinging away s
harply through 32 points until his battle cruisers had crossed the enemy’s wake and now had his ships to port at a distance of 14,000 yards, having exchanged targets.

  It now became apparent that while the German cruisers were still firing, they had suffered severely. Scharnhorst had been hit below the water line both fore and aft and numerous fires were blazing along her length, their smoke mingling with steam pouring from ruptured lines. One by one, her four funnels were shot away or blasted askew like skittles in a bowling alley, starting with the third at 15.30. Carnarvon, Stoddart’s flagship, had now caught up with the action after being some 10 miles behind at one stage. Her commander, Captain Skipwith, had flogged her engines hard and taken advantage of the various tactical changes of direction taken by the combatants to steer a reasonably straight course and so recover much of the lost mileage. Shortly before 16.00 she was able to add the fire of her four 7.5-inch guns to those already battering the Scharnhorst. Despite her damage, the German cruiser had continued to fire steadily but suddenly all her remaining guns fell silent. While her ammunition must have been all but exhausted the more probable explanation for this is that the order to abandon ship had been given. The British ships also ceased firing although the enemy’s ensign was still flying. At 16.04 Scharnhorst gave a sudden lurch to port as though one of her critical bulkheads had given way, releasing damned up water throughout the hull. A heavy list developed rapidly until she was lying on her beam ends. At 16.17 she slid beneath the waves. Even if those of her crew who managed to swim clear of the ship before she vanished cannot have survived for long in a sea temperature of just 38 degrees. Consequently, there were no survivors as Sturdee’s clear duty now lay in dealing with the Gneisenau, which was still full of fight.

  The German cruiser, in little better state than her lost sister ship, tried to make off to the south-west, but now she was having to absorb the combined fire of three opponents at a range of 10,000 yards. Wreathed in smoke and flames, her foremast leaning at a drunken angle and three of her four funnels holed or blown out of line, she struggled vainly to escape to the south-west with her speed reduced to 16 knots because of damage to her boiler rooms, Gneisenau nevertheless continued to fight with the one gun left to her until that, too, fell silent. By 17.50, however, she was lying dead in the water and listing slowly but steadily to starboard. Sturdee ordered his ships to cease firing and lower their boats to pick up survivors. At 18.00 Gneisenau went down, the site marked by debris and wisps of steam and smoke that continued to reach the surface. Some of those who managed to leave the ship safely were so weakened by the cold that they were unable to swim for long and drowned before they could be hauled into the boats, but 190 out of the 765-strong crew were rescued. One of the rescued officers, related by marriage to Stoddart, solicitously enquired after the admiral’s health.

  British casualties during this phase of the battle were negligible. Invincible sustained twenty-two hits, mostly with 8.2-inch calibre shells, which had wrecked the wardroom and several ratings’ mess decks. One 4-inch gun had been put out of action and a bunker flooded, but there were no personnel casualties. Inflexible had one man killed and two slightly wounded but the three hits she had sustained caused little or no damaged.

  Away to the west, the German light cruisers had become the prey in a high speed chase in which the odds were stacked against them. It was not just that two of their pursuers, Cornwall and Kent, were armoured cruisers armed with fourteen 6-inch guns apiece as opposed to the German ten 4.1-inch guns each, the boilers and engine rooms of the Leipzig and Nurnberg were in urgent need of an overhaul after their long stint in the Pacific. Only the Dresden, having sustained less wear and tear, stood any chance of out-pacing her British opponents, and then only by a knot or two.

  When the British cruisers had turned out of line ahead to an approximate line abreast they acted on Sturdee’s order to pursue their opposite numbers, Kent was on the left, Cornwall was in the centre and Glasgow on the right. Captain Ellerton of the Cornwall suggested that he should engage Leipzig while Kent tackled Nurnberg and Glasgow continued the pursuit of Dresden, which was drawing away. Luce, commanding Glasgow, was the senior captain present and he did not agree. He not only doubted whether his ship could overhaul Dresden before nightfall, but also whether Cornwall could catch Leipzig. He was himself already exchanging shots with the latter with the intention of slowing her down sufficiently for Cornwall to close the gap.

  At 14.50 Luce opened fire at 12,000 yards and at 15.10 one of his shells punched its way through Leipzig’s upper deck and exploded in a bunker that was in use. The result was a temporary reduction in the German ship’s speed. Despite this, a running fight was maintained for an hour, by which time the range had closed to 9,000 yards and Glasgow had herself been hit twice. Luce was uncertain how much damage he was inflicting on the enemy and, quite correctly, declined to close the range even further. He was, for example, unaware that one of his shells had started a blaze near Leipzig’s stern which Captain Haun’s damage control parties were unable to contain, but he was aware that when Kent steamed past her in pursuit of Nurnberg she opened fire on her with her hitherto disengaged battery.

  By 16.17 Cornwall was in range and opened fire. Leipzig was now under fire from both British cruisers. She continued to fight back, ignoring Glasgow and concentrating her entire effort on Cornwall. By 19.30 her foretopmast and mainmast had been shot away, fires were raging throughout the ship and her guns had fallen silent. Haun, having received a report to the effect that all her ammunition had been shot off, ordered three torpedoes to be launched. None found a target as the British ships were outside their range.

  Haun decided to scuttle his ship rather than have her fall into enemy hands. The sea cocks were opened and his men assembled on the after part of the forecastle, the only space that was not littered with wreckage or rendered untenable by raging fires. Nevertheless, the ensign still flew and he had no intention of lowering it. He tried to ensure that the wounded were equipped with life jackets, then thanked the crew for their efforts, calling for three cheers for the Kaiser, which were willingly given. Sensing that the end was near, the men broke into a popular patriotic song, The Song of the Flag.

  In the gathering dusk no one aboard either Glasgow or Cornwall can have known what was taking place aboard the Leipzig, but they did know that while her guns had fallen silent she had not surrendered. They closed in to fire their final broadsides into her. Shells bursting against the armoured gun shields and conning tower sent white-hot splinters ripping through the men crowded on the forecastle, causing heavy loss of life. Some of the men jumped overboard and tried to swim to the British ships but the distance was too great and they were quickly overcome by cold and a rising sea. At 20.30 Luce lowered his boats and signalled the Leipzig that he had done so. As she filled with water the German cruiser began listing to port and going down by the bows. Haun gave the order to abandon ship but was still aboard her when she went down. Only seven officers and eleven men were saved from a crew of 285. Leipzig had fought alone against impossible odds for four hours, earning the admiration of her foes and regret that the loss of life had been so heavy. In his report, Ellerton expressed his sincere regret that it had not been possible to save as gallant an officer as Haun had proved himself to be. During the action, Glasgow sustained the loss of one man killed and two wounded, while Cornwall had no personnel casualties and damage limited to two flooded bunkers.

  Meanwhile, Kent had continued her pursuit of Nurnberg. So determined was Captain Allen to catch her that every available piece of wood, including lockers, ladders, capstan bars and even hen coops were broken up and passed down to the stokeholds, where they were flung into the roaring furnaces. Repeatedly, the voice pipe from the bridge demanded more and more speed. Anxious engineer officers watched the needles on their gauges climb until the engines were producing 5,000 more horsepower than the makers claimed they were capable of. Finally, Kent was bounding along at 25 knots and steadily overhauling her opponent.<
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  At 17.00 Nurnberg opened fire at a range of 12,000 yards. Nine minutes later Kent found the range and a running fight ensued in which both ships displayed a high standard of gunnery. With the range down to 7,000 yards Nurnberg turned to port in order to bring her entire port battery into action. Allen conformed so that all his starboard guns could reply and set Kent on a converging course. As the range closed to 3,000 yards both ships continued to fire steadily but Nurnberg was absorbing the greater punishment.

  During the engagement a German shell exploded against the gun port of the A3 casemate. The flash set fire to charges inside the casemate and the flames spread down the hoist and would have ignited a charge at the bottom if it had not been flung out of harm’s way by Sergeant Charles Mayes, Royal Marine Light Infantry, who then flooded the compartment. If the charge had ignited the flames could have spread along the ammunition passage into the magazine and caused an explosion that would have blown the ship apart. Sergeant Mayes’ presence of mind earned him the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal.

  At 18.02 both ships turned to starboard. The range opened to 4,000 yards but Nurnberg’s speed was falling away and she was on fire forward. Ten minutes later Allen invoked a manoeuvre from the days of sail, swinging Kent across Nurnberg’s bows at little over 3,000 yards and raking her with all his starboard guns. He then turned hard a’ starboard until he was off the German ship’s port bow and battered her with his port guns. By 18.30 Nurnberg was barely moving and her guns were silent. Allen ordered his own guns to cease firing but observing that the declined to haul down his colours in surrender and was apparently in no immediate danger of sinking he instructed them to open fire once more.