HOW THE “SYDNEY” MET THE “EMDEN”
Forward, each gentleman and knight!
Let gentle blood show generous might
And chivalry redeem the fight!
The Luck of the Navy is not always good. There are wardrooms in the
Grand Fleet within which to mention any Joss except of the most devilish
blackness may lead to blasphemy and even to blows. One can sympathise.
Those who sped on May 31st, 1916, across 400 miles of sea and who,
though equipped with all the paraphernalia of fire-directors,
spotting-officers, range-fingers, control instruments, grizzled
gun-layers and tremendous wire-wound guns, failed to get in a single
shot at an elusive enemy, are dangerous folk to chaff. If to them had
been vouchsafed the great chance which came to the Salt of the Earth and
the Fifth B. S. there would not now be a German battleship afloat!
Still, in face of blazing examples of bad Joss such as this, I will
maintain that there are pixies sitting up aloft who have a tender regard
for the Royal Navy and who, every now and then, ladle out to it
toothsome morsels of unexpected, astounding, incredible Luck.
For how else can one explain the action at the Falkland Islands? There
was sheer luck in every detail of it, luck piled upon luck. Sturdee with
his two battle-cruisers raced through 7,000 miles of ocean, from
Plymouth to Port Stanley, and not a whisper of his coming sped over the
wireless to von Spee. Yet hundreds knew of Sturdee’s mission—even I
knew before he had cleared the English Channel. During five weeks, from
the Coronel battle until December 7th, the Falkland Islands were exposed
almost helpless to a raid by von Spee’s victorious squadron. Yet he
delayed his coming until December 8th—the day after the _Invincible_
and _Inflexible_ had arrived to gobble him up. As if these two miracles
were not sufficient—a month of silence in those buzzing days of enemy
agents and wireless telegraphy, and von Spee’s arrival off Port Stanley
at the moment most dangerous for him and most convenient for us—the
Fates worked for the Navy yet another. They gave to Sturdee upon
December 8th, 1914, perfect weather, full visibility, and a quiet sea in
a corner of ocean where rain and fog are the rule and clear weather
almost a negligible exception. The Falkland Islands do not see half a
dozen such days as that December 8th in the whole circuit of the year.
Von Spee came and to Sturdee were granted a long southern summer day,
perfect visibility, a limitless ocean of space, and a benign easy swell
to swing the gunsights kindly upon their mark. It was a day that gunners
pray for, sometimes dream of, but very rarely experience in battle.
Less conspicuously but not less benignantly did the kindly Fates work up
the scene for the destruction of the _Emden_. They made all their
preparations in silence and then switched up the curtain at the moment
chosen by themselves. In the Falkland Islands action Luck interposed to
perfect the Navy’s long-laid plans and to add to the scheme those
artistic touches of which man unaided is incapable. But the
_Sydney-Emden_ action was fortuitous, quite unplanned, flung off at a
moment when Luck might have seemed to be wholly on the side of the
raider. The _Emden_ had destroyed 70,000 tons of shipping in seven weeks
and vanished after each exploit upon an ocean which left no tracks. She
seemed to be as elusive and dangerous as the Flying Dutchman. But
perhaps her commander, von Müller, a most ingenious and gallant seaman,
had committed that offence, which the Athenians and Eton boys call
hubris, and had neglected to pay due homage for the good fortune which
was poured upon him in plenty. For the Fates wearied of their sport with
him and with us, withdrew their mantle of protection, and suddenly
delivered the _Emden_ to the _Sydney_ with that artistic thoroughness
which may always be seen in their carefully planned work. Luck is no
bungler, but Luck is a most jealous mistress. If Sturdee and Glossop are
wise they will sacrifice their dearest possessions while there is yet
time. The _Invincible_ is at the bottom of the North Sea and the
_Inflexible_ was mined in the Dardanelles. The _Sydney_ is a pretty
little ship and I should grieve to see her suffer for her good luck of
three years ago.
* * * * *
Take a chart of the Indian Ocean and draw a line from Fremantle in
Australia to Colombo in Ceylon. The middle point of this line will be
seen to lie about fifty miles east of the Cocos-Keeling Islands. Now
draw another line from Cocos to the Sunda strait, a line which will be
seen to bisect at right angles the Fremantle-Colombo line. After this
exercise in Euclid examine that point without parts and without
magnitude, fifty miles east of Cocos, where the tracks intersect. It
is a very interesting point, for upon the tropical night of November
8th, 1914, it was being approached by two hostile naval forces each of
which was entirely ignorant of the nearness of the other. Coming up from
Australia bound for Colombo steamed a fleet of transports under the
charge of Captain Silver of H.M. Australian light cruiser _Melbourne_.
Upon the left of Captain Silver, and nearest to the Cocos Islands, was
Captain Glossop in the sister ship _Sydney_, and away to the right was a
Japanese light cruiser. Upon the line from the Sunda strait to the Cocos
Islands was steaming the famous raider _Emden_, with an attendant
collier, bound upon a mission of destruction there. The _Emden_ crossed
the head of the convoy about three hours before it reached the point of
intersection of the two tracks, and went on to demolish the cable and
wireless station on the Islands. Meanwhile, wholly unconscious of the
scene-setting upon which the Fates were busy, the convoy sailed on,
crossed the _Emden’s_ track and cut that vessel off from any chance of
escape to the east. To the west the ocean stretches unbroken for
limitless miles. At half-past six in the morning the _Emden_ appeared
off the Cocos Islands and the watching wireless operators at once sent
out a warning to all whom it might concern that a foreign warship was in
sight. It greatly concerned Captain Silver of the _Melbourne_, who
ordered Captain Glossop to proceed in the _Sydney_ to the Islands in
order to investigate. The _Sydney_ was nearest to the Islands, was a
clean ship not three weeks out of dock, was in trim for the highest
possible speed and, though largely manned by men in course of training,
was in charge of experienced officers “lent” by the Royal Navy to the
Australian Fleet Unit.
[Illustration: HOW THE “SYDNEY” MET THE “EMDEN.”]
In the old sailing-ship days it was more common than it is now for
fighting ships to pass close to one another without detection. Whole
fleets used then to do it in a way which now seems always unbelievable.
The classical example is that of Napoleon and Nelson in June, 1798. On
the night of June 30th-July 1st, Napoleon with a huge fleet of
transports, escorted by Admiral Brueys’ squadron, crossed the Gulf of
Candia and reached Alexandria on the afternoon of the 1st. Nelson, who
had been at Alexandria in search of his enemy, left on June 29th, and
sailed slowly against adverse winds to the north. Though the French and
British fleets covered scores of miles of sea they passed across one
another, each without suspicion of the presence of the other. Nelson was
very short of frigates. It is not remarkable that the British convoy and
the _Emden_ on the night of November 8th, 1914, should so nearly have
met without mutual detection; what is wonderful is that the _Emden_
should have chosen the day and hour for raiding the Cocos Islands when a
greatly superior British force was barely fifty miles distant and placed
by accident in a position which cut off all prospects of escape. It was
a stroke of Luck for us which exactly paralleled the occasion of von
Spee’s raid a month later upon the Falkland Islands.
By seven o’clock Glossop and the _Sydney_ were ready to leave upon their
trip of investigation—they had no knowledge of what was before
them—and during the next two and a quarter hours they steamed at twenty
knots towards the distant cable station. In the meantime the _Emden_ had
sent a boat ashore and the work of destruction of the station was
completed by 9.20 a.m. Everything fitted exactly into its place, for the
Fates are very pretty workmen. The _Emden_ knew nothing of the
_Sydney’s_ coming, but as Glossop sped along his wireless receivers took
up the distress calls from Cocos. He learned that the enemy warship had
sent a boat ashore—and then came interruptions in the signals which
showed that the wireless station had been raided. Naval officers do not
get excited—they have too much of urgency upon which to concentrate
their minds—but to those in the _Sydney_ must have come some thrills at
the unknown prospect. Their ship and their men were new and untried in
war. Their guns had never fired a shot except in practice. Before them
might be the _Emden_ or the _Königsberg_ or both together. They did not
know, but as they rushed through the slowly heaving tropic sea they
serenely, exactly, prepared for action.
The light cruiser _Sydney_, completed in 1913 for the Australian Unit,
is very fast and powerful. She is 5,600 tons, built with the clipper
bows and lines of a yacht, and when oil is sprayed upon her coal
furnaces can steam at over twenty-five knots. She bears upon her deck
eight 6-inch guns of the latest pattern, one forward, one aft, and three
on either beam, so that she can fire simultaneously from five guns upon
either broadside. Her lyddite shells weigh one hundred pounds each. She
was, and is, of the fast one-calibre type of warship which, whether as
light cruiser, battle cruiser, or heavy battleship, gives to our Navy
its modern power of manœuvre and concentrated fighting force. Speed and
gun-power, with the simplicity of control given by guns all of one size,
are the doctrines upon which the New Navy has been built, and by virtue
of which it holds the seas. The _Sydney_ was far more powerful than the
_Emden_, whose ten guns were of 4.1-inch, firing shells of thirty-eight
pounds weight. The German raider had been out of dock in warm waters for
at least three and a half months, her bottom was foul, and her speed so
much reduced that in the action which presently began she never raised
more than sixteen knots. In speed as in gun-power she was utterly
outclassed.
Let us visit the _Sydney_ as she prepares for action on the morning of
the fight just as she had prepared day after day in practice drill at
sea. Before the foremast stands the armoured conning tower—exactly like
a closed-in jam-pot—designed for the captain’s use; forward of the
tower rises the two-storeyed bridge, the upper part of which is the
station of the gunnery control officer; upon the mast, some fifty feet
up, is fitted a spotting top for another officer. This distribution of
executive control may look very pretty and scientific, but Glossop, who
had tested it in practice, proposed to fight on a system of his own. If
a captain is cooped up in a conning tower, with the restricted vision of
a mediæval knight through a vizard, a gunnery lieutenant is perched on
the upper bridge by the big range-finder, and another lieutenant is
aloft in the spotting top, the difficulties of communication in a small
cruiser are added to the inevitable confusion of a fight. So the
armoured jam-pot and the crow’s nest aloft were both abandoned, and
Glossop placed himself beside his Gunnery Lieutenant Rahilly upon the
upper bridge with nothing between their bodies and the enemy’s shot
except a frail canvas screen. Accompanying them was a lieutenant in
charge of certain instruments. At the back of the bridge—which measured
some ten feet by eight—stood upon its pedestal the principal
range-finder with a seat at the back for the operator. This
concentration of control upon the exposed upper bridge had its risks, as
will presently appear, but is made for simplicity and for the rapid
working both of the ship and of her guns. Another lieutenant, Geoffrey
Hampden, was in charge of the after control station, where also was
fitted a range-finder. When a ship prepares for action the most unhappy
person on board is the Second in Command—in this instance
Lieutenant-Commander John F. Finlayson (now Commander)—who by the rules
of the Service is condemned to safe and inglorious, though important
duties in the lower conning tower. Here, seeing little or nothing and
wrapped like some precious egg in cotton wool, the poor First Lieutenant
is preserved from danger so that, if his Chief be killed or disabled, he
at least may remain to take over command.
From the upper fore bridge of the _Sydney_ we can see the guns’ crews
standing ready behind their curved steel screens and note that as the
ship cuts through the long ocean swell the waves break every now and
then over the fo’c’sle and drench the gun which stands there. At 9.15
land is sighted some ten miles distant and five minutes later a
three-funnelled cruiser, recognised at once as the _Emden_, is seen
running out of the port. Upon the _Sydney_ a bugle blows, and then for
twenty minutes all is quiet orderly work at Action Quarters. To the
_Emden_ the sudden appearance of the _Sydney_ is a complete surprise.
Her destruction party of three officers and forty men are still ashore
and must be left behind if their ship is to be given any, the most
slender, chance of escape. Captain von Müller recognises the _Sydney_ at
once as a much faster and more heavily gunned ship than his own. His one
chance is to rush at his unexpected opponent and utilise to the utmost
the skill of his highly trained gunners and the speed with which they
can work their quick-firing guns. If he can overwhelm the _Sydney_ with
a torrent of shell before she can get seriously home upon him he may
disable her so that flight will be possible. In rapid and good gunnery,
and in a quick bold offensive, may rest safely; there is no other
chance. So out he comes, makes straight for the _Sydney_ as hard as he
can go and gives her as lively a fifteen minutes as the most greedy of
fire-eaters could desire.
When the two cruisers first see one another they are 20,000 yards
distant, but as both are closing in the range comes quickly down to
10,500 yards (six land miles). To the astonishment both of the Captain
and Gunnery Lieutenant of the _Sydney_, who are together looking out
from the upper fore bridge, von Müller opens fire at this very long
range for his small 4.1-inch guns and gets within a hundred yards at his
first salvo. It is wonderful shooting. His next is just over and with
the third he begins to hit. At the long range the _Emden’s_ shells fall
steeply—at an angle of thirty degrees—rarely burst and never ricochet
from the sea. They whine overhead in torrents, plop into the sea on all
sides, and now and then smash on board. One reaches the upper fore
bridge, passes within a foot of Lieutenant Rahilly’s head, strikes the
pedestal of the big range-finder, glances off without bursting, cuts off
the leg of the operator who is sitting behind, and finishes its career
overboard. If that shell had burst Glossop and his Gunnery Lieutenant,
together with their colleague at the rate-of-change instrument, must
have been killed or seriously wounded and the Second in Command would
have been released from his thick steel prison. Not one of them was six
feet distant from where the shell struck in their midst. The
range-finder is wrecked and its operator killed, but the others are
untouched. A few minutes later two, possibly three, shells hit the after
control, wound everyone inside, and wipe that control off the effective
list.
But meanwhile the officers of the _Sydney_ and their untried but gallant
and steady men have not been idle. Their first salvo fired immediately
after the _Emden_ opened is much too far, their second is rather wild
and ragged, but with the third some hits are made. The _Sydney_ had
fortunately just secured her range when the principal range-finder was
wrecked and the after control scattered, and Gunnery Lieutenant Rahilly
is able to keep it by careful spotting and rate-of-change observations.
Glossop, who has the full command given by superior speed, manœuvres so
as to keep out to about 8,000 yards, to maintain as nearly constant a
rate of change as is possible, and to present the smallest danger space
to the enemy. The _Emden’s_ first effort to close in has failed, and now
that the _Sydney’s_ 100-pound shells begin to burst well on board of her
the _Emden’s_ one chance upon which von Müller has staked everything has
disappeared. During the first fifteen minutes the _Sydney_ was hit ten
times, but afterwards not at all; the _Emden_ was hit again and again
during the long-drawn-out two hours of the hopeless struggle. After
twenty minutes the _Emden’s_ forward funnel went and she caught fire
aft. Her steering gear was wrecked and she became dependent upon the
manipulation of her propellers, and the inevitable falling off in speed
to about thirteen knots. During the early critical minutes of the action
the _Sydney_ had the _Emden_ upon her port side, but all her casualties
were suffered upon the starboard or disengaged side due to the steepness
with which the German shells were falling. Once she was hit upon the
two-inch side armour over the engine room and the shell, which this time
burst, left a barely discernible scratch. Another shell fell at the foot
of a starboard gun pedestal in the open space behind the shield, burst
and wounded the gun’s crew but left the gun unhurt except for a
spattering of a hundred tiny dents. The electric wires were not even
cut. It is remarkable that during the whole of the action no electric
wires in any part of the _Sydney_ were damaged. As I have told both gun
controls of the _Sydney_ were hit during the first few minutes though
only the after one was put out of action; the _Emden_, less fortunate,
had both her controls totally destroyed and all the officers and men
within them killed.
After the lapse of about three-quarters of an hour the _Emden_ had lost
two funnels and the foremast; she was badly on fire aft and amidships,
so that at times nothing more than the top of the mainmast could be seen
amid the clouds of steam and smoke. Her guns, now occasionally firing,
gave out a short yellow flash by which they could be distinguished from
the long dark red flames of the _Sydney’s_ bursting lyddite. Once she
disappeared so completely that the cry went up from the _Sydney_ that
she had sunk, but she appeared again, blazing, almost helpless. Glossop,
who had been circling round to port, then drew in to a range of 5,500
yards—which in the absence of the range-finder was wrongly estimated at
under 5,000—and determined to try a shot with a torpedo. It was a
difficult shot as the torpedo gunner was obliged to set his gyroscope to
a definite angle and then wait until the rapidly turning _Emden_ came
upon his bearing. But in spite of the difficulties it was very good; the
torpedo ran straight for its mark and then stopped short at the distance
of 5,000 yards for which it had been set. The torpedo crews, naturally
enough, wanted forthwith to let off all their mouldies, just to show the
gunners how the business should be done with, but the hard-hearted
Glossop forbade. The moment after the one had been fired he swung the
ship round to starboard, opened out his range, and resumed the
distressful game of gun-pounding. The _Emden_ also went away to
starboard for about four miles and then von Müller, finding that his
ship was badly pierced under water as well as on fire, put about again
and headed for the North Keeling Island, where he ran aground. The
_Sydney_ followed, saw that her beaten enemy was irretrievably wrecked,
and went away to deal with the _Emden’s_ collier—a captured British
ship _Buresk_—which had hovered about during the action but upon which
Glossop had not troubled to fire. The _Emden_ fired no torpedoes in the
action, for though von Müller had three left his torpedo flat was put
out of business early in the fight.
Though the _Emden_ was beaten and done for, the gallantry and skill with
which she had fought could not have been exceeded. She was caught by
surprise, and to some extent unprepared, yet within twenty minutes of
the _Sydney’s_ appearance upon the sky line von Müller was pouring a
continuous rain of shell upon her at over 10,000 yards range and
maintaining both his speed of fire and its accuracy until the
hundred-pound shots bursting on board of him had smashed up both his
controls, knocked down his foremast, and put nine of his ten guns out of
action. Even then the one remaining gun continued to fire up to the
last. The crew of the _Sydney_, exposed though many of them were upon
the vessel’s open decks—a light cruiser has none of the protection of a
battleship—bore themselves as their Anzac fellow-countrymen upon the
beaches and hills of Gallipoli. At first they were rather ragged through
over-eagerness, but they speedily settled down. The hail of shell which
beat upon them was unceasing, but they paid as little heed to it as if
they had passed their lives under heavy fire instead of experiencing it
for the first time. Upon Glossop and his lieutenants on the upper
bridge, and in the transmission room below, was suddenly thrown a new
and urgent problem. With the principal range-finder gone and the
after-control wrecked in the first few minutes, they were forced to
depend upon skilful manœuvring and spotting to give accuracy to their
guns. They solved their problem ambulando, as the Navy always does, and
showed that they could smash up an opponent by mother wit and sea skill
when robbed by the aid of science. It is good to be equipped with all
the appliances which modern ingenuity has devised; it is still better to
be able at need to dispense with them.
I love to write of the cold fierce energy with which our wonderful
centuries-old Navy goes forth to battle, but I love still more to record
its kindly solicitude for the worthy opponents whom its energy has
smashed up. Once a fight is over it loves to bind up the wounds of its
foes, to drink their health in a friendly bottle, and to wish them
better luck next time. When he had settled with the collier _Buresk_,
and taken off all those on board of her, Glossop returned to the wreck
of the _Emden_ lying there helpless upon the North Keeling Island. The
foremast and funnels were gone, the brave ship was a tangle of broken
steel fore and aft, but the mainmast still stood and upon it floated the
naval ensign of Germany. Until that flag had been struck the _Sydney_
could not send in a boat or deal with the crew as surrendered prisoners.
Captain Glossop is the kindliest of men; it went against all his
instincts to fire at that wreck upon which the forms of survivors could
be seen moving about, but his duty compelled him to force von Müller
into submission. For a quarter of an hour he sent messages by
International code and Morse flag signals, but the German ensign
remained floating aloft. As von Müller would not surrender he must be
compelled, and compelled quickly and thoroughly. In order to make sure
work the _Sydney_ approached to within 4,000 yards, trained four guns
upon the _Emden_, and then when the aim was steady and certain smashed
her from end to end. The destruction must have been frightful, and it is
probable that von Müller’s obstinacy cost his crew greater casualties
than the whole previous action. These last four shots did their work,
the ensign came down, and a white flag of surrender went up. It was now
late in the afternoon, the tropical night was approaching, and the
_Sydney_ left the _Emden_ to steam to Direction Island some fifteen
miles away and to carry succour to the staff of the raided cable and
wireless station. Before leaving he sent in a boat and an assurance that
he would bring help in the morning.
Although the distance from Direction Island, where the action may be
said to have begun, to North Keeling Island, where it ended, is only
fifteen miles the courses followed by the fighting vessels were very
much longer. They are shown upon the von Müller-Glossop plan, printed on
page 193. The _Emden_ was upon the inside and the _Sydney_—whose
greatly superior speed gave her complete mastery of manœuvre—was upon
the outside. The _Emden’s_ course works out at approximately thirty-five
miles and the _Sydney’s_ at fifty miles. The officers and men who are
fighting a ship stand, as it were, in the midst of a brilliantly lighted
stage and may receive more than their due in applause if one overlooks
the sweating engineers, artificers, and stokers who, hidden far below,
make possible the exploits of the stars. At no moment during the whole
action, though ventilating fans might stop and minor pipes be cut, did
the engines fail to give Glossop the speed for which he asked. His
success and his very slight losses—four men killed and sixteen
wounded—sprang entirely from his speed, which, when required, exceeded
the twenty-five knots for which his engines were designed. When,
therefore, we think of Glossop and Rahilly, who from that exposed upper
bridge were manœuvring the ship and directing the guns, we must not
forget Engineer Lieutenant-Commander Coleman and his half-naked men down
below, who throughout that broiling day in the tropics nursed those
engines and toiled at those fires which brought the guns to fire upon
the enemy.
True to his promise Glossop brought the _Sydney_ back to the _Emden_ at
eleven o’clock on the morning of November 10th, having borrowed a doctor
and two assistants from Direction Island, and then began the long
task—which the Navy loves only less than actual battle—of rescue and
care for the sufferers by its prowess. North Keeling Island is an
irregular strip of rock, boulders and sand almost entirely surrounding a
large lagoon. It is studded with cocoanut palms and infested with red
land-crabs. An unattractive spot. The _Emden_ was aground upon the
weatherside and the long rollers running past her stern broke into surf
before the mainmast. Lieutenant R. C. Garsia, going out to her in one of
the _Sydney’s_ boats, was hauled by the Germans upon her quarter-deck,
where he found Captain von Müller, whose personal luck had held to the
last, for he was unwounded. Von Müller readily gave his parole to be
amenable to the _Sydney’s_ discipline if the surviving Germans were
transshipped. The _Emden_ was in a frightful state. She was burned out
aft, her decks were piled with the wreck of three funnels and the
foremast, and within her small space of 3,500 tons, seven officers and
115 men had been killed by high-explosive shell and splinters. Her
condition may be suggested by the experience of a warrant officer of the
_Sydney_ who, after gravely soaking in her horrors, retailed them in
detail to his messmates. For two days thereafter the warrant officers’
mess in the _Sydney_ lost their appetites for meat: one need say no
more! The unwounded and slightly wounded men were first transferred to
the boats of the _Sydney_ and _Buresk_, but for the seriously wounded
Neil-Robertson stretchers had to be used so that they might be lowered
over the side into boats. This had to be done during the brief lulls
between the rollers. By five o’clock the _Emden_ was cleared of men and
Captain von Müller went on board the _Sydney_, which made at once for
the only possible landing place on the island in order to take off some
Germans who had got ashore. To the surprise of everyone it was then
discovered that several wounded men, including a doctor, had managed to
reach the shore and were somewhere among the scrub and rocks. Night was
fast coming on, the wounded ashore were without food and drink—except
what could be obtained from cocoanuts—and were cut off from all
assistance except that which the _Sydney_ could supply. The story of how
young Lieutenant Garsia drove in through the surf after dark—at the
imminent hazard of his whaler and her crew—hunted for hours after those
elusive Germans, was more than once hopelessly “bushed,” and finally
came out at the original landing place, is a pretty example of the
Navy’s readiness to spend ease and risk life for the benefit of its
defeated enemies. In the morning the rescue party of English sailors and
unwounded Germans, supplied with cocoanuts and an improvised stretcher
made of bottom boards and boathooks, at last discovered the wounded
party, which had not left the narrow neck of land opposite the stranded
_Emden_. Lieutenant Schal of the _Emden_, who was with them, eagerly
seized upon the cocoanuts and cut them open for the wounded, who had
been crying for water all night and for whom he had not been able to
find more than one nut. The wounded German doctor had gone mad the
previous afternoon, insisted upon drinking deeply of salt water, and so
died. The four wounded men who remained alive were laboriously
transferred to the _Sydney_ and the dead were covered up with sand and
boulders. “A species of red land-crab with which the ground is infested
made this the least one could do.” The reports of Navy men may seem to
lack grace, but they have the supreme merit of vivid simplicity. That
short sentence, which I have quoted, makes us realise that waterless
crab-haunted night of German suffering more vividly than a column of
fine writing.
[Illustration: THE “SYDNEY-EMDEN” ACTION.]
All was over, and the packed _Sydney_ headed away for her 1,600-mile
voyage to Colombo. To her company of about 400 she had added 11 German
officers and 200 men, of whom 3 officers and 53 men were wounded. The
worst cases were laid upon her fo’c’sle and quarter-deck, the rest
huddled in where they could. It was a trying voyage, but happily the
weather was fine and windless, the ship as steady as is possible in the
Indian Ocean, and the Germans well behaved; von Müller and Glossop, the
conquered and conqueror, the guest and the host, became friendly and
mutually respecting during those days in the _Sydney_. I like to think
of those two, in the captain’s cabin, putting their heads together over
sheets of paper and at last evolving the plan of the _Sydney-Emden_
action which is printed here. Von Müller did the greater part of it,
for, as Glossop remarked, “he had the most leisure.” A cruiser skipper
with 400 of his own men on board and 200 prisoners, is not likely to
lack for jobs. To the von Müller-Glossop plan I have added a few
explanatory words, but otherwise it is as finally approved by those who
knew most about it.
Some single-ship actions remain more persistently in the public memory
and in the history books than battles of far greater consequence. They
are easy to describe and easy to understand. One immortal action is that
of the _Shannon_ and the _Chesapeake_; another is that of the _Sydney_
and the _Emden_. It was planned wholly by the Fates which rule the Luck
of the Navy, it was fought cleanly and fairly and skilfully on both
sides, and the faster, more powerful ship won. I like to picture to
myself the _Sydney_ heading for Colombo, bearing upon her crowded decks
the captives of her bow and spear, her guns and her engines, not
vaingloriously triumphant, but humbly thankful to the God of Battles. To
her officers and crew their late opponents were now guests who could
discuss with them, the one with the other, the incidents of the short
fierce fight dispassionately as members of the same profession, though
serving under different flags, just as Glossop and von Müller discussed
them in the after cabin under the quarter-deck when they bent their
heads over their collaborated plan.