CHAPTER XI

THE CRUISE OF THE “GLASGOW”

PART I.—RIO TO CORONEL

(July 27th to Nov. 1st, 1914)

Everyone has heard of the light cruiser _Glasgow_, how she fought at

Coronel, and then escaped, and is now the sole survivor among the

warships which then represented Great Britain and Germany; how she

fought again off the Falkland Islands, and with the aid of the

_Cornwall_ sank the _Leipzig_; how after many days of weary search she

discovered the _Dresden_ in shelter at Juan Fernandez, and with the

_Kent_ finally brought that German cruiser to a last account. These

things are known. But of her other movements and adventures between the

declaration of war in August of 1914 and that final spectacular scene in

Cumberland Bay, Juan Fernandez, upon March 14th, 1915, nothing has been

written. It is a very interesting story, and I propose to write it now.

I will relate how she began her fighting career as the forlorn solitary

representative of English sea power in the South Atlantic, and how by

gradual stages, as if endowed with some compelling power of magnetic

attraction, she became the focus of a British and German naval

concentration which at last extended over half the world. This scrap of

a fast light cruiser, of 4,800 tons, in appearance very much like a

large torpedo-boat destroyer, with her complement of 370 men, worthily

played her part in the Empire’s work, which is less the fighting of

great battles than the sleepless policing of the seas. The battleships

and battle cruisers are the fount of power; they by their fighting might

hold the command of the seas, but the Navy’s daily work in the outer

oceans is done, not by huge ships of the line, but by light cruisers,

such as the _Glasgow_, of which at the outbreak of the war we had far

too few for our needs.

In July, 1914, the _Glasgow_ was the sole representative of British sea

power upon the Atlantic coast of South America. She had the charge of

our interests from a point some 400 miles north of Rio, right down to

the Falkland Islands in the cold south. She was a modern vessel of 4,800

tons, first commissioned in 1911 by Captain Marcus Hill, and again in

September, 1912, by Captain John Luce, and the officers and men who

formed her company in July nearly four years ago, when the shadow of war

hung over the world. She was well equipped to range over the thousands

of miles of sea of which she was the solitary guardian. Her turbine

engines, driving four screws, could propel her at a speed exceeding

twenty-six knots (over thirty miles an hour) when her furnaces were fed

with coal and oil; and with her two 6-inch and ten 4-inch guns of new

pattern she was more than a match for any German light cruiser which

might have been sent against her.

Upon July 27th, 1914, while lying at Rio de Janeiro her captain received

the first intimation that the strain in Europe might result in war

between England and Germany. Upon July 29th the warning became more

urgent, and upon July 31st the activity of the German merchant ships in

the harbour showed that they also had been notified of the imminence of

hostilities. They loaded coal and stores into certain selected vessels

to their utmost capacity, and clearly purposed to employ them as supply

ships for any of their cruisers which might be sent to the South

Atlantic. At that time there were, as a matter of fact, no German

cruisers nearer than the east coast of Mexico. The _Karlsruhe_ had just

come out to relieve the _Dresden_, which had been conveying refugees of

the Mexican Revolution to Kingston, Jamaica. Thence she sailed for

Haiti, met there the _Karlsruhe_, and made the exchange of captains on

July 27th. Both these cruisers were ordered to remain, but a third

German cruiser in Mexican waters, the _Strassburg_, rushed away for home

and safely got back to Germany before war was declared on August 4th.

Thus the _Dresden_ and _Karlsruhe_ were left, and over against them in

the West Indies lay Rear-Admiral Cradock with four “County”

cruisers—_Suffolk_, _Essex_, _Lancaster_, and _Berwick_ (sisters of the

_Monmouth_)—and the fast cruiser _Bristol_, a sister of the _Glasgow_.

Though the _Glasgow_, lying alone at Rio, had many anxieties—chiefly at

first turning upon that question of supply which governs the movements

of war ships in the outer seas—she had no reason to expect an immediate

descent of the _Dresden_ and _Karlsruhe_ from the north. Cradock could

look after them if they had not the good luck to evade his attentions.

Upon August 1st, the _Glasgow_ was cleared for war, and all luxuries and

superfluities, all those things which make life tolerable in a small

cruiser, were ruthlessly cast forth and put into store at Rio. She was

well supplied with provisions and ammunition, but coal, as it always is,

was an urgent need—not only coal for the immediate present, but for the

indefinite future. For immediate necessities the _Glasgow_ bought up the

cargo of a British collier in Rio, and ordered her captain to follow the

cruiser when she sallied forth. Upon August 3rd, the warnings from home

became definite, the _Glasgow_ coaled and took in oil till her bunkers

were bursting, made arrangements with the English authorities in Rio for

the transmission of telegrams to the secret base which she proposed to

establish, and late in the evening of August 4th, crept out of Rio in

the darkness with all lights out. During that fourth day of August the

passing minutes seemed to stretch into years. The anchorage where the

_Glasgow_ lay was in the outer harbour, and she was continually passed

by German merchant steamers crowding in to seek the security of a

neutral port. War was very near.

[Illustration: THE CRUISE OF THE “GLASGOW.”]

Captain Luce had already selected a secret base, where he hoped to be

able to coal in shelter outside territorial waters. His collier had been

ordered to follow as soon as permitted, and he headed off to inspect the

barren rocks, uninhabited except by a lighthouse-keeper, which were to

be his future link with home. His luck held, for the first ship he

encountered was a big English steamer bound for Rio with coal for the

Brazilian railways. In order to be upon the safe side, he commandeered

this collier also, and made her attend him to his base. There, to his

relief, he found that shelter from the surf could be found, and that it

was possible to use the desolate spot as a coaling base and keep the

supply ships outside territorial waters. He used it then and afterwards;

so did the other cruisers, _Good Hope_ and _Monmouth_, which came out to

him, so also did that large squadron months later which made of this

place a rendezvous and an essential storehouse on the journey to the

Falklands and to the end of von Spee. We were always most careful to

keep on the right side of the Law.

I will not give to this base of the _Glasgow_ its true name; let us call

it the Pirates’ Lair, and restore to it the romantic flavour of

irresponsible buccaneering which I do not doubt that it enjoyed a

century or so earlier. In the _Glasgow’s_ day it mounted a lighthouse

and an exceedingly inquisitive keeper whom German Junkers would have

terrorised, but whom the kindly English, themselves to some extent

trespassers, left unharmed to the enjoyment of his curiosity. He, lucky

man, did not know that there was a war on.

Realise, if you can, the feelings of the officers and men of this small

English cruiser lying isolated from the world in her Pirates’ Lair.

Their improvised base, not far from the main trade routes, might at any

moment have been discovered—as indeed it was before very long; it was

the territory of a neutral country, a country most friendly then and

afterwards, but bound to observe its declaration of neutrality. They

knew that coal and store ships from England would be sent out, but did

not know whether they would arrive. They were in wireless touch with the

British representatives at Rio, Pernambuco, and Montevideo, but

authentic news came in scraps intermingled with the wildest rumour.

They, or rather their captain, had to sort the grains of essential fact

from the chaff of fiction. As the month of August unfolded, their news

of the war came chiefly from German wireless, and those of us who lived

through and remember those early weeks of war also remember that the

news from enemy sources had no cheerful sound. For some weeks they were

free from anxiety for supplies, provided that their base could be

retained, yet the future was blank. I do not think that they worried

overmuch; the worst time they had lived through was during those few

days in Rio before war broke out, and those days immediately afterwards,

when they were seeking those corners of their Lair least exposed to

gales and surf. Very often coaling was impossible; more often it was

both difficult and dangerous.

It may seem strange that for many weeks—until well into September—the

_Glasgow_ heard nothing of Cradock and his West Indies Squadron. Yet it

was so. Cradock in the _Suffolk_ had on August 5th met the _Karlsruhe_

coaling at sea, and signalled to the fast _Bristol_ to look after her.

The _Bristol_ got upon the chase and fired a shot or two, but, speedy

though she was, the _Karlsruhe_ ran away from her and was seen no more

and heard of no more until she began her ravages upon steamers to the

South of Pernambuco. Cradock, thinking she had gone north, and moreover

having charge of the whole North Atlantic trade on its western side,

became farther and farther separated from the _Glasgow_, and even went

so far away as Halifax. Meanwhile the _Dresden_ slipped down and entered

the _Glasgow’s_ sea area on August 9th, though her movements were not

yet known. On the 13th Captain Luce learned that the _Monmouth_ was

coming out to him under a captain who was his junior, so that upon

himself would still rest the responsibility for the South Atlantic. He

was now beginning to get some news upon which he could act, and already

suspected that the _Dresden_ or the _Karlsruhe_, or both, had broken

away for the south. He could hear the Telefunken wireless calls of the

_Dresden_ to her attendant colliers from somewhere in the north a

thousand miles away. During his cruises from the Lair he was always on

the look out for her, and once, on the 16th, thought that he had her

under his guns. But the warship which he had sighted proved to be a

Brazilian, and the thirst of the _Glasgow’s_ company for battle went for

a while unslaked. The _Dresden_, for which the _Glasgow_ was searching,

had coaled at the Rocas Islands, there met the _Baden_, a collier of

twelve knots, carrying 5,000 tons of coal, and together the two vessels

made for the south and remained together until after the Falkland

Islands action had been fought. The _Dresden_ picked up a second

collier, the _Preussen_, and set her course for the small barren

Trinidad Island, another old Pirates’ Lair some 500 miles from that of

the _Glasgow_, at which she in her turn established a temporary base. At

one moment the _Dresden_ and _Glasgow_ were not far apart, the wireless

calls sounded near, yet they did not meet. This was on the 18th, when

the _Glasgow_ was coaling at her base, and two days before she went

north to join up with the _Monmouth_ off Pernambuco.

This journey to the north coincided in time with the _Dresden’s_ passage

to Trinidad Island, so that by the 20th the two cruisers were again a

thousand miles apart, but with their positions reversed. While the

_Glasgow_ had been going up, the _Dresden_ had been going south and

east. For awhile we will leave the _Dresden_, which after spending two

days under the lee of Trinidad Island went on her way to the south,

drawing farther and farther away from the _Glasgow_ and more and more

out of our picture. Her movements were from time to time revealed by

captures of British ships, of which the crews were sent ashore. Her

captain, Lüdecke, at no time made a systematic business of preying upon

merchant traffic and upon him rests no charge of inhumanity. It may be

that commerce raiding and murder did not please him; it may be that he

was under orders to make his way at the leisurely gait of his collier

_Baden_—he left the _Preussen_ behind at Trinidad Island—towards the

Chilean coast, and the ultimate meeting with von Spee.

At sea off Pernambuco on August 20th, the _Glasgow_ met the _Monmouth_,

which had been commissioned on August 4th, mainly with naval reservists,

and hastily despatched to the South Atlantic. Rumour still pointed to

the presence of the _Dresden_ in the vicinity, and it seemed likely that

she might meditate an attack upon our merchant shipping in the waters

afterwards greatly favoured by the _Karlsruhe_. The two English cruisers

remained in the north for a week, hearing much German wireless, which

was that of the _Karlsruhe_, and not of the _Dresden_. On the night of

the 27th the armed liner _Otranto_ heralded her approach, and on the

following day the _Glasgow_ met her at the Rocas Islands. Captain Luce

had now progressed from the command of one cruiser to the control of

quite a squadron, three ships. Already the concentration about the small

form of the _Glasgow_ had begun.

The bigness of the sea and the difficulty of finding single vessels,

though one may be equipped with all the aids of cable and wireless

telegraphy, will begin to be realised. I have told how the _Dresden_

passed the _Glasgow_ on the 18th. She had been at the Rocas Islands on

the 14th. The _Karlsruhe_, too, had been at the Rocas Islands on the

17th. She, also, had come south, though Cradock, with his squadron, was

hunting for her in the north up to the far latitudes of Halifax. The two

German cruisers, which had seemed so far away from the _Glasgow_ when

she was at Rio calculating possibilities on August 1st, had both evaded

the West Indies squadron and penetrated into her own slenderly guarded

waters.

Upon August 30th the _Glasgow_, _Monmouth_, and _Otranto_ were back at

their Pirates’ Lair, which they could not leave for long, since it

formed their rather precarious base of supply, and there they learned

that the _Dresden_ had sunk the British steamer _Holmwood_ far to the

south off Rio Grande do Sul and must be looked after at once, since she

might have it in mind to raid our big shipping lines with the River

Plate. Here on the 31st they learned also of the action in the

Heligoland Bight, and of the German invasion of France, and of the

retreat from Mons. The land war seemed very far off, but very ominous to

those Keepers of the South Atlantic in their borrowed base upon a

foreign shore thousands of miles away.

My readers, especially those who are the more thoughtful, may ask how

the _Glasgow_ was able with a clear conscience to hie away to the north

and leave during all those weeks our big shipping trade to Brazil,

Uruguay, and the Argentine uncovered from the raiding exploits of all

the German liners lying there which might have issued forth as armed

commerce raiders. The answer is that none of the German liners had any

guns. The spectre of concealed guns which might upon the outbreak of war

be mounted, proved to be baseless. The German liners had no guns, not

even the _Cap Trafalgar_, sunk later, September 14th, off Trinidad

Island by the _Carmania_. The _Cap Trafalgar’s_ guns came from the small

German gunboat _Eber_, which had arranged a meeting with her at this

unofficial German base. The project of arming the _Cap Trafalgar_ was

quite a smart one, but, unfortunately for her, the first use to which

she put her borrowed weapons was the last, and she went down in one of

the most spirited fights of the whole war. The _Carmania_ had come down

from the north in the train of Rear-Admiral Cradock.

At the beginning of September the _Glasgow_ and the _Monmouth_ shifted

down south, in the hope of catching the _Dresden_ at work off the River

Plate. There they arrived on the 8th, but found no prey, though rumours

were many, and unrewarded searches as many. The _Otranto_ came down to

join them, and down also came the news that Cradock in his new flagship,

the _Good Hope_, sent out to him from England, was also coming to take

charge of the operations. Upon September 11th the _Dresden_ was reported

to be far down towards the Straits of Magellan and for the time out of

reach, so the _Glasgow’s_ squadron returned to its northern Lair and the

junction with the _Good Hope_. From Cradock the officers learned that

the _Cornwall_ and _Bristol_, with the _Carmania_ and _Macedonia_, had

arrived on the station, and that the old battleship _Canopus_ was coming

out. At the beginning of the war there had been one ship only in the

South Atlantic, the _Glasgow_; now there were no fewer than five

cruisers and three armed liners, and a battleship was on the way. One

ship had grown into eight, was about to grow into nine, and before long

was destined to become the focus of the most interesting concentration

of the whole war.

We have now reached September 18th, by which date the _Dresden_ was far

off towards the Pacific. She reached an old port of refuge for whalers

near Cape Horn, named Orange Bay, on the 5th, and rested there till the

16th. At Punta Arenas she had picked up another collier, the _Santa

Isabel_, and, accompanied by her pair of supply vessels passed slowly

round the Horn. At the western end of the Magellan Straits she met with

the Pacific liner _Ortega_, which, though fired upon and called to stop,

pluckily bolted into a badly charted channel and conveyed the news of

the _Dresden’s_ movements to the English squadron, which for awhile had

lost all trace of her.

It was not yet clear to Cradock, who was now in command of the Southern

Squadron—to distinguish it from the Northern Squadron, which presently

consisted of the armoured cruiser _Carnarvon_ (Rear-Admiral Stoddart),

the _Defence_, the _Cornwall_, the _Kent_, the _Bristol_, and the armed

liner _Macedonia_—it was not yet clear that the _Dresden_ was bound for

the Pacific, and a rendezvous with von Spee. It seemed more probable

that her intention was to prey upon shipping off the Straits of

Magellan. In order to meet the danger, he set off with the _Good Hope_,

_Monmouth_, _Glasgow_, and the armed liner _Otranto_ to operate in the

far south, employing the Falkland Islands as his base. The _Glasgow’s_

Lair of the north now remained for the use of Stoddart’s squadron.

In the light of after-events one cannot but feel regret that

the old battleship _Canopus_ was attached to the Southern

Squadron—Cradock’s—instead of the armoured cruiser _Defence_, a much

more useful if less powerfully armed vessel. The _Defence_ was

comparatively new, completed in 1908, had a speed of some twenty-one to

twenty-two knots, and was more powerful than either the _Scharnhorst_ or

the _Gneisenau_. The three sisters, _Defence_, _Minotaur_, and

_Shannon_, had indeed been laid down as replies to the building of the

_Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_, and carried four 9.2-inch guns and ten

7.5-inch as against the eight 8.2-inch and six 6-inch guns of the German

cruisers.

I have reached a point in my narrative when it becomes necessary to take

up the story from the German side, and to indicate how it came about

that five cruisers, which at the beginning of the war were widely

scattered, became concentrated into the fine hard-fighting squadron

which met Cradock at Coronel. The permanent base of the _Scharnhorst_

and _Gneisenau_ was Tsing-tau in China, but it happened that at the end

of July, 1914, they were more than 2,000 miles away in the Caroline

Islands. The light cruisers _Nürnberg_ and _Leipzig_ were upon the

western coast of Mexico, and, as I have already told, the _Dresden_ was

off the eastern coast of Mexico. The _Emden_, which does not concern us,

was at Tsing-tau. The _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_ were kept out of

China waters by the Japanese fleets and hunted for and chased to Fiji by

the Australian Unit. On September 22nd von Spee bombarded Tahiti, in the

Society Islands, at the moment when the _Dresden_, having safely passed

through the Atlantic, was creeping up the Chilean coast and the

_Nürnberg_ and _Leipzig_ were coming down from the north. All the German

vessels had been ordered to concentrate at Easter Island, a small remote

convict settlement belonging to Chili and lost in the Pacific far out

(2,800 miles) to the west of Valparaiso.

While, therefore, Cradock and his Southern Squadron were steering for

the Falkland Islands to make of it a base for their search for the

_Dresden_, von Spee’s cruisers were slowly concentrating upon Easter

Island. There was no coal at the Falklands—they produce nothing except

sheep and the most abominable weather on earth—but it was easy for us

to direct colliers thither, and to transform the Islands into a base of

supplies. The Germans had a far more difficult task. All through the

operations which I am describing, and have still to describe, we were

possessed of three great advantages. We had the coal, we had the freedom

of communications given by ocean cables and wireless, and we had the

sympathy of all those South American neutrals with whom we had to deal.

Admiral von Spee and his ships were all through in great difficulties

for coal, and would have failed entirely unless the German ships at

South American ports had run big risks to seek out and supply him. He

was to a large extent cut off from the outside world, for he had no

cables, and received little information or assistance from home. The

slowness of his movements, both before and after Coronel, may chiefly be

explained through his lack of supplies and his ignorance of where we

were or of what we were about to do.

It is comparatively easy for me now to plot out the movements of the

English and German vessels, and to set forth their relative positions at

any date. But when the movements were actually in progress the admirals

and captains on both sides were very much in the dark. Now and then

would come a ray of light which enabled their imagination and judgment

to work. Thus the report from the _Ortega_ that she had encountered the

_Dresden_ with her two colliers at the Pacific entrance of the Magellan

Straits showed that she might be bound for some German rendezvous in the

Pacific Ocean. A day or two later came word that the _Scharnhorst_ and

_Gneisenau_ had bombarded Tahiti, and that these two powerful cruisers,

which had seemed to be so remote from the concern of the South Atlantic

Squadron, were already half-way across the wide Pacific, apparently

bound for Chili. It was also, of course, known that the _Leipzig_ and

_Nürnberg_ were on the west coast of Mexico to the north. Any one who

will take a chart of the Pacific and note the positions towards the end

of September of von Spee, the _Dresden_, and the _Nürnberg_ and

_Leipzig_, will see that the lonely dot marked as Easter Island was

pretty nearly the only spot in the vast stretch of water towards which

these scattered units could possibly be converging. At least so it

seemed at the time, and, in fact, proved to be the case. The

_Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_ reached Easter Island early in October,

the _Nürnberg_ turned up on the 12th, and later upon the same day the

_Dresden_ arrived with her faithful collier the _Baden_. Upon the 14th

down came the _Leipzig_ accompanied by colliers carrying 3,000 tons of

coal. The German concentration was complete; it had been carried through

with very considerable skill aided by no less considerable luck. The few

inhabitants of the lonely Easter Island, remote from trade routes,

cables, and newspapers, regarded the German squadron with complete

indifference. They had heard nothing of the world war, and were not

interested in foreign warships. The island is rich in archæological

remains. There happened to be upon it a British scientific expedition,

but, busied over the relics of the past, the single-minded men of

science did not take the trouble to cross the island to look at the

German ships. They also were happy in their lack of knowledge that a war

was on.

[Illustration: THE PACIFIC: VON SPEE’S CONCENTRATION.]

I have anticipated events a little in order to make clear what was

happening on the other side of the great spur of South America while

Admiral Stoddart’s squadron was taking charge of the Brazilian,

Uruguayan, and upper Argentine coasts, and Admiral Cradock, with the

_Good Hope_, _Glasgow_, _Monmouth_, and _Otranto_—followed by the

battleship _Canopus_—were pressing to the south after the _Dresden_.

Stoddart’s little lot had been swept up from regions remote from their

present concentration. The _Carnarvon_ had come from St. Vincent, the

_Defence_ from the Mediterranean, where she had been Troubridge’s

flagship in the early days of the war; the _Kent_ had been sent out from

England, and the _Cornwall_ summoned from the West Coast of Africa. The

_Bristol_, as we know, was from the West Indies and her fruitless hunt

for the elusive _Karlsruhe_. The South Atlantic was now in possession of

two considerable British squadrons, although two months earlier there

had been nothing of ours carrying guns except the little _Glasgow_.

After the news arrived from the _Ortega_ about the _Dresden’s_

movements, Cradock took his ships down to Punta Arenas, and thence

across to Port Stanley, in the Falkland Islands, where he was joined by

the _Canopus_, a slow old ship of some thirteen to fourteen knots, which

had straggled down to him. I have never been able to reconcile the

choice of the old _Canopus_, despite her formidable 12-inch guns, with

my sense of what was fitting for the pursuit and destruction of German

cruisers with a squadron speed of some twenty-one knots. From Port

Stanley the _Glasgow_ and _Monmouth_ were despatched round the Horn upon

a scouting expedition which was to extend as far as Valparaiso. Already

the Southern Squadron was beginning to suffer from its remoteness from

the original Pirates’ Lair of the _Glasgow_. The Northern Squadron,

collected from the corners of the earth, were receiving the supply ships

first and skimming the cream off their cargoes before letting them loose

for the service of their brethren in arms to the south. It was all very

natural and inevitable, but rather irritating for those who had now to

make the best of the knuckle end of the Admiralty’s joints.

The trip round the Horn of the _Glasgow_ and _Monmouth_ was very rough

indeed; the English cruisers rolled continually gunwhale under, and had

they chanced to encounter the _Dresden_—which was not then possible,

for she was well up the Chilean coast—neither side could have fired a

shot at the other. At Orange Bay, where they put in, they discovered

evidence of the recent presence of the _Dresden_ in rather a curious

way. It had long been the custom of vessels visiting that remote

desolate spot to erect boards giving their names and the date of their

call. Upon the notice board of the German cruiser _Bremen_, left many

months before, was read in pencil, partially obliterated by a cautious

afterthought, the words “Dresden, September 11th, 1914.”

During the early part of October, the two cruisers _Glasgow_ and

_Monmouth_ worked up the Chilean coast and reached Valparaiso about

October 17th. It was an expedition rather trying to the nerves of those

who were responsible for the safety of the ships. Perhaps the word

“squirmy” will best describe their feelings. Already the German

concentration had taken place at Easter Island to the west of them; they

did not positively know of it, but suspected, and felt apprehensive lest

their presence in Chilean waters might be reported to von Spee and

themselves cut off and overwhelmed before they could get away. Coal and

provisions were running short, the crew were upon half rations, and any

imprudence might be very severely punished.

During October the _Glasgow_ and _Monmouth_ were detached from the _Good

Hope_, and it was not until the 28th that Cradock joined up with them at

a point several hundred miles south of Coronel, whither they had

descended for coal and stores after their hazardous northern enterprise.

Here also was the _Otranto_, but the _Canopus_, though steaming her

best, had been left behind by the _Good Hope_, and was, for all

practical purposes, of no account at all. She was 200 miles away when

Coronel was fought. On October 28th, after receiving orders from

Cradock, the _Glasgow_ left by herself bound north for Coronel, a small

Chilean coaling port, there to pick up mails and telegrams from England.

The _Glasgow_ arrived off Coronel on the 29th, but remained outside

patrolling for forty-eight hours. The German wireless about her was very

strong indeed, enemy ships were evidently close at hand, and at any

moment might appear. They were indeed much nearer and more menacing than

the _Glasgow_ knew, even at this eleventh hour before the meeting took

place. On October 26th Admiral von Spee was at Masafuera, a small island

off the Chilean coast, on the 27th he left for Valparaiso itself, and

there on the 31st he learned of the arrival in the port of Coronel of

the English cruiser _Glasgow_. The clash of fighting ships was very

near.

On October 31st the _Glasgow_ entered the harbour of Coronel, a large

harbour to which there are two entrances, and a rendezvous off the port

had been arranged with the rest of the squadron for November 1st. Her

arrival was at once notified to von Spee at Valparaiso. The mails and

telegrams were collected, and at 9.15 on the 1st the _Glasgow_ backed

out cautiously, ready, if the Germans were in force outside, to slip

back again into neutral waters and to take the fullest advantage of her

twenty-four hours’ law. She emerged seeing nothing, though the enemy

wireless was coming loudly, and met the _Good Hope_, _Monmouth_, and

_Otranto_ at the appointed rendezvous some eighty miles out to sea. Here

the mails and telegrams were transferred to Cradock by putting them in a

cask and towing it across the _Good Hope’s_ bows. The sea was rough, and

this resourceful method was much quicker and less dangerous than the

orthodox use of a boat. Cradock spread out his four ships, fifteen miles

apart, and steamed to the north-west at ten knots. Smoke became visible

to the _Glasgow_ at 4.20 p.m., and as she increased speed to

investigate, there appeared two four-funnelled armoured cruisers and one

light cruiser with three funnels. Those four-funnelled ships were the

_Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_, and until they were seen at that moment

by the _Glasgow_ they were not positively known to have been on the

Chilean coast. To this extent the German Admiral had taken his English

opponents by surprise. “When we saw those damned four funnels,” said the

officers of the _Glasgow_, “we knew that there was the devil to pay.”

I have already told the story of the Coronel action and I will not tell

it again. Von Spee held off so long as the sun behind the English gave

them the advantage of light, and did not close in until the sun had set

and the yellow afterglow made his opponents stand out like silhouettes.

He could see them while they could not see him. During the action, the

light cruiser _Glasgow_, with which I am mainly concerned, had a very

unhappy time. The armed liner _Otranto_ cleared off, quite properly, and

the _Glasgow_, third in the line, was exposed for more than an hour to

the concentrated fire of the 4.1-inch guns of both the _Leipzig_ and

_Dresden_, and afterwards, when the _Good Hope_ had blown up and the

_Monmouth_ been disabled, for about a quarter of an hour to the 8.2-inch

guns of the _Gneisenau_. Her gunnery officers could not see the splashes

of their own shells, and could not correct the ranges. When darkness

came down it was useless to continue firing blindly, and worse than

useless, since her gun flashes gave some guidance to the enemy’s

gunners. At the range of about 11,000 yards, a long range for the German

4.1-inch guns, the shells were falling all around very steeply, the

surface of the sea was churned into foam, and splinters from bursting

shells rained over her. It is a wonderful thing that she suffered so

little damage and that not a single man of her company was killed or

severely wounded. Four slight wounds from splinters constituted her

total tally of casualties. At least 600 shells, great and small, were

fired at her, yet she was hit five times only. The most serious damage

done was a big hole between wind and water on the port quarter near one

of the screws. Yet even this hole did not prevent her from steaming away

at twenty-four knots, and from covering several thousand miles before

she was properly repaired. I think that the _Glasgow_ must be a lucky

ship. After the _Good Hope_ had blown up and the _Monmouth_, badly hurt,

was down by the bows and turning her stern to the seas, the _Glasgow_

hung upon her consort’s port quarter, anxious to give help and deeply

reluctant to leave. Yet she could do nothing. The _Monmouth_ was clearly

doomed, and it was urgent that the _Glasgow_ should get away to warn the

_Canopus_, then 150 miles away and pressing towards the scene of action,

and to report the tragedy and the German concentration to the Admiralty

at home. During that anxious waiting time, when the enemy’s shells were

still falling thickly about her, the sea, to the _Glasgow’s_ company,

looked very, very cold! At last, when the moon was coming up brightly,

and further delay might have made escape impossible, the _Glasgow_

sorrowfully turned to the west, towards the wide Pacific spaces, and

dashed off at full speed. It was not until half an hour later, when she

was twelve miles distant, that she counted the seventy-five flashes of

the _Nürnberg’s_ guns which finally destroyed the _Monmouth_. I am

afraid that the story of the cheers from the _Monmouth_ which sped the

_Glasgow_ upon her way must be dismissed as a pretty legend. No one in

the _Glasgow_ heard them, and no one from the _Monmouth_ survived to

tell the tale. Captain Grant and his men of the _Canopus_ must have

suffered agonies when they received the _Glasgow’s_ brief message. They

had done their utmost to keep up with the _Good Hope_, and the slowness

of their ship had been no fault of theirs. Grant had, I have been told,

implored the Admiral to wait for him before risking an engagement.

The journey to the Straits and to her junction with the _Canopus_ was a

very anxious one for the _Glasgow’s_ company. They did their best to be

cheerful, though cheerfulness was not easy to come by. They had

witnessed the total defeat of an English by a German squadron, and

before they could get down south into comparative safety the German

ships, running down the chord of the arc which represented the

_Glasgow’s_ course, might arrive first at the Straits. That there was no

pursuit to the south may be explained by the one word—coal. Von Spee

could get coal at Valparaiso or at Coronel—though the local coal was

soft, wretched stuff—but he had no means of replenishment farther

south. One does not realize how completely a squadron of warships is

tied to its colliers or to its coaling bases until one tries to discover

and explain the movements of warships cruising in the outer seas.

While running down towards the Straits—for twenty-four hours she kept

up twenty-four knots—the _Glasgow_ briefly notified the _Canopus_ of

the disaster of Coronel and of her own intention to make for the

Falkland Islands. Beyond this, she refrained from using the tell-tale

wireless which might give away her position to a pursuing enemy. Upon

the evening of the 3rd she picked up the German press story of the

action, but kept silence upon it herself. On the morning of the 4th,

very short of stores—her crew had been on reduced rations for a

month—she reached the Straits and, to her great relief, found them

empty of the enemy. She did not meet the _Canopus_ until the 6th, and

then, with the big battleship upon her weather quarter, to keep the seas

somewhat off that sore hole in her side, she made a fortunately easy

passage to the Falkland Islands and entered Port Stanley at daylight

upon November 8th. Thence the _Glasgow_ despatched her first telegram to

the authorities at home, and at six o’clock in the evening set off with

the _Canopus_ for the north. But that same evening came orders from

England for the _Canopus_ to return, in order that the coaling base of

the Falklands might be defended, so the _Glasgow_, alone once more after

many days, pursued her solitary way towards Rio and to her meeting with

the _Carnarvon_, _Defence_, and _Cornwall_, which were at that time

lying off the River Plate guarding the approaches to Montevideo and

Buenos Ayres. The _Glasgow_ had done her utmost to uphold the Flag, but

the lot of the sole survivor of a naval disaster is always wretched. The

one thing which counts in the eyes of English naval officers is the good

opinion of their brethren of the sea; those of the _Glasgow_ could not

tell until they had tested it what would be the opinion of their

colleagues in the Service. It was very kind, very sympathetic; so

overflowing with kindness and sympathy were those who now learned the

details of the disaster, that the company of the _Glasgow_, sorely

humiliated, yet full of courage and hope for the day of reckoning, never

afterwards forgot how much they owed to it. At home men growled

foolishly, ignorantly, sank to the baseness of writing abusive letters

to the newspapers, and even to the _Glasgow_ herself, but the Service

understood and sympathised, and it is the Service alone which counts.

CHAPTER XII

THE CRUISE OF THE “GLASGOW”

PART II.—CORONEL TO JUAN FERNANDEZ

(Nov. 1st, 1914, to March 14th, 1915)

We left the British cruiser _Glasgow_ off the River Plate, where she had

arrived after her escape, sore at heart and battered in body, from the

disaster of Coronel. The battleship _Canopus_ remained behind at Port

Stanley to defend the newly established coaling-station at the Falkland

Islands. Her four 12-inch guns would have made the inner harbour

impassable to the lightly armoured cruisers of Admiral von Spee had he

descended before the reinforcements from the north arrived; and the

colliers, cleverly hidden in the remote creeks of the Islands, would

have been most difficult for him to discover. It was essential to our

plans that there should be ample stores of coal at the Falklands for the

use of Sturdee’s punitive squadron when it should arrive, and every

possible precaution was taken to ensure the supply. As it happened, von

Spee did not come for five weeks. He was at his wits’ end to find coal,

and was, moreover, short of ammunition after the bombardment of Tahiti

and the big expenditure in the Coronel fight. So he remained pottering

about off the Chilean coast until he had swept up enough of coal and of

colliers to make his journey to the Falklands, and to provide for his

return to the Lair which he had established in an inlet upon the coast.

At the English Bank, off the River Plate, the _Glasgow_ had joined up

with the _Carnarvon_, _Defence_, and _Cornwall_, and her company were

greatly refreshed in spirit by the kindly understanding and sympathy of

their brothers of the sea. The officers and men of the _Glasgow_, who

had by now worked together for more than two years, had come through

their shattering experiences with extraordinarily little loss of morale.

They had suffered a material defeat, but their courage and confidence in

the ultimate issue burned as brightly as ever. Even upon the night of

the disaster, when they were seeking a safe road to the Straits,

uncertain whether the Germans would arrive there first, they were much

more concerned for the safety of the _Canopus_ than worried about their

own skins. Their captain and navigating lieutenant had thrust upon them

difficulties and anxieties of which the others were at first ignorant.

The ship’s compasses were found to be gravely disturbed by the shocks of

the action, their magnetism had been upset, and not until star sights

could be taken were they able to correct the error of fully twenty

degrees. The speed at which the cruiser travelled buried the stern

deeply, and the water entering by the big hole blown in the port quarter

threatened to flood a whole compartment and make it impossible for full

speed to be maintained. The voyage to the Straits was, for those

responsible, a period of grave anxiety. Yet through it all the officers

and men did their work and maintained a cheerful countenance, as if to

pass almost scatheless through a tremendous torrent of shell, and to get

away with waggling compasses and a great hole between wind and water,

was an experience which custom had made of little moment. No one could

have judged from their demeanour that never before November 1st had the

_Glasgow_ been in action, and that not until November 6th, when she had

beside her the support of the _Canopus’s_ great guns, did she reach

comparative safety.

The _Glasgow’s_ damaged side had been shored up internally with baulks

of timber, but if she were to become sea- and battle-worthy it was

necessary to seek for some more permanent means of repair. So with her

consorts she made for Rio, arriving on the 16th, and reported her

damaged condition to the Brazilian authorities. Under the Hague

Convention she was entitled to remain at Rio for a sufficient time to be

made seaworthy, and the Brazilian Government interpreted the Convention

in the most generous sense. The Government floating dock was placed at

her disposal, and here for five days she was repaired, until with her

torn side plating entirely renewed she was as fit as ever for the perils

of the sea. Her engineers took the fullest advantage of those invaluable

days; they overhauled the boilers and engines so thoroughly that when

the bold cruiser emerged from Rio she was fresh and clean, ready to

steam at her own full speed of some twenty-six knots, and to fight

anything with which she could reasonably be classed in weight of metal.

By this time the _Glasgow_ had learned of the great secret concentration

about to take place at her old Pirates’ Lair to the north, and of those

other concentrations which were designed to ensure the destruction of

von Spee to whatsoever part of the wide oceans he might direct his

ships.

The disaster of Coronel had set the Admiralty bustling to very good and

thorough purpose. No fewer than five squadrons were directed to

concentrate for the one purpose of ridding the seas of the German

cruisers. First came down Sturdee with the battle cruisers _Invincible_

and _Inflexible_ to join the _Carnarvon_, _Glasgow_, _Kent_, _Cornwall_,

and _Bristol_ at the Pirates’ Lair. Upon their arrival the armoured

cruiser _Defence_ was ordered to the Cape to complete there a watching

squadron ready for von Spee should he seek safety in that direction. One

Japanese squadron remained to guard the China seas, and another of great

power sped across the Pacific towards the Chilean coast. In Australian

waters were the battle cruiser _Australia_ and her consorts of the Unit,

together with the French cruiser _Montcalm_. Von Spee’s end was certain;

what was not quite so certain was whether he would fall to the Japanese

or to Sturdee. Our Japanese Allies fully understood that we were

gratified at his falling to us; he had sunk our ships and was our just

prey. Yet if he had loitered much longer off Chili, and had not at last

ventured upon his fatal Falklands dash, the gallant Japanese would have

had him. Luck favoured us now, as it had favoured us a month earlier

when the _Emden_ was destroyed at the Cocos-Keeling Islands. Those who

have read my story of the _Emden_ in Chapter IX will remember that but

for the fortune of position which placed the _Sydney_ nearest to the

Islands when their wireless call for help went out, the famous raider

would in all probability have fallen to a Japanese light cruiser which

was with the Australian convoy.

The mission of the _Invincible_ and _Inflexible_, and the secrecy with

which it was enshrouded, is one of the most romantic episodes of the

war. I have already dealt fully with it. But there has since come to me

one little detail which reveals how very near we were, at one time, to a

German discovery of the whole game. The two battle cruisers coaled at

St. Vincent, Cape Verde Islands—Portuguese territory, within which we

had no powers of censorship—and at the Pirates’ Lair off the Brazilian

coast. Their movements began to be talked about in Rio and the River

Plate. Men knew of the Coronel disaster and shrewdly suspected that the

two great ships were on their way to the South Atlantic. A description

of their visit had been prepared, and was actually in type. It was

intended for publication in a local South American paper. That it was

not published, when urgent representations were made on our behalf,

reveals how scrupulous was the consideration with which our friends of

Brazil and the Argentine regarded our interests. There were no powers of

censorship, the appeal was as man to man, and Englishman to Portuguese,

and the appeal prevailed—even over the natural thirst of a journalist

for highly interesting news. The battle cruisers coaled and passed upon

their way, and no word of their visit went forth to Berlin or to von

Spee.

The _Glasgow_ was among the British cruisers which greeted Sturdee at

the Pirates’ Lair, and as soon as ammunition and stores had been

distributed and coal taken in, the voyage to the Falkland Islands began.

The squadron arrived in the evening of December 7th, and at daybreak of

the 8th von Spee ran upon his fate. The part played by the _Glasgow_ in

the action was less spectacular than that which fell to the battle

cruisers, but it was useful and has some features of interest. Among

other things it illustrates how little is known of the course of a naval

action—spread over hundreds of miles of sea—while it takes place, and

for some time even after it is over.

On the morning of December 8th, at eight o’clock, the approach of the

German squadron was observed, and at this moment the English squadron

was hard at work coaling. By 9.45 steam was up and the pursuit began.

The _Glasgow_ was lying in the inner harbour with banked fires, ready

for sea at two hours’ notice, but her Engineer Lieutenant-Commander

Shrubsole and his staff so busied themselves that in little over an hour

from the signal to raise steam she was under weigh, and an hour later

she was moving in chase of the enemy at a higher speed than she obtained

in her contractors’ trials when she was a brand-new ship three years

earlier. Throughout the war the engineering staff of the Royal Navy has

never failed to go one better than anyone had the right to expect of it.

It has never failed to respond to any call upon its energies or its

skill, never.

In order that we may understand how the _Dresden_ was able to make her

escape unscathed from her pursuers—she bolted without firing a shot in

the action—I must give some few details of the position of the ships

when the German light cruisers were ordered by von Spee to take

themselves off as best they might. Shortly before one o’clock the

_Glasgow_, a much faster ship than anything upon our side except the two

battle cruisers, was two miles ahead of the flagship _Invincible_, and

it was Sturdee’s intention to attack the _Scharnhorst_ and

_Gneisenau_—hull down on the horizon—with his speediest ships, the

_Invincible_, _Inflexible_, and _Glasgow_. Our three other

cruisers—_Carnarvon_, _Cornwall_, and _Kent_—were well astern of the

leaders. At 1.04 the _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_ turned to the

eastward to accept battle and to cover the retreat of their light

cruisers, which were then making off towards the south-east. Admiral

Sturdee, seeing at once that the light cruisers might make good their

escape unless the speedy _Glasgow_ were detached in pursuit, called up

the _Carnarvon_ (Rear-Admiral Stoddart) to his support, and ordered

Captain Luce in the _Glasgow_ to take charge of the job of rounding up

and destroying the _Leipzig_, _Nürnberg_, and _Dresden_. The _Glasgow_,

therefore, began the chase at a grave disadvantage. She first had to

work round the stern of the _Invincible_, pass the flagship upon her

disengaged side, and then steam off from far in the rear after the

_Cornwall_ and _Kent_, which had already begun the pursuit. The

_Leipzig_ and _Nürnberg_ were a long way off, and the _Dresden_ was even

farther. This cruiser, _Dresden_, though sister to the _Emden_, was,

unlike her sister and the others of von Spee’s light cruisers, fitted

with Parsons’ turbine engines. She was much the fastest of the German

ships at the Falkland Islands, and beginning her flight with a start of

some ten miles quickly was lost to sight beyond the horizon. The

_Cornwall_ and _Kent_ had no chance at all of overtaking her, and the

_Glasgow_, whose captain was the senior naval officer in command of the

pursuing squadron of the three English cruisers, could not overtake a

long stern chase by herself so long as the _Leipzig_ and _Nürnberg_ were

in his course and had not been disposed of. He was obliged first to make

sure of them. Steaming at twenty-four and a half knots, the _Glasgow_

drew away from the battle cruisers and began to overhaul the _Leipzig_

and _Nürnberg_. She decided to attack the _Leipzig_, which was nearest

to her, and to regulate her speed so that the _Cornwall_ and

_Kent_—both more powerful but much slower ships than herself—would not

be left behind. As it happened the engineering staffs of these not very

rapid “County” cruisers rose nobly to the emergency, the _Cornwall_ was

able to catch the _Leipzig_ and to take a large part in her destruction,

while the _Kent_ kept on after the _Nürnberg_ and, as it proved, was

successful in destroying her also. One of the ten boilers of the

_Nürnberg_ had been out of action for weeks past and her speed was a

good deal below its best.

The sea is a very big place, but that portion of it contained within the

ring of the visible horizon is very small. To those in the _Glasgow_,

pressing on in chase of the _Leipzig_, the scene appeared strange and

even ominous. They could see the _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_ far away,

moving apparently in pursuit of themselves, but the battle cruisers

hidden below the curve of the horizon they could not see. When firing

from the _Invincible_ and _Inflexible_ ceased for a while—as it did at

intervals—it seemed to the _Glasgow’s_ company that they were

sandwiched between von Spee’s armoured cruisers and his light cruisers,

and that the battle cruisers, upon which the result of the action

depended, had disappeared into space. The telegraph room and the

conning-tower doubtless knew what was happening, but the ship’s company

as a whole did not. To this brevity of vision, and to this detachment

from exact information, one must set down the extraordinarily

conflicting stories one receives from the observers of a naval action.

They see what is within the horizon but not what is below it, and that

which is below is not uncommonly far more important than that which is

above.

Shortly after three o’clock the _Glasgow_ opened upon the _Leipzig_ with

her foremost 6-inch gun at a range of about 12,000 yards (about seven

miles), seeking to outrange the lighter 4.1-inch guns carried by the

German cruiser. The distance closed down gradually to 10,000 yards, at

which range the German guns could occasionally get in their work. They

could, as the _Emden_ showed in her fight with the _Sydney_, and as was

observed at Coronel, do effective shooting even at 11,000 yards, but

hits were difficult to bring off, owing to the steepness of the fall of

the shells and the narrowness of the mark aimed at. For more than an

hour the _Glasgow_ engaged the _Leipzig_ by herself, knocking out her

secondary control position between the funnels, and allowing the

_Cornwall_ time to arrive and to help to finish the business with her

fourteen 6-inch guns. At one time the range fell as low as 9,000 yards,

the _Leipzig’s_ gunners became very accurate, and the _Glasgow_ suffered

nearly all the casualties which overtook her in the action.

About 4.20 the _Cornwall_ was able to open fire, and the _Glasgow_

joined her, so that both ships might concentrate upon the same side of

the _Leipzig_. Just as Admiral Sturdee in his fight with the

_Scharnhorst_ and the _Gneisenau_ could not afford to run risks of

damage far from a repairing base, so the _Glasgow_ and the _Cornwall_

with several hours of daylight before them were not justified in

allowing impatience to hazard the safety of the ships. They had to

regard the possible use of torpedoes and to look out for dropped mines.

Neither torpedoes nor mines were, in fact, used by the Germans, though

at one time in the course of the action drums, mistaken for mines, were

seen in the water and carefully avoided. They were cases in which

cartridges were brought from the magazines, and which were thrown

overboard after being emptied. As the afternoon drew on the weather

turned rather misty, and the attacking ships were obliged to close in a

little and hurry up the business. This was at half-past five.

From the first the _Leipzig_ never had a chance. She was out-steamed and

utterly out-gunned. Her opponents had between them four times her

broadside weight of metal, and the _Cornwall_ was an armoured ship. She

never had a chance, yet she went on, fired some 1,500 rounds—all that

remained in her magazines after Coronel—and did not finally cease

firing until after seven o’clock. For more than four hours her company

had looked certain death in the face yet gallantly stood to their work.

From first to last von Spee’s concentrated squadron played the naval

game according to the immemorial rules, and died like gentlemen. Peace

be to their ashes. In success and in failure they were the most gallant

and honourable of foes. At seven o’clock the _Leipzig_ was smashed to

pieces, she was blazing from stem to stern, she was doomed, yet gave no

sign of surrender.

At this moment, when the work of the _Glasgow_ and the _Cornwall_ had

been done—the _Cornwall_, it should be noted, bore the heavier burden

in this action—she was hit eighteen times, though little hurt, and

played her part with the utmost loyalty and devotion—at this moment

flashed the news through the ether that the _Scharnhorst_ and

_Gneisenau_ had been sunk. The news spread, and loud cheers went up from

the English ships. To the doomed company in the _Leipzig_ those cheers

must have carried some hint of the utter disaster which had overtaken

their squadron. It was not until nine o’clock (six hours after the

_Glasgow_ had begun to fire upon her) that she made her last plunge—if

a modern compartment ship does not blow up, she takes a powerful lot of

shell to sink her—and the English ships did everything that they could

to save life. The _Glasgow_ drew close up under her stern and lowered

boats, at the same time signalling that she was trying to save life.

There was no reply. Perhaps the signals were not read; perhaps there

were not many left alive to make reply. The _Leipzig_, still blazing,

rolled right over to port and disappeared. Six officers, including the

Navigating Lieutenant-Commander, and eight men were picked up by the

_Glasgow’s_ boats. Fourteen officers and men out of nearly 300! The

captives were treated as honoured guests and made much of. Our officers

and men took their gallant defeated foes to their hearts and gave them

of their best. It was not until two days later, when news arrived that

the _Leipzig’s_ sister and consort the _Nürnberg_ had been sunk by the

_Kent_, that these brave men broke down. Then they wept. They cared

little for the _Dresden_—a stranger from the North Atlantic—but the

_Nürnberg_ was their own consort, beside whom they had sailed for years,

and beside whom they had fought. They had hoped to the last that she

might make good her escape from the wreck of von Spee’s squadron. When

that last hope failed they wept. When I think of von Spee’s gallant men,

so human in their strength and in their weakness, I cannot regard them

as other than worthy brothers of the sea.

In the Coronel action the _Glasgow_, exposed to the concentrated fire of

the _Leipzig_ and _Dresden_ for an hour, and to the heavy guns of the

_Gneisenau_ for some ten minutes, did not lose a single man. There were

four slight wounds from splinters, that was all. But in her long fight

with the _Leipzig_ alone, assisted by the powerful batteries of the

_Cornwall_, the _Glasgow_ suffered two men killed, three men severely

wounded, and six slightly hurt. Such are the strange chances of war.

After Coronel, though they had seen two of their own ships go down and

were in flight from an overwhelming enemy, the officers and men were

wonderfully cheerful. The shrewder the buffets of Fate the stiffer

became their tails. But after the Falklands, when success had wiped out

the humiliation of failure, there came a nervous reaction. Defeat could

not depress the spirit of these men, but victory, by relieving their

minds from the long strain of the past months, made them captious and

irritable. Perhaps their spirits were overshadowed by the prospect of

the weary hunt for the fugitive _Dresden_.

* * * * *

By wondrous accident perchance one may

Grope out a needle in a load of hay.

[Illustration: THE CRUISE OF THE “GLASGOW.”]

Four German cruisers had been sunk, but one, the _Dresden_, had escaped,

and the story of the next three months is the story of a search—always

wearisome, sometimes dangerous, sometimes even absurd. The Straits of

Magellan, the islands of Tierra del Fuego and of the Horn, and the west

coast of the South American spur are a maze of inlets, many uncharted,

nearly all unsurveyed. The hunt for the elusive _Dresden_ among the

channels, creeks, and islands was far more difficult than the proverbial

grope for a needle in a load of hay. A needle buried in hay cannot

change its position; provided that it really be hidden in a load,

patience and a magnet will infallibly bring it forth. The _Dresden_

could move from one hiding place to another, no search for her could

ever exhaust the possible hiding-places, and it was not positively known

until after she had been run down and destroyed where she had been in

hiding. That she was found after three weary months may be explained by

that one word which explains so much in naval work—coal. The _Dresden_

after her flight from the Falkland Islands action was short of coal; von

Spee’s attendant colliers, _Baden_ and _Santa Isabel_, had been pursued

and sunk by the _Bristol_ and the armed liner _Macedonia_, and she was

cast upon the world without means of replenishing her bunkers. This was,

of course, known to her pursuers, so that they expected, and expected

rightly, that she would hang about in some secluded creek until her

dwindling supplies drove her forth upon the seas to hunt for more. Which

is what happened.

Upon the evening of December 8th, after the _Glasgow_ and _Cornwall_ had

disposed of the _Leipzig_, there were one English and two German

cruisers unaccounted for. The _Kent_ had last been seen chasing the

_Nürnberg_ towards the south-east, while the _Dresden_ was disappearing

over the curve of the horizon to the south. Upon the following morning

no news had come in from the _Kent_, and some anxiety was felt; it was

necessary to find her before proceeding with the pursuit of the

_Dresden_, and much valuable time was lost. It happened that during her

fight with the _Nürnberg_, which she sank in a most business-like

fashion, the _Kent’s_ aerials were shot away and she lost wireless

contact with Sturdee’s squadron. The _Glasgow_ was ordered off to search

for her, but fortunately the _Kent_ turned up on the morning of the 10th

deservedly triumphant. She had performed the great feat of catching and

sinking a vessel which on paper was much faster than herself, and she

had done it though short of coal and at the sacrifice of everything

wooden on board, including the wardroom furniture. She was compelled

with the _Glasgow_ and _Cornwall_ to return to Port Stanley for coal,

and this delay was of the utmost service to the fugitive _Dresden_.

Though the movements of that cruiser, in the interval, were not learned

until much later, it will be convenient if I give them now, so that the

situation may be made clear. The _Dresden_ had owed her escape to her

speed and to the occupation of the _Glasgow_—the only cruiser upon our

side which could catch her—with the _Leipzig_. She got clear away,

rounded the Horn on the 9th, and on December 10th entered the Cockburn

Channel on the west coast of Tierra del Fuego. At Stoll Bay she passed

the night, and her coal-bunkers being empty sent men ashore to cut

enough wood to enable her to struggle up to Punta Arenas. She ran a

great risk by making for so conspicuous a port, but she had no choice.

Coal must be obtained somehow or her number would speedily go up. She

was not entitled to get Chilean coal, for she had managed to delude the

authorities into supplying her upon five previous occasions during the

statutory period of three months. Once in three months a belligerent

warship is permitted, under the Hague Rules, to coal at the ports of a

neutral country; once she claims this privilege she is cut off from

getting more coal from the same country for three months. But the

_Dresden_ again managed, as she had already done four times before, to

secure supplies illegitimately. She coaled at Punta Arenas, remained

there for thirty-one hours—though after twenty-four hours she was

liable to internment—and left at 10 p.m. on the 13th. It was this

disregard for the Hague Rules which led to the destruction of the

_Dresden_ in Chilean territorial waters at Juan Fernandez three months

later. We held that she had broken international law deliberately many

times, she was no longer entitled to claim its protection. She could not

disregard it when it knocked against her convenience, and shelter

herself under it when in need of a protective mantle. She had by her own

violations become an outlaw.

At 2.30 a.m. on the 13th, Sturdee learned that the _Dresden_ was at

Punta Arenas. The _Bristol_, which was ready, jumped off the mark at

once; the _Inflexible_ and the _Glasgow_, which were not quite ready,

got off at 9.15. Thus it happened that the _Bristol_ reached Punta

Arenas seventeen hours after the _Dresden_ had left, to vanish, as it

were, into space, and not to be heard of again for a couple of months.

What she did was to slip down again into the Cockburn Channel and lie at

anchor in Hewett Bay near the southern exit. On December 26th she

shifted her quarters to an uncharted and totally uninhabited creek,

called the Gonzales Channel, and there she lay in idle security until

February 4th.

During the long weeks of the _Dresden’s_ stay in Hewett Bay and the

Gonzales Channel, the English cruisers were busily hunting for her among

the islets and inlets of the Magellan Straits, Tierra del Fuego, and the

west coast of the South American spur. The _Carnarvon_, _Cornwall_, and

_Kent_ took charge of the Magellan Straits, the _Glasgow_ and _Bristol_

ferreted about the recesses of the west coast with the _Inflexible_

outside of them to chase the sea-rat should she break cover for the

open. The battle cruiser _Australia_ came in from the Pacific and with

the “County” cruiser _Newcastle_, from Mexico, kept watch off

Valparaiso. The _Dresden_, lying snug in the Gonzales Channel, was not

approached except once, on December 29th, when one of the searchers was

within twenty miles of her hiding-place. The weather was thick and she

was not seen. The big ships did not long waste their time over the

search. It was one better suited to light craft, for lighter craft even

than the _Glasgow_ or _Bristol_, for which the uncharted channels often

threatened grave dangers. Armed patrols or picket boats, of shallow

draught, were best suited to the work, and in its later stages were

furbished up and made available.

On December 16th the battle cruisers _Invincible_ and _Inflexible_ were

recalled to England, and the _Canopus_ went north to act as guardship at

the precious Pirates’ Lair which has figured so often in these pages.

The _Australia_ passed on her way to the Atlantic, across which the

Canadian contingents were in need of convoy, and the supervision of the

_Dresden_ search devolved upon Admiral Stoddart of the _Carnarvon_. The

Admiral with the _Carnarvon_ and _Cornwall_ remained in and out of the

Magellan Straits, while the captain of the _Glasgow_, with him the

_Kent_, _Bristol_, and _Newcastle_, was put in charge of the Chilean

Archipelago. Gradually as time went on and the _Dresden_ lay low—all

this while in the Gonzales Channel—other ships went away upon more

urgent duties and the chase was left to the _Glasgow_, _Kent_, and an

armed liner _Orama_. The _Bristol_ had butted herself ashore in one of

the unsurveyed channels and was obliged to seek a dock for repairs. The

great concentration of which the _Glasgow_ had been the focus was over,

she was now back at her old police work, though not upon her old

station. She had begun the war in sole charge of the South Atlantic; the

wheel of circumstance had brought her, with her consorts, to the charge

of the South Pacific.

Although the _Glasgow’s_ company had had many experiences of the risks

of war, they had never felt in action the strain upon their nerves which

was always with them day in day out during that long weary hunt for the

_Dresden_ in the Chilean Archipelago. They explored no less than 7,000

miles of narrow waters, for the most part uncharted, feeling their way

by lead and by mother wit, becoming learned in the look of the towering

rocks which shut them in, and in the kelp growing upon their sea

margins. The channels wound among steep high cliffs, around which they

could not see. As they worked stealthily round sharp corners, they were

always expecting to encounter the _Dresden_ with every gun and torpedo

tube registered upon the narrow space into which they must emerge. Their

own guns and torpedoes were always ready for instant action, but in this

game of hide-and-seek the advantage of surprise must always rest with

the hidden conscious enemy. This daily strain went on through half of

December and the whole of January and February! One cannot feel

surprised to learn that in the view of the _Glasgow’s_ company the

actions of Coronel and the Falklands were gay picnics when set in

comparison with that hourly expectation throughout two and a half months

of the sudden discovery of the _Dresden_, and that anticipated blast of

every gun and mouldy which she could on the instant bring to bear. Added

to this danger of sudden attack was the ever-present risk of maritime

disaster. It is no light task to navigate for three months waters to

which exist no sailing directions and no charts of even tolerable

accuracy. Upon Captain Luce and upon his second in command,

Lieutenant-Commander Wilfred Thompson, rested a load of responsibility

which it would be difficult to overestimate.

It was not until early in March that any authentic news of the movements

of the _Dresden_ became available. Upon February 4th she had issued

forth of the Gonzales Channel and crept stealthily up the Chilean coast.

To the _Glasgow_ had come during the long weeks of the _Dresden’s_

hiding many reports that she was obliged to investigate. Many times our

own cruisers were seen by ignorant observers on shore and mistaken for

the _Dresden_; out would flow stories which, wandering by way of South

American ports—and sometimes by way of London itself—would come to

rest in the _Glasgow’s_ wireless-room and increase the burden thrown

upon her officers. More than once she was taken by shore watchers to be

the _Dresden_, and urgently warned from home to be on the look-out for

herself!

At last the veil lifted. The _Dresden_, with her coal of Punta Arenas

approaching exhaustion, was sighted at a certain spot well up the

Chilean coast where had been situated von Spee’s secret Lair. The news

was rushed out to the _Glasgow_, and since her consort, the _Kent_, was

nearest to the designated spot this cruiser was despatched at once to

investigate. As at the Falklands action, her engineers rose to the need

for rapid movement. For thirty-six hours continuously she steamed

northwards at seventeen knots, and arrived just before daybreak on the

7th. Nothing was then in sight, nor until three o’clock in the afternoon

of the following day, the 8th. While in misty weather the _Kent_ was

waiting and watching out at sea, a cloud bank lifted and the _Dresden_

was revealed. She had not been seen by us since the day of her flight,

December 8th, exactly three months before! The _Dresden_ was a shabby

spectacle, her paint gone, her sides raw with rust and standing high out

of the water. She was evidently light, and almost out of coal. The

_Kent_ at once made for her quarry, but the _Dresden_, a much faster

ship, drew away. Foul as she was, for she had not been in dock since the

war began, the _Kent_ was little cleaner. The _Dresden_ drew away, but

the relentless pursuit of the indefatigable _Kent_ kept her at full

speed for six hours, and left her with no more than enough fuel to reach

Masafuera or Juan Fernandez. By thus forcing the _Dresden_ to burn most

of the fuel which still remained in her bunkers, the _Kent_ performed an

invaluable service. This was on March 8th. Juan Fernandez was judged to

be the most likely spot in which she would take refuge, and thither the

_Glasgow_, _Kent_, and _Orama_ foregathered, arriving at daybreak on the

14th. In Cumberland Bay, 600 yards from the shore, the _Dresden_ lay at

anchor; the chase was over. She had arrived at 8.30 a.m. on the 9th; she

had been in Chilean waters for nearly five days. Yet her flag was still

flying, and there was no evidence that she had been interned. Cumberland

Bay is a small settlement, and there was no Chilean force present

capable of interning a German warship.

I will indicate what happened. The main facts have been told in the

correspondence which took place later between the Chilean and British

Governments. I will tell the story as I have myself gathered it, and as

I interpret it.

The _Dresden_ lay in neutral Chilean waters, yet her flag was flying,

and she had trained her guns upon the English squadron which had found

her there. There was nothing to prevent her—though liable to

internment—from making off unless steps were taken at once to put her

out of action. She had many times before broken the neutrality

regulations of Chili, and was rightly held by us to be an outlaw to be

captured or sunk at sight. Acting upon this just interpretation of the

true meaning of neutrality, Captain Luce of the _Glasgow_, the senior

naval officer, directed his own guns and those of the _Kent_ to be

immediately fired upon the _Dresden_. The first broadside dismounted her

forecastle guns and set her ablaze. She returned the fire without

touching either of the English ships. Then, after an inglorious two and

a half minutes, the _Dresden’s_ flag came down.

Captain Lüdecke of the _Dresden_ despatched a boat conveying his

“adjutant” to the _Glasgow_ for what he called “negotiations,” but the

English captain declined a parley. He would accept nothing but

unconditional surrender. Lüdecke claimed that his ship was entitled to

remain in Cumberland Bay for repairs, that she had not been interned,

and that his flag had been struck as a signal of negotiation and not of

surrender. When the Englishman Luce would not talk except through the

voices of his guns, the German adjutant went back to his ship and

Lüdecke then blew her up. His crew had already gone ashore, and the

preparations for destroying the _Dresden_ had been made before her

captain entered upon his so-called “negotiations.”

It was upon the whole fortunate that Lüdecke took the step of sinking

the _Dresden_ himself. It might have caused awkward diplomatic

complications had we taken possession of her in undoubted Chilean

territorial waters, and yet we could not have permitted her any

opportunity of escaping under the fiction of internment. Nothing would

have been heard of internment if the English squadron had not turned

up—the _Dresden_ had already made an appointment with a collier—and if

we had not by our fire so damaged the cruiser that she could not have

taken once more to the sea. Her self-destruction saved us a great deal

of trouble. In the interval between the firing and the sinking of the

_Dresden_, the Maritime Governor of Juan Fernandez suggested that the

English should take away essential parts of the machinery and telegraph

for a Chilean warship to do the internment business. Neither of these

proceedings was necessary after the explosion. The _Dresden_ was at the

bottom of Cumberland Bay, and the British Government apologised to the

Chileans for the technical violation of territorial waters. The apology

was accepted, and everyone was happy—not the least the officers and men

of the _Dresden_ who, after months of aimless, hopeless wanderings,

found themselves still alive and in a sunny land flowing with milk and

honey. After their long stay in Tierra del Fuego the warmth of Chili

must have seemed like paradise. The _Dresden_ yielded to the _Glasgow_

one item of the spoils of war. After the German cruiser had sunk, a

small pig was seen swimming about in the Bay. It had been left behind by

its late friends, but found new ones in the _Glasgow’s_ crew. That pig

is alive still, or was until quite recently. Grown very large, very

hairy, and very truculent, and appropriately named von Tirpitz, it has

been preserved from the fate which waits upon less famous pigs, and

possesses in England a sty and a nameplate all to its distinguished

self.

With the sinking of the _Dresden_ the cruise of the _Glasgow_, which I

have set out to tell, comes to a close. She returned to the South

Atlantic, and for a further stretch of eighteen months her officers and

men continued their duties on board. But life must for them have become

rather dull. There were no more Coronels, or Falkland Islands actions,

or hunts for elusive German cruisers. Just the daily work of a light

cruiser on patrol duty in time of war. When in the limelight they played

their part worthily, and I do not doubt continued to play it as

worthily, though less conspicuously, when they passed into the darkness

of the wings, and other officers, other men, and other ships occupied in

their turn the bright scenes upon the naval stage.

CHAPTER XIII

THE BATTLE OF THE GIANTS: SOME IMPRESSIONS

AND REFLECTIONS

PART I

It is strange how events of great national importance become associated

in one’s mind with small personal experiences. I have told with what

vividness I remember the receipt in November, 1914, of private news that

the battle cruisers _Invincible_ and _Inflexible_ had left Devonport for

the Falkland Islands, and how I heard Lord Rosebery read out Sturdee’s

victorious dispatch to 6,000 people in St. Andrew’s Hall, Glasgow. In a

similar way the Jutland battle became impressed upon my mind in an

unforgettable personal fashion. On May 22nd, 1916, I learned that

Admiral Beatty had at his disposal the four “Cats”—_Lion_, _Tiger_,

_Queen Mary_, and _Princess Royal_—of about twenty-nine knots speed,

and each armed with eight 13.5-inch guns, the two battle cruisers _New

Zealand_ and _Indefatigable_, of some twenty-seven knots of speed, and

carrying each eight 12-inch guns, and the _Queen Elizabeth_, of

twenty-five knots, all of which were armed with eight of the new 15-inch

guns, which were a great advance upon the earlier thirteen-point-fives.

The ships of the Fifth Battle Squadron had all been completed since the

war began. The _Queen Elizabeth_ herself went into dock at Rosyth for

repairs, so that for immediate service the squadron was reduced to four

ships—_Barham_, _Valiant_, _Warspite_, and _Malaya_.

Upon the following Saturday, May 27th, I was invited to lunch in one of

the battleships, but upon arrival at South Queensferry, I found the

Fleet under Short Notice for sea, and no one was allowed to leave the

ships, or to receive friends on board. It was a beautiful day, the long,

light-coloured Cats and the Futurist-grey battleships were a most noble

sight, but I felt too much like a Peri shut out of Paradise to be happy

in observing them. A day or two later, Thursday, June 1st, was fixed for

my next visit, but again the Fates were unkind. When I arrived in the

early morning and stood upon the heights overlooking the anchorage,

Beatty’s Fleet had gone, and, though I did not know it, had even then

fought the Jutland battle. In the afternoon, news came with the return

to the Forth of the damaged battleship _Warspite_ surrounded by her

attendant destroyers. That was on the Thursday afternoon, but it was not

until the evening of Friday that the first Admiralty message was issued,

that famous message which will never be forgotten either by the country

or by the Navy. The impression which it made may be simply illustrated.

I was sitting in my drawing-room after dinner, anxiously looking for

news both on national and personal grounds, when a newsboy shrieked

under my window “Great Naval Disaster: Five British Battleships Sunk.”

The news printed in the paper was not so bad as that shouted, but it was

bad enough; it gave the impression of very heavy losses incurred for no

compensating purpose, and turned what had really been a conspicuous

naval success into an apology for a naval disaster. As a humble student,

I could to some extent read between the lines of the dispatch and dimly

perceive what had happened, but to the mass of the British public, the

wording of that immortal document could not have been worse conceived.

To them it seemed that the End of All Things was at hand.

The story runs that the first bulletin was made up by clerks from scraps

of messages which came over the wireless from the Grand Fleet, but in

which the most important sentence of all was omitted. “The Germans are

claiming a victory,” wailed the Admiralty clerks through the aerials at

Whitehall. “What shall we say?” “Say,” snapped the Grand Fleet, “say

that we gave them hell!” If the Admiralty had only said this, said it,

too, in curt, blasphemous naval fashion, the public would have

understood, and all would have been well. What a dramatic chance was

then lost! Think what a roar of laughter and cheering would have echoed

round the world if the first dispatch had run as follows:

“We have met and fought the German Fleet, and given it hell. Beatty lost

the _Queen Mary_ and _Indefatigable_ in the first part of the battle

when the odds were heavily against us, but Jellicoe coming up enveloped

the enemy, and was only prevented by mist and low visibility from

destroying him utterly. The Germans have lost as many ships as we have,

and are shattered beyond repair.”

That message, in a few words, would have given a true impression of the

greatest sea fight that the world has known, a fight, too, which has

established beyond question the unchallengeable supremacy of British

strategy, battle tactics, seamanship, discipline, and devotion to duty

of every man and boy in the professional Navy. In the technical sense,

it was an indecisive battle: the Germans escaped destruction. But

morally, and in its practical results, no sea fight has been more

decisive. Nearly two years have passed since that morning of June 1st

when the grey dawn showed the seas empty of German ships, and though the

High Seas Fleet has put out many times since then, it has never again

ventured to engage us. Jutland drove sea warfare, for the Germans,

beneath the surface, a petty war of raids upon merchant vessels, a

war—as against neutrals—of piracy and murder. By eight o’clock on the

evening of May 31st, 1916, the Germans had been out-fought,

outmanœuvred, and cut off from their bases. Had the battle begun three

hours earlier, and had visibility been as full as it had been in the

Falkland Islands action, had there been, above all, ample sea room,

there would not have been a German battleship afloat when the sun went

down. There never was a luckier fleet than that one which scrambled away

through the darkness of May 31st-June 1st, worked its way round the

enveloping horns of Jellicoe, Beatty, and Evan-Thomas, and arrived

gasping and shattered at Wilhelmshaven. We can pardon the Kaiser, who,

in his relief for a crowning mercy, proclaimed the escape to be a

glorious victory.

But though the Kaiser may, after his manner, talk of victories, German

naval officers cherish no illusions about Jutland. If one takes the

trouble to analyse their very full dispatches, their relief at escaping

destruction shines forth too plainly to be mistaken. Admiral Scheer got

away, and showed himself to be a consummate master of his art. But he

never, in his dispatches, claims that the British Fleets were defeated

in the military sense. They were foiled, chiefly through his own skill,

but they were not defeated. The German dispatches state definitely that

the battle of May 31st “confirmed the old truth, that the large fighting

ship, the ship which combines the maximum of strength in attack and

defence, rules the seas.” The relation of strength, they say, between

the English and German Fleets, “was roughly two to one.” They do not

claim that this overwhelming superiority in our strength was sensibly

reduced by the losses in the battle, nor that the large English fighting

ships—admittedly larger, much more numerous, and more powerfully gunned

than their own—ceased after Jutland to rule the seas. Their claim,

critically examined, is simply that in the circumstances the German

ships made a highly successful escape. And so indeed they did.

The Jutland battle always presents itself to my mind in a series of

clear-cut pictures. Very few of those who take part in a big naval

battle see anything of it. They are at their stations, occupied with

their pressing duties, and the world without is hidden from them. I try

to imagine the various phases of the battle as they were unfolded before

the eyes of those few in the fighting squadrons who did see. Perhaps if

I try to paint for my readers those scenes which are vividly before me,

I may convey to them something of what I have tried to learn myself.

Let us transport ourselves to the signal bridge of Admiral Beatty’s

flagship, the battle cruiser _Lion_, and take up station there upon the

afternoon of May 31st, at half-past two. It is a fine afternoon, though

hazy; the clouds lie in heavy banks, and the horizon, instead of

appearing as a hard line, is an indefinable blend of grey sea and grey

cloud. It is a day of “low visibility,” a day greatly favouring a weak

fleet which desires to evade a decisive action. We have been sweeping

the lower North Sea, and are steering towards the north-west on our way

to rejoin Jellicoe’s main Fleet. Our flagship, _Lion_, is the leading

vessel of the First Battle Cruiser Squadron, and following behind us, we

can see the _Princess Royal_, _Queen Mary_, and _Tiger_. At a little

distance behind the _Tiger_ appear the two ships which remain to us of

the Second Battle Cruiser Squadron, the _Indefatigable_ and _New

Zealand_, fine powerful ships, but neither so fast nor so powerful as

are our four Cats of the First Squadron. Some five or six miles to the

west of us we can make out, against the afternoon sky, the huge bulk of

the _Barham_, which, followed by her three consorts, _Valiant_,

_Warspite_, and _Malaya_, leads the Fifth Battle Squadron of the most

powerful fighting ships afloat. We are the spear-head of Beatty’s Fleet,

but those great ships yonder, silhouetted against the sky, are its most

solid shaft.

[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF THE GIANTS.]

Word runs round the ship that the enemy has been sighted, but since we

know nothing of his numbers or of his quality—Jutland, though

anticipated and worked for, was essentially a battle of encounter—our

light cruisers fly off to make touch and find out for us. Away also

soars seaplane, rising from the platform of our carrying ship

_Engadine_, a clumsy-looking seagull, with its big pontoon feet, but

very fast and very deftly handled. The seaplane flies low, for the

clouds droop towards the sea, it is heavily fired upon, but is not hit,

and it returns to tell us—or rather the Admiral, in his conning tower

below—just what he wishes to learn. There is an enemy battle cruiser

squadron immediately in front of us, consisting of five armoured ships,

with their attendant light cruisers and destroyers. The German battle

cruisers are: _Derfflinger_ (12-inch guns), _Lützow_ (12-inch), _Moltke_

(11-inch), _Seydlitz_ (11-inch), and another stated by the Germans to be

the _von der Tann_, which had more than once been reported lost. Since

our four big battle cruisers carry 13.5-inch guns, and two other guns of

12-inch, and the four battleships supporting us great 15-inch weapons,

we ought to eat up the German battle cruisers if we can draw near enough

to see them distinctly. By half-past three the two British battle

cruiser squadrons are moving at twenty-five knots, formed up in line of

battle, and the Fifth Battle Squadron, still some five miles away, is

steaming at about twenty-three knots. The Germans have turned in a

southerly direction, and are flying at full speed upon a course which is

roughly parallel with that which we have now taken up. During the past

hour we have come round nearly twelve points—eight points go to a right

angle—and are now speeding away from Jellicoe’s Grand Fleet, which is

some forty miles distant to the north and west. Since we are faster than

Jellicoe, the gap between us and him is steadily opening out.

From the signal bridge, a very exposed position, we can see the turret

guns below us and the spotting top above. The turrets swing round, as

the gunners inside get their directions from the gunnery-control officer

who, in his turn, receives every few moments the results of the

range-finding and rate-of-change observations which are being

continually taken by petty officers charged with the duty. Further

corrections will be made when the guns begin to shoot, and the spotting

officers aloft watch for the splashes of the shells as they fall into

the sea. Naval gunnery, in spite of all the brains and experience

lavished upon it, must always be far from an exact science. One has to

do with moving ships firing at other moving ships, many factors which go

to a precise calculation are imperfectly known, and though the margin of

error may be reduced by modern instruments of precision, the long

fighting ranges of to-day make the error substantial. The lower the

visibility, the greater becomes the gunner’s uncertainty, for neither

range-finding nor spotting can be carried on with accuracy. Even on the

clearest of days it is difficult to “spot” a shell-splash at more than

14,000 yards (eight land miles), a range which is short for the huge

naval gun. When many guns are firing, it is not easy to pick up the

splashes of one’s own shells, and to distinguish between their

water-bursts and the camouflage put up by an enemy.

At our position upon the signal bridge, though we are there only in

spirit, we probably feel much more of excitement than does any officer

or man of the big ship upon which we have intruded our ghostly presence.

Most of them can see nothing; all of them are too busy upon their duties

to bother about personal feelings. There is an atmosphere of serene

confidence in themselves and their ship which communicates itself even

to outsiders like us. At 3.48 the enemy is some 18,500 yards distance,

and visible, for the light has improved, and firing begins almost

simultaneously from us and our opponents. The first crash from the

_Lion’s_ two fore-turrets nearly throws us off the bridge, so sudden and

fierce it is, and so little does its intensity seem to be subdued by our

ear-protectors. But as other crashes follow down the line we grow

accustomed to them, grip tightly at the hand-rail, and forget ourselves

in the grandeur of the sight unfolding itself before us. Away, far away,

is the enemy, hull down, smothered in smoke and by the huge gouts of

spray thrown up by our bursting shells. He is adding to the splashes by

firing his own side batteries into the sea to confuse the judgment of

our spotters.

At each discharge from our ship, a great cone of incandescent gas flames

forth, cutting like a sword through the pale curtain of smoke. From the

distant enemy ships we can see thin flashes spurt in reply, and his

shells pitch beside us and over us, lashing our decks with sea foam and

sometimes throwing a torrent of water over the spotting top and bridge.

Before five minutes have passed, we are wet through, our ears are

drumming in spite of the faithful protectors, and all sensation except

of absorbed interest in the battle has left us. At any moment we may be

scattered by a bursting shell, or carried to the bottom with our sunken

ship, but we do not give a thought to the risks.

While we are firing at the enemy, and he is firing at us at ranges

varying from ten to eight miles, a fierce battle is going on between the

lines of big ships. Light cruisers are fighting light cruisers,

destroyers are rushing upon destroyers. At an early stage in the action,

the German Admiral Hipper—in command of the battle cruisers—launched

fifteen destroyers at our line, and was taught a rough lesson in the

quality of the boys who man our T.B.D.s. Twelve of our heavier and more

powerfully armed destroyers fell upon the German fifteen, huddled them

into a bunch, and had started to lay them out scientifically with gun

and torpedo, when they fled back to the shelter of their own big ships.

Following them up, our destroyers delivered a volley of torpedoes upon

the German battle cruisers at less than 3,000 yards distance. Probably

no damage was done, for it is the forlornest of jobs to loose mouldies

against fast manœuvring ships, but lack of success does not in any way

dim the splendour of the attempt. As light cruisers and destroyers fight

and manœuvre, the torrent of heavy shells screams over their heads,

flying as high in their course as Alpine mountains, and dropping almost

vertically near the lines of battle cruisers.

As soon as we turned to the south in pursuit of Hipper’s advance

squadron of battle cruisers, Admiral Evan-Thomas closed his supporting

battleships upon us, and we can now see them clearly about two miles

away on our starboard quarter, formed in line of battle, the flagship

_Barham_ leading. At eight minutes past four they join in the fight,

firing at a range of 20,000 yards (twelve miles), not an excessive

distance for their tremendous flat-shooting 15-inch guns if the light

were good, but too far for accuracy now that the enemy ships can be seen

so very indistinctly. Up to now the German gunnery has been good; our

ships have not often been seriously struck, but the shells in bunched

salvoes have fallen very closely beside us. Our armour, though much

thinner than that of the battleships behind us, is sufficient to keep

off the enemy’s light shells—our 13.5-inch shells are twice the weight

of his 11-inch, and the 15-inch shells fired by the Queen Elizabeths

astern of us are more than twice the weight of his 12-inch. We feel

little anxiety for our turrets, conning towers, or sides, but we notice

how steeply his salvoes are falling at the long ranges, and are not

without concern for our thin decks should any 12-inch shells of 850 lb.

weight plump fairly upon them from the skies. By half-past four the

German fire has slackened a good deal, has become ragged and inaccurate,

showing that we are getting home with our heavy stuff, and the third

ship in the line is seen to be on fire. All is going well, the enemy is

outclassed in ships and in guns; we are still between him and his bases

to the south-west, he is already becoming squeezed up against the big

banks which stretch out one hundred miles from the Jutland coast, and

for a while it looks as if Beatty had struck something both soft and

good.

But a few minutes make a great change. All through the last hour we have

been steaming fast towards the main German High Seas Fleet and away from

Jellicoe, and at 4.42 the leading German battleships can be seen upon

the smoky horizon to the south-east. Though we do not know it yet, the

whole High Seas Fleet is before us, including sixteen of the best German

ships, and it were the worst of folly to go any farther towards it. We

could, it is true, completely outflank it by continuing on our present

course, and with our high speed might avoid being crushed in a general

action, but we should have irrevocably separated ourselves from

Jellicoe, and have committed a tactical mistake of the biggest kind. We

should have divided the English forces in the face of the enemy, instead

of concentrating them. So a quick order comes from the conning tower

below, and away beside us runs a signal hoist. “Sixteen points,

starboard.” Sixteen points mean a complete half-circle, and round come

our ships, the _Lion_ leading, turning in a curve of which the diameter

is nearly a mile, and heading now to the north, towards Jellicoe,

instead of to the south, away from him. Our purpose now is to keep the

Germans fully occupied until Jellicoe, who is driving his battleships at

their fullest speed, can come down and wipe Fritz off the seas. As we

come round, the German battle cruisers follow our manœuvre, and also

turn through sixteen points in order to place themselves at the head of

the enemy’s battle line.

As we swing round and take up our new course, we pass between the Queen

Elizabeths and the enemy, masking their fire, and for a few minutes we

are exposed in the midst of a critical manœuvre to the concentrated

salvoes of every German battleship within range. The range is long, the

German shells fired with high elevation fall very steeply, and we are

safe except from the ill-luck of heavy projectiles pitching upon our

decks. From the signal bridge of the _Lion_ we can see every battle

cruiser as it swings, or as it approaches the turning point, we can see

the whole beautiful length of them, and we also see a sight which has

never before been impressed upon the eyes of man. For we see two

splendid battle cruisers struck and sink; first the _Indefatigable_, and

then the _Queen Mary_. It is not permitted to us to describe the scene

as actually it presented itself to our eyes.

Beatty has lost two battle cruisers, one of the first class and one of

the second. There remain to him four—the three Cats and the _New

Zealand_; he is sorely weakened, but does not hesitate. He has two

duties to carry out—to lead the enemy towards Jellicoe, and so dispose

of his battle cruisers beyond the head of the German lines as powerfully

to aid Jellicoe in completing their development. Beatty is now round,

and round also comes the Fifth Battle Squadron, forming astern of the

battle cruisers, and with them engaging the leading German ships. The

enemy is some 14,000 yards distant from us in the _Lion_ (8½ miles), and

this range changes little while Beatty is speeding first north and then

north-east, in order to cross the “T” of the German line. We will

continue to stand upon the _Lion’s_ bridge during the execution of this

most spirited manœuvre, and then leave Beatty’s flagship in order to

observe from the spotting top of a battleship how the four Queen

Elizabeths fought the whole High Seas Fleet, while our battle cruisers

were turning its van. What these splendid ships did, and did to

perfection, was to stall the Germans off, and so give time both for the

enveloping movement of Beatty and for the arrival and deployment of

Jellicoe’s main Fleet.

By five o’clock Beatty is fairly off upon his gallant adventure, and

during the next hour, the hardest fought part of the whole battle, the

gap between the battle cruisers and the four supporting battleships

steadily widens. If the Germans are to be enveloped, Beatty must at the

critical moment allow sufficient space between himself and Evan-Thomas

for Jellicoe to deploy his big Fleet between them, and this involves on

the part of the Commander-in-Chief a deployment in the midst of battle

of a delicacy and accuracy only possible to a naval tactician of the

highest order. But both Beatty and Evan-Thomas know their Jellicoe, to

whom, at few-minute intervals, crackle from the aerials above us

wireless messages giving with naval precision the exact courses and

speeds of our ships and the bearings of the enemy. For an hour—up to

the moment when we turned to the north—we ran away from Jellicoe, but

during the next hour we steamed towards him; we know that he is pressing

to our aid with all the speed which his panting engineers can get out of

his squadrons. Beatty’s battle cruisers, curving round the head of the

German line at a range of 14,000 to 12,000 yards, are firing all the

while, and being fired at all the while, but though often hit, they are

safer now than when they were a couple of miles more distant.

We have now reached a very important phase in the battle. It is twenty

minutes past six. At six o’clock the leading vessels of Jellicoe’s Grand

Fleet had been sighted five miles to the north of us and his three

battle cruisers—_Invincible_ (Admiral Hood), _Inflexible_, and

_Indomitable_—have flown down to the help of Beatty. They come into

action, steaming hard due south, and take station ahead of us in the

_Lion_. By this lengthening of his line to the south Beatty has now

completely enveloped the German battle cruisers, which turn through some

twelve points and endeavour to wriggle out of the jaws of the trap which

they see closing remorselessly upon them. They are followed in this turn

by the battleships of the High Seas Fleet which, for more than an hour,

have been faithfully hammered by Evan-Thomas’s Queen Elizabeths, and

show up against the sky a very ragged outline. The range of the battle

cruisers is now down to 8,000 yards, and they get well home upon

battleships as well as upon opponents of their own class. We do not

ourselves escape loss, for the _Invincible_, which has become the

leading ship, is shattered by concentrated gun-fire. The gallant Hood,

with his men, has gone to join his great naval ancestors.

* * * * *

And now let us put the clock back to the hour, 4.57, when the Queen

Elizabeths had completed their turn to the north, and had taken up

position astern of Beatty to hold off the main German Fleet while he is

making his enveloping rush. From the spotting top of the battleship upon

which we have descended we get a most inspiring view, though every now

and then we are smothered in oily smoke from the huge flat funnels below

us, and are drenched with water which is flung up in torrents by shells

bursting alongside. The enemy ships upon which we are firing are some

18,000 yards distant, we can with great difficulty make them out amid

the smoke and haze, and we wonder mightily how the keen-eyed spotting

officers beside us can judge and correct, as they appear to be doing,

the bursts of our shells more than ten miles distance. Our guns, and

those of our consorts, are firing deliberately, for we do not know how

long the battle will endure, and the supply of 15-inch shell and cordite

cannot be unlimited in the very biggest of ships. We learn from the

spotting officers that all our ships, except the _Valiant_, have been

hit several times while coming into action by dropping shots, but that

no serious harm has been done. Meanwhile the shells are falling fast

about us, and all of our ships are repeatedly straddled. The _Warspite_

suffered the most severely, though even she was able to go home to the

Forth under her own steam. This is the battleship whose steering gear

went wrong later in the action, and which turned two complete “O’s” at

full speed. Round she went in great circles of a mile in diameter,

spitting shots with every gun that bore upon the enemy during her wild

gyrations. Fritz began well, but does not seem able to stand punishment.

He rarely hits us now, though we are giving him a much better mark than

he presents to us. For we are silhouetted against the almost clear sky

to the west, while he—and there are a great many of him—is buried in

mist and smoke to the east. Rarely can our range-finding officers take a

clear observation; rarely can our spotters make sure of a correction.

Yet every now and then we note signs that our low-flying, hard-hitting

shells—each one of which weighs not much short of a ton!—are getting

home upon him at least as frequently as his shots are hitting us. Three

of his battleships are new, built since the war began, but the rest are

just Königs and Kaisers, no better than our Dreadnoughts of half a dozen

years ago. We would willingly take on twice our numbers of such

battleships and fight them to a finish upon a clear summer’s day.