THE CAREER OF VON SPEE
At the beginning of hostilities the strategic position in the Pacific
and Indian oceans should have been one that could have caused no
possible naval anxiety to the Allies. Japan had at once thrown in her
lot with us, and as we had squadrons in the China Seas, in the Indian
Ocean, and in Australasia there was, when the forces of our eastern
allies are added to them, a total naval strength incalculably greater
than that at the disposal of the enemy. But this fact notwithstanding,
there was for some months extraordinary uncertainty, and the
arrangements adopted by the Admiralty permitted a serious attack to
be made on our shipping and involved a tragic disaster to a British
squadron. The facts of the case are far from being completely known,
but the main features of the original situation and its development
make it possible to draw certain broad inferences, which are probably
correct.
In the summer of 1914 the German sea forces at Tsing-Tau consisted
of two armoured cruisers, two light cruisers, certain destroyers and
gun-boats. Leaving the destroyers and gun-boats behind, Von Spee in
the month of June abandoned his base at Tsing-Tau, and, after calling
at Nagasaki, made for the German possessions in the Caroline Islands.
His flag flew in _Scharnhorst_, and this ship with her sister vessel
_Gneisenau_ constituted his main strength. He had the two light
cruisers, _Leipzig_ and _Emden_, in his company, and on July 20,
when the situation was becoming acute, he ordered _Nürnberg_, which
was at San Francisco, and _Dresden_, which was at Vera Cruz, at the
other side of the American continent, to join him. _Nürnberg_ reached
him in a couple of weeks; _Dresden_ not till the end of October. By
mid-August, then, his force consisted of two armoured cruisers, each
with a broadside of six 8-inch and three 6-inch guns, and three light
cruisers armed only with 4-inch. Of the light cruisers _Emden_ and
_Nürnberg_ had a speed of between 25 and 26 knots; _Leipzig_ of about
23 or 24. The fighting value of the armoured cruisers was approximately
equal to that of _Minotaur_ and _Defence_ and probably superior to that
of the _Warrior_ class. The German 8-inch guns fired a projectile only
slightly lighter than the British 9.2, so that, gun for gun, there
should have been little to choose between them; while from the point
of view of the control of fire, the broadside of six homogeneous guns
could probably be used quite as effectively as a mixed armament of four
9.2’s and five 7.5’s, and more so than one of four 9.2’s and two 7.5’s.
To engage such a squadron with the certainty of success, therefore, at
least three British armoured cruisers of the latest type would have
been required.
Neither of the British squadrons in eastern waters possessed the
combination of speed and power that would have made them superior
to Von Spee’s force. Vice-Admiral Jerram, in the China station, had
under his command _Triumph_, _Minotaur_, _Hampshire_, _Newcastle_,
and _Yarmouth_. But _Triumph_ was not in commission at the outbreak
of war, and, though armed with 10-inch guns, she was three knots
slower than the German cruisers. Sir Richard Peirse’s command in the
East Indies consisted of _Swiftsure_, a sister ship of _Triumph_;
_Dartmouth_, a cruiser of the same class as _Newcastle_; and _Fox_, a
cruiser of old and slow type. Neither squadron, then, could have sought
for Von Spee with any hope of bringing him to action, if he choose
to avoid it, or with any certainty of defeating him, if he accepted
battle. Australia possessed a navy of her own of vastly greater force
than either of these outpost forces of the mother-country. Of ships
finished, commissioned, and ready for sea, it consisted of _Australia_,
a battle-cruiser of the _Indefatigable_ class; two protected cruisers
of the _Dartmouth_ type, _Sydney_ and _Melbourne_; and _Encounter_,
a sister ship of _Challenger_, with destroyers and submarines. A
fast light cruiser, _Brisbane_, and some destroyers were building.
In the Japanese Navy the Allies had, of course, resources out of all
proportion to the enemy’s strength.
When war became imminent Admiral von Spee, as we have seen, left his
base for the Polynesian islands. He did this because it was obvious
that he could not keep Tsing-Tau open in face of the strength that the
combined Japanese and British forces could bring to bear against it,
and to have been trapped would have been fatal. The same reasons that
made him abandon Tsing-Tau forbade his trying to keep possession of
Rabaud in the Bismarck Archipelago. He faced his future, then, without
a base--just as Suffren did in 1781. There were several elements
peculiar to the situation that made this possible. In the coast towns
of Chile and Peru the Germans had a very large number of commercial
houses and agents, and there were German ships in every South American
port. Their trade with the islands was considerable and, no doubt long
before war, it had been arranged that, on receiving the right warning,
a great deal of shipping should be equipped and mobilized to supply the
German squadron. The widely scattered German outposts afforded also a
service hardly less valuable than coal and food. They constituted an
intelligence organization that was indispensable. Having no base, and
no source of supply other than these German houses in South America
and the islands, it was inevitable that Von Spee should look to the
east, and not to the west, in any operations that he undertook, if
those operations were to be extended and made by a squadron, and not
by detached ships. In discussing, then, the strategy which the German
Admiralty pursued, these facts must not be lost sight of.
Of warlike policies he had a choice of two. He might either keep his
ships together and embark on a war of squadrons, or he could scatter
his ships and devote himself to commerce destruction. In the first
case, as we have seen, he could only look for objectives in the east.
In the alternative the greatest fields of his operations were either
north of the Carolines, where the Chinese trade could be attacked; or
northwest, where the Asiatic and Australian trades converge to Colombo;
or still farther to the west, where the whole eastern trade runs into
the mouth of the Red Sea. To the eastward there was no focal point
of trade where great results could have been achieved--unless indeed
he took his ships round the Horn to attack the River Plate trade or,
better still, the main route that passes Pernambuco. It was an obvious
truth of the situation that, according as the attack on trade promised
great results, so would that attack encounter the greatest dangers,
for it seemed to be a certainty that the focal points would be the
best protected. The most frequented of these, the approaches to the
Red Sea, were also the furthest from his source of supply, and had he
in fact resolved upon commerce destruction, his ships would have had
to maintain themselves, as did _Emden_, by coaling and re-victualling
out of the prizes that they took. The advantage of scattering and
going for the trade ruthlessly would have been the virtual certainty
of inflicting very formidable damage indeed of an economic kind. The
advantage of keeping his squadron together was the chance of some
_coup_ that would turn the scale--even if only for a time--in his
country’s favour. The disadvantages of the first policy were that
there was the certainty that each ship would ultimately be run down
and destroyed by superior force, and grave risk that one or more ships
would be paralyzed by want of supplies, before a sufficient destruction
of trade could justify the sacrifice. The weakness of the second was
that, as a squadron, his ships might accomplish nothing at all.
I have so far discussed the German Admiral’s alternatives as if they
had been debated at the time when war became certain. But it can be
taken for granted that the principles on which he acted were not solely
his own, but had determined German policy in this matter long before.
And, in the main, the decisive arguments probably arose from the
character of his force.
Writing in 1905, Admiral Sir Reginald Custance exposed the whole tissue
of fallacies on which the policy of building armoured cruisers had
been based. The main duties of cruising ships are, first, to assist
in winning and maintaining command of the sea, by acting as scouts
and connecting links between the battle squadrons, and, secondly, to
exercise command, once it has been established by the attack on and
defence of trade. For the successful discharge of these functions the
essential element is that the cruisers should be numerous. So long
as their speed is equal, or superior, to that of the enemy cruisers,
there is no reason why their individual strength should be greatly or
at all superior. The armoured variety represents, roughly speaking,
the value of three cruisers of ordinary type, and is manned by a crew
almost proportionately larger. When first designed, it was possible
to build these large cruisers of a speed superior to that of the
smaller vessels, and having this monopoly, the French invented the
type in pursuance of the idea that a sea war that consisted chiefly of
attacks on commerce, promised brighter prospects than one which could
not succeed unless based on battle-fleet supremacy. But this monopoly
vanished nearly twenty years ago. For cruising purposes proper, then,
this bastard type, while individually enormously more powerful than the
light cruiser, was slower and so could not cover even one-third of the
ground of its equivalent value in the smaller vessels. Over nine-tenths
of the field of cruising, then, it represents a loss of between 60 and
70 per cent. of war efficiency, and this merely from its size.
But because size means cost and because cost has certain definite
influences on the human appreciation of values, it was confidently
prophesied that no one in command of a number of units of this value
could fail to give an undue consideration to the importance of
conserving them. Armoured cruisers, in short, would never be treated
as cruisers at all, but would be kept in squadrons, just as capital
ships are kept, partly to ensure a blow of the maximum strength, if
to strike came within the possibilities of the situation, much more,
however, for the protective value of mutual support, for fear of an
encounter with superior force. This protective tendency would obviously
have a further and much more disastrous effect upon the cruising value
of such vessels. It would simply mean that, instead of each doing
one-third of what three smaller cruisers of the same value might have
done, they would really do no cruising, properly so called, at all; and
not only this, but would probably monopolize the work of two or three
small cruisers to act as special scouts of a squadron so composed, so
diverting these units in turn from their proper duties. If any one
will take the trouble to read the chapter in Barfleur’s “Naval Policy”
dealing with this topic, he will find in Von Spee’s conduct an exact
exemplification of what that accomplished and gallant author suggested
must happen. Von Spee’s policy, in other words, was probably settled
for him by the logic of the situation and the doctrine which prevailed
to create it.
Von Spee actually did, then, what it was fully anticipated he would do.
He kept his ships together and travelled slowly eastward, maintaining
himself in absolute secrecy from the outbreak of war until November
1. What were his exact hopes in the policy pursued, and what the
consideration that led him to adopt it? His hopes of achieving any
definite strategic result can only have been slender. The composition
of his force was so well known that he could hardly have supposed it
possible that he would ever meet a squadron of inferior strength.
He cannot, then, primarily have contemplated the possibility of any
sort of naval victory. Failing this, he may have had various not very
precisely defined ideas in his mind. There was to begin with the
possibility of picking up a sufficient number of German reservists off
the South American coast to have made it possible, not only to attack
and seize the Falkland Islands, but actually to have occupied them by
an extemporized military force. This, as we know, he did attempt. He
might further have contemplated crossing the South Atlantic to the
Cape, with a view to supporting an insurrection of the Boers, if that
materialized, or in any event of backing up the German colonists, who
would be open to attack. Or, having struck a blow at the Falkland
Islands, he might have sent his ships on a final mission in raiding
the Atlantic trade. So long as his squadron was afloat, there were
many possibilities--and always a certainty that it would force counter
concentration on his opponents and thereby embarrass them in the task
of searching for him.
But one thing was certain. He could not combine squadron war with
commercial war. _Emden_ he detached in August to attack the trade in
the Indian Ocean. But the only support he could lend her was such
immunity from pursuit as would result from the concentration he forced
upon the British forces. It is highly probable that, had he sent all
his ships on the same mission, he would have had at least a month’s
run before effective measures could be taken, if only for the fact,
possibly unknown to him, that so large a part of the Allied forces were
being devoted to convoying the Australian troops.
CORONEL
But whatever the risks and difficulties of trade war, the uncertainties
of doing anything at all as a squadron were really greater, and the
final fate of his ships more certain. Whatever his hopes of striking a
blow for his country’s profit or prestige, he could hardly, even in his
most sanguine moments, have anticipated anything so extraordinary as
Admiral Cradock’s attack on him on November 1.
The full story of this ill-fated British force is still to be told. Nor
can what we know be made fully intelligible until we have at least the
actual words of Admiral Cradock’s instructions. But certain inferences
from his actions show that whatever those instructions were, his own
understanding of them is not in doubt at all. Briefly, the facts of the
case are these:
Shortly after the outbreak of war Admiral Cradock transferred his
flag from _Suffolk_ to _Good Hope_ and made his way round the Horn,
taking _Monmouth_, _Glasgow_, and the liner _Otranto_ with him. The
old battleship, _Canopus_, was despatched from home to join his flag,
and actually caught him up some time before the action. The _Canopus_
needed time either for refitting, to coal, or to re-provision, and the
Admiral, instead of waiting for her, pursued his way north with his
original three ships.
Before _Canopus_ joined the flag the last letters written by the
officers and men of the squadron were posted, and in one of these a
member of his staff stated that the general feeling was that the ships
were inadequate to the task set before them, and so far, at least, as
their mission was concerned, the naval supremacy of Great Britain was
not being employed to any useful purpose.
Certain truths with regard to the force that Cradock took north, and
of the force that he attacked, should be borne in mind. _Good Hope_,
_Monmouth_, and _Glasgow_ were as a squadron, markedly faster than Von
Spee’s squadron. Whether the _Otranto_ was capable of more than 22 or
23 knots I do not know; but the three warships certainly had the heels
of the Germans. It is, then, obvious that if Admiral Cradock’s staff
regarded themselves and their ships as inadequate or in danger, it
cannot have been because, had the enemy attacked them, they would have
been unable to escape. It is next equally obvious that had the Admiral
kept _Canopus_ with him, while the pace of the squadron would have been
brought down from 23 knots to 15, its fighting value, as measured by
broadside power, would have been very much greater than Von Spee’s.
That Von Spee at least thought so is clear from his published letters.
Without _Canopus_, then, Cradock would have been safe if he had run
away. With _Canopus_ he would have been reasonably safe if he had
awaited the enemy’s attack. The significance of the letter which I have
alluded to is that it was written by a man to whom neither of these
contingencies seemed to be open. The superiority in speed which would
always have made it possible for Cradock to evade Von Spee was also the
one quality of his ships that gave him capacity to attack the Germans
if they showed any signs of avoiding action. No doubt, if the Germans
would have awaited action by a squadron which included the _Canopus_
Admiral Cradock’s chances might have been brilliant. But if he started
out to look for Von Spee with a 15-knot squadron, his chances for
acting swiftly on any information that came his way would have been
greatly reduced; and to have limited his advance to 15 knots would have
been handing over the initiative in the matter entirely to the enemy.
Bearing these elements in mind and noting first that the British
Admiral deliberately left _Canopus_ behind; next, that at two o’clock
in the afternoon of November 1, when the presence of an enemy was
suspected to the north, he at once ordered all ships to close on _Good
Hope_, and continued when the squadron was formed, to advance against
the enemy, and that then, when he saw him, in spite of the bad weather
and bad light, at once announced that he intended to attack him, the
inference is irresistible that he thought it his duty to find and
attack the enemy, and that he refused to interpret the sending of
_Canopus_ to mean that he could judge for himself whether or not he
was in sufficient force to attack. He acted, that is to say, as no
man would act unless he believed his mission to be of a peremptory and
quite unmistakable kind.
So much, I think, is clear from the few known facts of the case.
Whether Admiral Cradock was right in so interpreting his orders is,
of course, another matter. Of that no one can judge until the orders
themselves are published, and then only those who are familiar with
the precise meaning of the phrases employed. Of the instructions
themselves, then, I express no opinion. I am only concerned with the
light that Admiral Cradock’s actions throw on his own interpretation of
them.
Two official descriptions of the action have been published, Captain
Luce’s, and the Graf von Spee’s despatches. There are further the
private letters of the German Admiral, of his son Otto, and that of a
lieutenant of the _Glasgow_. All of these are in substantial agreement
in their statement of the facts--an unusual thing, to be explained
perhaps quite simply. The British officers naturally told the truth
about the fate of the squadron; and the German success was so complete
that there was no reason for the Government to exaggerate or garble the
straightforward and not ungenerous statements of the German sailors. It
is to Von Spee’s credit that he declined any public rejoicings by the
German colony at Valparaiso, when he visited that port directly after
the action to secure the internment of _Good Hope_, of whose fate he
was uncertain.
The story of the fight is simple enough. Admiral Cradock formed
his ships in line with _Good Hope_ leading, then _Monmouth_, then
_Glasgow_. _Otranto_ he ordered away as soon as battle became imminent,
and _Glasgow_ shortly afterwards. Von Spee criticizes the British
Admiral for not attacking the two armoured cruisers during the half
hour that elapsed between the formation of the Fleet while _Nürnberg_
and _Dresden_ were coming up full speed to join the line. At 6:30 the
two lines were on nearly parallel and southerly courses at a distance
of about 14,700 yards. Twenty minutes later Von Spee had closed the
range about 1,200 yards, and he then altered course a point towards the
enemy, and this, in a quarter of an hour, brought the range to about
11,000 yards. He then opened fire and, five minutes later, got his
first hit with a salvo on _Good Hope_. He had the best of the light,
and it was obvious to him that the British gunnery suffered more from
the heavy seas than did his own. As in neither squadron could any
but the upper-deck guns be used, the Germans had an overwhelmingly
superior armament in action--their twelve 8-inch guns having nothing
opposed to them except the two 9:2 of _Good Hope_ and the upper-deck
6-inch guns of _Good Hope_ and _Monmouth_. Inferior metal and the more
difficult conditions soon told their tale. In the quarter of an hour
during which the German Admiral closed the range from 11,000 yards to
less than 7,000, he says “both the British cruisers were practically
covered by the German fire, whereas _Scharnhorst_ was hit only twice,
and _Gneisenau_ only four times.” The German Admiral now sheered off,
and it looks as if Admiral Cradock had then begun to close. An English
account supposes that _Good Hope_ was drifting and not under control.
Anyhow, the range, in spite of the German change of course, was reduced
by another 1,200 yards, and the Germans thought that the British
Admiral contemplated a torpedo attack. About fifty minutes after the
action commenced there was an enormous explosion in _Good Hope_ which
had been on fire some time. The people in _Glasgow_ for a time thought
it was the German flagship that had gone, so short had the range
become. Neither of our armoured cruisers fired after this, and the
Germans seem to have lost sight of _Good Hope_ altogether, in spite of
her proximity. _Monmouth_, listing badly and on fire, turned to keep
bows on to the sea, and Von Spee sent his light cruisers in pursuit of
her. She kept her flag flying to the last and was sunk, an hour and a
half after _Good Hope_ blew up, by a short range attack by _Nürnberg_.
Both ships could, of course, quite honourably have saved themselves
once their case had become hopeless, had their officers chosen to
surrender. But it was with no thought of surrendering that they had
engaged, and the stoic heroism of their end is the noblest legacy
they could have left to their fellow countrymen. _Glasgow_ kept with
_Monmouth_ as long as she could; but her orders from the Admiral had
been explicit, and it was obvious that she could not single-handed
engage the undamaged German squadron, nor be of the slightest service
to _Monmouth_ had she attempted to do so. Captain Luce, quite rightly
therefore, retreated from the scene.
A private letter, written a day after the action by the German Admiral,
throws an interesting light on the situation. After recounting the
unimportant character of the damage suffered by his ships, he adds,
“I do not know what adverse circumstances deprived the enemy of every
measure of success.... If _Good Hope_,” he wrote “escaped she must, in
my opinion, make for a Chilean port on account of her damages. To make
sure of this I intend going to Valparaiso to-morrow with _Gneisenau_
and _Nürnberg_, and to see whether _Good Hope_ could not be disarmed
by the Chileans. If so, I shall be relieved of two powerful opponents.
_Good Hope_, though bigger than _Scharnhorst_, was not so well armed.
She mounted heavy guns, but only two, while _Monmouth_ succumbed to
_Scharnhorst’s_ as she had only 6-inch guns. The English have another
ship like _Monmouth_ hereabouts and, in addition, as it seems, a
battleship of the _Queen_ class carrying 12-inch guns. Against the
latter we can hardly do anything. Had they kept their force together,
we should probably have got the worst of it. You can hardly imagine the
joy which reigned among us. We have at least contributed something to
the glory of our arms, although it may not mean much on the whole and
in view of the enormous number of English ships.”
Viewing this action apart from the circumstances that led up to it and
the magnificent spirit and self-sacrifice displayed, its technical
and historical interest lies chiefly in the fact that it is the only
instance in the war in which an inferior force has sought action with
one incomparably stronger. The weaker, not only sought battle, but
apparently executed no defensive manœuvres of any kind whatever. We
shall find, for instance, no parallel in Coronel to the tactics of Von
Spee at the Falkland Islands, or to those of Admiral Scheer at Jutland.
And it is perhaps remarkable that the British Admiral, once having
determined on action which he must have known would be desperate,
did not either at once attempt to close the enemy at full speed, so
as to give his very inferior artillery and his torpedoes a chance of
inflicting serious damage on the enemy while daylight lasted, or delay
closing until bad light would make long-range gunnery impossible, in a
_mêlée_ at point blank. Anything might have happened, and it was to the
weaker side’s interest to leave as much as possible to chance.
It is hardly conceivable that the total result of the action could
have been different so far as the British squadron is concerned. But
it is permissible to speculate as to whether the Germans might not
have suffered more, had either of the above plans been followed. The
reasoning which dictated Admiral Cradock’s tactics can, of course,
never be known.
A matter of considerable technical interest is, that though two
armoured cruisers kept firing for a considerable period, it is
quite clear from Von Spee’s despatch that their fire was completely
ineffective. Everyone has agreed in explaining this largely by the
extreme difficulty of gunnery conditions, but it is surely highly
probable that the chief cause is to be found in the fire of the German
ships having, so far as the power of offence is concerned, put _Good
Hope_ and _Monmouth_ out of action within very few minutes of action
beginning. All accounts agree in the _Scharnhorst’s_ salvo having
found _Good Hope_ within five minutes, and it is not likely that
_Monmouth_ fared any better at the hands of _Gneisenau_. What seems to
me remarkable is the length of time the ships kept afloat after being
militarily useless. The explosion in _Good Hope_ took place after
she was in action fifty minutes, and it is not known when she sank.
The _Monmouth_ survived the opening salvoes by two hours and twenty
minutes, and to the last seemed to have her engines in perfect working
order. It is impossible, I think, to resist the inference, that all the
German hitting, except the shell that caused the explosion in _Good
Hope_, was done in the first few minutes of action, while the light was
at its best, though the range was at its longest.