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The 1914 Naval Battle of the Falkland Islands By Mr Nick Sanders God forbid that I should do this thing, After their victory at Coronel, the German China Squadron retired north up the coast to Chile to take on coal at Valparaiso. The availability of coal was a major factor in naval warfare in the early 20th century. Ships were dependent on the fuel but were limited in their capacity to carry supplies for more than a few days, and so more often than not travelled with several supply ships carrying, and looking for, coal in neutral countries. Whilst in Valparaiso, von Spee received his orders for the next leg of his mission - to return home to Germany. To do this he elected to round the Horn but, making one of his few unforced mistakes, chose to take his time before setting off. He could perhaps have anticipated that the British would be sending a force south to avenge Coronel, but nonetheless it was not until 26th November that he started his passage south, in company with three colliers, sufficient to carry them around Cape Horn and well up the east coast of South America. Glasgow and Otranto (the survivors from Coronel) meanwhile had fled back around Cape Horn into the Atlantic. By 4th November, three days after Coronel, word had reached the Admiralty about the Royal Navy's first defeat for more than one hundred years, and swift action was taken to see retribution. Camarvon and Cornwall, both armoured cruisers, were ordered to join Defence off Montevideo and - perhaps most importantly - the modern battlecruisers Invincible and Inflexible were ordered to coal and proceed south immediately. These were impressive ships, fitted with eight 12-inch guns and with a speed of twenty-five knots. More significantly, they were faster and had a greater range than either the Schamhorst or the Gneisenau. The charismatic Admiral Lord Jackie Fisher had returned to the Admiralty shortly before Coronel. He immediately expressed the opinion that he could not tolerate Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee as his Chief of War Staff as he considered him to be 'rash and rather wild on Service matters'. Matters reached a head after Coronel, particularly because Sturdee had been proved to be right in suggesting that Craddock's forces needed reinforcing before seeking an engagement with the Germans. In an attempt to defuse a difficult situation, Churchill persuaded Fisher that Sturdee was the man to lead the new 'task force', to which Fisher agreed. On 9th November 1914, therefore, Sturdee hoisted his flag in Invincible, and the heavyweights set off to rendezvous with the other ships waiting off South America. After a series of confusing intelligence reports, the plans were modified and the ships were ordered to rendezvous in the Falkland Islands. Sturdee's squadron arrived here on 7th December. The old battleship Canopus had been ordered to remain in Stanley and position herself so that her guns covered the Narrows, having been ordered to ground the ship if necessary to obtain the best berth. Guns were landed and lookouts and signal stations established to create a 'Fortress Falklands'. Von Spee, meanwhile, received intelligence which misleadingly confirmed the continued absence of British warships from the Falklands. He therefore planned to attack the Islands in order to destroy the coal stocks and capture the Governor in retaliation for the British imprisonment of the Governor of Samoa. He ordered the armoured cruiser Gneisenau to enter Port William and to anchor in the channel just outside the Narrows, and the light cruiser Numberg to enter Port Stanley to 'do destruction'. The remainder of his force was to remain off the coast, to await the return of the other two ships. On the Islands, the Canopus had been beached and camouflaged, and a temporary minefield laid. The Governor had called up every able-bodied man in the defence force, and had sent the women and children into Camp for safety. When Sturdee's force arrived on the 7th, the light cruisers Bristol and Glasgow came into Port Stanley, whilst Invincible, Inflexible, Camarvon, Cornwall and Kent anchored in Port William where they began coaling. At 0830 hours on 8th December, the Gneisenau and Numberg started their approach to Stanley to carry out their raid. From about ten miles out, smoke was seen from the area of Stanley, which was assumed to be the coal stocks being destroyed by the Islanders. Approaching from south of Cape Pembroke, Captain Maerker in the Gneisenau then received reports from his lookouts of the sighting of four tripod masts in Port William. He could not imagine there being two dreadnoughts in the South Atlantic, and signalled to von Spee the presence of some additional cruisers in the harbour before continuing with his mission. The British squadron could hardly have been less ready for action when the Glasgow fired a gun to draw attention to the signal flying from the Canopus's masthead: 'Enemy in sight!' Only the Carnarvon and Glasgow had coaled, and only the Kent had steam at less than two hours' notice. Both the Cornwall and the Bristol had an engine opened up for repairs. On hearing the news, Sturdee calmly but swiftly ordered his ships to get steam up as soon as they could and prepare themselves for action. Kent was ordered to leave harbour. Then, acknowledging that there was little more that could be done, Sturdee went below and had his breakfast. While the British squadron lay unable to move in Port William, the German raiding party continued to close. As 0920 hours, when the Germans were just under seven miles away, Canopus opened fire from her position in Stanley harbour at maximum elevation towards the Germans with both her turrets. As luck would have it, the after turret was loaded with a practice (non-explosive) round which had been loaded the night before in preparation for a practice shoot, the after turret crew wanting to beat their rivals in the forward turret in a race to get the first round away. They had no time to unload this before being called into action, and so fired the practice round anyway. The explosive round from the forward turret fell short of the Gneisenau and exploded on contact with the water. The practice round however ricocheted off the water and by chance hit the Gneisenau amidships. Captain Maerker had seen the Kent leaving harbour and had increased speed to cut her off, but the unexpected hit from the Canopus had caused her to turn sharply away and report to von Spee. Von Spee in return ordered the Gneisenau not to accept action and to rejoin her sister ship further out at sea. Canopus never fired again in this battle, but she had served her purpose. Von Spee formed up his squadron and steered south east, away from the Falklands. In the meantime, the engine room teams in the British ships made remarkable progress - by 1030 hours the ships were moving out of the harbour and the flagship hoisted the general signal 'Chase!' As Sturdee cleared Port William he could see the smoke from von Spee's squadron on the horizon, and knew that - barring unforeseen circumstances - he had the Germans at his mercy. He had a superior force with an overall speed advantage of five knots. The Germans were less than twenty miles away, so he could bring them within the range of Invincible and Inflecible's 12-inch guns within two hours. Both squadrons therefore steamed south east, with the British in pursuit of the Germans closing all the time. At 1247 hours (after ensuring that all his crews had eaten lunch) Sturdee signalled 'Open fire and engage the enemy' and shortly afterwards the Inflexible fired her first salvo at the last ship in the German line, the light cruiser Leipzig. It was some twenty minutes before the British battlecruiser, firing at maximum range (just over nine miles) started to get her shots to all close. By this time, Von Spee realised that it was only a matter of time before the Leipzig received a damaging hit, and that he could not avoid action with his superior opponents. He therefore took the decision to bring his two armoured cruisers into action more quickly, hoping to allow his light cruisers to get away and continue their mission of harrying British trade. The light cruisers were ordered to pull out of line and try to escape, and the Schamhorst and Gneisenau turned to the north east, shortening the range to the British dreadnoughts. Sturdee had anticipated this in his general battle orders, and had directed his own cruisers to stay focussed on the smaller enemy warships, leaving the bigger ships to his own battlecruisers. The battle thus divided into two separate actions. The Glasgow, Camarvon and Kent pursued the fleeing Dresden, Leipzig and Numberg, whilst the Invincible and Inflexible engaged the Schamhorst and Gneisenau. The battle lasted for most of the afternoon, with both the major German ships suffering considerable damage from the superior gunnery of the Royal Navy. At 1604 hours, the Schamhorst, listing heavily and on fire, but with her flag still flying, started to capsize and in less than fifteen minutes had sunk. As the Gneisenau was still fighting, no ship could stop in an attempt to rescue the survivors, and as a result there were none. All 765 officers and crew, including von Spee himself, perished. By 1750 hours the Gneisenau was receiving sustained fire from both batytlecruisers and was stopped in the water with fire, smoke and steam rising everywhere. Sturdee ordered a ceasefire and a few minutes later the Gneisenau turned onto its side and then disappeared. 190 survivors were rescued from the water. The cruisers meanwhile had been equally effective in their pursuit of the remainder of the German squadron. The Kent engaged the Numberg in a close range action, sinking her at 1927 hours. There were only seven survivors; von Spee's son, Otto, was not one of them. The Cornwall and the Glasgow opened fire on the Leipzig which they sunk at 2035 hours. Seven officers and eleven men survived out of 285. As the sun set on 8th December 1914 over the Falkland Islands to the west of the battle, all but one of the German squadron - victorious at Coronel just five weeks earlier - had been destroyed, with a loss of over two thousand lives. The Dresden escaped from the Battle, and made for the Chilean fjords to hide. However, on 14th March 1915 the Glasgow, Kent and Orama found the ship anchored in Cumberland Bay, Mas a Tierra (an island off the coast of Chile, west of Valparaiso), perilously short of coal and awaiting internment by the Chilean government. turning a Nelsonian eye to International Law, the British ships opened fire on the Dresden which, after a short exchange, landed her crew. Shortly afterwards the forward magazine exploded. Admiral Sturdee's achivement in the waters of the Falklands was loudly acclaimed across the Empire and not least in Stanley where the Governor threw a party for all those involved. The toast was to 'the King and the Royal Navy.' Admiral Craddock's defeat at Coronel had been well and truly avenged. Indeed, it could easily be argued that the Battle of the Falklands was the only truly successful naval action of the Great War. Sturdee was awarded a baronetcy, the first naval officer to receive this traditional honour for a successful action at sea for 113 years. He was promoted Admiral of the Fleet in 1921 and died in 1925, just before his 66th birthday. Sturdee always paid tribute to the bravery and professionalism of his opponent, Admiral Graf von Spee, who went down on the Schamhorst in the middle of the action. Von Spee's achievments at Coronel and his bravery in action were also recognised by the Germans in the 1930s in naming one of their new 'pocket battleships' the Graf Spee. Ironically, at the start of the Second World War, the Graf Spee was engaged in similar operations to the German China Squadron in 1914 - disrupting British trade routes in the South Atlantic. Graf Spee met her end in one of the first actions of the Second World War in the Battle of the River Plate off Montevideo, almost twenty0five years to the day after the death of the Admiral after whom she was named. Acknowledgments: This article is reproduced with the kind permission of
the author. Nick Sanders was Senior Magistrate in the Falkland
Islands from 2001 to 2004. As a Naval Officer, he served in the
Falkland Islands in 1982, 1983 and 1986. |
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