Castles of Steel (42 page)

Glasgow, Monmouth,
and
Otranto
made a memorable westward passage around Cape Horn. A gale piled up mountainous seas and “it blew, snowed, hailed and sleeted as hard as it is possible to do these things,” wrote one of the squadron officers. “I thought the ship would dive under altogether at times. . . .
Monmouth
was rolling 35 degrees at times . . . the ship was practically a submarine.” On
Otranto,
another officer said, “We finally got past caring what might happen, what with the strain, the weather, and the extreme cold.” On October 12, Luce’s three ships reached a temporary coaling base established at Vallenar roads, among the Chilean fjords in the Chonos Archipelago. The water and the scenery in the shadow of Mount Isquiliac reminded British sailors of a Scottish loch on a summer day: a blue lagoon surrounded by green islands with mountains rising to 5,000 and 6,000 feet and, in the distance, the snowcapped higher Andes. Explorers from the ships had difficulty penetrating past the fringe of beach; beyond lay an almost impenetrable forest, dense with boulders, fallen tree trunks, thick scrub, and bog pitted with deep holes filled with wet, slippery moss.

Having coaled, Luce left
Otranto
behind, and with
Glasgow
and
Monmouth
steamed north up the Chilean coast. Admiral von Spee’s squadron was much on his mind. “It seemed to both the captain of
Monmouth
and myself,” Luce said later, “that we were running a considerable risk without much object, and I should personally have preferred to go alone in
Glasgow
which I knew to be faster than any of the Germans, and unless caught against the land, would be able to avoid a superior force.
Monmouth,
which had been long due for a refit, was at the best only equal in speed to the Germans and her fighting value would not avail against the enemy’s superior armored cruisers. I was therefore very anxious to complete my mission before Von Spee appeared on the coast.” On October 14, Luce reached Coronel, a small coaling harbor lined by white sand beaches and forests of fir and eucalyptus, 275 miles south of Valparaíso. The next day,
Glasgow
arrived at Valparaíso and anchored among a number of German merchant vessels that had sought refuge in the harbor. While his ship loaded provisions, Hirst went ashore to the English club “for a good square meal.” He found it “an extraordinary place; nobody spoke a word to me, although I was in uniform; simply stared at me as though I were a wild beast.”
Glasgow
remained only a few hours and then returned to Vallenar. On October 18, the entire British squadron was back at sea off Valparaíso. Rolling uncomfortably in the big Pacific swells,
Glasgow
’s officers envied their comrades on the
Good Hope
“snug as a bug at Port Stanley . . . her men breaking up the pubs—
our
pubs.” On October 21,
Monmouth
reported additional boiler defects and announced that she would be completely out of action by January. “She has already been condemned twice,” Hirst noted.

Meanwhile, at Port Stanley in the Falklands, Admiral Cradock had been waiting for two weeks for instructions and reinforcements. On the evening of October 7, he received an Admiralty signal sent from London on October 5, which once more entirely changed his situation. On the night of October 4, a British radio station at Suva in the Fiji Islands had intercepted a message from
Scharnhorst
declaring that the German squadron was steaming east from the Marquesas toward Easter Island. As Easter Island lies halfway between Tahiti and the South American coast, the news left little doubt as to Von Spee’s destination. There was yet time for the Admiralty to reinforce Cradock. It did not do so. “It appears that
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
are working across to South America,” the Admiralty signaled Cradock on October 5. “You must be prepared to meet them. . . .
Canopus
should accompany
Glasgow, Monmouth
and
Otranto,
the ships to search and protect trade in combination. . . . If you propose
Good Hope
to go [to the west coast], leave
Monmouth
on east coast.” The Admiralty, in other words, was telling Cradock to be ready to meet Spee, but also to split his force; if he decided to take
Good Hope
into the Pacific, he was to leave
Monmouth
behind to protect trade in the South Atlantic. Notably, the Admiralty did not mention
Defence.

Cradock replied the next day, October 8, but because of delays in transmission, his signal was not received in London until October 11. He began by questioning the Admiralty’s assumption that Spee’s two armored cruisers would be accompanied by only a single light cruiser. His own visits to Orange Bay clearly indicated that the
Dresden
was in the Pacific where, he assumed, she would join
Nürnberg
and
Leipzig,
giving Spee three light cruisers. He asked specifically, “Does
Defence
join my command?” He also asked whether “regulations of the Panama Canal Company permit passage of belligerent ships.”

[Cradock’s question about the Panama Canal arose from the possibility that von Spee might take that route between the Pacific and the Atlantic and thus avoid South America and the South Atlantic. The great interocean waterway had been formally opened on August 16, 1914. Since that day, the British Foreign Office had been pressing to discover what rules the Americans would impose on the traffic of belligerent warships. The U.S. State Department refused to give a straightforward answer, although it seemed that the Americans would agree to a maximum of three of a belligerent power’s ships at one time, enough for
Scharnhorst, Gneisenau,
and one other ship—a light cruiser or a collier—to pass through.]

Cradock’s question about
Defence
was prompted by the Admiralty’s continuing failure to keep him informed as to her whereabouts. In fact, despite Whitehall’s new assessment that Spee probably was approaching South America, there had been no renewal of orders for
Defence
to join Cradock. Yet no one had told Cradock that the powerful, modern armored cruiser on which he was counting would not be coming. By not mentioning
Defence
in any of its messages to Cradock, the Admiralty now appeared to assume that four ill-matched vessels—a stumbling, elderly battleship, an old armored cruiser, a fast, modern light cruiser, and an armed merchant liner—would be enough to deal with Spee if the German squadron turned up.

The Admiralty had not answered Cradock’s October 8 signal when, on October 11, he sent another. In this message, the admiral made a sound suggestion of benefit to the navy’s overall strategic deployment, but one that ultimately damaged his own situation. He pointed out the risks of a single British squadron attempting to cover both the east and west coasts of South America. If Spee was indeed on his way to South American waters, and if the only available British squadron was concentrated on the west coast off Chile, the Germans might manage to evade this squadron and slip around Cape Horn into the South Atlantic. Once there, they could destroy all British coaling bases—the Falklands, the river Plate, and the Abrolhos—and ravage British trade all the way up to the West Indies. To guard against this eventuality, he suggested that a new backup squadron of additional ships be formed on the east coast. In retrospect, it seems probable that when Cradock spoke of forming a new squadron, he assumed that he would control the operations of both the east and west coast squadrons. The bulk of his present squadron—
Glasgow, Monmouth,
and
Otranto
—was already on the west coast. The new east coast squadron he had in mind would consist of a grouping of
Good Hope
(now at the Falklands),
Canopus
(on the way),
Defence
(which he believed was on the way), and
Cornwall
(brought down from the mid-Atlantic).

The Admiralty decided to follow Cradock’s suggestion. The admiral obviously was right in saying that if he took his present squadron up the Chilean coast and Spee went around him into the South Atlantic, the Germans could create havoc on the river Plate. The Admiralty’s decision, transmitted on October 14, was to form a strong, new east coast squadron, as Cradock had recommended. This new squadron would include the old ar-mored cruisers
Carnarvon
and
Cornwall,
the new light cruiser
Bristol
(a sister of
Glasgow
), two armed merchant cruisers, and
Defence,
which now was once again summoned from the Mediterranean. The new squadron would be based at the river Plate, not at the Falklands, and it would be commanded by another rear admiral, not by Cradock.

Had Cradock been left to decide whether, where, and when the two squadrons should be concentrated, he might have beaten the enemy. But with no additional ships and no single commander to determine how the available ships should be deployed, the plan was inadequate. Luce was to write:

It always appeared to me that we fell between two stools. There was not force available at the moment to form two squadrons of sufficient strength and speed and we should not have advanced into the Pacific until this was forthcoming, but [should] have concentrated in the Straits using the Falklands as a base. The [British] trade on the west coast was not of vital importance and could have been kept in harbor until von Spee’s position was revealed—which was bound to happen if he was to do anything. Cradock seems to have thought, however, that the Admiralty were pressing him to attack and his ardent fighting spirit could not brook anything in the nature of defensive strategy.

Much of the confusion in London and the Falklands can be blamed on the lack of clarity in the signals passing between the two points. Churchill, forwarding Cradock’s October 11 message to Prince Louis, clearly did not understand Cradock’s thinking: he minuted his copy to the First Sea Lord, “It would be best for the British ships to keep within supporting distance of one another, whether in the Straits or near the Falklands, and to postpone the cruise along the west coast until the present uncertainty about
Scharnhorst-Gneisenau
is cleared up. They and not the trade are our quarry for the moment. Above all, we must not miss them.” Battenberg, satisfied that Cradock knew this, replied to Churchill’s note with the single word, “Settled.” Nevertheless, from this memorandum, it is obvious that Churchill was unaware that three of Cradock’s four ships were already far up the Chilean coast. Then two days later, Churchill and Battenberg again discussed the situation and the First Lord subsequently minuted to the First Sea Lord:

I understand from our conversation that the dispositions you proposed for the South Pacific and South Atlantic were as follows: 1) Cradock to concentrate at the Falklands
Canopus, Monmouth, Good Hope
and
Otranto.
2) To send
Glasgow
to look for
Leipzig
and attack and protect trade on west coast of South America as far north as Valparaiso. 3)
Defence
to join
Carnarvon
in forming a new combat squadron on the trade route from Rio. . . . These arrangements have my full approval. I presume Cradock is aware of the possibility of
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
arriving on or after the 17th in his neighborhood and that if not strong enough to attack he will do his utmost to shadow them, pending the arrival of reinforcements.

There was much in these two memoranda that would have confused and upset Admiral Cradock had he been able to read them. He had never been told merely to “shadow”
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau;
on the contrary, on September 14, he had been given an order, never countermanded, to “destroy the German cruisers.” Churchill spoke to Battenberg of “pending . . . reinforcements”; Cradock long ago had asked for reinforcement and
Defence
had been promised, then, without his knowledge, withdrawn. The memorandum makes clear that the Admiralty now believed that
Canopus
was sufficient reinforcement.

The Admiralty’s October 14 signal reached Cradock at Port Stanley on October 15.
Defence,
he now learned, was to join Stoddart, not him, but at least
Defence
was coming to the South Atlantic. As Stoddart was junior to him on the Navy List, he still might order Stoddart to send
Defence
to join him at the Falklands. And with
Defence
in mind, Cradock had not yet begun to protest against the Admiralty’s exaggerated opinion of the value of
Canopus.
It was
Canopus
’s four 12-inch guns that encouraged Churchill to believe that Cradock would have superiority over Spee’s two armored cruisers. All other considerations—her age, her tired boilers and machinery, her raw crew—were set aside. In fact,
Canopus
’s 12-inch shells certainly would have harmed the German armored cruisers—if they had hit them. Many doubted their ability to do that. The battleship’s two 12-inch turrets were in the charge of Royal Navy Reserve lieutenants who, before the war, had never stepped inside a battleship gun turret. Nevertheless, Churchill, in sending
Canopus
to Cradock, colorfully described the old battleship as “a citadel around which all our cruisers in those waters could find absolute security.” With
Canopus
in company, the First Lord proclaimed, Admiral Cradock’s squadron was safe;
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
would never dare venture within range of those 12-inch guns. Lieutenant Hirst of
Glasgow
held “entirely a contrary opinion. . . . [
Canopus
] was seventeen years old. Her antique 12-inch guns . . . had a maximum range of . . . three hundred yards less than those of the German heavy cruisers, and they were difficult to load and lay on the heavy sea way prevalent in the South Pacific.”

The Admiralty had told Admiral Cradock on September 14 that he was to “break up German trade and destroy the German cruisers.” On October 5, he was instructed, “You must be prepared to meet them [
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
] in company . . .
Canopus
to accompany
Glasgow, Monmouth
and
Otranto.
” But how could he accomplish this with a squadron tied to
Canopus
? The old battleship’s best official speed was 16 knots; the speed of the German armored cruisers was over 20. Then came the discovery that
Canopus
could not make even 16 knots. The Admiralty had calculated that
Canopus
would reach the Falklands on October 15, but she did not leave the river Plate until October 17. The following day, her captain, Heathcoat Grant, signaled Cradock at Port Stanley that he hoped to arrive on the twenty-second and that his ship’s best speed was 12 knots.