Castles of Steel (45 page)

Before Cradock, steaming north, turned toward the enemy, he had the entire Pacific Ocean on his port bow, with ample sea room to escape.
Good Hope, Monmouth,
and
Glasgow
all could make more than 20 knots and thus were faster than Von Spee’s two armored cruisers, but
Otranto
’s best speed that afternoon was 16 knots, inferior to all of the German ships. Thus, while Cradock with his three warships might have run for protection back to the 12-inch guns of
Canopus,
he could have done so only by leaving
Otranto
behind. Later, critics asked why
Otranto
was present at all with the British squadron at Coronel. The answer is that Cradock had not expected to meet the East Asia Squadron that afternoon. He was hunting one light cruiser, and in this effort,
Otranto,
by extending his search line, had a useful part to play. Once
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
appeared, however,
Otranto
became a heavy liability: if Cradock slowed down to her speed, he surrendered 6 or 7 knots; if he left her behind she could fall prey to any one of the German ships. “We all thought he would leave
Otranto,
” wrote
Glasgow
’s gunnery officer, “[but] he did not like leaving [her] to look after herself. . . . She is such an enormous hulk she can be seen for miles on the darkest night.” Cradock made his choice, signaling his squadron, “I cannot go down and engage the enemy at present leaving
Otranto.
”

Cradock now knew that the long anticipated encounter with Spee was at hand. At 5:10 p.m., he signaled all ships to head toward
Glasgow,
the ship nearest the enemy. Having decided to fight and because Royal Navy ships were not trained for battle at night, he decided to force an action while daylight remained. He formed his ships into a single line—
Good Hope
lead-ing, then
Monmouth, Glasgow,
and
Otranto
—on a southeasterly course at 16 knots, the highest speed of which
Otranto
was capable. His intention was to bring the Germans within range of his squadron’s numerous 6-inch guns; unfortunately, this course also headed the ships diagonally across a heavy sea on the side toward the enemy. Here, the waves rolling up against the closed casements of
Good Hope
’s and
Monmouth
’s lower port gun batteries rendered these guns useless. With these gun ports closed and because of the shorter range of all of the British 6-inch guns, Spee’s sixteen 8.2-inch guns were opposed at this stage only by the two 9.2-inch guns of
Good Hope.

Thereafter for almost an hour, the two lines of ships swept south on a roughly parallel course, 14,000 yards apart. To British sailors looking across the water, the German squadron gave an intimidating impression of con-fidence and power.
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau,
their red, gold, and black battle flags stiff in the wind, black smoke billowing from their funnels, the waves racing along their towering white sides, seemed to ride irresistibly over the seas. To the west, the British line presented a hodgepodge assembly, wallowing and plunging through the swells, green water breaking over their bows, their main deck guns awash, their telescopes and gun sights drenched by icy spray and encrusted with salt.

Nevertheless, Cradock believed that he had a chance. His position to the west of Spee offered a great advantage in terms of light. The British squadron was between the enemy and the setting sun, putting the low afternoon rays directly into the Germans’ eyes. As the British closed the range, the sun would blind the German gun layers while at the same time lighting up the German ships as targets. Conversely, Cradock realized, after the sun went down, this advantage would be reversed. Rather than having the setting sun in their eyes, the enemy gunners would be looking—for at least half an hour after sunset—at the black shapes of his ships starkly silhouetted against the afterglow in the western sky. The Germans, meanwhile, would be lost in the gray obscurity of the inshore twilight. Cradock decided to force an immediate action, To have a chance, he knew that he must come close enough to effectively use his armored cruisers’ seventeen 6-inch guns. At 6:18 p.m., he increased speed to 16 knots, hoisted the signal “Follow in the admiral’s wake,” and turned closer toward the enemy. At the same moment, he wirelessed
Canopus,
laboring up the coast 250 miles to the south, “I am going to attack the enemy now.”

Admiral von Spee refused to have it so. He realized as well as Cradock the danger of having his gun layers blinded by glare from the setting sun, and he had no intention of letting his enemy come within range until the sun had set. His squadron speed was now 20 knots, giving him the power to dictate time and range, and he deliberately refused immediate action. Edging away to port, keeping himself between Cradock and the coast, he established a new range of 18,000 yards. Thwarted, Cradock turned back to a parallel southerly course. Then, as the sun slid into the sea and evening crept over the sky, the German ships became indistinct against the background of gathering darkness. To the west, the four British ships, steaming in a neat line one behind the other, were sharp-etched in black silhouette against the red-gold panorama of the afterglow.

At 6:50 p.m., the sun sank beneath the horizon. “And now began the saddest naval action in the war,” Winston Churchill wrote. “Of the officers and men in both the squadrons that faced each other in these stormy seas so far from home, nine out of ten were doomed to perish. The British were to die that night; the Germans a month later.” Once the advantage of light had abandoned Cradock, Spee immediately altered course and brought his ships to within 12,300 yards of the British squadron. At 7:04 p.m., he hoisted the signal to open fire, and orange flashes blossomed from
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau.
Soon gray-white mushrooms, beautifully grouped, rose from the sea 500 yards short of the British flagship. From the beginning, despite the fact that the ships on both sides were rolling, the shooting of the two German armored cruisers was not merely superior; it was remarkable. It was as if they were at peacetime gunnery practice;
Scharnhorst
’s first salvo landed 500 yards short; her second was 500 yards over; then, with an awful inevitability, the third salvo smashed into the British flagship. Within five minutes, Spee had achieved decisive hits on both British armored cruisers.
Scharnhorst
’s third salvo struck
Good Hope
’s forward 9.2-inch gun tur-ret, and her foredeck exploded in flames. Thus, even before he fired his first shot, Cradock was deprived of one of his squadron’s two big guns. Meanwhile,
Gneisenau
fired rapid salvos at
Monmouth,
striking her forecastle. As
Good Hope
and
Monmouth
steamed through a forest of water spouts, men on
Glasgow
observed the curious effect of sheets of flame continuously bathing the sides of both ships with the heavy sea sliding along the sides seeming to have no effect.

Cradock decided to move in closer. And with every minute, the tactical disadvantage of the British ships increased. The Germans now were almost invisible. Heavy seas pounding against their ships were sending bursts of spray into the faces of the British gunners, telescopes were blurred, and in the growing darkness, spotters could not mark the fall of shots. There was nothing at which to aim except the flashes of the German guns, while Spee’s gun layers continued to hit their well-defined targets with salvos fired three a minute. The battle quickly became, in the words of one British survivor, “the most rotten show imaginable.” Two relatively new German cruisers, winners of competitive gunnery tests in the German navy and manned by 2,200 trained German sailors, were pitted against two obsolete ships manned by scratch crews of Britons, the vast majority of whom had been happily pursuing civilian lives less than six months before. The lower deck guns of the German armored cruisers were able to fire, but the main deck casements of
Good Hope
and
Monmouth
had to be kept closed lest the guns be smothered by the sea. Not that the German ships faced no difficulties. “The waves rose high in the strong wind,” said one German officer. “Water foamed up over the cruisers’ forecastles and then flowed streaming over the upper decks. The crews and ammunition carriers found it difficult to keep their feet.” An English 6-inch shell penetrated on the starboard side of
Gneisenau
into the officers’ wardroom where it burst. Water poured in rapidly, but the ship’s carpenters, up to their necks in water, stopped the leak. A British shell hit the after turret between the guns and temporarily jammed the mechanism that enabled the turret to rotate. It was repaired and the guns reopened fire. But for the British, it was infinitely worse.
Glasgow
never observed any gunfire at all from the lower gun casements of the two British armored cruisers. That meant that sixteen German 8.2-inch guns were opposed by only one 9.2-inch gun and a few 6-inch guns. The German salvos thundered rhythmically at twenty-second intervals, whereas, Spee reported, the British gunners fired only one salvo to his three.

Otranto
played no active part in the battle.
Dresden
had fired briefly at the armed merchant cruiser and
Otranto
’s Captain Edwards, seeing that his ship could do nothing useful, signaled Cradock to ask if he should keep out of range. Cradock’s reply was garbled and provided no clear orders. Then
Gneisenau
put two shells over Edwards’s bridge and a column of water spouted up fifty yards off his starboard bow. Unable to reply with his 4-inch guns, Edwards prudently drew out of line onto
Glasgow
’s starboard quarter. Even here, owing to her huge bulk and the short range of her guns,
Otranto
could serve no purpose except as a looming target, which the enemy could use to determine the range to the British line. Realizing this, Captain Edwards took her away to the west as fast as she would go.

The main action lasted only fifty-two minutes. With the early loss of
Good Hope
’s forward 9.2-inch gun, Cradock’s chances of harming the enemy at anything but 6-inch-gun range had been cut in half. Even his smaller guns had little effect:
Monmouth
’s 6-inch gunfire was at first very rapid, but because
Gneisenau
was out of range the British shells landed in the sea. And once
Gneisenau
turned her full attention on
Monmouth,
the British shooting quickly became ragged. Her gun crews fought their guns, but the foredeck was burning and black smoke billowed along her exposed port side. Outranged by the German guns that were straddling the British line along its length, and with his own 6-inch guns having difficulty reaching the enemy, Cradock had a single thought: to come still closer. As he led his squadron across the shell-torn seas to bring his 6-inch guns to bear, he was punished fiercely and
Good Hope
’s masthead and foretop repeatedly glowed red as shells from
Scharnhorst
burst against them. By 7:23 p.m., the range was down to 6,600 yards and still Cradock came on. Spee, fearing that this was a torpedo attack, edged away to the east. At 7:35 p.m., Cradock still plunged toward the German line 5,500 yards away. “The enemy had the range perfectly and all their salvos straddled our lines. The scene was appalling,” said a
Glasgow
officer.

As the British kept coming,
Gneisenau
’s guns shortened the range and the execution became terrible. One shell struck
Monmouth
’s fore 6-inch turret and blew off the roof. As flames licked up out of the steel shell, a second, larger explosion shattered the entire forward part of the ship; when the flames subsided, the forward turret had completely disappeared. Still
Gneisenau
’s shells crashed through her decks; heavy seas were flooding into her gaping bows and she began heeling to port. Then, as though beaten out of line by sheer weight of metal,
Monmouth
began to lose speed and yaw away to starboard. For a while, it seemed to those watching from
Glasgow
that she was having some success in overcoming her fires, but she never rejoined the line and gradually her guns lapsed into silence.

Darkness settled, the moon came up behind the clouds, and the Germans, except for the relentless flashes of their guns, were invisible to their enemies. Not so
Good Hope
and
Monmouth,
which flared like twin beacons. Frequently, both ships, already bright with flames, flashed into vivid orange as another shell detonated against their superstructures. In the dark, the German gun layers used the fires in the British ships as aiming points. “As the two big enemy ships were in flames,” noted one German officer, “we were able to economize [on use of] our searchlights.”

Good Hope
was in forlorn condition. Although the single 9.2-inch gun on her stern continued to fire once a minute, the shells crashing into the flagship had ripped away her upper works and decks and the smoke pouring from her funnels was an incandescent red. Still, she pushed stubbornly ahead, her upper port 6-inch battery defiant. At 7:42 p.m.,
Good Hope,
as though in a final desperate effort to sell her life dearly, gathered all her remaining strength, turned directly toward her tormentors, and charged them, trailing fiery clouds of flame behind her. Spee ordered his ships out of her path and then, at a range of less than 5,000 yards, poured in rapid-fire broadsides from both
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau.
His salvos blanketed
Good Hope;
she staggered under the rain of blows and came to a halt with her upper deck a sea of flame.

It was now quite dark, with the moon intermittently obscured by clouds and occasional rain squalls. By 7:50 p.m., the stricken British flagship, which had absorbed at least thirty-five direct hits from
Scharnhorst,
could be seen, silent and burning, close to the enemy. A
Glasgow
midshipman, watching
Good Hope,
saw “her funnels illuminated by a fire burning near the bridge. A moment later, there was a tremendous detonation . . . and the whole of her forepart shot up in a fan-shaped sheet of flame.” A broad column of flame rose from amidships where it illuminated a cloud of debris flung still higher in the air. “She looked,” said Spee, “like a splendid firework display against a dark sky. The glowing white flames, mingled with bright green stars, shot up to a great height.” Then the column of fire broke and fell, to wash along the decks and cover the hull with waves of flame. Debris crashed into the sea and the forward section of the ship silently detached itself and slid down into oblivion. Incredibly, two 6-inch guns of the after port battery each fired twice more into the darkness. Then her fire ceased and she lay drifting, a low, dark, gutted hull, illuminated by a red glare. After this, all was black and, despite her proximity, she was never seen again. Ironically, so close had
Good Hope
been to the German line that for a moment
Glasgow
’s gunners thought it was the German flagship, not their own, that had exploded.