History tells us that on November 1, 1914, a British naval force under Admiral Cradock was crushingly defeated by a similar German force under Admiral von Spee off Coronel, Chile. We also learn that that same force under von Spee was annihilated by a British force Under Admiral Sturdee less than a month later in the battle of Falkland Islands.
These are the facts. With them, and with no undue display of imagination we can picture the gloom in London on the night the news of Coronel was flashed to the world. Men and women walking along the streets with heads bowed in reverent thought of the brave men who were then lying at the bottom of the Pacific; men and women unable to believe, and yet having to, that the Navy had been defeated, that Britain was no longer “Mistress of the Seas”; men and women accustomed to defeat in France and the ever- lengthening casualty lists being asked to accustom themselves to a new kind of defeat and to the thought of even more men who would never return. That was a dark night for England.
And, with even less play of the imagination, we can picture the jubilation one month later when the news of Falkland Islands was published. Wild cheering from the crowds in front of bulletin boards. Heads up and smiling faces. The White Ensign once more waving proudly over the Seven Seas! The Navy had come back and Coronel was avenged!
Why was Cradock defeated one month and Sturdee victorious the next? Was it luck? Was it because of an indomitable spirit that refused to be beaten? Was it because of new weapons, new methods, new men, and brains? Was it because of all of those things or none of them? That is our story.
Picture yourself for a moment in the maproom of the British Admiralty. On a chart which covers the entire wall are studded the pins which represent the naval forces throughout the world. Close by, in the North Sea area, the two clusters are representative of the two great fleets which anxiously watch one another from their bases scarcely a hundred miles apart. The war is just a month old by now and only a few mild feints and passes have been made. But the situation is secure. Not so, however, on the broad expanses of ocean. German raiders are known to be at sea and presumably watching and waiting for their chances to strike at the countless arteries of trade which bring the life blood to the British Isles and without which they cannot live, much less wage a war in France. To throttle this menace is the purpose of the ships whose pins are scattered in seemingly indiscriminate fashion over the face of the great map.
The source of primary anxiety is the group of enemy cruisers which were based in the Far East when war was declared and which have apparently been swallowed up in the vast wastes of the Pacific. On August 8 the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were reported in the Solomon Islands. Not a word has been heard of them since. The Emden was in Tsingtao when the war broke out. She has completely disappeared. The Nurnberg put into Honolulu on September 1 and thereafter disappeared to the southward. The Leipzig had been known to be off the west coast of Mexico during the latter part of August. The Dresden had last been seen at Pernambuco on September 3.
Here then is a force of two heavy cruisers and four light ones, potential death to any number of allied merchant vessels, whose locations can be marked only by steaming circles from the places of their last appearance.
The Allies, however, are doing their best in the face of this amazing lack of information. At Singapore is a British squadron, amply able to deal with the German should he strike there. In northern Asiatic waters the Japanese Navy is holding control. In the West Indies, guarding the exit of the Panama Canal, is a sizable British squadron, and far to the southward, near the tip of South America, is Admiral Cradock with his flagship Good Hope, an elderly heavy cruiser, two light cruisers, the Monmouth and Glasgow, and an armed merchant vessel, the Otranto, which had spent her previous summers taking tourists to Scandinavia.
Shortly before the middle of September the word began to leak through that German trade was being resumed on the west coast of South America. This news very obviously implied that German warships could be expected in that area for the purpose of protecting their own trade, and, as a corollary, destruction of allied trade. And this conclusion very obviously demanded re-enforcements for Admiral Cradock.
It is rather probable that the average fourth-class midshipman when asked what he would send out to catch a squadron of enemy cruisers, would reply in effect, “more cruisers than he has.” That, certainly, would be a logical answer. In fact, the British Admiralty had laid down just such a policy. In a memorandum which dealt with the protection of trade in time of war with Germany and which had been taken as a definition of policy, there had appeared,
As for the enemy’s warships and his few exceptionally fast vessels, they must be marked down and hunted by fast, modern vessels which are concerned with nothing else but to bring them to ac tion.1
And in the record of correspondence of this very time we find a memorandum from one high Admiralty official to another,
They (Scharnhorst and Gneisenau) and not the trade are our quarry for the moment. Above all we must not miss them.2
Thus we are able to assume that the Admiralty realized what common sense dictated, namely, that in order to protect allied shipping it was necessary to run down the enemy raiders and wipe them off the face of the ocean, and that in order to do this it was necessary to send out fast, modern vessels with no other mission than the annihilation of the enemy.
Two types of vessels in the British Navy were admirably fitted for such a task, cruisers (both heavy and light) and battle cruisers. But it was a vessel of neither type which was dispatched to help out Cradock. Instead of “fast, modern vessels” the Canopus was sent, an old 12-inch-gun battleship which was not even wanted in the battle line of the fleet. She had a registered speed of about 16 knots but experience had shown that 13 knots was the maximum which could be relied upon. And it was with such a craft that Cradock was expected to carry out the purport of the Admiralty memorandum, to “hunt down and bring to action” the enemy warships.
Of course the only explanation of this action has been the assertion that nothing more effective could be spared. But what can be spared is always a matter of opinion and not of fact. Jellicoe would have undoubtedly remonstrated against weakening his Grand Fleet, and other admirals would have equally bewailed the weakening of their cruiser squadrons. Suffice it to say that three months later, Beatty, with two of his battle cruisers off on a mission of which we shall hear later, met the Germans' four battle cruisers with five of his own. It is very evident that the British principle of "two keels to one" held sway as far as the fleet was concerned but elsewhere it was merely a topic of conversation.
The order which dispatched the Canopus to Cradock was the first move in the campaign of which Admiral Bacon, a distinguished British officer, has said, "The history of this peculiar muddle is one of the darkest chapters of the war at sea."3
At about the middle of September things began to happen. The Emden was located in the Indian Ocean where she was playing havoc with allied shipping. That eliminated her from the South American scene. At the same time, however, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau appeared off Apia, Samoa, and a little later at Tahiti. Still later, an intercepted wireless message gave indications that they were en route to Easter Island. Of the other vessels nothing was heard.
The two larger pins on the Admiralty chart, however, were steadily moving to the eastward, closer to Cradock and his ill-assorted brood of ducks and drakes. The Admiralty wired,
Admiralty to Rear Admiral Cradock. (October 5.) It appears from information received that Gneisenau and Scharnhorst are working across to South America. A Dresden may be scouting for them. You must be prepared to meet them in company. Canopus should accompany Glasgow, Monmouth, and Otranto, and should search and protect trade in combination.4
Who was the man who sent that order? Who was the "muddler in chief" in this dark chapter? No other than the directing hand in the Admiralty in London. We are forced to deduce that the Admiralty did know what was required, but when it came to translating theory into action, it completely fell down. It failed, as some writers put it, in the “principle of the objective.”
Now this order is of more than passing interest and we are obliged to examine it closely. First of all, it starts off with the available information, as do all well-written (?) orders. But what of that information? It intimates that a concentration of two heavy and one light cruiser may be expected. No mention is made of the other two light cruisers which are known to be at large. Cradock might very well have been led to believe that they had been accounted for in some other theater, and yet such was not the case. Why assume that one light cruiser was seeking her two larger consorts and not assume that a full- fledged concentration was on? That question Mr. Churchill overlooks in his rather full explanation of the tragedy of Coronel.5
Secondly, as to the specific orders involved. In our terminology we would certainly say that the primary decision implied was to “search and protect trade,” and the secondary decision implied was to keep the squadron concentrated. In other words a squadron composed of 1 battleship, 1 heavy cruiser, 2 light cruisers, and an armed merchant vessel with a reliable unit speed of 13 knots was told to go out and catch an enemy squadron of 2 heavy cruisers and possibly 3 light cruisers with a unit speed of about 23 knots.
Let us digress a moment and imagine what might have been sent. The order might have said in essence,
Here, Admiral Cradock, is a force with which you will operate against the enemy in accordance with your basic orders to protect the interests of the Empire.
Or, it might have said,
Here is a force, Admiral Cradock, which we desire you to keep concentrated. You will not be expected to bring the enemy to action, but needless to say that is what is desired.
An order issued in accordance with the first quotation would have been in the German tradition. In the War at Sea we find,
Any intervention by the home authorities might be disastrous. The chief of the Cruiser Squadron must, as hitherto, be allowed entire freedom of action.6
And it would have been more in accordance with our own ideas. We fundamentally believe in giving a trusted man a job to do and then in leaving him alone. But that was not the British Admiralty method in this particular operation.
An order issued in accordance with the second quotation would have been vastly out of tradition and one difficult for any Englishman to give or to take. But it would certainly have been a more judicious order under the circumstances and it would have relieved Cradock of the necessity of deciding, as he eventually had to, whether to seek the chaperonage of the wheezing old Canopus while the enemy ran rampant over the trade routes, or whether to seek out and bring him to action, regardless of consequences.
The order was a bad one. Of that there can be no doubt. It was misleading in its information and it was ambiguous in its directions. Military tragedies have often been made of just such stuff.
At this point in the official narrative we come to an exchange of telegrams between the Admiralty and Admiral Cradock which only serve to confuse the issue. Admiral Cradock made a strategic suggestion as to concentration of forces which was in reality being carried out. He ordered the Defence which was on the east coast of South America to join his command. The Admiral commanding the Defence remonstrated to the Admiralty and the Admiralty countermanded Cradock’s order. Cradock indicated that he intended to keep his squadron concentrated on the Canopus but feared that due to her speed of "12 knots" he would be unable to bring the enemy to action. And all through this welter of indecision and procrastination there runs the ever increasing probability that von Spee is concentrating his squadron on the west coast of South America and that if British trade is to be protected, Cradock, and Cradock alone, must face the issue.
Finally on the morning of November 3, the word reaches London that von Spee’s squadron has been definitely located off the coast of Chile. Now is the time for action! Cradock must be re-enforced! And so the Defence, which had been refused him but a few short weeks before, was detached from her station on the east coast and ordered to proceed with utmost speed to join Cradock's squadron. Word of this was sent to Cradock but it was sent too late. He never received it.
Four days before, anxious to be on his way, straining at the leash to carry out his orders to "search and protect" trade in the only manner which he, as a naval officer, knew to be possible, he had ordered the Canopus to proceed to a northern rendezvous, and then with the rest of his squadron had started up the coast with the fervent hope of bringing the enemy to action. Cradock had faced the issue and had met it squarely.
On November 1, he was steaming up the coast with the Good Hope, Monmouth, and Otranto. The Glasgow had been sent on ahead to investigate conditions in Coronel but had orders to rejoin that day. The Canopus was 250 miles to the southward, leisurely proceeding to her rendezvous in a manner thoroughly befitting an aged battleship. During the morning the Britishers intercepted wireless messages from the Leipzig which indicated that she was operating alone in search of prey. The Glasgow joined at 1435. Immediately thereafter the Admiral formed a scouting line with the Good Hope to the westward and the other three ships fifteen miles to the eastward. The sweep to the north began. At 1645 Contact was made and the Battle of Coronel followed.
The details are too well known to be gone into here. There is one point, however, in which we are vitally interested. When the contact had been well developed and it appeared that, instead of the lone Leipzig, there were four German ships to face, Cradock had the two possible courses of action which are always open to a naval commander when he meets the enemy. He might have refused to give battle within the limitations of his speed, or he might have joined battle to the best of his ability.
Most of the writers on the subject have discussed the decision which Admiral Cradock was called upon to make at this point in considerable detail. All agree that Admiral Cradock acted in the very highest tradition of the British Navy and to him have been paid the greatest possible honors for his valorous conduct. But as to the wisdom of his decision and as to the reasons for it there has been considerable difference of opinion. Some have argued that he should have held off battle until he had had a chance to fall back on the Canopus. This would very obviously have meant no battle at all, for the Germans would hardly have been rash enough to attack a 12-inchgun battleship with their comparatively flimsy craft. Some have argued that Cradock realized that he himself would be lost, but very wisely attacked with the hope that the damage he would be able to inflict would be so great as to allow the Canopus to come up and put the coup de grace to her wounded enemies. Some have argued that Cradock realized that he would not have time to fall back on the Canopus before he was forced to fight and accordingly rushed in while the natural advantages seemed to be with him.
It has seemed to this particular writer that Cradock was called upon to make no decision whatsoever at the time of actual contact, that his decision to give battle had been made several days before when he left the tactical support of the Canopus and that when the Germans were actually sighted he had only to give the orders for concentration and attack.
Let us consider for a moment this man Cradock. He had joined the Navy at thirteen. He had served a full lifetime in the various grades and in the various duties which had eventually brought him to his position of command. He had had more than his share of active, war-time service and he had been decorated on several occasions for his valor. Would a man such as this, a man weaned on the Nelsonic tradition and who had spent a lifetime in having it bred into him, take an order to “search and protect” trade to mean that he must seek the protection of a wheezing old battleship at the very moment when the enemy appears in his vicinity, obviously bent on the destruction of that very trade? Never. Whenever such a man is given an order which is ambiguous, as Admiral Cradock’s order undoubtedly was, he can always be expected to take the course which is least pusillanimous, the course which leads to the very heart of the enemy, regardless of the odds against him.
It was just such a course which Sir Richard Grenville had taken when he ordered his tiny Revenge to attack the Spanish squadron at the Azores, and it was just such a course which Nelson had implied when he made the remark that no captain could go very far wrong in placing his ship alongside that of an enemy. It was just such a course which had led the British Navy to a tradition of not only highhearted valor, but unfailing success.
And it was that course which Cradock took when he disobeyed that somewhat vague part of his order which had to do with concentration, and proceeded to carry out what was to him the far more important part, to “search and protect trade.”
Now it has been subsequently proved that this was precisely the course which the Admiralty desired Cradock not to take. Mr. Churchill brings this point out in his own writing on the subject.7 He insists that the one unfailing principle of warfare is to bring a superior force to bear against an inferior enemy and that seeking action under any other circumstances is necessarily a vital mistake. He further insists that he thought Cradock was sufficiently well grounded in the principles of warfare to avoid making such a fatal error. But he does admit that at one time he had misgivings.
On the day before the Battle of Coronel, Admiral Fisher relieved as First Sea Lord of the Admiralty. Mr. Churchill went over the situation with him and discussed at length the particular plight of Cradock. He ended the conversation with, “You don’t suppose he would try to fight without the Canopus?”
And then Mr. Churchill recounts, “He did not give any decided reply.”8
Fisher was a naval officer. He knew Cradock and he knew men like Cradock. He knew the orders that had been issued to Cradock and he knew how he himself would have reacted, and doubtless he had his own ideas as to how Cradock had probably reacted. In other words and to reduce the whole matter to its barest fundamentals, the Admiralty in a muddling, ambiguous order intended to tell Cradock to keep his force concentrated above all else. Cradock interpreted the order to mean that he must seek out and bring the enemy to action. And like any honest man he followed his convictions.
And so the battle was fought. The Good Hope and Monmouth went to the bottom with over a thousand men. Not a soul survived. By almost superhuman efforts on the parts of their engineers' forces the Glasgow and Otranto were able to escape in the darkness, and to rally round the Canopus for an eventual concentration at Falkland. Von Spee's squadron was practically untouched and proceeded into Valparaiso for fueling and revictualing.
At this point the British cause was at its lowest ebb. Von Spee was still at large British trade was still at his mercy and the force which had been designed to hunt hire down was scattered and sunk.
But there is still the chance of a swift change of fortune. For some time previous to the battle of Coronel, affairs on sea had been going none too well for England. A fine cruiser, the Pathfinder, had been sunk by a submarine. A little later three cruisers, Aboukir, Cressy, and Hogue, had met a similar fate at the hands of a single sub marine. The British fleet had had but one real brush, that at Helgoland Bight, and the results had not come up to expectations. There had arisen accordingly a cry for new blood at the Admiralty. The cry had been met by the appointment of Lord Fisher.
Fisher had become First Sea Lord in 1904 and had served with singular success for six years. He had then retired due to age, and when he reassumed the role in 1914 he was 71 years old. This rather advanced age, however, was well offset by the qualities which he brought to the position. Fisher, more than any other man, was responsible for the British Navy as it went into the war.
He had been patron saint to the Dreadnought type of ship, the turbine, and the water-tube boiler; he had led develop meats in gunnery; and he had been almost solely responsible for the "reforms" which had taken place with regard to dockyards personnel, and methods of training. No one in the service knew the details of that vast organization as he did. But what was far more important at this time was the character and the indomitable will of the rasa. In his earlier years he had been described in terms of the three R's—ruthless, relentless, and remorseless. The work he had accomplished and the wrecks of his opposition were ample justification of that description. His own word to juniors had always been, "get on or get out." He had asked for no quarter and he gave none.
This was the man who walked into the operations room at the Admiralty on the morning after the news of Coronel had been received and rolled up his sleeves, preparatory to dealing with von Spee in ruthless, relentless, and remorseless fashion. The change of fortune was under way.
As we have already noted, the Defence had been ordered to join Cradock, but that was far from the strength required to meet the new situation. However, Lord Fisher had the resources at hand.
His first move was to order two battle cruisers, Invincible and Inflexible, from the Grand Fleet to Devonport for necessary repairs, preparatory to proceeding to South-American waters. He ordered the Princess Royal, another battle cruiser, to the West Indies in case of a break through the Panama Canal. To Africa, in case of a dash across the lower Atlantic, he dispatched cruisers so that there could be no possibility of an escape. In all, there were thirty ships employed in the hunt for von Spee and no single group could possibly be outgunned or outmaneuvered as Cradock had been.
Then, in order to co-ordinate the offensive and to bring to it the most effective principles of command, Vice-Admiral Sturdee was ordered to hoist his flag in the Invincible as commander in chief in the South Atlantic and Pacific, a post solely designed for the purpose of "seeking out and destroying Admiral von Spee's squadron." That was the mission given Sturdee.
An interesting side light on the indomitable will of Lord Fisher is contained in the story of the sailing of the two battle cruisers. They were ordered to arrive at Devonport on November 8, and the dockyard was ordered to complete the necessary repairs by November 11. The dockyard reported that certain of the boilers could not possibly be rebricked in time. Fisher replied that the vessels would sail on the date named even if they had to sail with the masons on board. The admiral-superintendent received this message and traveled all the way to London to urge a little more time. Fisher informed him that by the time he returned to his dockyard the vessels would have sailed. It was true. Those two cruisers sailed as per schedule, even though they had to take electricians along to complete work on the firing circuits.
And it was not a day too soon.
Sturdee sailed with almost unbelievable secrecy and arrived at the Falkland Islands on December 7 without the slightest intimation reaching the German Staff that they had been dispatched from the Grand Fleet. The next morning while the Admiral was shaving, his flag lieutenant came to his door in a bathrobe and reported that the Germans were approaching the harbor. And the story goes on to say that the Admiral told him to order breakfast served and to then get dressed. He proceeded with his shaving.
Thus it was that Sturdee was not called upon to “seek out” the enemy. He was merely called upon to “destroy” him, and he had the forces with which to do it. With his squadron of 2 battle cruisers, 3 heavy cruisers, and 1 light cruiser which had concentrated at Falkland he engaged in a running chase against the German’s 2 heavy and 3 light cruisers and annihilated the squadron. Only the Dresden managed to escape, and as a result of the battle her eventual fate was sealed. On the British side, 7 men were killed and 12 were wounded as against the German casualties of 2,200.
Lord Fisher was vastly displeased that the Dresden escaped and indeed there is no apparent reason why she should have got away. However, the battle was a glorious victory for the British and the menace to British trade which von Spee represented had been completely removed. The 30 ships which had been used in the campaign against him could now be sent back to more important duties.
Why was Cradock defeated one month and Sturdee victorious the next? The simplest answer, of course, is that Cradock had been on the short end of the odds, whereas Sturdee had been on the long. But again we may ask, why? The ships which Sturdee fought with were all in existence at the time of Coronel and they all might have conceivably taken part. Some have argued that the tragedy of Coronel was due to an error of judgment on the part of Cradock, but none have ever hinted that he disobeyed his orders. Was it luck? To a certain extent. It was certainly sheer luck which enabled the Germans to pick up Cradock’s squadron to the westward against a setting sun and it was just as sheer luck which enabled Sturdee to reach the Falkland Islands when he did and not twenty-four hours later. Was it spirit on the part of the actual participants in the two battles? Never. No crews ever fought more gallantly than did those of Cradock’s ships.
We might go on and examine every known element of naval success. Undoubtedly we would find a lot to be learned. There is one element, however, which requires but little examination and which stands out as a deciding factor in this story with blinding brilliance. Clarity—clarity of thought, clarity of action, and clarity of speech. Sturdee had them on his side and Cradock did not.
Clarity of thought required the realization that von Spee was a menace which must be eradicated at all costs and that the only way to eradicate him was to hunt him down with bigger and faster ships. Clarity of action required that those bigger and faster ships be dispatched to a man who could use them to the best advantage. Clarity of speech required that that man be told in the simplest and most understandable language that his game was the enemy squadron.
Before Coronel the Admiralty understood that von Spee was a menace but apparently failed to recognize the emergency nature of the situation. It was also understood that von Spee could only be defeated by bigger and faster ships, but the Admiralty wanted them elsewhere and ended up in a compromise, a bigger ship, but an infinitely slower one. Then the man on the job, Cradock, was issued orders, the meaning of which is still being argued twenty years later.
Fisher met the issue squarely. When he took command there was not a minute to be spared. Von Spee must be annihilated. Therefore the ships were made available and not one extra hour was allowed in preparing them for their mission. A trusted officer was detailed to the job and told to "go and get him." There could be no question in anybody's mind what those orders meant, least of all in Admiral Sturdee's.
From first to last Fisher acted with indomitable resolve. He saw clearly the line which stretched from his office in London to the bridge of von Spee's flagship and he followed it without swerving by a single hairbreadth. The rewards were great. Mr. Churchill wrote him after the news of Falkland had been received, "This was your show and your luck . . . it was a great coup. Your flair was quite true."9
1 Churchill, The World Crisis, p. 562.
2 Ibid., p. 447.
3 The Life of Lord Fisher of Kilverstont, ii, 172.
4 Frothingham, The Naval History of the World War, 1,161.
5 Churchill, The World Crisis, pp. 442-77.
6 German official history, The War at Sea.
7 Churchill, The World Crisis, p. 451.
8 Ibid., p. 455.
9 Bacon, Lord Fisher of Kilverstone, ii, p. 178.