CHAPTER VIII

IN THE SOUTH SEAS: CLEANING UP

Now is the winter of our discontentMade glorious summer . . .And all the clouds that lour’dIn the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer . . .

And all the clouds that lour’d

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

The naval operations which culminated in the action off the Falkland Islands are associated vividly in my mind with two little personal incidents. On November 12th, 1914, a week after the distressful news had reached this country of the destruction by the enemy of the cruisersGood HopeandMonmouthoff the Chilean coast, a small slip of paper was brought to me in an envelope which had not passed through the post. I will not say from whom or whence that paper came. Upon it were written these words: “The battle cruisersInvincibleandInflexiblehave left for the South Atlantic.” That was all, twelve words, but rarely has news which meant so much been packed into so small a space. The German Sea Command would have given a very great deal for the sight of that scrap of paper which, when read, I burned. For it meant that two fast battle cruisers, each carrying eight 12-⁠inch guns, were at that moment speeding south to dispose for ever of von Spee’s Pacific Squadron. The battle cruisers docked and coaled at Devonport on November 9th, 10th and 11th; hundreds of humble folk like myself must have known of their mission and its grim purpose, yet not then nor afterwards until their work was done did a whisper of their sailing reach the ears of Germany.

TheInvincibleandInflexiblecoaled off St. Vincent, Cape Verde Islands, and again south of the Line. At the appointed rendezvous off Brazil they were joined by theCarnarvon,Kent,Cornwall, andBristol, the armed linerOrama, and many colliers. Weeks had passed and yet no word of the English plans, even of the concentration in force, reached von Spee, who still thought that he had nothing more formidable to deal with than a few light cruisers and the old battleshipCanopus.

Nothing is more difficult to kill than a legend, and perhaps the most invulnerable of legends is that one which attributes to the German Secret Service a superhuman efficiency. I offer to the still faithful English believers two facts which in a rational world would blast that legend for ever: the secret mission of theInvincibleandInflexibleto the Falkland Islands in November-December 1914, and the silent transport of the original British Expeditionary Force across the Channel during the first three weeks of war. And yet, I suppose, the legend will survive. The strongest case, says Anatole France inPenguin Island, is that which is wholly unsupported by evidence.

The second incident which sticks in my mind was a scene in a big public hall on the evening of December 9th. Lord Rosebery was in the middle of a recruiting speech—chiefly addressed, as he plaintively observed, to an audience of baldheads—when there came a sudden interruption. Pink newspapers fluttered across the platform, the coat tails of the speaker were seized, and one of the papers thrust into his hands. We all waited while Lord Rosebery adjusted his glasses and read a stop-press message. What he found there pleased him, but he was in no hurry to impart his news to us. He smiled benevolently at our impatience, and deliberately worked us up to the desired pitch of his dramatic intensity. Then at last he stepped forward and read:

“At 7.30 a.m. on December 8th theScharnhorst, theGneisenau, theNürnberg, theLeipzig, and theDresdenwere sighted near the Falkland Islands by a British Squadron under Vice-Admiral Sir Frederick Sturdee. An action followed in the course of which theScharnhorst(flying the flag of Admiral Graf von Spee), theGneisenau, and theLeipzigwere . . .sunk.”

At that word, pronounced with tremendous emphasis, 6,000 people jumped to their feet; they shouted, they cheered, they stamped upon the floor, they sang “Rule Britannia” till the walls swayed and the roof shuddered upon its joists. It was a scene less of exultation than of relief, relief that the faith of the British people in the long arm of the Royal Navy had been so fully justified. Cradock and the gallant dead of Coronel had been avenged. The mess had been cleaned up.

“I thought,” said Lord Rosebery, as soon as the tumult had died down, “I thought that would wake you up.”

At Devonport theInvincibleandInflexiblehad been loaded “to the utmost capacity,” not only with stores and ammunition for their own use, but with supplies to replenish the depleted magazines of their future consorts. They steamed easily well out of sight of land, except when they put in to coal off St. Vincent, and made the trip of 4,000 miles to the rendezvous near the line in a little over fourteen days. They cleared the Sound in the evening of November 11th, and found the other cruisers I have mentioned awaiting them at the appointed rendezvous off the Brazilian coast in the early morning of November 26th. Two days passed, days of sweltering tropic heat, during which the stores, brought by the battle cruisers, were parcelled out among the other ships and coal was taken in by all the ships from the attendant colliers. The speed of a far-cruising squadron is determined absolutely by its coal supplies. When voracious eaters of coal like battle cruisers undertake long voyages, it behoves them to cut their fighting speed of some twenty-eight knots down to a cruising speed of about one-half. By the morning of Saturday, November 28th, the now concentrated and fully equipped avenging Squadron was ready for its last lap of 2,500 miles to the Falkland Islands. The English vessels, spread out in a huge fan, swept down, continually searching for the enemy off the coasts of South America, where rumour hinted that he had taken refuge. The several ships steamed within the extreme range of visible signalling—so that no tell-tale wireless waves might crackle forth warnings to von Spee. It was high summer in the south and the weather glorious, though the temperature steadily fell as the chilly solitudes of the Falklands were approached. No Germans were sighted, and the Falkland Islands were reached before noon on December 7th. The Squadron had already been met at the rendezvous and joined by the light cruiserGlasgow. The oldCanopus, so slow and useless as a battleship that she had been put aground on the mud of the inner harbour (Port Stanley) to protect the little settlement there, was found at her useful but rather inglorious post. Most of the vessels anchored in the large outer harbour (Port William) and coaling was begun at once, but though it was continued at dawn of the following day it was not then destined to be completed.

Up to this moment the plans of Whitehall had worked to perfection. The two great battle cruisers had arrived at the rendezvous from England, the Squadron had secretly concentrated and then searched the South Atlantic, the Falkland Islands had been secured from a successful surprise attack which would have given much joy to our enemies, yet not a whisper of his fast-approaching doom had sped over the ether to von Spee. Throughout the critical weeks of our activity he had dawdled irresolutely off Valparaiso. All our ships were ready for battle, even the light cruiserGlasgow, so heavily battered in the Coronel action that her inside had been built up with wooden shores till it resembled the “Epping Forest,” after which the lower deck had christened it, and she had a hole as big as a church door in one side above the water-line. She had steamed to Rio in this unhappy plight and had been there well and faithfully repaired. Captain Luce and his men were full of fight; they had their hurts and their humiliation to avenge and meant to get their own back with interest. They did; their chance came upon the following day, and they used it to the full.

Whitehall had done its best, and now came a benevolent Joss to put the crowning seal upon its work. Coronel was bad black Joss, but the Falkland Islands will go down to history as a shining example of the whiteness of the Navy’s good Joss when in a mood of real benignity. We desired two things to round off the scheme roughed out at the Admiralty on November 6th: we wanted—though it was the last thing which we expected—we wanted the German Pacific Squadron to walk into the trap which had so daintily been prepared, and they came immediately, on the very first morning after our arrival at the Falkland Islands, at the actual moment when Vice-Admiral Sturdee and Rear-Admiral Stoddart (of theCarnarvon), with heads bent over a big chart, were discussing plans of search. They might have come and played havoc with the Islands on any morning during the previous five weeks, yet they did not come until December 8th, when we were just ready and most heartily anxious to receive them hospitably. We wanted a fine clear day with what the Navy calls “full visibility.” We got it on December 8th. And this was a very wonderful thing, for the Falkland Islands are cursed with a vile cold climate, almost as cold in the summer of December as in the winter of June. It rains there about 230 days in the year, and even when the rain does not fall fog is far more frequent than sunshine. The climate of the Falklands is even some points more forbidding than the dreadful climate of Lewis in the Hebrides, which it closely resembles. Yet now and then, at rare intervals, come gracious days, and one of them, the best of the year, dawned upon December 8th. The air was bright and clear, visibility was at its maximum, the sea was calm, and a light breeze blew gently from the north-west. Our gunners had a full view to the horizon and a kindly swell to swing the gunsights upon their marks. For Sturdee and his gunners it was a day of days. Had von Spee come upon a wet and dull morning all would have been spoiled; he could have got away, his squadron could have scattered, and we should have had many weary weeks of search before compassing his destruction. But he came upon the one morning of the year when we were ready for him and the perfect weather conditions made escape impossible. Our gunnery officers from their spotting tops could see as far as even the great 12-⁠inch guns could shoot. When the Fates mean real business there is no petty higgling about their methods; they ladle out Luck not in spoonfuls but with shovels.

The Squadron which had come so far to clean up the mess of Coronel was commanded by Vice-Admiral Sir F. C. Doveton Sturdee, who had been plucked out of his office chair at the Admiralty—he was Director of Naval Intelligence—and thrown up upon the quarter-deck of theInvincible. He was the right man for the job, a cool-headed scientific sailor who would make full use of the power and speed of his big ships and yet run no risk of suffering severe damage thousands of miles away from a repairing base. Those who criticise his leisurely deliberation in the action, and the long-range fighting tactics which dragged out the death agony of theScharnhorstfor three and a half hours and of theGneisenaufor five, forget that to Sturdee an hour or two of time, and a hundred or two rounds of heavy shell, were as nothing when set against the possibility of damage to his battle cruisers. His business was to sink a very capable and well-armed enemy at the minimum of risk to his own ships, and so he determined to fight at a range—on the average about 16,000 yards (9½ land miles)—which made his gunnery rather ineffective and wasteful, yet certain to achieve its purpose in course of time.

Just as von Spee at Coronel, having the advantage of greater speed and greater power, could do what he pleased with theGood HopeandMonmouth, so Sturdee with his battle cruisers could do what he pleased with von Spee. TheInvincibleandInflexiblecould steam at twenty-eight knots—they were clean ships—while theScharnhorstand theGneisenau, now five months out of dock, could raise little more than twenty. The superiority of the English battle cruisers in guns was no less than in speed. Each carried eight 12-⁠inch guns, firing a shell of 850 lb., while von Spee’s two armoured cruisers were armed with eight 8.2-⁠inch guns, firing shell of 275 lb. Sturdee, with his great advantage of speed, could set the range outside the effective capacity of von Spee’s guns, secure against anything but an accidental plunging shot upon his decks, while the light German 6-⁠inch armour upon sides and barbettes was little protection against his own 12-⁠inch armour-piercing shell. Sturdee could keep his distance and pound von Spee to bits at leisure. The “visibility” was perfect, space was unlimited, the Germans had no port of refuge, and from dawn to sunset Sturdee had sixteen hours of working daylight. He was in no hurry, though one may doubt if he expected to take so unconscionable a time as three and a half hours to sink theScharnhorstand five hours to dispose of theGneisenau. It was not that Sturdee’s gunnery was bad—relatively, that is, to the gunnery of other ships or of other navies. The word bad suggests blame. But it was certainly ineffective. After the Falkland Islands action, and after those running fights in the North Sea between battle cruisers, it became dreadfully clear that naval gunnery is still in its infancy. All the brains and patience and mechanical ingenuity which have been lavished upon the problem of how to shoot accurately from a rapidly moving platform at a rapidly moving object, all the appliances for range-finding and range-keeping and spotting, leave a margin of guesswork in the shooting, which is a good deal bigger than the width of the target fired at. The ease and accuracy of land gunnery in contrast with the supreme difficulty and relative inaccuracy of sea gunnery were brought vividly before me once in conversation with a highly skilled naval gunner. “Take a rook rifle,” said he, “put up a target upon a tree, measure out a distance, sit down, and fire. You will get on to your target after two or three shots and then hit it five times out of six. You will be a land gunner with his fixed guns, his observation posts, his aeroplanes or kite balloons, his maps upon which he can measure up his ranges. Then get into a motor-car with your rook rifle, get a friend to drive you rapidly along a country road, and standing up try what sport you make of hitting the rabbits which are running and jumping about in the fields. That, exaggerated a bit perhaps, is sea gunnery. We know our own speed and our own course, but we don’t know exactly either the enemy’s speed or the enemy’s course; we have to estimate both. As he varies his course and his speed—he does both constantly—he throws out our calculations. It all comes down to range-finding and spotting, trial and error. Can you be surprised that naval gunnery, measured by land standards, is wasteful and ineffective?” “No,” said I, “I am surprised that you ever hit at all.”

The English Squadron began to coal at half-past three upon that bright summer morning of December 8th, and the grimy operation proceeded vigorously until eight o’clock, when there came a sudden and most welcome interruption. Columns of smoke were observed far away to the south-east, and, presently, the funnels of two approaching vessels were made out. There were three others whose upper works had not yet shown above the horizon. Coaling was at once stopped and steam raised to full pressure. Never have our engineer staffs more splendidly justified their advance in official status than upon that day. Not only did they get their boilers and engines ready in the shortest possible time, but, in the subsequent action, they screwed out of their ships a knot or two more of speed than they had any right to do. The action was gained by speed and gun power; without the speed—the speed of clean-bottomed ships against those which, after five months at sea, had become foul—the power of the great guns could not have been fully developed. So, when we remember Sturdee and his master gunners and gunnery officers in the turrets and aloft in the spotting tops, let us also remember the master engineers hidden out of sight far below who gave to the gunners their opportunity.

The battle cruisers, whose presence it was desired to conceal until the latest moment, poured oil upon their furnaces and, veiled in clouds of the densest smoke, awaited the rising of the pressure gauges. In the outer harbour the light cruisers collected, and from her immovable position upon the mud-banks the oldCanopusloosed a couple of pot shots from her big guns at the distant German at a range of six miles. Admiral Graf von Spee and his merry men laughed—they knew all about theCanopus. Then, when all was ready, the indomitableGlasgow, theKent(own sister to the sunkenMonmouth), and the armouredCarnarvonissued forth to battle. In the words of an eye-witness, later a prisoner, “The Germans laughed till their sides ached.” A few more minutes passed, and then, from under the cover of the smoke and the low fringes of the harbour, steamed grandly out theInvincibleandInflexible, cleared for action, their huge turrets fore and aft and upon either beam bristling with the long 12-⁠inch guns, their turbines working at the fullest pressure, the flag of Vice-Admiral Sturdee fluttering aloft. There was no more German laughter. Von Spee and his officers and men were gallant enemies, they saw instantly the moment the battle cruisers issued forth, overwhelming in their speed and power, that for themselves and for their squadron the sun had risen for the last time. They had come for sport, the easy capture of the Falkland Islands, but sport had turned upon the instant of staggering surprise to tragedy; nothing remained but to fight and to die as became gallant seamen. And so they fought, and so they died, all but a few whom we, more merciful than the Germans themselves at Coronel, plucked from the cold sea after the sinking of their ships.

The German Squadron—the two armoured cruisersScharnhorstandGneisenau, each with eight 8.2-⁠inch guns, and the three light cruisersNürnberg,Dresden, andLeipzig, each armed with ten 4.1-⁠inch guns—made off at full speed, and for awhile the English Squadron followed at the leisurely gait for the battle cruisers of about twenty knots so as to keep together. It was at once apparent that our ships had the legs of the enemy, and could catch them when they pleased and could fight at any range and in any position which they chose to select. That is the crushing advantage of speed; when to speed is added gun power a fleeing enemy has no chance at all, if no port of refuge be available for him. In weight and power of guns there was no possible comparison. TheInvincibleandInflexible, which had descended from the far north to swab up the mess of Coronel, were at least three times as powerful as theScharnhorstandGneisenau, crack gunnery ships though they might be. Their 12-⁠inch guns could shoot with ease and with sufficient accuracy for their purpose at a range beyond the full stretch of the German 8.2-⁠inch weapons however deftly they might be handled. Their 10-⁠inch armour upon the turrets and conning-tower was invulnerable against chance hits when closing in, and the armoured decks covering their inner vitals were practicably impenetrable. The chances of disaster were reduced almost to nothingness by Sturdee’s tactics of the waiting game. When at length he gave the order to open fire he kept out at a distance which made the percentage of his hits small, yet still made those hits which he brought off tremendously effective. A bursting charge of lyddite in the open may do little damage, even that contained in a 12-⁠inch shell, but the same charge exploded within the decks of a cruiser is multiplied tenfold in destructiveness.

Presently the German Squadron divided, the enemy light cruisers and attendant transports seeking safety in flight from our light cruisers despatched in chase while the armoured cruisers held on pursued by the two battle cruisers and the armouredCarnarvon, whose ten guns were of 7.5- and 6-⁠inch calibre. TheCarnarvon, light though she was by comparison with the battle cruisers, did admirable and accurate work, and proved in the action to be by no means a negligible consort. There was no hurry. A wide ocean lay before the rushing vessels, the enemy had no opportunity of escape so long as the day held clear and fine, and the English ships could close in or open out exactly as they pleased. During most of the fight which followed theInvincibleandInflexiblesteered upon courses approximately parallel with those of the Germans, following them as they dodged and winded like failing hares, always maintaining that dominating position which in these days of steam corresponds with Nelson’s weather gauge. It followed from their position as the chasers that they could not each use more than six guns, but this was more than compensated for by the enemy’s inability to use more than four of his heavier guns in theScharnhorstorGneisenau.

I have met and talked with many naval officers and men who have been in action during the present war, and have long since ceased to put a question which received an invariable answer. I used to inquire “Were you excited or sensibly thrilled either when going into action or after it had begun?” This was the substance though not the words of the question. One does not talk in that land fashion with sailor-men. The answer was always the same. “Excited, thrilled, of course not. There was too much to do.” An action at sea is glorified drill. Every man knows his job perfectly and does it as perfectly as he knows how. Whether he be an Admiral or a ship’s boy he attends to his job and has no time to bother about personal feelings. Naval work is team work, the individual is nothing, the team is everything. This is why there is a certain ritual and etiquette in naval honours; personal distinctions are very rare and are never the result of self-seeking. There is no pot-hunting in the Sea Service. Not only are actions at sea free from excitement or thrills, but for most of those who take part in them they are blind. Not one in twenty of those who fight in a big ship see anything at all—not even the gun-layers, when the range is long and they are “following the Control.” Calmly and blindly our men go into action, calmly and blindly they fight obeying exactly their orders, calmly and blindly when Fate wills they go down to their deaths. In their calmness and in their blindness they are the perfected fruits of long centuries of naval discipline. The Sea Service has become highly scientific, yet in taste and in sentiment it has changed little since the days of Queen Elizabeth. The English sailor, then as now, has a catlike hatred of dirt, and never fights so happily as when his belly is well filled. The officers and men of the battle cruisers had been coaling when the enemy so obligingly turned up, and they had breakfasted so early that the meal had passed from their memories. There was plenty of time before firing could begin. So, while the engineers sweated below, those with more leisure scrubbed the black grime from their skins, and changed into their best and brightest uniforms to do honour to a great occasion. Then at noon “all hands went to dinner.”

The big guns of the battle cruisers began to pick up the range of theScharnhorstandGneisenauat five minutes to one, three hours after the chase had begun, when the distance from the enemy’s armoured cruisers was some 18,000 yards, say ten land miles. And while the huge shots fly forth seeking their prey, let us visit in spirit for a few minutes the spotting top of theInvincible, and discover for ourselves how it is possible to serve great guns with any approach to accuracy, when both the pursuing and pursued ships are travelling at high speed upon different courses during which the range and direction are continually varying. TheInvincibleworked up at one time to twenty-nine knots (nearly thirty-four miles an hour), though not for long, since a lower speed was better suited to her purpose, and the firing ranges varied from 22,000 yards down to the comparatively close quarters of six miles, at which theScharnhorstand, later, theGneisenauwere sent to the bottom.

From the decks of theInvincible, when the main action opened, little could be seen of the chase except columns of smoke, but from the fire control platform one could make out through glasses the funnels and most of the upper works of the German cruisers. At this elevation the sea horizon was distant 26,000 yards (about 15½ land miles), and upon the day of the Falkland Islands fight “visibility” was almost perfect. When an enemy ship can be seen, its distance can be measured within a margin of error of half of one per cent.—fifty yards in ten thousand; that is not difficult, but since both the enemy vessel and one’s own ship are moving very fast, and courses are being changed as the enemy seeks to evade one’s fire or to direct more efficiently his own guns, the varying ranges have to be kept, which is much more difficult. It follows that three operations have to be in progress simultaneously, of which one is a check upon and a correction of the other two. First, all the range-finders have to be kept going and their readings compared; secondly, the course and speed of one’s own ship have to be registered with the closest accuracy and the corresponding speeds and courses of the enemy observed and estimated; thirdly, the pitching of one’s shots has to be watched and their errors noted as closely as may be. All this delicate gunnery work is perfectly mechanical but chiefly human. The Germans, essentially a mechanically inhuman people, try to carry the aid of machinery farther than we do. They fit, for example, a gyroscopic arrangement which automatically fires the guns at a chosen moment in the roll of a ship. We fire as the roll brings the wires of the sighting telescopes upon the object aimed at, and can shoot better when a ship is rolling than when she is travelling upon an even keel. We believe in relying mainly upon the deft eyes and hands of our gun-layers—when the enemy is within their range of vision—and upon control officers up aloft when he is not. German gunnery can be very good, but it tends to fall to pieces under stress of battle. Ours tends to improve in action. Machinery is a good servant but a bad master.

As the shots are fired they are observed by the spotting officers to fall too short or too far over, to one side or to the other, and corrections are made in direction and in range so as to convert a “bracket” into a “straddle” and then to bring off accurate hits.

When, say, the shots of one salvo fall beyond the mark and the shots of the next come down on the near side, the mark is said to be “bracketed.” When the individual shots of a salvo fall some too far and others too short, the mark has been “straddled.” A straddle is a closed-in bracket. At long ranges far more shots miss than hit, and we are dealing now with ranges up to ten or twelve miles. The bigger the gun the bigger the splash made by its shell when striking the water, and as the spotting officers cannot spot unless they can clearly make out the splashes, there is an accuracy—an ultimate effective accuracy—in big guns with which smaller ones cannot compete however well they may be served. For, ultimately, in naval gunnery, when ships are moving fast and ranges are changing continually, we come down to trial and error. We shoot and correct, correct and shoot, now and then find the mark and speedily lose it again, as the courses and speeds are changed. Unless we can see the splashes of the shells and are equipped with guns powerful enough to shoot fairly flat—without high elevation—we may make a great deal of noise and expend quantities of shell, but we shall not do much hurt to the enemy.

The Falkland Islands action was the Royal Navy’s first experience in long-range war gunnery under favorable conditions of light—and it was rather disappointing. It revealed the immense gap which separates shooting in war and shooting at targets in time of peace. The battle cruisers sank the enemy, and suffered little damage in doing their appointed work, and thus achieved both the purposes which Admiral Sturdee had set himself and his men. But it was a wasteful exhibition, and showed how very difficult it is to sink even lightly armoured ships by gun-fire alone. Our shells at the long ranges set were falling steeply; their effective targets were not the sides but the decks of the Germans, which were not more than seventy feet wide. If one reflects what it means to pitch a shell at a range of ten miles upon a rapidly moving target seventy feet wide, one can scarcely feel surprised that very few shots got fairly home. We need not acceptau pied de la lettrethe declaration of Lieutenant Lietzmann—a damp and unhappy prisoner—that theGneisenau, shot at for five hours, was hit effectively only twenty times, nor endorse his rather savage verdict that the shooting of the battle cruisers was “simply disgraceful.” But every competent gunnery officer, in his moments of expansive candour, will agree that the results of the big-gun shooting were not a little disappointing. The Germans added to our difficulty by veiling their ships in smoke clouds and thus, to some extent cancelled the day’s “visibility.”

No enemy could have fought against overwhelming odds more gallantly and persistently than did von Spee, his officers, and his highly trained long-service men. Many times, even at the long ranges at which the early part of the action was fought, they brought off fair hits upon the battle cruisers. One 8.2-⁠inch shell from theScharnhorstwrecked theInvincible’swardroom and smashed all the furniture into chips except the piano, which still retained some wires and part of the keyboard. Another shell scattered the Fleet Paymaster’s money-box and strewed the decks with golden bullets. But it was all useless. Though theInvinciblewas the leading ship, and at one time received the concentrated fire of both theScharnhorstand theGneisenau, she did not suffer a single casualty. And, while she was being peppered almost harmlessly, her huge shells, which now and then burst inboard the doomed German vessels, were setting everything on fire between decks, until the dull red glow could be seen from miles away through the gaping holes in the sides. It was a long-drawn-out agony of Hell.

Firing began seriously at 12.55 and continued, with intervals of rest for guns and men, till 4.16, when theScharnhorstsank. Three hours and twenty-one minutes of Hell! Through it all the Germans stuck to their work, there was no thought of surrender; they fought so long as a gun could be brought to bear or a round of shell remained in their depleted magazines. Every man in theScharnhorstwas killed or drowned; the action was not ended when she went down and her consortGneisenau, steaming through the floating bodies of the poor relics of her company, was compelled to leave them to their fate. For nearly two hours longer theGneisenaukept up the fight. The battle cruisers and the smallerCarnarvonclosed in upon her, and at a range of some six to seven land miles smashed her to pieces. By half-past five she was blazing furiously fore and aft, and at two minutes past six she rolled over and sank. Her guns spoke up to the last. As she lay upon her side her end was hastened by the Germans themselves, who, feeling that she was about to go, opened to the sea one of the broadside torpedo flats. She sank with her ensign still flying. If the whole German Navy could live, fight, and die like the Far Eastern Pacific Squadron, that Service might in time develop a true Naval Soul.

Those of the crew who remained afloat in the water after theGneisenausank were picked up by boats from the battle cruisers and theCarnarvon—we rescued 108 officers and men. Admiral Sturdee sent them a message of congratulation upon their rescue and of commendation upon their gallantry in battle, and every English sailor did his utmost to treat them as brothers of the sea. Officers and men lived with their captors as guests, not as prisoners, in wardroom and gun-room, and on the lower deck the English and Germans fought their battle over again in the best of honest fellowship. “There is nothing at all to show that we are prisoners of war,” wrote a young German lieutenant to his friends in the Fatherland, expressing in one simple sentence—though perhaps unconsciously—the immortal spirit of the English Sea Service. A defeated enemy is not a prisoner; he is an unhappy brother of the sea, to be dried and clothed and made much of, and to be taught with the kindly aid of strong drink to forget his troubles.

There is little of exhilaration about a sea fight, such as that which I have briefly sketched. It seems, even to those who take part in it, to be wholly impersonal and wholly devilish. Though its result depends entirely upon the human element, upon the machines which men’s brains have secreted and which their cunning hands and eyes direct, it seems to most of them while in action to have become nothing loftier than a fight between soulless machines. One cannot wonder. The enemy ship—to those few of the fighting men who can see it—is a spot upon the distant horizon from which spit out at intervals little columns of fire and smoke. There is no sign of a living foe. And upon one’s own ship the attention of everyone is absorbed by mechanical operations—the steam steering gear, the fire control, the hydraulic or electric gun mechanism, the glowing fires down below fed by their buzzing air fans, the softly purring turbines. And yet, what now appears to be utterly inhuman and impersonal is in reality as personal and human as was fighting in the days of yard-arm distances and hand-to-hand boarding. The Admiral who, from his armoured conning-tower, orders the courses and maintains the distances best suited to his terrible work; the Fire Director watching, aiming, adjusting sights with the minute care of a marksman with his rifle; the officers at their telescopes spotting the gouts of foam thrown up by the bursting shells; the engineers intent to squeeze the utmost tally in revolutions out of their beloved engines; the stokers each man rightly feeling that upon him and his efforts depends the sustained speed which alone can give mastery of manœuvre; the seamen at their stations extinguishing fire caused by hostile shells; the gunners following with huge blind weapons the keen eyes directing them from far aloft; all these are personal and very human tasks. A sea fight, though it may appear to be one between machinery, is now as always a fight between men. Battles are fought and won by men and by the souls of men, by what they have thought and done in peace time as a preparation for war, by what they do in war as the result of their peace training.

The whole art of successful war is the concentration upon an enemy at a given moment of an overwhelming force and the concentration of that force outside the range of his observation. Both these things were done by the Royal Navy between November 6th and December 8th, 1914, and their fruits were the shattered remains of von Spee’s squadron lying thousands of fathoms deep in the South Atlantic. But nothing which the Admiralty planned upon November 6th would have availed had not the Royal Navy designed and built so great a force of powerful ships that, when the far-off call arose, two battle cruisers could be spared to travel 7,000 miles from the North Sea to the Falkland Islands without sensibly endangering the margin of safety of the Grand Fleet at home.

While theInvincibleandInflexiblewere occupying the front of the battle stage and disposing of the hostile stars, the English light cruisers were enjoying themselves in the wings in a more humble but not less useful play. The cruiserKentastonished everybody. She was the lame duck of the Squadron, a slow old creature who could with extreme difficulty screw out seventeen knots, so that, in the company of much faster boats, her armament of fourteen 6-⁠inch guns appeared to be practically wasted. Yet this elderly County cruiser, so short of coal that her fires were fed with boats, ladders, doors, and officers’ furniture, got herself moving at over twenty-one knots, chased and caught theNürnberg—which ought to have been able to romp round her if one of her boilers had not been out of action—and sank the German vessel out of hand. Afterwards her officers claimed with solemn oaths that she had done twenty-four knots, but there are heights to which my credulity will not soar. One is compelled on the evidence to believe that she did catch theNürnberg, but how she did it no one can explain, least of all, I fancy, her Engineer Commander himself. TheLeipzigwas rapidly overhauled by the speedyGlasgow, who sank her with the aid of theCornwalland so repaid in full the debt of Coronel. The cruiserBristol, a sister of theGlasgow, was sent after the German Squadron’s transports and colliers, and, in company with the armed linerMacedonia, “proceeded,” in naval language, “to destroy them.” Out of the whole German Squadron the light cruiserDresden(own sister to theEmden) alone managed to get away. She had turbine engines and fled without firing a shot. She passed a precarious hunted existence for three months, and was at last disposed of off Robinson Crusoe’s Island on March 14th, 1915. TheGlasgow, still intent upon collecting payment for her injuries, and our aged but active friend theKent, were in at her death, which was not very glorious. I will tell her story in its proper place. So ended that most dainty operation, the wiping out of the German Pacific Squadron and the cleaning up of the Mess of Coronel. Throughout, our sailors had to do only with clean above-water fighting. There were no nasty sneaking mines or submarines to hamper free movement; the fast ship and the big gun had full play and did their work in the business-like convincing fashion which the Royal Navy has taught us to expect from it.

[For what follows I have none but German evidence, yet am loth to disbelieve it. I cannot bring myself to conceive it possible that the dull Teutonic imagination could, unaided by fact, round off in so pretty a fashion the story of the Falkland Islands. My naval friends laugh at me. They say the yarn is wholly impossible.]

More than a year afterwards some fishermen upon the barren Schleswig coast observed a little water-worn dinghy lying upon the sand. She was an open boat about twelve feet long, too frail a bark in which to essay the crossing of the North Sea. Yet upon this little dinghy was engraved the name of theNürnberg! Like a homing pigeon this frail scrap of wood and iron had wandered by itself across the world from that far-distant spot where its parent vessel had been sunk by theKent. It had drifted home, empty and alone, through 7,000 miles of stormy seas. I like to picture to myself that Odyssey of theNürnberg’sdinghy during those fourteen months of lonely ocean travel. Those who know and love ships are very sure that they are alive. They are no soulless hulks of wood or steel or iron, but retain always some spiritual essence distilled from the personality of those who designed, built, and sailed them. It may be that in her dim blind way this fragment of a once fine cruiser, all that was left of a splendid squadron, was inspired to bring to her far-away northern home the news of a year-old tragedy. So she drifted ever northwards, scorched by months of sun and buffeted by months of tempest, until she came at last to rest upon her own arid shores. And the spirits of German sailors, which had accompanied her and watched over her during those long wanderings, must, when they saw her ground upon the Schleswig sands, have passed to their sleep content.

CHAPTER IX

HOW THE “SYDNEY” MET THE “EMDEN”

Forward, each gentleman and knight!Let gentle blood show generous mightAnd chivalry redeem the fight!

Forward, each gentleman and knight!

Let gentle blood show generous might

And chivalry redeem the fight!

The Luck of the Navy is not always good. There are wardrooms in the Grand Fleet within which to mention any Joss except of the most devilish blackness may lead to blasphemy and even to blows. One can sympathise. Those who sped on May 31st, 1916, across 400 miles of sea and who, though equipped with all the paraphernalia of fire-directors, spotting-officers, range-fingers, control instruments, grizzled gun-layers and tremendous wire-wound guns, failed to get in a single shot at an elusive enemy, are dangerous folk to chaff. If to them had been vouchsafed the great chance which came to the Salt of the Earth and the Fifth B. S. there would not now be a German battleship afloat! Still, in face of blazing examples of bad Joss such as this, I will maintain that there are pixies sitting up aloft who have a tender regard for the Royal Navy and who, every now and then, ladle out to it toothsome morsels of unexpected, astounding, incredible Luck.

For how else can one explain the action at the Falkland Islands? There was sheer luck in every detail of it, luck piled upon luck. Sturdee with his two battle-cruisers raced through 7,000 miles of ocean, from Plymouth to Port Stanley, and not a whisper of his coming sped over the wireless to von Spee. Yet hundreds knew of Sturdee’s mission—even I knew before he had cleared the English Channel. During five weeks, from the Coronel battle until December 7th, the Falkland Islands were exposed almost helpless to a raid by von Spee’s victorious squadron. Yet he delayed his coming until December 8th—the day after theInvincibleandInflexiblehad arrived to gobble him up. As if these two miracles were not sufficient—a month of silence in those buzzing days of enemy agents and wireless telegraphy, and von Spee’s arrival off Port Stanley at the moment most dangerous for him and most convenient for us—the Fates worked for the Navy yet another. They gave to Sturdee upon December 8th, 1914, perfect weather, full visibility, and a quiet sea in a corner of ocean where rain and fog are the rule and clear weather almost a negligible exception. The Falkland Islands do not see half a dozen such days as that December 8th in the whole circuit of the year. Von Spee came and to Sturdee were granted a long southern summer day, perfect visibility, a limitless ocean of space, and a benign easy swell to swing the gunsights kindly upon their mark. It was a day that gunners pray for, sometimes dream of, but very rarely experience in battle.

Less conspicuously but not less benignantly did the kindly Fates work up the scene for the destruction of theEmden. They made all their preparations in silence and then switched up the curtain at the moment chosen by themselves. In the Falkland Islands action Luck interposed to perfect the Navy’s long-laid plans and to add to the scheme those artistic touches of which man unaided is incapable. But theSydney-Emdenaction was fortuitous, quite unplanned, flung off at a moment when Luck might have seemed to be wholly on the side of the raider. TheEmdenhad destroyed 70,000 tons of shipping in seven weeks and vanished after each exploit upon an ocean which left no tracks. She seemed to be as elusive and dangerous as the Flying Dutchman. But perhaps her commander, von Müller, a most ingenious and gallant seaman, had committed that offence, which the Athenians and Eton boys call hubris, and had neglected to pay due homage for the good fortune which was poured upon him in plenty. For the Fates wearied of their sport with him and with us, withdrew their mantle of protection, and suddenly delivered theEmdento theSydneywith that artistic thoroughness which may always be seen in their carefully planned work. Luck is no bungler, but Luck is a most jealous mistress. If Sturdee and Glossop are wise they will sacrifice their dearest possessions while there is yet time. TheInvincibleis at the bottom of the North Sea and theInflexiblewas mined in the Dardanelles. TheSydneyis a pretty little ship and I should grieve to see her suffer for her good luck of three years ago.

Take a chart of the Indian Ocean and draw a line from Fremantle in Australia to Colombo in Ceylon. The middle point of this line will be seen to lie about fifty miles east of the Cocos-Keeling Islands. Now draw another line from Cocos to the Sunda strait, a line which will be seen to bisect at right angles the Fremantle-Colombo line. After this exercise in Euclid examine that point without parts and without magnitude, fifty miles east of Cocos, where the tracks intersect. It is a very interesting point, for upon the tropical night of November 8th, 1914, it was being approached by two hostile naval forces each of which was entirely ignorant of the nearness of the other. Coming up from Australia bound for Colombo steamed a fleet of transports under the charge of Captain Silver of H.M. Australian light cruiserMelbourne. Upon the left of Captain Silver, and nearest to the Cocos Islands, was Captain Glossop in the sister shipSydney, and away to the right was a Japanese light cruiser. Upon the line from the Sunda strait to the Cocos Islands was steaming the famous raiderEmden, with an attendant collier, bound upon a mission of destruction there. TheEmdencrossed the head of the convoy about three hours before it reached the point of intersection of the two tracks, and went on to demolish the cable and wireless station on the Islands. Meanwhile, wholly unconscious of the scene-setting upon which the Fates were busy, the convoy sailed on, crossed theEmden’strack and cut that vessel off from any chance of escape to the east. To the west the ocean stretches unbroken for limitless miles. At half-past six in the morning theEmdenappeared off the Cocos Islands and the watching wireless operators at once sent out a warning to all whom it might concern that a foreign warship was in sight. It greatly concerned Captain Silver of theMelbourne, who ordered Captain Glossop to proceed in theSydneyto the Islands in order to investigate. TheSydneywas nearest to the Islands, was a clean ship not three weeks out of dock, was in trim for the highest possible speed and, though largely manned by men in course of training, was in charge of experienced officers “lent” by the Royal Navy to the Australian Fleet Unit.

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