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.
In contrast to the horrors that descended on Good Hope and Monmouth, Glasgow bore a charmed existence. At 7:05, she had begun firing her two 6-inch guns over 10,000 yards, first at Leipzig and then at Dresden. Glasgow’s gun layers, firing from a rolling platform only eight feet above the waterline, could hardly see their targets, and the smoke of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, driven by the wind, made them even more difficult to see. Nevertheless, Glasgow continued firing while her gunnery officer searched in the darkness for signs of the fall of shot. The effort was fruitless and Glasgow hit neither Leipzig nor Dresden.
Meanwhile, the two German light cruisers were firing back. Leipzig’s initial salvo fell short of Glasgow and her fire remained ineffective until 7:15 p.m., when the British cruiser came within range of the German 4.1-inch guns. From that point on, Luce’s ship was engaging both German light cruisers, and, at times, also Gneisenau. All this time, Glasgow could see the two bigger British ships being cruelly punished. No one on board Glasgow actually saw Good Hope founder, but everyone knew that she could not have survived. Once the British flagship was gone, Scharnhorst switched her fire to Monmouth, and Gneisenau to Glasgow; huge splashes began erupting around the unarmored British light cruiser. Moonlight gave Glasgow an occasional glimpse of the enemy ships and, shifting fire from Leipzig to Gneisenau, she scored at least one hit with her forward 6-inch gun on Gneisenau’s after turret. For a few minutes the turret could not be trained, but the armor was not pierced and soon the German guns returned to action.
By eight o’clock, Luce knew that he was tempting fate by continuing the action. For an hour, his ship had been exposed to the fire of both Leipzig and Dresden and for ten minutes he was the target of the 8.2-inch shells of Gneisenau. His own guns could do little against this adversary and his gunnery officer was unable even to see the splashes of his shells in order to correct ranges. “The moon was rising behind the enemy, dimly showing him up at times while he could no longer see us, and they only fired when they could see the flash of our guns,” Luce said. “We kept up our fire a little longer until I realized that each time we fired we brought on ourselves the combined fire of the whole [German] squadron.” Accordingly, at 8:05, Luce ordered his ship to cease fire.
Luce’s ship had been extraordinarily lucky. In part, this was due to the difficulties Dresden and Leipzig had faced in fighting their guns while pitching and rolling in the heavy seas. Together, the two German light cruisers had fired more than 600 shells at Glasgow, but had hit her only five times. Three shells had lodged harmlessly in coal bunkers, where the lumps of coal had squelched their explosive force; one broke up, without bursting, against a conning tower support. The only significant hit came from a 4.1-inch shell from Leipzig that burst aft on the waterline just above the port outer propeller and tore a large hole about six feet square. One compartment was flooded but there was no spreading or damage to the adjacent compartments and the ship’s speed was not affected. Glasgow was still able to steam away at 24 knots and cover 5,000 miles before she was repaired. Remarkably, not a single man of Glasgow’s crew was killed or severely wounded. Four slightly wounded seamen returned to duty within a few days.
Glasgow’s parrots were not as lucky. As the ship went into action, it was decided that it would be unkind to leave the birds in their cages and, although the vessel was fifty miles from the coast, the parrots were released. For a while, each time the guns were fired, they rose, flew about, then settled back on Glasgow’s upper deck. As the battle wore on, the parrots became dazed and perched apathetically about the ship. Hirst saw two perched on a gun barrel just before it fired; others lined up on the funnel stays and the edges of boats. Only ten parrots survived the battle.
Once Luce ceased firing, he turned to see what he could do for the stricken Monmouth. At 8:15 p.m., he found the battered armored cruiser, listing and down by the bow. The fires on her deck had been put out and she was trying to turn to the north, to get her undamaged stern into the large waves rolling up from the south. By the time Glasgow arrived, the moon in the east had risen above the clouds to light up the sea and reveal four enemy ships approaching in line abreast; soon they would sight the British ships. “Are you all right?” Luce signaled by flashing light. Monmouth’s captain, Frank Brandt, replied, “I want to get stern to sea. I am making water badly forward.” “Can you steer northwest?” Luce asked, hoping that the Monmouth could limp to the Chilean coast. “The enemy are following us astern,” he added.
For almost ten minutes, Glasgow hung off Monmouth’s port quarter, but there was nothing Luce could do. The enemy was near, the area was flooded with moonlight, and Luce had to decide whether to share Monmouth’s fate without being able to render any real assistance, or to attempt to escape. “I felt that I could not help her but must be destroyed with her if we remained,” Luce said later. “With great reluctance, I therefore turned to the northwest and increased to full speed.” Before leaving, Glasgow passed under the Monmouth’s stern. As the light cruiser went by for the last time, the crew of the stricken ship was heard cheering and, amid the voices of men, some thought they heard the higher notes of a boy.
Two of Glasgow’s officers later justified Luce’s decision: “It was obvious that Monmouth could neither fight nor fly,” said one. “It was essential that there should be a survivor of the action to turn Canopus which was hurrying at her best speed to join up and, if surprised alone by four or five ships . . . must have shared the fate of the other ships. Monmouth was therefore reluctantly left to her fate.” Another officer agreed. “It was awful having to leave,” he said, “but I don’t see what else the skipper could have done.”
Glasgow headed west at full speed, losing sight of Monmouth astern at 8:50 p.m., and then turned south toward Canopus. Throughout the action, the Germans had ceaselessly jammed British wireless transmissions, and Glasgow had been unable to get any messages through. Now, as she raced south, the jamming effect declined and her wireless was able to tell Canopus the dreadful story. At first, as Glasgow rushed south at 24 knots, there was hope that Monmouth might have eluded the enemy and be limping to safety. Then, half an hour later, the men on Glasgow’s decks saw a searchlight beam flickering on the northern horizon. Distant firing broke out again and seventy-five gun flashes were counted. Then, silence. Glasgow knew that the Germans had found Monmouth. Later, one Glasgow officer remembered that “utterly dispirited and sick at heart . . . I went down to my cabin to snatch a few hours of sleep. . . . I threw myself onto my bunk, wet clothes and all. . . . We were humiliated to the very depths of our beings. We hardly spoke to one another for the first twenty-four hours. We felt so bitterly ashamed of ourselves for we had let down the King; we had let down the Admiralty; we had let down England. What would the British public think of the Royal Navy?”
By 8:15 p.m., with the ocean shining under bright moonlight broken by clouds and scattered rain squalls, Admiral von Spee had lost contact with his enemies. Scharnhorst slowed, and with his flagship lying athwart the sea and rolling heavily, Spee signaled his light cruisers: “Both British armored cruisers severely damaged. One light cruiser apparently fairly intact. [German] ligh
t cruisers to pursue and attack with torpedoes.” Upon receiving this order, Leipzig turned at 18 knots toward a glare visible to the northwest that Captain Johannes Haun supposed might be a burning ship. By the time he reached the position, he could see nothing from his bridge, but members of his crew who were on the main deck throwing cartridge cases overboard observed lifeless bodies amid a mass of floating debris. They failed to report this to Haun, who therefore did not pass the information along to Spee; the admiral remained ignorant that he had sunk the British flagship. A few minutes later, Dresden stumbled upon Leipzig and, believing her to be Glasgow, prepared to fire a torpedo. Recognition came just in time.
Meanwhile, Nürnberg, which had been twenty-five miles behind the squadron when the firing began, believed that she had missed the battle. Receiving Spee’s torpedo order, Captain Karl von Schönberg turned his ship in the direction from which he had last heard gunfire. At 8:35 p.m., a lookout reported a column of smoke on the starboard bow and Schönberg steered for it at 21 knots, but it disappeared into the darkness (this was Glasgow, which had just left Monmouth to her fate). Schönberg then observed another, larger ship about two miles farther away on his starboard beam. Here, he found a heavily damaged British armored cruiser, listing 10 degrees to port, but still under way, her guns silent. As Nürnberg approached, the crippled vessel heeled still more so that the guns on her port side were useless. Schönberg closed in, switched on his searchlight, and recognized Monmouth, lacking her forward 6-inch turret. The searchlight also picked out the White Ensign, still flying, and repair parties moving about the shattered decks. Monmouth’s propellers still threshed under her stern, and her steering appeared undamaged. Schönberg waited, his searchlight pointedly illuminating the White Ensign 600 yards away. Monmouth did not fire, but there was no move-ment to lower the flag. At 9:20, Schönberg opened fire, deliberately aiming high; still the White Ensign was not struck. Nürnberg next fired a tor-pedo, which missed. Schönberg ceased fire, switched off his searchlights, and waited. Then, Monmouth began to gather speed and turn toward Nürnberg, possibly, the German believed, intending to ram or to bring her starboard guns to bear. As Monmouth turned, Nürnberg circled and passed under Monmouth’s stern, now rising high out of the sea. At point-blank range, Schönberg fired. No shot could miss; the shells ripped open the unprotected part of the hull. Monmouth shuddered and heeled farther until the sea rolled over the port deck rail and lapped around the funnels. Soon, the ship was lying on her side, her ensigns drooping toward the water, her red keel rising. At 8:58 p.m., Monmouth capsized and went down. Schönberg made no attempt to rescue; the seas were too heavy and his lookouts reported smoke from approaching, unidentified four-funneled ships. Eventually, as the ships came closer, they were recognized as Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.