Spee had also to consider the deployment of the British navy. He now knew that both Monmouth and Good Hope had been destroyed and that Glasgow had escaped. He had been told that the armored cruisers Defence, Cornwall, and Carnarvon were in the river Plate; the whereabouts of Canopus—the “Queen-class battleship”—were unknown. From a collier, joining him from Punta Arenas, he learned that on November 15 a British steamship had arrived in Punta Arenas from Port Stanley and reported that there were no British warships in the Falkland Islands; obviously, the steamer had departed Port Stanley before Canopus returned on November 12. Later, German agents at Rio learned that Canopus was present at Port Stanley. This information reached Montevideo on November 20, but by then both Montevideo and Valparaíso were out of wireless touch with the German squadron. Spee therefore believed that the Falklands were undefended and that the thousand-mile stretch of ocean from Tierra del Fuego north to the river Plate was empty.
The East Asia Squadron put to sea from the Gulf of Penas on the afternoon of November 26. Steaming out into the ocean, the ships were caught up in a heavy southwest swell. The wind rose steadily and by late evening the sea was piling up in large rollers with spray driving off the crests. At first, the size and power of the armored cruisers kept them riding over the waves, but the smaller ships, top-heavy with coal on deck, rose, swayed, and plunged. Then, with the wind rising higher, the bows of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau lifted toward the crests of the waves, breached them, and sent tons of water thundering and foaming down on the decks before running out the scuppers. As the day wore on, the smaller ships were practically submerged in the mountainous seas.
The worst day of the passage was November 29, off the western entrance to the Magellan Straits. Between peaks and valleys of water, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst often disappeared from each other’s view. Rope lines were stretched for safety on decks and even in the officers’ wardrooms. Worried about the safety of their ships, the captains of Leipzig and Dresden ordered their crews to jettison their deck cargos of coal. “The seas were huge,” said a Leipzig officer, “at one minute level with the deck, next forty feet below you. . . . We sheered out of line. Heavy seas had shifted the deck cargo . . . [and the] scuppers were stopped with coal, so that with three feet of water on deck and we were in danger of capsizing. We turned up into the wind to have our bows into the sea . . . while all hands turned out to shovel coal overboard. Men were standing waist deep in icy water.”
By the following morning, the wind had dropped, and although rain and hail still pelted the ships, squadron speed was raised to 10 knots. At noon on December 1, the German sailors saw Cape Horn, the southern extremity of the American continent. “Rain clouds hung over the jagged peak rising sheer out of the water, the rock which mounts guard between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans,” said a Gneisenau officer. The next day, an iceberg, 200 feet high and 650 yards long, pale blue in the sunlight, was sighted. East of the Horn, the squadron encountered and seized a three-masted English sailing ship carrying 2,800 tons of Cardiff coal. The next morning, prize in hand, they reached sheltered waters at the eastern end of the Beagle Channel and anchored off Picton Island. The Dresden, short of coal, had informed the admiral that she now had too little to make Santa Elena on the Argentine coast. With prospects for fuel in the South Atlantic uncertain, Spee decided to take the time to parcel out the newly acquired English coal. While the men were coaling, parties of officers landed on the desolate shore beneath the black mountains of Tierra del Fuego to shoot ducks and bring back branches with red berries to decorate their cabins for Christmas. Spee visited Gneisenau to see his son Heinrich and to play bridge with Maerker. Another three days went by. And still, Spee displayed no sense of urgency.
On the morning of December 6, the admiral summoned his captains on board Scharnhorst and proposed an attack on the Falkland Islands, which he believed were undefended. He wished to destroy the wireless station at Port Stanley, the key to British communications in the South Atlantic, to burn any stocks of coal (his bunkers were full), and to capture the British governor in reprisal for the British seizure of the German governor of Samoa. At this meeting, only two officers—his Chief of Staff and Captain Schönberg of Nürnberg—favored this plan; the other captains wished to avoid the Falklands and proceed directly north to attack Allied trade in the estuary of the river Plate. Consultation is one thing, command another, and Spee, finding the image of a defenseless Port Stanley too great a temptation, overruled the majority. As a precaution, he decided that only Gneisenau and Nürnberg would carry out the attack; the rest of the squadron would wait over the horizon. He instructed Captain Maerker to draw up an operational plan.
Maerker’s plan was this: once detached from the squadron, Gneisenau and Nürnberg would proceed at 14 knots to a point five miles east of the Cape Pembroke lighthouse, arriving by 8:30 a.m. From this point, they would look into the harbor and, if it was clear of enemy ships, Gneisenau would move to the entrance to Port William and lower boats, which would sweep the entrance clear of mines. Then Nürnberg would steam all the way into the inner Port Stanley harbor while Gneisenau would follow as far as the channel connecting Port William with Port Stanley. There, the big armored cruiser would anchor and send landing parties in armed cutters to the town. Covered by the 4.1-inch guns of Nürnberg, they would destroy the wireless station and the coal stocks and try to bring the governor back to the ship. When their work was done, the two ships would leave the harbor and rejoin the squadron not later than 7:30 p.m.
The meeting ended at noon and the captains returned to their ships. That afternoon in clear weather, the East Asia Squadron steamed eastward along the south coast of Tierra del Fuego. The next day, Monday, December 7, Admiral von Spee and his ships turned northeast toward the Falkland Islands.
CHAPTER 14 The Battle of the Falkland Islands
The night was clear and the visibility exceptional even at two in the morning when officers on Scharnhorst’s bridge first made out the dark masses of the Falkland Islands on the northern horizon. The early summer dawn three hours later promised a rare, cloudless day, the first in weeks. At 5:30 a.m., Admiral von Spee signaled Gneisenau and Nürnberg to leave the squadron and proceed to reconnoiter Port Stanley. The admiral, with Scharnhorst, Dresden, and Leipzig, would remain to the south, while his three colliers waited off Port Pleasant, a bay twenty miles southwest of Port Stanley. As the sun came up, Captain Maerker and Commander Hans Pochhammer of Gneisenau got a better look at the coast, whose capes, bays, and hills they identified with the aid of compass, binoculars, and maps. On deck, a landing party was assembling; Pochhammer looked down from the bridge at the men in white gaiters carrying rifles, one oddly bringing his gas mask. As promised, the summer morning was near perfect: the sea was calm, with only a slight breeze from the northwest gently rippling the surface; the sky was high, clear, and azure. Port Stanley was hidden from the south by a range of low hills, but by seven o’clock, as they came closer, Maerker and Pochhammer could see their first target, the radio mast on Hooker’s Point. They also noticed, near the place where the Cape Pembroke lighthouse stood at the tip of a sandy, rock-strewn peninsula, a thin column of smoke. It appeared to rise from the funnel of a ship.
The British squadron began to coal early that summer morning. By 4:30 a.m., the collier Trelawny was secured to the port side of Invincible and at 5:30 a.m. all hands had been summoned to begin coaling. By two hours later, when the crew was piped to breakfast, 400 tons had been taken aboard. Coaling never resumed that day. Just after 7:30 a.m., a civilian lookout in the observation post on Sapper Hill saw two columns of smoke on the southwestern horizon. He raised his telescope, then picked up his telephone and reported to Canopus: “A four-funnel and a two-funnel man of war in sight steering northwards.” (Nürnberg had three funnels, but because of the angle of the approaching ship, the spotter missed one.)
At 7:45 a.m., Canopus received the Sapper Hill message. Because there was no land line between the grounded Canopus and Sturdee’s
flagship in the outer harbor, Captain Grant could not pass along the message by telephone. And because Invincible was out of sight, hidden from him by intervening hills, he could not signal visually. Glasgow, however, was anchored in a place from which she could see both Canopus and Invincible. Accordingly, Canopus hoisted the signal “Enemy in sight.” Glasgow saw it and, at 7:56 a.m., Luce raised the same flags on his own mast. There was no response from Invincible, busy coaling and surrounded by a haze of coal dust. Impatiently, Luce, still in his pajamas, snapped at his signal officer, “Well, for God’s sake, do something. Fire a gun, send a boat, don’t stand there like a stuffed dummy.” The firing of a saluting gun and its report echoing through the harbor attracted attention. By training a powerful searchlight on Invincible’s bridge, Glasgow passed the message. Meanwhile, Luce said to his intelligence officer, “ ‘Mr. Hirst, go to the masthead and identify those ships.’ Halfway up,” Hirst said, “I was able to report, ‘Scharnhorst or Gneisenau with a light cruiser.’ ”
Spee had achieved complete surprise. Sturdee, not imagining the possibility of any threat to his squadron, had made minimal arrangements for its security. The armed merchant cruiser Macedonia was slowly patrolling outside the mouth of the harbor. The armored cruiser Kent, assigned to relieve Macedonia and the only warship that could get up full steam at less than two hours’ notice, was anchored in Port William. Invincible, Inflexible, Carnarvon, and Cornwall also were anchored in Port William; Bristol and Glasgow were in the inner harbor where Canopus was grounded. By eight o’clock, only Carnarvon and Glasgow had completed coaling and Carnarvon’s decks still were stacked with sacks of coal. Kent, Cornwall, Bristol, and Macedonia had not yet begun to replenish their bunkers; they would fight that day with what remained from Abrolhos. Bristol had closed down her fires for boiler cleaning and opened up both engines for repairs, and Cornwall had one engine under repair. In Cornwall’s wardroom, her officers, many already in civilian clothes, were breakfasting on kippers, marmalade, toast, and tea and making plans for a day of shooting hares and partridges on the moors behind the town.
The sound of Glasgow’s gun found Admiral Sturdee in the act of shaving. An officer raced to the admiral’s quarters, burst in, and announced that the Germans had arrived. Later, Sturdee was reported to have replied, “Send the men to breakfast.” After the war, Sturdee gave his own version of the moment: “He [Spee] came at a very convenient hour because I had just finished dressing and was able to give orders to raise steam at full speed and go down to a good breakfast.” It was said of Sturdee that “no man ever saw him rattled.” Nevertheless, while the admiral may have been pleased by the luck that had brought the enemy so obligingly to his doorstep, he may also have wondered whether perhaps the greater luck was on Spee’s side. The situation of the British squadron was awkward; Kent was the only warship ready to fight. It was possible that Spee might boldly approach Port Stanley harbor with his entire squadron and unleash a storm of 8.2-inch shells into the crowd of ships at anchor. In the confined space of the harbor, some British ships would mask the fire of others and Sturdee would be unable to bring more than a fraction of his superior armament to bear. Accurate salvos from Scharnhorst and Gneisenau might damage, even cripple, the battle cruisers. Even once the British ships raised steam, Spee still might stand off the harbor entrance and subject each vessel to a hail of shells or a volley of torpedoes as it emerged. With these apprehensions in every mind, all eyes were on the flagship to learn what steps Sturdee intended to take.
At 8:10, signal flags soared up Invincible’s halyards. Kent, the duty guard ship, was ordered to weigh anchor immediately and proceed out through the mine barrier to protect Macedonia and keep the enemy under observation. The battle cruisers were told to cast off their colliers so as to leave themselves freer to fire even while they were still at anchor. All ships were ordered to raise steam and report when they were ready to proceed at 12 knots. Carnarvon was to clear for action, to sail as soon as possible, and to “engage the enemy as they come around the corner” of Cape Pembroke. Canopus was to open fire as soon as Gneisenau and Nürnberg were within range. Macedonia, unfit for battle against warships, was ordered to return to harbor. Having issued his orders, Sturdee went to breakfast.
At 8:20 a.m., the observation station on Sapper Hill reported more smoke on the southwestern horizon. At 8:47, Canopus’s fire control station reported that the first two ships observed were now only eight miles off and that the new smoke appeared to be coming from three additional ships about twenty miles off. Meanwhile, bugles on all the ships in the harbor were sounding “Action,” the crews were busy casting off the colliers, smoke was pouring from many funnels, and the anchorage was covered with black haze. The engine room staffs aboard Cornwall and Bristol hurried to reassemble their dismantled machinery.
Sturdee’s breakfast was short. He was on deck at 8:45 a.m. to see Kent moving down the harbor to take up station beyond the lighthouse. “As we got near the harbor entrance,” said one of Kent’s officers, “I could see the smoke from two ships on our starboard over a low-lying ridge of sand.” It would be another hour before the battle cruisers and Carnarvon could weigh anchor, and still longer before Cornwall and Bristol were ready.
At the Admiralty, few details were known and the worst was feared. At 5:00 p.m. London time, Churchill was working in his room when Admiral Oliver, now Chief of Staff, entered with a message from the governor of the Falkland Islands: “Admiral Spee arrived at daylight this morning with all his ships and is now in action with Admiral Sturdee’s whole fleet which was coaling.” “These last three words sent a shiver up my spine,” said Churchill. “Had we been taken by surprise and, in spite of our superiority, mauled, unready, at anchor? ‘Can it mean that?’ I said to the Chief of Staff. ‘I hope not,’ was all he said.”
“As we approached,” said the commander of Gneisenau, “signs of life began to appear. Here and there behind the dunes, columns of dark yellow smoke began to ascend . . . as if stores [of coal] were being burned to prevent them falling into our hands. In any case, we had been seen, for among the mastheads which could be distinguished here and there through the smoke, two now broke away and proceeded slowly east towards the lighthouse. . . . There was no longer any doubt that warships were hidden behind the land. . . . We thought we could make out first two, then four, then six ships . . . and we wirelessed this news to Scharnhorst.”
The Germans, up to this point, had little premonition of serious danger. Then Gneisenau’s gunnery officer, Lieutenant Commander Johann Busche, staring through his binoculars from the spotting top on the foremast, believed that he saw something ominous: tripod masts. When he reported this to the bridge, Captain Maerker curtly dismissed the observation. Tripod masts meant dreadnoughts, Busche was told, and there were no dreadnoughts in the South Atlantic. Maerker continued to take Gneisenau and Nürnberg closer to their initial bombardment position four miles southwest of Cape Pembroke. He did not bother to pass Busche’s report along to Admiral von Spee.
As Gneisenau and Nürnberg drew closer, the 12-inch guns of Canopus, invisible to the German ships, were being elevated and trained on them by guidance from the shore observation post. When Maerker’s two ships were near Wolf’s Rock, six miles short of Cape Pembroke, they slowed their engines, turned, and glided to the northeast, swinging around to present their port broadsides to the wireless station. But Canopus, sitting on her mudbank, spoke first. As soon as her gunnery officer, ashore in the observa-tion post, judged the range to be down to 11,000 yards, he gave the signal. At 9:20 a.m., both 12-inch guns in the battleship’s forward turret fired. The reverberating roar shook the town and the harbor and produced shrill cries from circling flocks of seabirds. The shots fell short, but the Germans hoisted their battle flags, turned, and made away to the southeast. As they did so, Canopus tried again with another salvo at 12,000 yards. Again the shots were short, but this time by less, and some observers believed that one of the shells ricocheted, sending fragments into the base
of a funnel on Gneisenau. With the Germans moving out of range, Canopus had played her part. She had saved the wireless station, the anchored ships, and the town from bombardment, and had provided Sturdee’s squadron with time to leave the harbor. Captain Grant ordered a cease-fire.
Captain Maerker had just signaled Spee that Gneisenau was about to open fire when he received a shock. Without warning, two gigantic mushrooms of water, each 150 feet high, rose out of the sea a thousand yards to port. This was heavy-caliber gunfire, although the guns themselves could not be seen. Immediately, Maerker hoisted his battle ensigns and turned away, but not before a second salvo spouted up 800 yards short of his ship. Before abandoning his mission, Maerker considered a final attempt to harm the enemy. The first British cruiser coming out of the harbor was recognized as a County-class ship (it was Kent) and Maerker, believing that she was trying to escape, increased speed to cut her off outside the entrance to Port William. Scarcely had he settled on a closing course, however, when he received a signal from Scharnhorst. This was not the unopposed landing Spee had planned. He had no wish to engage British armored cruisers or old battleships with 12-inch guns and he ordered Maerker to suspend operations and rejoin the flagship: “Do not accept action. Concentrate on course east by south. Proceed at full speed.” Spee retreated because, although he now knew that a 12-inch-gun ship or ships were present, he was certain that they were old battleships that his squadron could easily outrun. Maerker turned and made off at high speed toward the flagship twelve miles away.