Castles of Steel

by Robert K. Massie

  This telegram, lengthy, complicated, and sometimes contradictory, bore heavy responsibility for what happened later. Cradock, reading the message, understood that Spee might be coming toward him. To meet this threat, he was ordered to concentrate a squadron strong enough to meet and “destroy the German cruisers.” He was to move his primary base south to the Falklands. The southeastern Pacific, it was implied, would be added to his theater of operations, but, simultaneously, he was to leave behind in the Atlantic sufficient ships to deal with Dresden and Karlsruhe. He was assured that reinforcements were on the way: the old battleship Canopus was en route and, more important, the modern armored cruiser Defence would join him from the Mediterranean. Until Defence arrived, Good Hope and Monmouth should stick close to Canopus for mutual protection. He was to search the Magellan Straits, but he was also to be ready either to double back to the Plate or to proceed up to Valparaíso to harass German trade, “according to information.”

  Evaluating the strengths of the two ships being sent to reinforce his squadron, Cradock could think of little use for Canopus, and for the next seven weeks he would continue to wonder how to employ this lumbering predreadnought. Completed in 1899, Canopus, at 12,950 tons, was lighter than Cradock’s flagship, the 14,000-ton armored cruiser Good Hope. To please nineteenth-century admirals, Canopus had been built with a ram, a weapon dating back to Phoenician and Roman galleys and designed to pierce the hull of an enemy vessel that somehow came too close. It was true that the old battleship carried four 12-inch guns, but they were of an early design and their maximum range of 13,000 yards was no greater than that of Von Spee’s sixteen 8.1-inch guns. In any case, by 1912 the ship’s general deterioration had forced the Admiralty to place her and her five sisters in the Reserve Fleet, with scrapping scheduled for 1915. For over two years, Canopus had been moored at Milford Haven with only a maintenance party aboard. In July 1914, she was granted a last reprieve to swell the numbers at the Spithead Review and then, when war came, her temporary recommission was extended. Manned by a crew of partially trained reservists, she spent several weeks escorting the BEF across the Channel and then was ordered to the Cape Verde Islands, and then to the Falklands. Her speed was unreliable: “Few [ships of the Canopus class] can steam well now except for short spurts,” said a contemporary naval annual. In preparation for the Spithead Review, her old engines were coaxed to push her through the water at 16 knots, but all knew that this figure was illusory; Churchill credited her with an actual speed of 15 knots; Jellicoe qualified this by saying, “If she did not break down.”

  The modern armored cruiser Defence, on the other hand, was precisely what Cradock needed. This was a ship of 14,600 tons with four 9.2-inch guns and ten 7.5-inch guns and a speed of 23 knots. Defence was one of the last three British armored cruisers ever built. Completed in 1908 after the launch of the battle cruiser Invincible, she was faster and more powerfully armed than Spee’s two armored cruisers; indeed, she and her sisters, Minotaur and Shannon, had been laid down in reply to the building of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Cradock’s older armored cruisers, Good Hope and Monmouth, were weaker than Von Spee’s ships but just as fast; now, bolstered by Defence, he should be able to meet the Germans on equal terms.

  Even promised reinforcement of his squadron, Cradock could make little sense of the Admiralty’s September 14 signal. He might have sufficient strength to fight Admiral von Spee, but he did not have enough ships to do everything he had been told to do. At best, he would need to rely on guesswork and luck, shuttling ships back and forth to the place of greatest danger. The confusion of overlapping orders recalls the instructions to Milne at the outbreak of war: to destroy Goeben, cover the French transports, and keep the Austrian fleet from leaving the Adriatic. The originator of both sets of orders was Churchill (once again, the language is unmistakable) and, again, the First Lord’s strategy was approved by Prince Louis and Sturdee.

  Reading the September 14 message, Cradock doubtless wondered why Canopus was being sent. The background to this decision reveals something of how things were working at the Admiralty. At the first suggestion that Spee might appear on the coast of South America, a War Staff memorandum of September 7 had recommended reinforcing Cradock with three armored cruisers and a light cruiser from the Mediterranean. Prince Louis and Sturdee had gone further, advocating the dispatch of two battle cruisers from the Grand Fleet to the South Atlantic. But Jellicoe objected to this weakening of Beatty’s force and Churchill refused to overrule the Grand Fleet Commander-in-Chief. Ultimately, the Admiralty decided that only Defence could be spared. Battenberg, however, insisted that something more be done for Cradock. Canopus, ram and all, then serving no purpose at the Cape Verde Islands, was that something more.

  Meanwhile, another event upset all of these arrangements. On Septem-ber 14, Admiral von Spee suddenly appeared off Samoa, hoping to find the New Zealand troop transports at anchor. Samoa was 2,500 miles farther east than the German squadron’s last known position, so Churchill and his colleagues, once they began drawing fresh circles on their maps, would normally have been left in little doubt that Spee was headed for South America. Then, presumably, the Admiralty would have confirmed and perhaps even increased its reinforcement of Cradock. But Spee, finding nothing at Apia, steamed away to the northwest—a false course—before doubling back to the east. The Admiralty was deceived by this elementary ruse used by sea captains for centuries. Spee, London now assumed, was returning to the Far East. And if he was not making for South America, there was no need to reinforce Cradock. Defence, which on September 14 had been summoned from the Dardanelles, had traveled as far as Malta. On September 18, these orders were canceled and Defence was ordered back to the Dardanelles. Essentially, Cradock was told that he no longer need worry about the German East Asia Squadron. The fatal signal read: “Situation changed . . . Gneisenau appeared off Samoa on 14th and left steering NW. German trade on west coast of America is to be attacked at once. Cruisers need not be concentrated. Two cruisers and an armed liner appear sufficient for Magellan Straits and west coast. Report what you propose about Canopus.” In this message, there was no mention of the cancellation of Defence’s sailing orders. For weeks, Cradock continued to expect this powerful ship; he calculated that if she had left the Mediterranean shortly after receiving the September 14 telegram and was steaming toward him at 15 knots, she would arrive at the river Plate early in October.

  Cradock, with Good Hope, Monmouth, Glasgow, and Otranto, was in the river Plate when the Admiralty’s September 18 message arrived. Told that Spee was no longer coming east, Cradock decided that two cruisers—Glasgow and Monmouth—and his armed liner Otranto would suffice to search the Magellan Straits and go up the South American west coast to disrupt the activities of German merchant ships. He had no use for Canopus and proposed to leave her as a guard ship at the river Plate. Once Defence arrived, he would have her “coal and await orders” with Canopus.

  Cradock’s departure from the Plate was delayed by a gale, but on September 22, he left for the Straits of Magellan. At this point, he understood that the only enemy ship the Admiralty thought he was likely to meet was Dresden. Privately, however, he still suspected that Spee’s East Asia Squadron might be making for South America. Before leaving Montevideo, he wrote a personal letter to King George V, whom he had known during the monarch’s naval career. “I have a feeling that the two [German] heavy cruisers from China are making for the Straits of Magellan and am just off there to ‘search and see,’ ” he said. A memorandum Cradock left at the British consulate in Montevideo underlined this suspicion. It emphasized the “urgent importance that any and all information of movements of . . . Gneisenau and Scharnhorst and other China cruisers should reach Rear Admiral [Cradock] . . . without delay.” Before leaving it behind, Cradock had deleted from the message a line that revealed the depth of his concern: “Delay may entail loss of H.M. ships.”

  Steaming south, Cradock encountered a merchant ship on September 25 that told him
that Dresden had passed into the Pacific a week before. On the twenty-eighth, the British squadron arrived at the Chilean port of Punta Arenas, in the Magellan Straits, where the British consul reported that Dresden had been at Orange Bay on the southern coast of Tierra del Fuego. Hoping that the German ship still might be there and that he could catch her by surprise, Cradock left Punta Arenas after midnight—without lights, to conceal his departure from the town’s large German colony. On September 29, in thick weather and falling snow, the British squadron threaded the narrow, uncharted Cockburn Channel where high, snow-covered mountains and glaciers came down to the water on either side. The Cape Horn weather was freakish: gusts of wind roared down the mountains, whipping calm seas into foam; then the ships would round a bend and find the water still as glass. Leaving the channel, the squadron rounded Cape Horn west to east and charged into Orange Bay. They found it empty, although a landing party discovered a tablet left by Dresden, saying that she had been there September 8, 9, and 10. The following day, Cradock sent Otranto to Punta Arenas and took the rest of his squadron to the Falklands to coal. At Punta Arenas, Otranto intercepted a German wireless signal suggesting that Dresden had returned to Orange Bay. Cradock left the Falklands at high speed and made another descent on the remote anchorage. Arriving on the night of Octo-ber 6, he again found the bay empty. Thereupon, he ordered Captain Luce of Glasgow to take his light cruiser with Monmouth and Otranto to search up the Chilean coast as far as Valparaíso. Good Hope, with Cradock aboard, would return to the Falklands to coal, to remain in closer wireless touch with Montevideo and London, and to guard against the possibility that Dresden might double back and return to the South Atlantic.

  Glasgow, Monmouth, and Otranto made a memorable westward passage around Cape Horn. A gale piled up mountainous seas and “it blew, snowed, hailed and sleeted as hard as it is possible to do these things,” wrote one of the squadron officers. “I thought the ship would dive under altogether at times. . . . Monmouth was rolling 35 degrees at times . . . the ship was practically a submarine.” On Otranto, another officer said, “We finally got past caring what might happen, what with the strain, the weather, and the extreme cold.” On October 12, Luce’s three ships reached a temporary coaling base established at Vallenar roads, among the Chilean fjords in the Chonos Archipelago. The water and the scenery in the shadow of Mount Isquiliac reminded British sailors of a Scottish loch on a summer day: a blue lagoon surrounded by green islands with mountains rising to 5,000 and 6,000 feet and, in the distance, the snowcapped higher Andes. Explorers from the ships had difficulty penetrating past the fringe of beach; beyond lay an almost impenetrable forest, dense with boulders, fallen tree trunks, thick scrub, and bog pitted with deep holes filled with wet, slippery moss.

  Having coaled, Luce left Otranto behind, and with Glasgow and Monmouth steamed north up the Chilean coast. Admiral von Spee’s squadron was much on his mind. “It seemed to both the captain of Monmouth and myself,” Luce said later, “that we were running a considerable risk without much object, and I should personally have preferred to go alone in Glasgow which I knew to be faster than any of the Germans, and unless caught against the land, would be able to avoid a superior force. Monmouth, which had been long due for a refit, was at the best only equal in speed to the Germans and her fighting value would not avail against the enemy’s superior armored cruisers. I was therefore very anxious to complete my mission before Von Spee appeared on the coast.” On October 14, Luce reached Coronel, a small coaling harbor lined by white sand beaches and forests of fir and eucalyptus, 275 miles south of Valparaíso. The next day, Glasgow arrived at Valparaíso and anchored among a number of German merchant vessels that had sought refuge in the harbor. While his ship loaded provisions, Hirst went ashore to the English club “for a good square meal.” He found it “an extraordinary place; nobody spoke a word to me, although I was in uniform; simply stared at me as though I were a wild beast.” Glasgow remained only a few hours and then returned to Vallenar. On October 18, the entire British squadron was back at sea off Valparaíso. Rolling uncomfortably in the big Pacific swells, Glasgow’s officers envied their comrades on the Good Hope “snug as a bug at Port Stanley . . . her men breaking up the pubs—our pubs.” On October 21, Monmouth reported additional boiler defects and announced that she would be completely out of action by January. “She has already been condemned twice,” Hirst noted.

  Meanwhile, at Port Stanley in the Falklands, Admiral Cradock had been waiting for two weeks for instructions and reinforcements. On the evening of October 7, he received an Admiralty signal sent from London on October 5, which once more entirely changed his situation. On the night of October 4, a British radio station at Suva in the Fiji Islands had intercepted a message from Scharnhorst declaring that the German squadron was steaming east from the Marquesas toward Easter Island. As Easter Island lies halfway between Tahiti and the South American coast, the news left little doubt as to Von Spee’s destination. There was yet time for the Admiralty to reinforce Cradock. It did not do so. “It appears that Scharnhorst and Gneisenau are working across to South America,” the Admiralty signaled Cradock on October 5. “You must be prepared to meet them. . . . Canopus should accompany Glasgow, Monmouth and Otranto, the ships to search and protect trade in combination. . . . If you propose Good Hope to go [to the west coast], leave Monmouth on east coast.” The Admiralty, in other words, was telling Cradock to be ready to meet Spee, but also to split his force; if he decided to take Good Hope into the Pacific, he was to leave Monmouth behind to protect trade in the South Atlantic. Notably, the Admiralty did not mention Defence.

  Cradock replied the next day, October 8, but because of delays in transmission, his signal was not received in London until October 11. He began by questioning the Admiralty’s assumption that Spee’s two armored cruisers would be accompanied by only a single light cruiser. His own visits to Orange Bay clearly indicated that the Dresden was in the Pacific where, he assumed, she would join Nürnberg and Leipzig, giving Spee three light cruisers. He asked specifically, “Does Defence join my command?” He also asked whether “regulations of the Panama Canal Company permit passage of belligerent ships.”

  [Cradock’s question about the Panama Canal arose from the possibility that von Spee might take that route between the Pacific and the Atlantic and thus avoid South America and the South Atlantic. The great interocean waterway had been formally opened on August 16, 1914. Since that day, the British Foreign Office had been pressing to discover what rules the Americans would impose on the traffic of belligerent warships. The U.S. State Department refused to give a straightforward answer, although it seemed that the Americans would agree to a maximum of three of a belligerent power’s ships at one time, enough for Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and one other ship—a light cruiser or a collier—to pass through.]

  Cradock’s question about Defence was prompted by the Admiralty’s continuing failure to keep him informed as to her whereabouts. In fact, despite Whitehall’s new assessment that Spee probably was approaching South America, there had been no renewal of orders for Defence to join Cradock. Yet no one had told Cradock that the powerful, modern armored cruiser on which he was counting would not be coming. By not mentioning Defence in any of its messages to Cradock, the Admiralty now appeared to assume that four ill-matched vessels—a stumbling, elderly battleship, an old armored cruiser, a fast, modern light cruiser, and an armed merchant liner—would be enough to deal with Spee if the German squadron turned up.

  The Admiralty had not answered Cradock’s October 8 signal when, on October 11, he sent another. In this message, the admiral made a sound suggestion of benefit to the navy’s overall strategic deployment, but one that ultimately damaged his own situation. He pointed out the risks of a single British squadron attempting to cover both the east and west coasts of South America. If Spee was indeed on his way to South American waters, and if the only available British squadron was concentrated on the west coast off Chile, the Germans might manage to evade
this squadron and slip around Cape Horn into the South Atlantic. Once there, they could destroy all British coaling bases—the Falklands, the river Plate, and the Abrolhos—and ravage British trade all the way up to the West Indies. To guard against this eventuality, he suggested that a new backup squadron of additional ships be formed on the east coast. In retrospect, it seems probable that when Cradock spoke of forming a new squadron, he assumed that he would control the operations of both the east and west coast squadrons. The bulk of his present squadron—Glasgow, Monmouth, and Otranto—was already on the west coast. The new east coast squadron he had in mind would consist of a grouping of Good Hope (now at the Falklands), Canopus (on the way), Defence (which he believed was on the way), and Cornwall (brought down from the mid-Atlantic).