Castles of Steel

by Robert K. Massie

  The tragedy can be blamed, in part, on a failure of clarity in language. Cradock never put his requirements and apprehensions clearly before a busy War Staff. He was candid when he told the governor before leaving the Falklands that with such a weak force he had no hope of success, but his protests to the Admiralty were in the form of hints rather than declarations. Cradock should have understood that London had failed to comprehend his situation, but admirals of his generation had not been brought up to question orders, particularly if the questions seemed to suggest the admiral’s concern for his own personal safety. Cradock had protested as much as a British admiral could.

  In defeat, Cradock became a hero. Confronting this new situation, Churchill, ever resourceful with language, found a way simultaneously to honor and praise the hero, deplore his judgment, and shroud Admiralty responsibility. In anticipation of a parliamentary question after the battle, Churchill prepared a statement declaring that Cradock had consciously and bravely sacrificed his squadron in a vain effort to cripple Spee. “We are of the opinion,” Churchill wrote, “that feeling he could not bring the enemy immediately to action as long as he kept with Canopus, he decided to attack them with his fast ships alone, in the belief that even if he himself were destroyed . . . he would inflict damage on them which . . . would lead to their certain subsequent destruction. . . . Though the Admiralty have no responsibility for this decision, they considered it was inspired by the highest devotion.”

  This explanation of Cradock’s behavior was clothed in further eloquence by Arthur Balfour, the former prime minister and Churchill’s successor as First Lord. At the 1916 dedication of the Cradock memorial at York Minster, Balfour asked:

  Why did . . . [Cradock] attack, deliberately, a force which he could not have reasonably hoped either to destroy or put to flight? Remember what the circumstances of the German squadron were. The German admiral in the Pacific was far from any port where he could have refitted. If he therefore suffered damage, even though he inflicted far greater damage than he received, his power might be utterly destroyed. If Admiral Cradock judged that his squadron, that he himself and those under him, were well sacrificed if they destroyed the power of this hostile fleet, then I say that there is no man, sailor or civilian, but would say that such a judgement showed . . . only the highest courage . . . in the interests of his country. If I am right there never was a nobler act. We shall never know the thoughts of Admiral Cradock when it became evident that, outgunned and outranged, success was an impossibility. He must have realized that his hopes were dashed forever. . . . His body is separated from us by half the world and he and his gallant comrades lie far from the pleasant homes of England. Yet they have their re-ward . . . theirs is an immortal place in the great roll of naval heroes.

  When the first volume of The World Crisis appeared in 1923, Churchill was severely criticized by many retired officers for acquitting the Admiralty of all blame for Coronel. Churchill responded, attempting to justify himself in the Morning Post, but so unconvincing were his arguments that an editorial declared that “by attacking the memory of an heroic martyr to his duty and his orders” the former First Lord cast the blame “upon the principal victim of his own error of judgment. . . . He would have been wiser to have left the reputation of the dead sailor alone.”

  Two British ships were sunk at Coronel, but three escaped. Canopus picked up Glasgow’s message at 2:00 a.m. on November 2 and immediately reversed course. Heading south for the Magellan Straits, she soon slowed to 9 knots as she exchanged a following sea under her stern for heavy seas over her bow. Otranto eluded her enemies by steaming 200 miles west into the Pacific, then turning south and east and rounding Cape Horn. Glasgow on the morning after the battle was running south at 20 knots with green water over the forecastle while carpenters worked in the stern to shore up damage. On November 4, three days after the battle, Glasgow entered the Magellan Straits and that night, without stopping, passed Punta Arenas. At the eastern end of the Straits, she anchored and awaited Canopus, which appeared on the sixth. Then, together, the old battleship and the light cruiser sailed for the Falkland Islands, 300 miles away. For the crew of the damaged Glasgow, the sight of the old Canopus wallowing behind was reassuring. Not everyone aboard the light cruiser knew that the old battleship twice had signaled, “Not under control.”

  At dawn on Sunday, November 8, seven days after the battle, the two ships anchored at Port Stanley. At that moment, the outlook for the Falklands, no longer protected by the guns of Cradock’s squadron, was bleak. The 200 barren islands, with their rugged, indented coastlines, dozens of remote harbors, and treeless brown moors, made up one of the loneliest outposts of the British empire. The little town of Port Stanley, on the south side of East Falkland, consisted of two streets of houses constructed of timber and corrugated iron. The town’s population was a little over a thousand and another thousand farmers and shepherds were scattered through the remainder of the islands, living on the moors or in tiny villages. On this rugged terrain, swept by rain and wind throughout the year, the inhabitants, mostly of Scottish ancestry, raised sheep. During breeding season, millions of penguins, seals, and sea lions congregated on the rocky shores. Despite the economic insignificance of the islands, their defense was crucial to Britain; no other protected harbor and coaling station was available to the British navy in the South Atlantic. As soon as Canopus and Glasgow arrived, seventy islander volunteers, sheep farmers or fishermen, came out to help with coaling. From the population, a rifle militia of 300 men had been formed. Women and children had been sent to the hills, valuables were buried, and an earth rampart had been raised around the wireless station. Glasgow contributed to the defense by sending ashore a small field gun with ammunition. Then, having taken aboard enough coal to reach the river Plate, the two ships sailed at 6:00 p.m. During the night, however, Grant signaled that Canopus was again near breakdown and that he must have five days to repair his engines. In London, Fisher realized that this “citadel” would be useless in a sea battle. He ordered her to return to Port Stanley, where she was to run herself aground on the mud flats at the eastern end of the inner harbor and transform herself into a stationary steel fort to protect the harbor and the town.

  Lame old Canopus now became an immobile, unsinkable gun platform. From where she lay, behind the low peninsula of rocks and sand that separates Port Stanley from the South Atlantic, she was almost invisible from the sea. To further blend her into the landscape, the crew took down her topmasts and splashed brown and green camouflage paint across her funnels and upper works. A line of crude mines made from empty oil barrels and filled with explosives to be detonated by electric wires from the shore was strung across the entrance to the outer harbor. Seventy Royal Marines from the battleship landed with small artillery pieces and constructed beach defenses at three possible landing sites. A lookout station was established on Sapper Hill, a 400-foot hill two miles south of the village with a sweeping view of the sea to the south and east. On a smaller promontory nearer the harbor, a fire control station was manned by ship’s officers. Telephone lines were strung from both of these observation points to the battleship. Thus the Falklands and Canopus awaited Admiral von Spee.

  Meanwhile on November 11, Glasgow reached the river Plate where she found Defence, whose crew lined the rails and cheered. On the twelfth, Glasgow and Defence left the Plate together for Abrolhos Rocks, in accordance with an Admiralty decision to withdraw all British naval forces from the South Atlantic until reinforcements could arrive. On November 14, a sunny warm day, with the nightmare of Coronel two weeks behind them, Glasgow’s crew appeared on deck wearing white summer uniforms.

  CHAPTER 13 “Very Well, Luce, We’ll Sail Tomorrow”

  In London at seven o’clock on the morning of November 4, the Admiralty received the first news of the disaster at Coronel. The First Lord reacted immediately, asking the whereabouts of the battle cruisers Australia and Invincible and the armored cruisers Defence, Carnarvon, Cornwall, and Kent
, and how long it would take each of them to reach Abrolhos Rocks, Rio, and Punta Arenas. An urgent signal was sent to Stoddart: “Carnarvon, Cornwall should join Defence off Montevideo. Canopus, Glasgow, Otranto ordered if possible to join you there. Kent will come from Sierra Leone. Enemy will most likely come on to the Rio trade routes. Reinforcements will meet you shortly from England.”

  Stoddart, whose flagship was Carnarvon, now commanded all British warships in the South Atlantic. It was another heterogeneous collection: four armored cruisers of different classes and capabilities, two modern light cruisers (one under repair), the armed merchant cruiser Macedonia, and the obsolete battleship Canopus, about to be grounded on the Port Stanley mudflats. Stoddart mustered his squadron at Abrolhos Rocks. All the armored cruisers were present by November 17 and, a few days later, Glasgow, repaired, came in from Rio.

  Four armored cruisers was a considerable force and the inclusion of Defence, denied to Cradock, would give Stoddart a fair chance against Admiral von Spee. Stoddart would have two 9.2-inch, fourteen 7.5-inch, twenty-two 6-inch, and ten 4-inch guns against the Germans’ sixteen 8.2-inch, twelve 5.9-inch, and thirty-two 4.1-inch guns. The critical question was the range at which Stoddart should engage. Because Spee’s sixteen 8.2-inch guns had a longer reach than all but the Defence’s two 9.2-inch guns, the British, once again, would have to come closer. There was no doubt that German gunnery would be superior, but the British would have the advantage in speed. The odds, in sum, were roughly even, but after Coronel, the Admiralty did not wish to sponsor a fair fight. From the moment Churchill heard about Cradock’s defeat, he wished to send the battle cruiser Invincible. “But I found Lord Fisher in a bolder mood,” Churchill wrote of the old admiral he had just appointed as First Sea Lord. “He would take two battle cruisers from the Grand Fleet for the South American station.” Within six hours of receiving a first report of Coronel, the First Lord and the First Sea Lord signaled Jellicoe at Scapa Flow: “Order lnvincible and Inflexible to fill up with coal at once and proceed to . . . [Devonport] with all dispatch. They are urgently needed for foreign service.”

  Churchill gave Fisher credit for this bold decision. The hunting down and destruction of enemy armored cruisers was the purpose for which Fisher had designed and built battle cruisers. Combining high speed and big guns, they were his beloved “greyhounds” and the dispatch of two of them to the South Atlantic was meant to ensure not merely Spee’s defeat, but his annihilation. “Sir John Jellicoe rose to the occasion and parted with his two battle cruisers without a word,” said Churchill—but, in fact, neither Jellicoe nor Beatty was pleased to be giving up two battle cruisers to hunt down two armored cruisers on the far side of the world. Five days later, when Fisher persuaded Churchill to strip away a third battle cruiser, this time Princess Royal, one of Beatty’s beloved Cats, and send it to the West Indies to guard against Spee coming through the Panama Canal, Jellicoe protested vehemently. It is “important not to weaken the Grand Fleet just now,” the Commander-in-Chief wrote to Fisher. “I will of course do the best I can with the force at my disposal, but much is expected of the Grand Fleet if the opportunity arises, and I hope I shall not be held responsible if the force is unequal to the task devolving upon it.” The Admiralty attempted to mollify Jellicoe by pointing out that the newest British battle cruiser, Tiger, then doing gunnery and torpedo exercises in southern Ireland, was about to join Beatty, and that three new dreadnought battleships, Benbow, Emperor of India, and Queen Elizabeth, were nearly ready. Jellicoe remained unpacified. The four new ships were not yet part of his fleet, he said, and when they arrived they would be raw. He also grumbled that if a third battle cruiser had to go, Fisher should have taken the older, 12-inch-gun New Zealand instead of the 13.5-inch-gun Princess Royal because New Zealand was adequate to deal with Spee and more economical in her consumption of coal.

  To appease the angry sea admirals, Fisher, uncharacteristically apologetic, wrote to Beatty, who had supported Jellicoe’s complaint about the taking of Princess Royal. “I admit the force of all your arguments,” Fisher said. “We have nought else . . . [to meet] the eventuality (not yet improbable) of the ‘Scharnhorst and Co.’ coming through the Panama Canal to New York to release the mass of armed German liners ready there to emerge into the Atlantic. Why the Vaterland [the 52,000-ton queen of German transatlantic liners, interned in New York with its German crew on board] has not ‘nipped out’ already is beyond me. . . . As I told Jellicoe, had I known of the New Zealand having more coal endurance, I would have taken her. I’m in the position of a chess player coming into a game after some damned bad moves have been made in the opening of the game by a pedantic ass. . . . It’s very difficult to retrieve a game badly begun.”

  The two battle cruisers first assigned, Invincible and Inflexible, belonged to the first generation of Jacky Fisher’s dreadnoughts. Completed in 1908, they weighed 17,250 tons, carried eight 12-inch guns, and could make at least 25 knots. To achieve such heavy armament and high speed within their tonnage, they had sacrificed armor and were no better protected than an armored cruiser. Already, both had participated in the war: Inflexible had pursued Goeben, and Invincible had been with Beatty in the Battle of the Bight. On Thursday morning, November 5, both battle cruisers were moored in Cromarty Firth. That evening, with Invincible leading, they steamed out into the North Sea and, at 17 knots, went north and west through Pentland Firth, then south through the Irish Channel. They were off the Eddystone Light at the western end of the Channel at 5:00 a.m. on November 8. A thick fog covered Plymouth Sound and Invincible grounded briefly on a sandbar; the tide rose and by 2:00 p.m., she was resting in a dry dock. Inflexible followed into a second dry dock. The ships were to have their bottoms cleaned and machinery repaired, and then embark coal, ammunition, and supplies, not only for themselves, but for other ships in the South Atlantic. Nevertheless, as Churchill observed, “Once ships fall into dockyard hands, a hundred needs manifest themselves.” Next morning, Admiral Edgerton, the head of the Devonport dockyard, wired the Admiralty: “The earliest possible date of completion of repairs to Invincible and Inflexible is midnight November 13. Repairs to boilers of Invincible cannot be finished before.” A hurricane blew through the Admiralty. “Friday the thirteenth! What a day to choose!” Fisher exclaimed. “Shall I give him a prog?” Churchill asked. Fisher wanted more than a prog, and the message to Edgerton, drafted by Churchill, was peremptory: “Invincible and Inflexible are needed for War Service and are to sail Wednesday, November 11. Dockyard arrangements must be made to conform. You are held responsible for the speedy dispatch of these ships in a thoroughly efficient condition. If necessary dockyard men should be sent away in the ships, to return as opportunity offers.”

  On Monday, November 9, although the ship was still in dry dock, Invincible’s decks were stacked with stores and provisions. That night, the battle cruiser was moved out of dry dock to a coaling jetty. Her crew began coaling just before midnight and continued until 11:30 the next morning with a break for cocoa at 3:00 a.m. and another for breakfast at 7:30. The repairs were never finished; when she sailed, Invincible had several dozen workmen still on board.

  Meanwhile, the Admiralty had appointed an officer to command the force. It was not to be Rear Admiral Stoddart. Command of two battle cruisers and numerous armored cruisers called for a vice admiral and, as it happened, an officer of this rank was immediately available from the inner circle of the Admiralty itself. The appointment, however, was not conceived in thoughtful discussion, but in rancor and compromise. The rancor was Fisher’s; the compromise, Churchill’s. On returning to the Admiralty as First Sea Lord, Fisher had brought with him a fierce resentment against the Chief of Staff, Vice Admiral Sir Frederick Doveton Sturdee. This feeling stemmed from an old feud. Ten years before, during his first appointment as First Sea Lord, Fisher had assigned Sturdee as Chief of Staff to Lord Charles Beresford, then Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet. According to Sturdee, before he took up his post, Fisher a
sked him “to keep an eye on Charlie as he was inclined to be rather rash and rather wild on Service matters. He asked me to write to him privately about my chief. This request I never complied with. Such a disloyal act was so obvious it did not require a second thought.” Subsequently, during the long, bitter vendetta waged by Beresford against Fisher that resulted in both resigning in 1910, Sturdee sided with Beresford. Fisher, with all the power of his volcanic personality, detested Sturdee. When news of Coronel reached Whitehall, and Fisher persuaded Churchill to send out two battle cruisers, the new First Sea Lord walked into Sturdee’s room to give him this information. Sturdee could not restrain himself from pointing out that he himself had suggested just such a move before Coronel but had been overruled. Fisher, believing that his initiative was being challenged, flushed and left the room. He went straight to Churchill to announce that he would not tolerate “that damned fool at the Admiralty for one day longer.”

  Frederick Doveton Sturdee, then fifty-five, was a short, bulldog-shaped man with a Roman nose, a heavy lower jaw, and flourishing eyebrows. He had entered the navy at twelve, specialized in gunnery and torpedoes, and developed a reputation as a tactician. After serving under Beresford in the Mediterranean and Channel Fleets, he was promoted to rear admiral in 1910 and knighted in 1913. Appointed to the Admiralty in May 1914, he quickly made himself disliked. It was said that he was rigid, pedantic, conceited, and surly. Wanting to do everything himself, he refused to listen to advice from subordinates. When his dispositions of the fleet were criticized, he became obstinate; even after the loss of the three Bacchantes, Sturdee continued to press for regular cruiser patrols on the Broad Fourteens. Opinions about him split along old fault lines: Beresford described him as “one of the most brilliant, if not the most brilliant, officer of my acquaintance”; Fisher called him a “pedantic ass . . . is, has been, and always will be.” Fisher blamed Sturdee for the assignment of ships and squadrons in the weeks preceding Coronel: “Never such utter rot as perpetrated by Sturdee in his world-wide dispersal of weak units! Strong nowhere, weak everywhere!”