Castles of Steel

by Robert K. Massie

  Nevertheless, Churchill trusted Sturdee. Fisher’s anger had to be assuaged, but the First Lord refused to make the Chief of Staff the scapegoat for Coronel. Suddenly, a solution presented itself: two battle cruisers were about to leave England on an important mission; a commander for this force was needed; Sturdee could be removed from the Admiralty and Fisher would be pleased. The First Lord summoned Sturdee and told him, “The destruction of the German [Spee’s] Squadron is an object of high and immediate importance. I propose to entrust this duty to you.” Sturdee immediately accepted, turned over his duties as Chief of Staff to Rear Admiral Sir Henry Oliver, and departed by train for Devonport. On Wednesday the eleventh, Sturdee boarded Invincible and hoisted his vice admiral’s flag. By midmorning, the captains of both battle cruisers reported their ships ready for sea. “Very well,” Sturdee said laconically, “we sail at four p.m.” At noon, Lady Sturdee and their daughter came aboard for a farewell meal. Sturdee brought with him the new title of Commander-in-Chief, South Atlantic and Pacific. “Your main and most important duty,” his orders read, “is to search for the German armored cruisers . . . and bring them to action. All other considerations are to be subordinate to this end.” All British ships and naval officers, including Stoddart, in all the oceans where von Spee might appear, were placed under Sturdee’s command.

  The battle cruisers steamed west and south, through the Bay of Biscay, around the tip of Spain, past Portugal, past Madeira with sunrise lighting its 6,000-foot peak. Daily, the weather grew warmer and the sea shaded to deeper blues. The sea routine of the naval service set in: the officers breakfasted on porridge, fish patties, eggs, and bacon, lunched on bread, butter, jam, and cakes, and for dinner had soup, salt beef, macaroni, cheese, dessert, and coffee. Tea at 4:00 p.m. was followed by officers’ deck hockey. On Sunday mornings, the captains inspected their ships at 10:00 and church services on deck followed at 11:00. Once the weather was warm, a swimming pool was rigged by stretching a canvas between the two forward 12-inch guns; the officers used it between seven and eight a.m.; the men in the evening. On November 17, officers and men changed from their winter blue uniforms into summer white. On deck in bright sunshine, they watched groups of flying fish, like “small flocks of birds,” breaking the surface, flying, plunging, reappearing, soaring.

  Six days out from England, the battle cruisers anchored in the wide, semicircular bay of Porto Grande on St. Vincent, one of the Portuguese Cape Verde Islands, off the coast of Africa. As they approached, the British sailors saw an 8,000-foot volcanic mountain, its peak wreathed in clouds, rising straight from the sea. The harbor itself was crowded with ships, including eight German steamers sheltering in the neutral port. As soon as their anchors splashed, the battle cruisers were surrounded by brightly colored boats with green oranges, bananas, and coral necklaces for sale. Colliers came alongside, and coaling continued through the night. A tragedy marred this procedure. In the middle of the night, a sixteen-year-old boy attending a cable motor on board Invincible dropped off to sleep. His hand, resting on the rolling cable, was caught and the boy was dragged completely around the cable drum. He died instantly. The following day, Invincible, under way, halted in mid-ocean and the boy was buried at sea.

  Sturdee proceeded south at a constant, economical 10 knots, his speed, like Spee’s in the Pacific, dictated by coal. His ships’ appetites were huge and the distances immense: 2,500 miles from Devonport to the Cape Verde Islands; 2,300 miles from Cape Verde to the Abrolhos Rocks; 2,200 from the Abrolhos Rocks to the Falklands. The admiral wanted his approach unknown. His ships maintained radio silence and although it took Sturdee twenty-six days to travel from Devonport to the Falklands, the information that he was coming never reached Spee. This was less a success of British security than a failure of German intelligence. At Devonport, it was widely known that the two battle cruisers were off to deal with Spee. News of the voyage also became known in Rio and Montevideo, thanks to talkative radio operators, German and British, at Cape Verde. On November 17 at a club in Rio, Lieutenant Hirst of Glasgow overheard two Englishmen discussing the imminent arrival of the two battle cruisers. The Germans had a good cable connection with Chile, but when they did learn about Sturdee’s coming, either it was too late to reach Spee by wireless at sea or they simply did not realize the urgent nature of the news.

  At dawn on November 26, Sturdee reached Abrolhos to find Stoddart’s cruiser squadron and nine colliers riding at anchor. Soon, the sea was filled with small boats going from ship to ship. Invincible had brought fifty-four bags of mail from England and Inflexible distributed a month’s provisions—including beer, which Stoddart’s men had not tasted for weeks. Then, under a merciless sun, in temperatures of 100 degrees, the battle cruisers coaled. The armored cruiser Defence, no longer needed to confront Spee, was dispatched to bolster the squadron at Capetown. At a conference of captains on the morning of November 27, Sturdee declared that Spee could not reach the river Plate before he did and that even if the Germans came into the South Atlantic, they probably would steam slowly up the middle of the ocean. He admitted that Spee might attack the Falklands, and arrangements were made for Port Stanley to send a daily wireless signal so that silence could be interpreted as the loss of that colony. Sturdee’s plan was that if he arrived at the Falklands before Spee came around the Horn, he would use the islands as a coaling base and then set his fast light cruisers, Glasgow and Bristol, to ferreting the harbors in Tierra del Fuego and the fjords of the Chilean archipelago. Once the prey was located, the battle cruisers were to come at high speed. The squadron, he announced, would sail from Abrolhos on the twenty-ninth. Captain Luce of Glasgow was surprised to hear that Sturdee intended to remain at Abrolhos for another two days. Luce, who had been at the Falklands and was aware of the deep anxiety of the inhabitants, felt that this was unjustifiable; in addition, the tactical urgency of Sturdee reaching the Falklands before Spee seemed obvious. “In some trepidation,” he wrote later, he went back to the flagship after the conference. “I hope you don’t mind me coming over, sir,” he said to Sturdee, “and please don’t imagine I am questioning your orders, but thinking it over, I do feel we should sail as soon as possible.”

  “But, dammit, Luce,” Sturdee replied, “we’re sailing the day after tomorrow. Isn’t that good enough for you?” Luce persisted and Sturdee relented: “Very well, Luce, we’ll sail tomorrow.”

  At 10:00 on the morning of November 28, Sturdee led his force to sea. Sweeping south in bright sunshine, the ships spread in a fanlike search pattern, each ship at the maximum distance—twelve miles in good weather—that permitted visual communication by signal light. Two days later, with the sea still calm and visibility excellent, Sturdee ordered firing practice. Carnarvon towed a target for Kent, which fired 144 rounds of 6-inch ammunition; then Kent towed for Carnarvon. The battle cruisers fired their 12-inch guns at 12,000 yards, the range at which Sturdee intended to engage. Invincible fired thirty-two shells, four from each gun, at a target towed by Inflexible. Only one hit was obtained, but the near misses were declared satisfactory. Inflexible then fired thirty-two rounds at an Invincible target and scored three hits. While Invincible was hauling in her target, the wire cable wrapped itself around the starboard outboard propeller. Sturdee halted the entire squadron for twelve hours in mid-ocean while divers went down and attempted to clear the fouled propeller. They failed, but to avoid wasting more time, the squadron got under way with Invincible steaming on only three propellers.

  As the ships steamed farther south, the air grew colder, the sea changed from deep blue to green and gray, and the swells were flecked with whitecaps. Spouting whales and an albatross were seen and the crews changed from summer white uniforms back into winter blue. The Falkland Islands first appeared through rain squalls at around 9:00 on Monday morning, December 7. Twenty-seven days and 7,000 miles after leaving England, the battle cruisers passed the Cape Pembroke lighthouse, marking the entrance to Port Stanley harbor, and carefully made their way through
the string of improvised mines strung across the harbor mouth. Along the shore on each side as they glided into the anchorage, the crews saw seals and penguin rookeries. Port Stanley harbor is divided by a narrow channel into two bays: Port William, the outer, deeper anchorage, and Port Stanley, the inner harbor and site of the small settlement. In Port William, the two battle cruisers and the armored cruisers dropped anchor. Bristol and Glasgow, being of shallower draft, proceeded through the narrow channel into the inner harbor, where the little settlement spread itself along the shore. Five minutes after anchoring, divers went down to clear the tightly wound cable from lnvincible’s propeller. Before morning, the propeller was free. The squadron needed coal, but because only two colliers were available, the warships had to take turns. Cornwall was given permission to put out fires in order to clean her boilers and Bristol was allowed to dismantle an engine for repair. The armed merchant cruiser Macedonia was assigned to patrol the harbor entrance and the armored cruiser Kent, keeping steam up inside the anchorage, was instructed to relieve Macedonia at 8:00 the following morning.

  Then Sturdee summoned his captains on board lnvincible. There were reports of German colliers at Dawson Island in Tierra del Fuego, which suggested that Spee might soon be coming around Cape Horn. Sturdee, wishing to get around the Horn before the Germans, declared that the British squadron would remain at the Falklands for only forty-eight hours; they would sail, he said, on Wednesday, the ninth. Meanwhile that day, the officers of Invincible and Inflexible were to have five hours’ shore leave; the officers of the armored and light cruisers would have their turn the following day. Proceeding ashore in their ships’ boats, the battle cruiser officers saw Canopus dressed in her strange colors, sitting on her mudbank. They were welcomed at the small town pier by the rector of Christ Church, who invited them to afternoon tea. Returning to their ships at six o’clock, they looked at the barren hills to the west and bundled their coats tighter against the cold wind coming up from Antarctica.

  After his victory, Admiral von Spee remained in Valparaíso harbor for less than the twenty-four hours permitted and sailed on November 4. A day and a half later, he was back at Más Afuera, 400 miles out in the Pacific. Leipzig was already there, small against the towering cliff, and had brought with her a prize, a French four-masted bark loaded with 3,600 tons of Cardiff coal. The vessel and her cargo were both welcome; the coal was stowed and the bark’s canvas sails were cut up and resewn into 300 useful coal sacks.

  For nine days, the East Asia Squadron remained in the shadow of the cliff. There, the German sailors learned that Tsingtao had fallen and that Emden’s voyage had come to an end. Leipzig and Dresden took their turn going into Valparaíso for receiving and sending messages, while aboard the anchored Scharnhorst, Spee considered his next move. Oddly, he seemed in no hurry. He must have known that Britain would react aggressively to Cradock’s defeat and that it was to his advantage to reach the South Atlantic before the Admiralty in London could send out reinforcements. Still, he dawdled. Why? Spee’s lethargy had several possible causes. Undoubtedly, he was fatigued; six months of relentless daily responsibility during a 15,000-mile voyage across the Pacific, climaxing in a violent naval battle, were sufficient reason for that. But there was more than weariness in Spee’s procrastination. He was an aggressive, skilled commander in battle, but when he considered the strength of his squadron in opposition to the overwhelming, worldwide power of the British navy, he tended to gloom and fatalism. Imbued since youth with respect for the Royal Navy, he felt that whatever he did, in whatever direction he went, it scarcely mattered; his small squadron inevitably must encounter the avenging power of his enemies. These forebodings explain his advice to his admirer in Valparaíso that she keep her flowers for his grave.

  Spee also faced a number of practical difficulties. Cradock had inflicted little material damage on the German ships, but he had significantly weakened their fighting power by depleting their magazines. Another battle in the Southern Ocean would empty the magazines and leave the armored cruisers impotent in any attempt to break through the British North Sea blockade. As always, Spee worried about coal, and this consideration led him to reaffirm at Más Afuera the decision he had made at Pagan Island: he ruled against commerce raiding, which still appealed to the captains of his light cruisers. The squadron, he declared, would remain together.

  The East Asia Squadron left Más Afuera on November 15, headed for the tip of South America and the South Atlantic. Four days later, the ships entered the Gulf of Penas on the coast of Chile, 300 miles north of the Straits of Magellan, and anchored in Bahía San Quintín, beneath the peaks of the Cordilleras, crowned in that region by Cerro San Valentín, 13,000 feet high and capped with snow. Not far away, two glaciers, the San Rafael and the San Quintín, reach down to the water. From their decks, the German seamen stared at the sunlight shining on the mountain peaks, the glowing, prismatic colors of the glacier ice, and the luxuriant green virgin forests along the water’s edge. Boats launched in water still as glass made their way back and forth between floating pieces of blue-green ice broken off from the glacier.

  Surrounded by the natural silence of this uninhabited place, the German ships coaled again and the admiral conducted a ceremony. The kaiser, exultant, had signaled that he was personally awarding Spee the Iron Cross, First Class and the Iron Cross, Second Class. In addition, the admiral was ordered to select from among his officers and men 300 others to receive the Iron Cross, Second Class. Spee chose his captains, gunnery officers, engineer officers, wireless officers, chief engineers, and his own staff; the rest of the awards were left to the individual ship captains to parcel out. The admiral went from ship to ship, naming and congratulating the recipients (although the medals themselves waited in Germany for the squadron’s return) and outbursts of cheering echoed through the low mists hanging over the water.

  In Bahía San Quintín, Spee received a message from Berlin, written before the Battle of Coronel and brought to him from Valparaíso by Dresden and Leipzig. In most respects, the signal, containing general Naval Staff guidelines, conformed to Spee’s own thinking and decisions:

  1. Little result can be expected from war against commerce in the Pacific. In the Atlantic, in view of the strict watch kept by the enemy on the principal trade routes, commerce raiding is possible only with ships operating in groups [large enough to] have nothing to fear from enemy naval forces.

  2. On the other hand, the coal supply for ships operating in groups will become more difficult because, owing to British pressure, neu-tral states continually extend their prohibitions on exports. Even supplies . . . [from] New York can hardly be counted upon. Coal taken from captured ships will hardly suffice for cruisers operating in groups.

  3. [Therefore], it is left to your discretion to break off cruiser warfare against trade as soon as you think it advisable and to attempt to break through to Germany with all the ships you can concentrate.

  4. You may succeed if your careful preparations are accompanied by good luck. One of the conditions necessary for success is to take in enough coal in South America to reach the Canaries or at any rate the Cape Verde islands. . . . It may be necessary to secure the cooperation of the High Seas Fleet in breaking through the enemy blockade in the North Sea; therefore, your intentions should be communicated early. . . .

  7. Relations with Argentina and Brazil are not friendly. Portugal is hesitating about joining our enemies. . . . Spain is neutral. . . . If Portugal declares war against us, it might be possible to take coal by force from the Portuguese islands of Cape Verde, the Azores, and Madeira.

  This memorandum provided no recent intelligence or orders, but it made clear that the Naval Staff agreed that using the cruiser squadron to attack Allied trade would be unwise. Admiral von Tirpitz had strongly advocated that Spee drop everything else and attempt to break through for home. When Spee’s telegram announcing the Coronel victory arrived, Tirpitz had “proposed to put him [von Spee] free . . . to run up the center of t
he Atlantic. . . . The ammunition left after the heavy expenditure of the engagement seemed to me insufficient for a second battle. I therefore proposed that we should place von Spee, with whom we could communicate via Valparaiso, at liberty to avoid the east coast of South America, making the northward voyage in the middle of the Atlantic or nearer the African coast. . . . [We should] tell Spee that we did not expect any further active operations from him and that . . . his task was now to make his way home . . . through the vast tracts of the Atlantic. . . . The prestige of Coronel would have been established.” Tirpitz, however, did not have operational command of the navy. And Admiral Hugo von Pohl, the Chief of the Naval Staff, was unwilling “to encroach in any way on the freedom of action of the Count [von Spee].” Tirpitz could not overrule Pohl and the order to sail directly home was never sent. A message from Pohl, sent after Coronel, reached Valparaíso on November 16, and also was passed to Spee by Leipzig: “What are your intentions? How much ammunition do you have?” Spee replied that the two armored cruisers had about half their ammunition and the light cruisers rather more. As to his intentions, Spee replied: “The cruiser squadron intends to break through for home.”

  Coal, as always, remained the determinant. Spee had promises, estimates, and advice, none of which he could burn in his furnaces. Besides, the promises were blurred: the Naval Staff had said that 40,000 tons of coal could be delivered from New York by neutral steamers already chartered; then, in the same message, he was told that these supplies could not be counted upon. Fourteen thousand tons awaited Spee in the Canary Islands—unless Portugal became a belligerent on the Allied side. Before going into Bahía San Quintín, Spee himself had sent messages to Montevideo and New York, asking that steamers—“German if possible”—meet him at Puerto Santa Elena on the South Atlantic coast of Argentina with 10,000 tons of coal. Meanwhile, in Bahía San Quintín, his ships, preparing to sail, were gorging themselves on coal, cramming their bunkers and then piling more on the decks.