Castles of Steel (46 page)

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] light 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.

Later, Captain Schönberg wrote: “I fired until the
Monmouth
had completely capsized, which . . . proceeded very slowly and majestically, the brave fellows went under with flags flying, an indescribable and unforgettable moment as the masts with the great top flags sank slowly into the water. Unfortunately, there could be no thought of saving the poor fellows. First, I believed that I had an enemy before me, secondly the sea was so high that hardly a boat could have lived in it. Moreover, all my ship’s boats were secured before the action.” Even so, after the battle, many of
Nürnberg
’s officers were ill at ease about their slaughter of a helpless enemy. “It was terrible to have to fire on poor fellows who were no longer able to defend themselves,” said Lieutenant Otto von Spee, the admiral’s son. “But their colors were still flying and when we ceased fire for several minutes they did not haul them down.”

The battle was over.
Nürnberg
signaled the flagship, “Have sunk enemy cruiser,” and Spee replied, “Bravo,
Nürnberg
!” There were no survivors from
Monmouth
or
Good Hope.
Sixteen hundred British seamen had died. Christopher Cradock, his wish fulfilled, was one of them.

By 10:15 p.m., Spee decided that
Good Hope, Glasgow,
and
Otranto
had escaped. The last two were of little concern, and he believed that
Good Hope
was so heavily damaged that she would either sink or make for Valparaíso for repairs, in which case he hoped to persuade the Chilean government to disarm and intern her. But there remained the British battleship sighted off Punta Arenas; from signals intercepted by
Scharnhorst
he knew that the battleship was coming north. Deciding not to risk an encounter with this ship, Von Spee himself turned north at 10:20 p.m.

On Monday morning, November 2, the day after the battle, the sun was shining, the wind had dropped, the sea was calm, and the ships of the East Asia Squadron, steaming at 10 knots, gently rose and fell in the following swell. In the clear air, the Germans could see the distant coastline of Chile and, more important, far and wide an empty ocean. When Spee ordered a diligent search for the shattered hulk of
Good Hope
or any evidence of her sinking, the observations made by
Leipzig
’s crew finally reached him. Admiral von Spee now knew that he had command of the sea in the southeast Pacific. To acknowledge the victory, he gave his ships the opportunity to close his flagship and cheer him, responding, “With God’s help, a glorious victory. I express my thanks and congratulations to the crews.” Assessing the damage to his squadron, Spee found that
Scharnhorst
had been hit only twice and that both shells had failed to explode. One British 6-inch shell had hit forward on the starboard side above the armored belt, making a hole three feet square and penetrating to a storeroom—but it did not explode. “The creature just lay there,” wrote Spee, “as a kind of greeting.” A second shell hit a funnel without doing serious damage. The four shells that struck
Gneisenau
had not seriously harmed her. The three German light cruisers had not been hit. Not a single German officer or seaman had been killed; three men from
Gneisenau
had been slightly wounded. For Spee, the most serious consequence of the battle was that he had expended half of his ammunition. At Coronel,
Scharnhorst
had fired 422 8.2-inch shells and had only 350 left;
Gneisenau
had fired 244 and had 528 left. The ammunition had been well spent; even in the heavy sea, the gunnery of the armored cruisers had been superb.
Scharnhorst,
for example, scored at least thirty-five direct hits on
Good Hope.
But the fact was that there were no more projectiles to feed to the guns, short of Wilhelmshaven or Kiel.