Battle of the Falkland Islands
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| Battle of the Falkland Islands | |||||||
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| Part of World War I | |||||||
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| Combatants | |||||||
| British Empire | German Empire | ||||||
| Commanders | |||||||
| Doveton Sturdee | Maximilian von Spee † | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 2 battlecruisers, 3 armoured cruisers, 2 light cruisers and 1 grounded pre-dreadnought |
2 armoured cruisers, 3 light cruisers, 3 transports |
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| Casualties | |||||||
| 10 killed, 19 wounded No ships lost |
1,871 killed, 215 captured 2 armoured cruisers, 2 light cruisers sunk, 2 transports captured and subsequently scuttled |
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| The Command of the Oceans 1914-1918 |
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| Penang – Coronel – Cocos – Falkland Islands - Königsberg |
The Battle of the Falkland Islands was a naval engagement of the First World War, fought between units of the Royal Navy and the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial German Navy) on 8 December 1914. The British, reeling from the defeat at the Battle of Coronel sent a large force to destroy the German cruiser squadron. The result was a decisive victory for the British.
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[edit] Background
Following Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee's success on1 November 1914 at the Battle of Coronel, off the coast of Chile, where his German East Asia Squadron sank Admiral Cradock's flagship HMS Good Hope and the cruiser HMS Monmouth, von Spee's force put into Valparaíso for orders and intelligence.
Unknown to Admiral Spee as he headed for the Falklands, a British squadron, including two modern battle cruisers, HMS Invincible and HMS Inflexible, were at that same time re-coaling at Stanley in the Falklands. They had been sent by the First Sea Lord, Admiral Lord Fisher, to avenge the British defeat at Coronel. The British battle cruisers mounted eight 12-inch guns apiece, whereas Spee's SMS Scharnhorst and SMS Gneisenau each had 8.2-inch guns. Additionally, the battle cruisers could make 25½ knots against Spee's 22½ knots. Thus the British battle cruisers could outrun their opponents and significantly outgun them. Invincible and Inflexible were accompanied at Stanley by five other cruisers, under the command of Vice Admiral Sturdee. These were the armoured cruisers HMS Carnarvon, HMS Cornwall and HMS Kent; and the two light cruisers, HMS Bristol and HMS Glasgow. An old pre-dreadnought battleship, HMS Canopus, had also been grounded at Stanley to give a stable gunnery platform and act as a make-shift fortress for their defence of this area.
Visibility on 8 December 1914 was at its maximum: the sea was placid with a gentle breeze from the north west, the sun bright, the sky clear. The advance cruisers of the German squadron had been detected early on, and by nine o'clock that morning the British battle-cruisers and cruisers were in hot pursuit of the five German vessels, these having taken flight in line abreast to the south-east.
[edit] The battle
Spee's cruisers, the Gneisenau and Nürnberg, approached Stanley first. At the time, the entire British fleet was coaling. Fortunately for the British, the Germans were surprised by gunfire from an unknown source, i.e. the Canopus which had been grounded as a guardship and was behind a hill. This was enough to check the cruisers' advance. The sight of the distinctive tripod masts of the British battlecruisers confirmed that they were facing a better equipped enemy. The Kent was already making way out of the harbour and was ordered to follow them.
Already aware of the German ships, Sturdee had ordered the crews to breakfast, knowing that the Canopus had bought them time while steam was raised.
To Spee, with his crew battle-weary and his ships outgunned, the outcome was seemingly inevitable. Realising his danger too late — and having missed the golden opportunity to shell Sturdee's fleet while in port — Spee and his squadron dashed for the open sea, the armoured cruisers leading left port around 10:00. Spee was ahead by 15 miles but there was a lot of daylight left for the faster battlecruisers to catch up.
It was nearly one o'clock when the British battlecruisers opened fire and it took them half an hour to get the range of the Leipzig. Realising that he could not hope to outrun the fast British battle cruisers, Spee decided to engage them with his armoured cruisers alone, to give the light cruisers a chance to escape, just after 13:20. The German armoured cruisers had the advantage of being to windward of a freshening north-west breeze, causing the funnel smoke of the battlecruisers to obscure their target practically throughout the action. Pochhammer indicates that there was a long respite during the early stages of the battle while the battle-cruisers attempted to lure Admiral Spee away from his advantageous position, but failed to do so.
Despite initial success by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in striking Invincible (commanded by Edward Bingham), the British capital ships suffered little damage, thanks to their armour. Spee then resumed the hasty escape, but the battlecruisers were within extreme firing range some forty minutes later.
Invincible and Inflexible engaged Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, Sturdee detached the cruisers to chase the Leipzig and Nürnberg.
Inflexible and Invincible turned to fire broadsides at the armoured cruisers and Spee responded by trying to close the range. His flagship Scharnhorst took extensive damage with funnels flattened, fires and a list. The list became worse at 16:04 and she sank by 16:17. All hands were lost. Gneisenau continued to fire and evade until 17:15 by which time her ammunition had gone and her crew allowed her to sink, going down at 18:02. During her death throes, Admiral Sturdee continued to engage Gneisenau with his two battlecruisers and the cruiser Carnarvon rather than detaching one of the battle cruisers to hunt down the escaping Dresden. Of the Gneisenau's crew, 190 were rescued from the water. The battlecruisers had received about 40 hits and lost one man, with four more injured.
Meanwhile, Nürnberg and Leipzig had run from the British cruisers. The Nürnberg was running at full speed but in need of maintenance, while the crew of the pursuing Kent were pushing her boilers and engines to the limit. Nurnberg finally turned to battle at 17:30. Kent had the advantage in shell weight and armour. Nurnberg suffered two boiler explosions around 18:30, giving the advantage in speed and manoeuvre to Kent. She then rolled over at 19:27 after a long chase. The cruisers Glasgow and Cornwall had chased down Leipzig. Glasgow closed to finish Leipzig which had run out of ammunition but was still flying her battle ensign. She fired two flares, so Glasgow halted fire. At 21:23, more than 80 miles southeast of the Falklands, she rolled over, leaving only 18 survivors .
[edit] Results
Ten British sailors were killed during the battle and 19 wounded; none of the British ships was badly damaged. In contrast, 1,871 German sailors were killed in the encounter, including Admiral Spee and his two sons. A further 215 survivors were rescued and ended up prisoners on the British ships. Most of them were from the Gneisenau, five from the Nürnberg and 18 from the Leipzig. None of the 765 officers and men from the Scharnhorst survived.
Of the known German force of eight ships, two escaped: the auxiliary Seydlitz and the light cruiser Dresden, which roamed at large for a further three months before her captain surrendered off the Juan Fernández Islands on 14 March 1915. Evacuating his ship, he then scuttled her by detonating its main ammunition magazine.
As a consequence of the battle, German commerce raiding on the high seas by regular warships of the Kaiserliche Marine was brought to an end. However, Germany put several armed merchant vessels into service as commerce raiders until the end of the war (see Felix von Luckner, for example). These lone raiders would not utilize the fleet in being principle of von Spee.
[edit] Discussions and Interpretations
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[edit] Admiral Spee's intentions
Military historian John Keegan has written about the battle in his book Intelligence in War and used the battles of Coronel and the Falkland Islands to illustrate the effect of wireless intelligence on the outcome. The whereabouts of the ships could be sent round the world, so that ships no longer need rely on visual search. Von Spee's purpose in heading for Stanley was in part to capture its communication centre.
It is held by historians that his subsequent target was merchant and troop shipping in the South Atlantic after raiding the British radio and coaling station at Stanley in the Falkland Islands.
There are no documents in the German naval archives of any nature relating to the attack on the Falkland Islands in December 1914. It came as a complete surprise to Berlin. It would therefore appear that Admiral von Spee was acting on his own initiative or on secret undisclosed orders when he drew up his plan.
Lord Fisher had told Churchill: "If I were Spee, I would occupy the Falklands, fortify them, and destroy the maritime traffic of the South Atlantic from there....". If Fisher thought this way, it is likely that Spee had not only weighed the possibility but had decided to proceed accordingly to the full blown invasion, occupation and fortification of the Falkland Islands.
It had been the practice of Admiral von Spee during the first five months of the war to detach a single cruiser for the purpose of neutralizing the harbour installations of enemy-held islands, instead of arriving with the entire armada and exposing it to risk. Increasingly short of coal by December 1914 and lacking intelligence of British naval movements, it would have defied logic on Spee's part to advance on Port Stanley with five cruisers, plus three auxiliaries from the south and two supply ships coming down from the north, if his purpose was simply to demolish the radio station and torch the coal stores. The evasive report submitted to the British Admiralty by Admiral Sturdee adds to the suspicion that von Spee's intention was to convert the Falkland Islands into a German naval base. Admiral Sturdee's report was written on 19 December 1914, eleven days after the battle; by then he had had time to assimilate the various reports and establish the facts of the action. His paper was published as a Supplement to the London Gazette, No 29087 of 3 March 1915.
Spee began his attack on 8 December 1914, intending subsequently to refuel north at the estuary of the River Plate (Río de la Plata). While aware of ships in the area, he mistakenly assumed them to belong to the Imperial Japanese Navy[citation needed]. At the time, the entire British fleet was coaling and would have been sitting ducks if Spee had decided to press the attack, since the sinking of the first ship would have blocked the harbour.
[edit] Chasing German auxiliaries
Sturdee noted that "information was received from the captain of HMS Bristol at 11:27 a.m. that three enemy ships had appeared off Port Pleasant, probably colliers or transports. The captain was therefore directed to take charge also of the Macedonia under his orders and destroy the transports." At the end of his report, Sturdee returned briefly to the matter of the German transports. "HMS Macedonia reported that only two ships, steamers Baden and Santa Isabel were present: both ships were sunk after removal of the crews."
These two evasive, deliberately misleading paragraphs hide a story that on no account was to be made public, either then or in the following decades. Port Pleasant is not many miles below Port Stanley on the east coast of the Falklands. How the three German vessels had happened to simply materialize there just before noon is not explained. The only explanation is that during the night of 7 December no alert naval watch had been kept on the southern and eastern waters of the island, and the German auxiliaries had steamed up during the hours of darkness and anchored close inshore.
Whereas Bristol was the senior ship of the two appointed to destroy the three transports, Sturdee preferred the Macedonia. He reported that "only two ships were present, these being sunk after removal of the crews". It is a puzzle how, in perfect visibility, the number of German auxiliaries coming about Port Pleasant was counted as three instead of two, and has remained at two ever since. Was there, or was there not, a third auxiliary?
The German support vessels are believed to have been five. Two of these, the steamers Mera and Elinore Woermann, sailed from the River Plate on 4 December 1914 for an unspecified destination loaded with cement, rolls of barbed wire, entrenching equipment and provisions. It is thought that they had been headed for the Falklands; they returned to the River Plate on or about 11 December.
The collier Baden, about 7,500 tons, was a HAPAG ship built in 1913. The collier Santa Isabel, about 5,200 tons, was a Hamburg-Sud Amerika ship built in 1914. Both were modern colliers which would have made a useful addition to the British mercantile fleet if taken as prizes, yet they were both sunk within 50 miles of Port Stanley. The two steamers were apparently overtaken by the Bristol and Macedonia at about 1 p.m and the crews "given ten minutes to abandon ship". Since the British boarding parties remained aboard the Santa Isabel for seven hours, and eight and a half hours aboard Baden before the colliers were sunk, one is inclined to suspect that their holds contained something more explosive and delectable (?) than just coal.
[edit] Seydlitz
The Phantom Ship was probably the Norddeutscher Lloyd passenger liner Seydlitz, built at Schichau in 1903. Able to accommodate 2,000 persons, she was past her best, but could make 14 knots. The day before the outbreak of war, Seydlitz sailed from Sydney and reached Argentina unscathed, laying up at Bahía Blanca at the southern end of Buenos Aires province. Early in November 1914, she made the voyage from there to Valparaiso in Chile, which was the principal mobilisation centre for German reservists and volunteers from all parts of South America.
According to the memoirs (Graf Spees Letzte Fahrt, Leipzig, 1924) of Fregattenkapitän Hans Pochhammer, First Officer of the armoured cruiser SMS Gneisenau and senior surviving German officer of the Falklands battle, the German East Asia Squadron had been hiding in the Gulf of Penas along the southern coast of Chile during the latter part of November 1914, in order to load new stores and refit. It was joined there on or about December 21 by Seydlitz, arriving from Valparaiso. Pochhammer was mystified by this liner, for although bearing no outward markings, she was described as "a hospital ship". He could not understand the need for such a vessel, since each of the five warships had adequate medical facilities, sick bays and shared a total of eleven surgeons. Pochhammer was unable to gain access to Seydlitz, and no member of her alleged "medical staff" was ever seen.
Although Pochhammer confirms that the three auxiliaries were present at Picton Island in the Beagle Channel in early December 1914, he avoids mentioning when they sailed: it is clear that they did not leave for the Falklands in company with the five warships on the evening of 7 December, and may have gone on earlier. Pochhammer states that during his captivity at Port Stanley, he was kept aboard HMS Macedonia for part of the time. In conversation with her officers, when he asked them what had become of Seydlitz he was told,
"She came out of Port Pleasant like a bat out of hell. Macedonia and Bristol had to take a steamer apiece allowing Seydlitz to head for the south and west and so escape, we all thought she was an armed merchant cruiser."
Upon her arrival in Argentine waters, Seydlitz put into San Antonio Oeste and declared herself to be "a hospital ship". The Argentine authorities were not deceived and interned her as a German naval auxiliary. She was interned there for the remainder of the war. The original mission of this passenger ship with capacity for 2000 passengers was probably to evacuate the population of the Falkland Islands (also about 2000 at the time) and carry it to neutral Argentina.
[edit] Argentine involvement
What cannot be known is the extent to which Argentina might have had knowledge of, or been involved in, the enterprise. Admiral Spee had been granted independence to act as he thought fit by the German Admiralty, but surely not to the extent of an invasion which was bound to have major diplomatic repercussions. The scale of Spee's audacious adventure must be viewed in the light of his own general demeanour of gloom after his conceiving of the plan at Valparaiso in November 1914, and the fact that all the cruiser commanders were opposed to it. A diplomatic reason for the arrangement cannot be discounted. 8 December is an important religious holiday in Argentina, and Pochhammer indicates in his memoir that Spee was working towards a set date for the attack. No document is extant in the Argentine archives relating to the affair, but Argentina would certainly have had just as much interest in the stewardship of the Falklands at that time as she had subsequently.
[edit] References
- Keegan, John: Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda, Knopf, 2003 ISBN 0-375-40053-2
- Pochhammer, Hans: Graf Spees letzte Fahrt, Hase & Koehler, 1924
