yards shortly after six o'clock off Coronel near the coast of Chile. The Gneisenau was struck by a 9.2-inch shot from the Good Hope. The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau picked the Good Hope as their first target, but finding that they could do no damage at that range and that they were safe from the fire of the British ship, they came to within 6,000 yards of her. Her fire in reply was augmented by that of the Monmouth. Excellent aim on the part of the Germans soon had the Good Hope out of action, and fire broke out aboard her. Soon after general action her magazine exploded.
The Monmouth then received the brunt of the fire from the German ships, and came in for more than her share of the destructive fire, being put virtually out of action, and at the same time there occurred an explosion on board the Good Hope and she sank immediately, carrying Admiral Cradock to his death.
There remained of the British force only the Otranto—a converted liner and not really a battleship of the line—the Glasgow and the hopelessly disabled Monmouth to continue the fight with an efficient German force. The British commander ordered the former two to get away by making speed, but the officer in charge of the Glasgow, paying no heed to the order, kept in the fight.
The famous German raider "Emden" beached on one of the Cocos Islands after being wrecked by the "Sydney's" shells.
Dusk was then coming on and the Glasgow sought to take advantage of it by getting between the German ships and the limping Monmouth, concealing the latter from them with her smoke. But the Germans had now come to within 4,500 yards. To escape possible attack from torpedoes the German ships spread out their line, but perceiving that such a danger was not present, they again closed in to finish the crippled British ships. All of the German ships now went for the Glasgow, and she had to desert the Monmouth, which first sailed northward, in bad condition, and later made an attempt to run ashore at Santa Maria, but was unable to do so.
The inevitable "if" played its part in the battle. When the British fleet first went after the Germans it had as one of its units the battleship Canopus. But her speed was not up to that of the other ships, and she fell far to their stern. By the time the action was on she was too distant to take part in it. No attempt was made to go together owing to the slowness of the battleship. The Canopus was never in the action at all, being 150 miles astern. Had Cradock not desired to he need not have taken on the action but retired in the Canopus. The setting of the sun also played its part; if daylight had continued some hours more the British squadron might have held out till the Canopus brought up, for the almost horizontal rays of the sun were in the eyes of the German gunners. But as it dropped below the watery horizon it left the British ships silhouetted against a clear outline. The Canopus did not get into the fight, and the greatest concern of the Glasgow as she steamed off was to warn the British battleship to keep off, for of less speed than the German ships, and outnumbered by them, her appearance meant her destruction. The Glasgow, later joined by the Canopus, arrived in battered condition at the Falkland Islands. The Monmouth, after the main action was over, was found and finished by the German squadron and went down. Seventy shots were fired at her when she lay sinking, on fire and helpless, and unable to fire her guns. Germany had evened the score in the second battle between fleets.
The Dresden after the Falkland action took refuge in Fiordes of Terra del Fuego and after being there for a couple of months proceeded to the head of the Island of Juan Fernandez where she was found by the Glasgow, Kent and auxiliary cruiser Orama and was destroyed.
Most remarkable had been the career of the German third-class cruiser Nürnberg, which had joined the other German ships that went to make up the German squadron which fought in this battle off Coronel. This vessel, on the day after Germany and England went to war, was lying near Yap, an island in the Pacific, that had been, until captured by the Japanese, the wireless station of most importance to the Germans in the Pacific Ocean. She immediately, after being apprised that she was part of a navy engaged in a war, set sail and was not reported again until the 7th of September, when she appeared at Fanning Island, a cable station maintained by Britain, and from which cables run to Vancouver to the east and Australia to the west. Here she hid her identity by entering the harbor flying the tricolor of France and appearing as though she was making a friendly visit. Officials on the island, happy to think they would have such a visitor, saw two cutters leave the warship.
Great was the surprise of those watching events from the shore when they saw the French flag lowered from the masthead of the visitor and in its place the German naval ensign run up. The cutters were just about reaching knee-deep water at the shore when this surprise came, and it was augmented when, with the protection of the guns of the vessel, the men in these cutters showed themselves to be a hostile landing party.
Her presence was not reported to the rest of the world for the good reason that she cut all cables leading from the island. All the British men there were put under guard, and after damaging all cable instruments she could find, the Nürnberg, accompanied by a collier that had come with her, again took to the high seas.
She next turned up at the island of St. Felix, 300 miles west of the Chilean coast, but did not come to the harbor. During the night of October 14 the inhabitants of that island saw the flash and heard the roar of an explosion miles out to sea, and for a number of days later they picked up on their beach the wreckage of what must have been a collier. As has been related in preceding paragraphs, the Nürnberg took part in that fight. The end of her career came in the battle off the Falkland Islands, which will be dealt with later.
CHAPTER XXXV
THE GERMAN SEA RAIDERS
While British men-o'-war were capturing German merchantmen and taking them to British ports, the German raiders which were abroad were earning terrifying reputations for themselves because the enemy merchantmen with which they came upon had to be destroyed on the high seas, for there were no ports to which they could be taken. Prominent among these was the Königsberg, a third-class cruiser. When the war came she was in Asiatic waters and immediately made the east coast of Africa her "beat." While patrolling it she came upon two British merchant ships, and after taking from their stores such supplies as were needed she sent them to the bottom. On September 20, 1914, she made a dash into the harbor of Zanzibar and found there the British cruiser Pegasus, which on account of her age was undergoing a complete overhauling. She was easy prey for the German ship, for besides the fact that she was stationary her guns were of shorter range than those of her adversary. Shell after shell tore into her till she was battered beyond all resemblance to a fighting craft. But her flag flew till the end, for though it was shot down from the masthead, two marines held it aloft, one of them losing his life. And when the Königsberg, her task of destruction complete, sailed off, the lone marine still held up the Union Jack. The British ships in those waters made a systematic hunt for her and located her at last, on the 30th of October. She was hiding in her favorite rendezvous, some miles up the Rufigi River in German East Africa. The ship which found her was the Chatham, a second-class cruiser, with a draft much heavier than that of the Königsberg, and the difference gave the latter a good advantage, for she ran up the river and her enemy could not follow. Nor could the English ship use her guns with much effect, for the gunners could not make out the hull of the German ship through the tropical vegetation along the river banks. All that the British ship could do was to fire shells in her general direction and then guess what effect they had. But to prevent her escape, colliers were sunk at the mouth of the river. She had come to as inglorious an end as her victim, the Pegasus.
The account of another raider, the Kronprinz
