“Wait on the order, gunlayer.”
As he spoke Good Hope put her helm down and started to reduce the range. Within the minute the German squadron had conformed, pulling away and returning the distance to twenty thousand yards.
“They won’t come up to us, sir. Chicken!”
That was one explanation, Hector accepted. He glanced over his shoulder, saw the sun close to the horizon. There would still be light for a good two hours after the sun had set and the Germans would be lost against the shore while Good Hope and Monmouth would be silhouetted and easily ranged on.
A few more minutes of the apparent stalemate and the German squadron turned on a diagonally converging course and opened fire at seven o’clock in the evening. Their first shells were unders, but all within a cable of the two British cruisers.
“Fire, sir!”
Hector laid the gun according to the pointer from Control and waited on Good Hope’s roll before pressing the electric trigger. The guns, fore and aft, roared and the crews started the reload while Hector watched Scharnhorst. He saw waterspouts far astern of his target and probably two hundred yards over. The Gunnery Commander had set the wrong speed for the cruisers; presumably he would correct with the next shot.
The layer shouted and raised his hand and Hector pressed the Gun Ready switch which would tell the Commander he could fire again. A few more seconds, the pointer moving and Hector trying to match it, the gun barrel swinging in response. Four great waterspouts rose just abeam of them and there was a clattering of shell splinters on the hull and turret plating.
The fire light glowed and Hector pressed his switch. The gun recoiled and he bent to the telescope to spot his shell. It was difficult to see anything against the shoreline, but he thought he could see a waterspout. He leant to the telephone to call the result to the Commander.
“Over one hundred. Left two hundred, sir.”
Gunners used ‘left’ and ‘right’ rather than port and starboard, the only time the terms were used in the Navy. He watched carefully as the gunners completed the reload, activating the rammer to push the three hundred pounds of shell into the barrel and then the two silk-cased charges of cordite. The breech swung closed and rotated to the lock position and the detonator was inserted. Hector was about to press the Gun Ready switch when an eight point two inch armour-piercing shell penetrated the gun house and exploded, destroying the gun and vaporising the men. He was dead before he knew they had been hit by the third salvo the German cruisers had fired.
Good Hope was much slowed by the damage to the stern and the engineroom and fought on with only one big gun, closing the range to bring the six inch into action. She was hit by another dozen big shells in the space of half an hour and then by a barrage of lesser when she succeeded in getting closer.
She fell silent at about ten to eight, racked by a series of internal explosions that ripped her apart. By eight o’clock she was gone, taking Admiral Craddock and all hands with her, the action having lasted a bare hour.
It grew dark and Monmouth, almost crippled, was lost to sight. One of the light cruisers found her an hour later, massively on fire and crawling. The German ship called for Monmouth’s surrender and prepared to send boats to the rescue; she fired a pair of guns in response. They sank her, again with all hands, within minutes.
Glasgow shepherded Otranto into the night and the pair made best speed back to the Falklands, there to inform the Admiralty by cable of the disaster.
The Tsingtao Squadron was left, virtually untouched, to enjoy their victory, sending the word onto the wires at Valparaiso that the Royal Navy which had ruled the waves for a century had been humiliatingly defeated. Admiral Spee had used half of his ammunition and had no source of replenishment; he could buy coal from neutrals but not shells. He waited for orders from Berlin.
“Have you heard, Number One?”
Simon had not. A first lieutenant was a busy man when his ship entered harbour, taking condition reports and establishing what must be done to make her ready to sail again. He was sat in the little wardroom, collating his figures on oil usage and the tonnage remaining in the bunkers and deciding whether they must request the services of the oiling berth; he was in no mood to put down his pen and listen to his captain’s latest gossip.
He looked up with ill grace.
“No, sir. What’s happened?”
“Good Hope and Monmouth gone. All hands. Did almost no damage to Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Lasted a bare hour.”
The oil was forgotten. It was the most disastrous news in the century since the losses of frigates in the War of 1812. It was almost unbelievable.
“Certainly, sir? Not propaganda from Berlin?”
“Confirmed from the British consul in Valparaiso. No survivors. Kit Craddock and every man under his command. Glasgow and Otranto were separate, somehow, and are expected into the Falklands as soon as they can get there. No doubt the details will come through from them.”
“What does the Admiralty say, sir?”
“Nothing as yet.”
Their Lordships would have to respond, and quickly.
“I was on St Vincent with one of Good Hope’s subs. McDuff. He must have gone.”
“A certainty. They are definite that it was all hands.”
“Pity. Pleasant chap. Wasn’t going to set the world on fire but he would have made captain for sure. Four of us – Adams and MacDuff and me, all making the grade, and Baker who was told to send his papers in, no use to man or beast!”
“You might want to rethink that, Number One. Front page of the Telegraph – I picked up yesterday’s paper in the depot ship. Do you see?”
Simon followed his captain’s finger, spotted the smudgy photograph and the bold text below it.
‘Captain Richard Baker, VC, who was a midshipman who found he did not like the sea and joined the 3rd Bedfordshires and was in France two days after hostilities commenced. Distinguished himself repeatedly falling back to Ypres, held the rearguard… blew a bridge… fought for weeks in the slagheaps to the north. Came out leading one quarter of his men, sole officer survivor of the company.’
“Well, sir, that was unexpected. An idle, fat, spotty, chocolate-chewing no-hoper for two years. I have never heard of a mid being beaten as often as he was. Nor at Dartmouth, where he was no better and only scraped through. Never saw cowardice in him, that I would certainly say, but a less likely hero I cannot imagine. Well done the man! If he can do that, there’s hope for all of us.”
“Good. There needs be! What will the Admiralty do, you ask? The first reaction must be to send a squadron of modern battleships south at top speed, but what will that look like? Two cruisers, and not the most modern of the breed, having to be dealt with by a battlefleet? That would be an additional humiliation in the eyes of the world.”
Simon was much struck by that observation. The Navy would show up as a heavy-handed bully, the German squadron a David going down before an overwhelming Goliath.
“Battlecruisers, sir? A small flotilla to go down at speed, mop them up and come quickly away again?”
“Probably. I don’t doubt we will hear of movement within hours. There must be an instant reaction and fast ships sent at top speed.”