Battle of Coronel, 1914: the Royal Navy's worst day of the war

Coronel was the worst British naval defeat of the First World War and the first defeat of a British squadron at sea in about a century. It lasted little more than two hours, was fought in a rising sea and failing light, and left no survivors at all from the two ships that were sunk. Its real consequence came five weeks later, in the South Atlantic.²

A squadron loose in the Pacific

When war broke out in August 1914, Germany's East Asia Squadron under Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee was the strongest German force outside Europe. Its core was a pair of modern armored cruisers, the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau, and it was joined by the light cruisers Nürnberg, Leipzig and Dresden. Japan's entry into the war on the Allied side made the north Pacific too dangerous, so Spee crossed toward South America, raiding French possessions on the way.³

The British learned of his plans from intercepted wireless traffic. According to the 1914-1918-online encyclopedia, the Admiralty knew by the end of September at the latest that he meant to take his squadron into the Atlantic. The task of stopping him fell to Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock, a brave officer whose fighting experience had mostly been on land, in Egypt, the Sudan and the Boxer Rebellion.⁴

Cradock's weak hand

Cradock's ships were no match for Spee's. His flagship, the Good Hope, and the Monmouth were old armored cruisers; the Glasgow was a modern light cruiser; the Otranto was a converted liner. The battleship Canopus, built in 1896, had heavier guns but was too slow to keep up with the cruisers. The Admiralty had promised him the powerful cruiser Defence as well, but neither she nor the Canopus was with him when the battle came.⁵

The gap in firepower was stark. The Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau each carried eight 8.2-inch guns. The Good Hope had only two 9.2-inch guns, the only British weapons that could match the German range, and sixteen 6-inch guns; the Monmouth had fourteen 6-inch guns. The German cruisers were also better armored and faster.⁶

Intelligence made things worse. HistoryOfWar.org notes that the Admiralty received false reports placing Spee near Australia, and Cradock came to believe that only the Leipzig was off the Chilean coast.⁷

Sunset off Coronel

Cradock sent the Glasgow into the port of Coronel for news. British wireless discipline was no better than German, and Spee soon learned that a lone British cruiser was in the port. Cradock and the Glasgow's captain, John Luce, still expected to find only the Leipzig. The 1914-1918-online encyclopedia records that on the afternoon of 1 November, at 4:17, lookouts on the Glasgow saw smoke on the horizon, and within minutes it was clear that the two squadrons were in sight of each other.⁸

He could probably still have tried to escape south toward the Canopus. Instead he chose to fight; once the firing began, the weak Otranto left the line. Why he did so was argued over at the time and since: from a sense of honor, because of ambiguous orders, or in the hope of damaging the German cruisers so far from any dockyard.⁹

Spee used his speed to hold the range where his heavy guns could reach and most of the British guns could not. He opened fire at sunset, with the British ships silhouetted against the evening sky: at about 7 p.m. according to HistoryOfWar.org, at 6:34 according to the 1914-1918-online encyclopedia, which warns that times differ in every report of the battle. The Scharnhorst engaged the Good Hope, and the Gneisenau the Monmouth. HistoryOfWar.org says one of the Good Hope's two 9.2-inch guns was out of action within 15 minutes; the encyclopedia, that she lost her main guns after five minutes. The sea was rough, which made it hard for both sides to work their ships.¹⁰

Lost with all hands

The Good Hope burned and blew up. HistoryOfWar.org puts the explosion at about 8 p.m., the Naval Historical Society of Australia gives 7:57 and the 1914-1918-online encyclopedia 7:23, while the catalogue of the National Maritime Museum says she went down about twenty minutes before the Monmouth's end. Cradock died with her.¹¹

The Monmouth, set on fire by the Gneisenau, was still afloat when the German armored cruisers lost contact in the dark at about 8 p.m. At about 9:20 the light cruiser Nürnberg came upon her. Her engines were running and she had not hauled down her flag; she seemed to be turning, perhaps to ram or to bring her other guns to bear. The Nürnberg opened fire again and the Monmouth capsized. There were no survivors from either ship: HistoryOfWar.org gives the loss as about 1,600 men, the 1914-1918-online encyclopedia as more than 1,700. The Glasgow, which the encyclopedia says was hit twice without serious damage, and the Otranto got away. Spee's ships came through almost undamaged, with three men wounded by the encyclopedia's count, and put in at Valparaíso.¹²

The answer at the Falklands

The shock in Britain was enormous. The new First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir John Fisher, took two of the Grand Fleet's precious battlecruisers, the Invincible and the Inflexible, and sent them south under Vice Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee. On 8 December 1914, off the Falkland Islands, they caught and destroyed his squadron.¹³ › Battle of the Falkland Islands, 1914

Coronel is remembered as a defeat that was also a warning. It showed how little old ships and brave men could do against modern guns, and it showed the cost of confused orders between London and the admiral at sea. For the German navy it was a brilliant success, but a brief one. The same war at sea brought the German raider Emden to Penang four days earlier, and on the same date in 1918 the fight for Lwów began.¹⁴