Battle of the Falkland Islands

On 8 December 1914, in the South Atlantic off the Falkland Islands, a British force under Vice-Admiral Doveton Sturdee destroyed the German East Asia Squadron of Vice-Admiral Maximilian von Spee. The armoured cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the light cruisers Leipzig and Nürnberg went to the bottom. Spee, his two sons and some 1,900 German sailors were killed. Only the light cruiser Dresden survived, managing to escape.

Surprise at Port Stanley

Five weeks had passed since the victory at Coronel. Von Spee’s squadron had rounded Cape Horn and entered the Atlantic. On the way to Germany the admiral decided to strike at the Falklands, destroy the wireless station at Port Stanley, today Stanley, and burn the coal stocks. He was convinced that there were no warships in the harbour. He did not know that the day before Sturdee had put in there with two battlecruisers, HMS Invincible and HMS Inflexible, sent from Britain precisely to find him, and with several cruisers.

The morning was sunny, with a light wind and perfect visibility. At about 7.50 a.m. observers on land sighted two German ships approaching, Gneisenau and Nürnberg. The British were no less surprised than the Germans: most of the ships were coaling, and repairs were under way on some of them. Sturdee calmly gave the order to raise steam and told the crews to have breakfast. Time was bought for them by the old battleship Canopus, grounded in the harbour as a floating battery. At about 9.20 a.m. she opened fire from behind a hill, and her shells, though they did no damage, halted the Germans. According to an often-quoted account, Canopus’s gunners had practice shells in their guns, loaded for a firing exercise planned for that day, and one of them, ricocheting off the water, hit Gneisenau.

The pursuit

When the Germans made out the tripod masts of capital ships in the harbour, Spee realised the position he was in and turned away to the south-east at full speed. At about 10 a.m. the British ships began to leave harbour. The weather favoured the pursuers, and the battlecruisers were several knots faster. From the sheep station at Fitzroy the movements of the German ships were watched by Muriel Felton, the manager’s wife, together with two maids, who took turns riding up a nearby hill. Felton passed reports by telephone to Port Stanley, and the Admiralty later rewarded the women with silver plates.

Shortly before 1 p.m. the British opened fire at a range of about 15 kilometres. Spee ordered the light cruisers to escape to the south, while he himself turned back to fight with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau to give them a chance. Sturdee sent his own cruisers after the light cruisers and took on the armoured ships with the battlecruisers. The battle broke up into several separate duels, scattered over dozens of miles of ocean.

Destruction of the squadron

The German armoured cruisers stood no chance against 305 mm guns. Scharnhorst, the flagship, sank at 4.17 p.m. with all hands and the admiral on board. Gneisenau fought on until her ammunition was exhausted and sank at about 6 p.m. The British picked up some 190 survivors from the cold water, among them the first officer, Hans Pochhammer, who later described the battle in his memoirs. In the evening, after a long chase, Kent sank Nürnberg, and Glasgow and Cornwall sank Leipzig, which fought to her last shell. Seven men survived from Nürnberg and eighteen from Leipzig. The British lost 10 killed and not a single ship.

Admiral von Spee died together with both his sons. Otto von Spee was serving in Nürnberg and Heinrich von Spee in Gneisenau. Dresden, the fastest of the German cruisers, took advantage of the weather, which worsened in the afternoon, and vanished from her pursuers. For the next three months she hid off the coast of Chile.

Revenge for Coronel

In Britain the news of the victory was received with enormous relief. Admiral Cradock’s defeat had been avenged, and together with the destruction of Emden a month earlier it essentially ended the threat from German cruisers on the oceans. The Germans, who after Coronel had fêted Spee as a hero, now mourned an entire squadron. In the Falklands 8 December is still a public holiday and a day of remembrance of the battle.