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After their ten-thousand-mile journey across the Pacific, after their eight-day rendezvous at Easter Island, the German squadron experienced a small victory at the Battle of Coronel.
On November 1, off the coast of Chile, Admiral von Spee detected the BritishGlasgow nearby. Von Spee, who had received reports of a single enemy cruiser in the area, ordered his fleet to overtake the ship.
TheGlasgow, however, was part of Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock’s squadron, which lay nearby, unseen.
Admiral Cradock was equally misled. Reports had reached him of a single German cruiser,Leipzig, in the area, and by chance this was the first of von Spee’s ships he spotted. He, too, ordered his squadron into rapid combat against the single cruiser.
Each side believed it had the superior force, and by the time the situation was clear, action was under way.
The German ships carried more big-caliber guns and the weight of their fire was nearly double that of the British. Within two hours the Royal Navy lost two cruisers and nearly sixteen hundred men beside the Chilean town of Coronel.
Von Spee, from his lookout, was surveying the British cruisers, when suddenly flecks of red and green and yellow burst from one of the flaming ships, like bright scarves in the sky. They swirled in odd circles, then began to flutter—they were parrots. The British officers had released parrots bought in Brazil as gifts. The birds, however, were too stunned by the explosions to accept their freedom. Swooping about the smoky forecastle, they collided with the cannons; they perched on the gunwale as fires erupted around them. It was noted by a young German officer that almost one hundred birds soon bobbed lifelessly on the sea. “This seemed to all of us,” the young officer wrote in the last letter his mother would receive, “a most eerie omen.”
The Battle of Coronel was the first defeat suffered by the Royal Navy in over a century, and prompted First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill to send almost the entire British Fleet after von Spee. Churchill’s orders were unequivocal: “Your main and most important duty is to search for the German armored cruisers. . . . All other considerations are to be subordinated to this end.” Von Spee was in immense danger. The battle had expended nearly half his ships’ ammunition, depleting the only resources that might have saved his fleet and returned him home.
Also, the sinking of Admiral Cradock’s ship,Good Hope, contributed to von Spee’s growing tension. Von Spee had known Sir Christopher Cradock since his first posting to Tsingtao; he had sent a man with whom he’d been friends for fourteen years to the bottom of the sea.
Days later, at a dinner to celebrate their victory, an officer made a toast: “To the damnation of the British navy.” Von Spee then stood and raised his own glass, proclaiming: “I drink to the memory of a gallant and honorable foe!” Without waiting for support, he drained his glass, gathered his hat, and departed.
The portentousness of such a victory on November 1st would not have been lost on von Spee, a Catholic. It was All Saints’ Day.
—Fleet of Misfortune: Graf von Spee and the Impossible Journey Home