Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Early in November a fleet of five German cruisers, under Admiral von Spee, encountered a British squadron composed of the cruisers Good Hope, Monmouth and Glasgow, in command of Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock, off the coast of Chile, in the Southern Pacific.
When we set off yesterday, Robert and I and Liesel and Erna and Rene, Dora called after us: The bridal pair in spee. She had picked up the phrase from Oswald. I think it means in a hundred years. She can wait a hundred years if she likes, we shan't. Mother scolded her like anything and said she mustn't say such stupid things. A good job too; in spee, in spee.
On 15 August Japan demanded within eight days the surrender of the lease of Tsingtau and the evacuation of Far Eastern waters by German warships. No answer was, of course, returned, but the German squadron under Von Spee wisely left Tsingtau in anticipation of its investment by the Japanese.
The remaining British ships, with the exception of the Carnarvon, gave attention to the three lighter German cruisers and the Eitel Friedrich, which had broken from the first formation and were now pointing southeast. Von Spee ordered the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau to turn broadside to the enemy.
He had been through the China troubles as a lieutenant in the Monmouth afterwards sunk by German shot off Coronel knew von Spee, von Müller, and other officers of the Pacific Squadron, and spoke of them with enthusiasm. "They sunk some of our ships and we wiped out theirs. That was all in the way of business. We loved them in peace and we loved them in war.
But all this time the Invincible and Inflexible were silent with their guns, though there was bustle enough aboard them while their coaling was being hurried. By ten o'clock these two larger ships were ready with steam up and decks cleared, and they came out from behind the hills. Von Spee saw that discretion was the better part of valor and gave orders for his ships to make off at full speed.
Admiral von Spee also turned southward, and the stern chase was renewed without firing until 2.45. At this point both sides turned to port, the Germans now slightly in the rear and working in to 12,500 yards to use their 5.9-inch guns. At 3.15 the British came completely about to avoid the smoke, and the Germans also turned, a little later, as if to cross their bows.
Von Spee and his men fought as bravely and as skilfully as Cradock and his; and the war for command of the sea went against the Germans because while the Germans were building pre-Dreadnoughts and casting 8-inch guns, we were building Dreadnoughts and casting 10 or 12-inch guns; and while they were constructing their Dreadnoughts, we were building super-Dreadnoughts with 13.5 and 15-inch guns.
"Von Spee was a very good fellow I knew him well and his two sons who went down with him," says an Admiral gently. "I was at Kiel the month before the war. I know that many of their men must loathe the work they are set to do." "The point is," says a younger man, broad shouldered, with the strong face of a leader, "that they are always fouling the seas, and we are always cleaning them up.
In the second week of December the British navy avenged the defeat of Rear Admiral Cradock's squadron off the Chilean coast in November, when a powerful special fleet, under Vice-Admiral Sir Frederick Sturdee, encountered the German cruiser fleet, under Admiral von Spee, off the Falkland Islands and practically destroyed it. Only one of the five German cruisers escaped.
Word Of The Day