Churchill’s Greyhounds
‘We seek him here, we seek him there
Our cruisers seek him everywhere,
Is he off China, or far Ponape?
That damned elusive Graf von Spee…’
-From a satirical cartoon of October 1914.
In the minds of the British public, the escape of the Goeben had been avenged in late August, when four battlecruisers led by HMS Lion sailed into the Heligoland Bight and sank three German light cruisers in the space of little more than half an hour. Two weeks later, Goeben’s former companion, SMS Breslau, was intercepted off Norway by the armoured cruisers Warrior and Cochrane. Breslau fled from these slow ships but was intercepted further south by three of Beatty’s battlecruisers, his squadron now including the brand-new HMS Panther, sailing on her first combat mission.
Nevertheless, there had been other setbacks. Samoa was lost (albeit briefly) to von Spee’s bold attack, and in late September two cruisers were torpedoed by a U-boat just a few miles from where HMS Bacchante had been sunk by the Goeben, resulting in the loss of nearly 1,000 lives. The loss of the battleship Audacious to a mine a few weeks later only underlined that the underwater threat was very real.
The inability to catch von Spee was causing the British government and the Navy considerable embarrassment, and it prompted the politically engineered downfall of the First Sea Lord, Admiral Battenburg and his replacement with a man who was seen as both 'less German' and immeasurably more dynamic.
With Turkey neutral and the Austrian Fleet staying quiet, HMS Inflexible was despatched from the Mediterranean to reinforce the East Indies squadron, and she reached Singapore on the 4th November. Despite the concerns of Admiral Jellicoe, HMS Princess Royal was ordered to the Caribbean, where she could assist in the hunt for the light cruisers Dresden and Karlsruhe (both known to be somewhere off the South American coast) and be ready to intercept von Spee should he choose to come through the Panama Canal.
In the Atlantic, areas of responsibility had been changed following the need for Admiral Stoddart to cover operations against Germany’s African colonies. Admiral Cradock’s squadron was therefore covering South America and was to be reinforced with HMS Invincible. The Admiral, however, couldn’t wait for her and had taken the cruisers Good Hope and Suffolk south to search for the Leipzig, which had been raiding off the west coast of the Americas.
After leaving Manihiki, von Spee’s ships coaled at uninhabited Christmas Island, where at a ‘council of war’ aboard the Blucher on the 6th October, he decided that the time had come to split up the squadron.
The following day, Gneisenau and Nurnburg sailed for the Marquesas Islands. With no communications with the outside world they stayed there for six days, allowing their crews to rest and coal in safety while obtaining fresh stores from a German firm, still trading in these French-owned islands. The two ships then sailed on east, stopping at the even more isolated Easter Island, where they bought fresh beef and a small supply of flour from an English rancher, who even after three months, still didn’t know that war had been declared. From there they steamed to the coast of South America, entering the neutral Chilean port of Valpariso on the 16th November.
Von Spee headed slowly west, sending the supply ship Seydlitz into Pearl Harbour, which she reached on the 21st October. Her Captain had considerable difficulty in persuading the Americans to allow him to coal, as they were suspicious that she was assisting a belligerent warship, and not heading for the Panama Canal as he claimed, but they did allow him to communicate with Berlin during his day in port.
She rejoined the squadron with news of the ongoing war and the success of Captain von Muller in the Emden, confirming the Admiral’s decision to head West, where he hoped to hide in the neutral islands of the Dutch East Indies, before breaking through to the Indian Ocean and perhaps reaching German East Africa.
His spoofs and evasions had kept the Allies guessing for three months, and directly or indirectly more than 30 warships were searching for his four cruisers.
In the south Pacific, HMS New Zealand, Hampshire, HMAS Melbourne and the French Montcalm were on the lookout. To the north, Admiral Jerram’s pre-dreadnought HMS Triumph, with Newcastle and Yarmouth blocked the route into the China Sea, assisted by the Japanese battleship Kurama and cruiser Iwate. The trade routes to Australia through the Java Sea were patrolled by Admiral Pierse, whose pre-dreadnought HMS Swiftsure and light cruiser Dartmouth had just been reinforced by HMS Inflexible. Patey, with Australia, Sydney and HMS Minotaur was in the Bismarck Sea.
On the 16th November, Admiral von Spee’s luck ran out.