THE CRUISER GLASGOW

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 173, 23 June 1926, Page 11

THE CRUISER GLASGOW

HER GLORIOUS RECORD, A TERRIBLE TERRIER. VENGEANCE ON THE DRESDEN. If the men who manned the British cruiser Glasgow in the days of her glory were to bo asked to decide the fate of their ship when she grew too old to take her place in the fighting line, they would say: “Take her out to sea and sink her with her flag flying ; let her go down in the grave of ships, farewelled with a broadside from her younger sisters.” But no such glorious end awaits the little cruiser that did glorious deeds in her warlike life. It is announced by cable that the Glasgow is to go to the scrap heap, to he broken up for the worth of her metal.But, however inglorious her end, the name of the Glasgow will live in history as one of the most famous fighting ships of her timo, a game terrier among the mastiffs. In the battle off Coronel, ill-starred for the British ships, she fought a gallant fight, and fled only when there was nothing else for it. But as she went, her scarred and bleeding crew vowed vengeance against the victorious enemy. They met again, and the terrier took her bite, being one of the ships' which sought out and destroyed the Dresden off Juan Fernandez, thus completing the extermination of tho German warships on the high seas. OVERWHELMING ODDS. Cruising about tho Chilean coast, wo had a few old, slow ships, expecting tho reinforcements which never came. They were the armoured cruiser Good Hopo (14,000 tons), the flagship of Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock, which had been laid down in 1901 ; tho light cruiser Monmouth (9800 tons), laid down in 1899; the more modern light cruiser Glasgow, and the Otranto, an armed merchantman, useless against warships. Von Spee’s fleet ■ squadron consisted of two modem armoured cruisers, either of -which * alone could have wiped out the old * British squadron. His flagship was b the Scharnhorst, a powerful armoured b cruiser, laid down in 1906. Her ton--11 nage was 11,600, and she carried the * most modern guns and had as her cap- ’ tain tho crack gun expert of the Ger- ’ mail Navy. With her was her sister v ship, the Gneisenau. Both these ships had a speed of over 22 knots. In addition, Von Spee had three modern , light cruisers, Leipzig, Dresden and > ’Nurnberg. Light guns not counting > in the, impending battle, the Germans > had sixteen 8.2 modern guns, against , which tho British had only two anti- , quated 9.2 in guns. Tho odds were six to one against the British wlien it came to shooting. Yet it was the gal- ■ lant Cradock who opened tho attack, and who died in the finish rushing his smitten ship upon the enemy to fight at close quarters. The Admiralty knew the position. It had been asked for reinforcements against the heavier German combination known to be at large. “We feel that the Admiralty ought to have a better force here,” wrote Cradock’s secretary in a letter which was not received in England until after he had gone down with tho flagship. “But we will fight cheerfully, whatever odds wo have to face.” But the only reinforcement sent -was the ancient Canopus, a battleship of 1897, having four 12in guns of the oldest pattern, and a speed of only 20 knots. And when the battle was fought she was 200 miles away 1 THE BATTLE OF COIIONEL. At nine o’clock on the morning of Sunday, November 1, 1914, the British squadron off Coronel spread out in a fan of 15 miles radius to search for the enemy. Shortly after four in the afternoon the Glasgow sighted the German squadron. Soon after six the British admiral signalled, “I am going to attack the enemy.” His last message to his squadron soon after the opening of the action was, “There is danger. Do your utmost.” They did what they could—but what could be done against such odds but to nobly die ? The enemy’s ships were bad targets, with the light of the setting sun siiimmering on them to mislead our gunners. As the sun went down the Germans were in the shadow of a shadowy coast, while our ships were vividly silhouetted against the western afterglow. Tho German shooting was rapid and deadly, but the growing darkness and the spray of a head sea made the main deck guns of the British ships almost useless, and the Monmouth could not get close enough to the enemy to do any damage, for at the third salvo of the Germans both the Monniouth and the Good Hope were on fire forward. The frail-like Otranto early made a wise escape. As the British tried to close to use their 6in guns, the Germans drew away to keep their long distance, and with their higher speed they had the situation in hand from beginning to end. Tho Good Hope ruslied on the enemy in an attempt to use her torpedoes. Burning like an inferno, she made a splendid target, and at ten minutes to eight she blew up with her gallant crew still fighting, while the Monmouth, on fire and sinking, drifted, unmanageable, out of the battle line. THE GALLANT GLASGOW. At eight the Glasgow was the only ship left in tho line, with the German light and armoured cruisers directing their fire at her, the nearest being ‘ only 4500 yards away. Though receiving this volume of German fire, _ the crew of the Glasgow fought with I the coolness of battle practice. Over 600 shells were fired at her—an unarmoured vessel which Should never have been asked to fight against armoured foes—but she escaped by a miracle, it would seem. Only five shells struck her at the waterline, and on three of these occasions she was saved by her coal hunkers. For 15 minutes the Glasgow stood by the battered and sinking Monmouth, but as the Monmouth was unmanageable, the Germans were closing in, and remaining would have meant the certain destruction of the ship and tho death of a further 400 men, the only thing was to “run away and live to fight another day.” How that day came, when the Glasgow had her revenge is part of the naval history of the war. GERMAN INHUMANITY. The gross inhumanity of the Germans in not attempting to save the drowning British sailors disgusted even their friends the Chilians. “With clear weather, in a scarcely heavy sea, and at the end of a naval battle in which they had behaved heroically, 1600 Englishmen were allowed to go to the bottom of the' sea,” commented ono Chilian paper. . Writing on this matter the Times’s History of the War says: “The blood-mad beasts,

disturbed by this condemnation of neutrals, then trumped up tho excuse that a tempest prevented them from launching their boats. But the British Navy understood. It did not alter our sailors’ resolution to obey always tho last prayer of Nelson at Trafalgar and, mark their victors by the chivalrous rescue of their beaten, drowning foes. But tho incident altered the fighting spirit of tho British seaman. He had gone into the war with considerable personal admiration for his opponents, and felt a patriotic and sportsmanlike interest in defeating him. But after the battle off Coronel, a silent, deadly purpose animated every man in the British Navy. And when afterwards they got home with their terrible guns, they thought not of the agony of the enemy, but of the suffering of their comrades in the Good Hope and the Monmouth.” SMASHED AT THE FALKLANDS. On December 8 the German squadron crept up to the Falkiands, expecting to find there the Glasgow and a few small ships to make another mess of. But in a landlocked bay of East Island lay two great modern British cruisers, the Invincible and Inflexible, and when the Germans were engaging the Glasgow, the old Canopus, the Carnarvon and Cornwall, out came the big fellows like spiders oil to flies —came out through tho smoke of the little ones, and gave tho Germans the grand shock. The Germans’ big ships, seeing escape impossible, turned broadside on to fight, but their three light cruisers turned and scattered for the nearest neutral ports, pursued by. three of ours. They had no relish for the sauce they served up to the weaker British off Coronel. The tale of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau is soon told. After two hours of a running fight, the Scharnhorst went down by the stern with von Spee and all his men. Two hours later, battered into a ghastly wreck, the Gneisenau also sank. There was no time to pick up the men of the flagship, blit with the other ship finished they answered the cries of her drowning crew and rescued as many as possible. Thus did they shame the Hun. who lot Britishers drown off Coronel —and in spite, also, of the dirty trick of the Nurnberg, which hauled down her flag, and when the Kent drew close to rescue her men, hoisted it again and poured in a deadly broadside at close range. For their treachery the Germans on this ship were swept with lyddite shell, and they then hauled down tho flag for good. They had spited themselves, for their cowardly broadside had holed the boats of the Kent, and this interfered with the work of rescue. To add to tile lvorror of the scene and the punishment of the tricksters, a large flock of albatrosses swooped down and attacked the men in the water, pecking their eyes out, so that they died in agony. . THE GLASGOW’S REVENGE. In this battle the Glasgow singled out the Liepzig, which had smitten her at Coronel. When tho Kent wanted to join in the Glasgow signalled: “Stand off! I can manage this myself!” Gallant Glasgow. She ’ gave her antagonist the deatli-blow after a running fight of two hours, and the slower Cornwall, coming up, blew her to pieces and her crew to—where they ought to have gone, let it be hoped. Later the Glasgow and two other cruisers trailed the Dresden to Juan Fornandez, and the Dresden was sent the wav of the rest. So was Coronel well and truly avenged.