SECRET HISTORY.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2715, 24 June 1925, Page 2

SECRET HISTORY.

“JOHNNY” FISHER’S WAY. “I’LL, SMASH YOU!” Admiral of the Fleet Sir Frederick Charles Doveton Sturdee, Baronet Sturdee, of the Falkland Isles, was born in June, 1859, and entered the Navy in 1871. He retired In 1921. They are both dead now, and part, at least, of the inside story' of the greatest naval disaster of the century can be told (says a Sydney “Sun" writer). Von Spec and his will o’ the wisp squadron were being herded down to the South Pacific by the Australian and Japanese warships, when on Sunday, November 1, 1914, they came in contact with H.M.S. Good Hope, Monmouth, and the Glasgow, in company with the armed liner Otranto, under the command of Rear-Admiral Sir 'Christopher Craddock. Battle was given and Craddock’s squadron was smashed. Five days later the Admiralty heard of the terrible defeat, but published that it could not accept it as accurate, because the battleship Canopus had been specially sent to strengthen Admiral Craddock’s squadron, and would give him a decided superiority. Unhappily the Canopus, like the tortoise, was slow though sure, and was two hundred miles away south when, the Good Hope, an immense target under-gunned, and the Monmouth were sinking with hundreds of gallant men aboard. Someone had blundered. Without reason there had been agitation in Great Britain for the removal of Prince Louis of Battenburg from command of the British Navy. German blood was suspected to carry Teuton taint. Never was foul thoughts less justified. But Sir John Fisher was hauled out of retirement and superseded Prince Louis at the Admiralty. At once he studied the von Spec situation. The dramatic victory of von Spec’s squadron, after five weeks' complete disappearance in the Pacific, made him determine that at all hazard there should be speedy retribution. Silence again descended upon the South Pacific, and even deeper silence upon the Admiralty. But thirty-eight days later English naval supremacy was re-established by the destruction of von Spec’s ships at Falkland Islands.' The day after the news reached London the writer had the privilege of meeting “Johnny" Fisher in his room at the Admiralty. The old warrior sat at his desk, vastly elated, with his customary bottle of port wine on one side, and a decanter of brandy on the other. "I suppose you want to know how it was done?’’ he inquired. “Well, I found that Sturdee, as Chief of Staff, had been party to the despatch of the Cdnopus, and the tragedy off the Chilian coast. So I called him off his stool” (Johnny’s way of describing a luxurious office chair), “and I said to him. "You can have two battle cruisers, the Invincible and the Inflexible. They are lying at Portsmouth. You can commission them. And I will give you a month to clear the sea of von Spee and his ships. If you don't well smash I’ll well smash you!” Sturdee did the smashing within the aliotetd period, nobody, not even in Portsmouth, knowing that he had gone, nor the destination of the two giant battle-cruisers when they slipped out of harbour at dead of night.