Battle of the Falkland Islands (1914): Revenge for Coronel

The Battle of the Falkland Islands was a naval battle fought on 8 December 1914 in the South Atlantic, when a British squadron under Vice-Admiral Doveton Sturdee destroyed most of Germany’s East Asia Squadron under Admiral Maximilian von Spee. Coming only five weeks after a humiliating British defeat at Coronel, it removed the last major German naval force from the world’s oceans and showed the power of the new battlecruiser.

Background: from Tsingtao to Coronel

When the First World War began in August 1914, Germany’s East Asia Squadron was based at Tsingtao (Qingdao) on the coast of China. Japan’s entry into the war on the Allied side made that base untenable. Von Spee took his two armoured cruisers, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, across the Pacific towards South America, where he hoped to find coal and friendly ports. Light cruisers joined him on the way, while the cruiser Emden was detached to raid shipping in the Indian Ocean.

On 1 November 1914 von Spee met a weaker British squadron under Rear-Admiral Christopher Cradock off Coronel, on the coast of Chile. In the evening light the Germans sank the armoured cruisers Good Hope and Monmouth with all hands. About 1,600 British sailors died, including Cradock; the Germans suffered only a handful of wounded. It was the Royal Navy’s first defeat at sea in about a century, and it caused shock in Britain.

The British response

The First Sea Lord, Admiral John Fisher, who had returned to the Admiralty only days earlier, reacted quickly. He detached two battlecruisers, Invincible and Inflexible, from the Grand Fleet and sent them south under Sturdee. Battlecruisers carried guns as heavy as a battleship’s but were much faster, a type Fisher himself had championed.

Sturdee gathered further ships off Brazil: the armoured cruisers Carnarvon, Cornwall and Kent, the light cruisers Glasgow (a survivor of Coronel) and Bristol, and the armed merchant cruiser Macedonia. The squadron reached Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands on 7 December and began to take on coal. The old battleship Canopus had already been settled on the mud of the harbour as a fixed guardship.

What happened on 8 December

After rounding Cape Horn, von Spee decided to raid Port Stanley, destroy its coal stocks and wireless station, and then break into the Atlantic. On the morning of 8 December Gneisenau and Nürnberg approached the islands ahead of the squadron. Their lookouts saw the tall tripod masts in the harbour, a sign that capital ships were present. Shortly afterwards Canopus opened fire at long range, and the Germans turned away.

Sturdee’s ships raised steam and left harbour by about 10:00. In clear weather and calm seas the faster battlecruisers steadily closed the distance. Shortly before 13:00 they opened fire. Von Spee then ordered his light cruisers to scatter while Scharnhorst and Gneisenau turned to fight, hoping to buy time for the others.

The outcome was never in doubt. The British 12-inch guns outranged the German 8.2-inch guns, and Sturdee kept his distance. Scharnhorst sank at about 16:17 with von Spee and her entire crew. Gneisenau went down at about 18:00; British ships rescued around 190 of her men from the freezing water.

Meanwhile the British cruisers pursued the light cruisers. Kent, whose stokers reportedly burned wooden fittings to raise extra speed, caught and sank Nürnberg in the early evening. Glasgow and Cornwall sank Leipzig later that night. Two German colliers were also captured or sunk. Only the light cruiser Dresden and the auxiliary Seydlitz escaped.

Key people

• Vice-Admiral Doveton Sturdee commanded the British squadron. He had been Chief of the War Staff and was not well regarded by Fisher, but the victory made his reputation.
• Admiral Maximilian von Spee led the East Asia Squadron. He died with his flagship; both of his sons, serving in Nürnberg and Gneisenau, were also killed.
• Admiral John Fisher, the First Sea Lord, took the decisive step of sending the battlecruisers south.
• Rear-Admiral Christopher Cradock, killed at Coronel, was the man the British sailors at the Falklands wanted to avenge.

Consequences

The battle ended Germany’s cruiser war against Allied trade on the high seas, apart from a few isolated raiders. Dresden hid for three months among the fjords and channels of southern Chile. On 14 March 1915 Kent and Glasgow found her at Más a Tierra in the Juan Fernández Islands, and her crew scuttled her.

The victory also restored British confidence after Coronel and the loss of several cruisers to submarines and mines earlier in the war. Germany named one of its later warships Graf Spee, and the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee fought a famous action off the River Plate in 1939.

The battlecruisers that won the battle did not have long careers. Inflexible was badly damaged by a mine during the naval attack on the Dardanelles in March 1915, part of the Gallipoli campaign. Invincible blew up with the loss of over 1,000 men at the Battle of Jutland in 1916, when British battlecruisers proved vulnerable against equally heavy German guns.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1914, 1 November: Von Spee defeats Cradock at the Battle of Coronel off Chile.
• 1914, 11 November: Invincible and Inflexible sail from Devonport under Sturdee.
• 1914, 7 December: Sturdee’s squadron arrives at Port Stanley and begins coaling.
• 1914, 8 December, morning: German ships approach the Falklands; Canopus opens fire.
• 1914, 8 December, about 16:17: Scharnhorst sinks with von Spee aboard.
• 1914, 8 December, evening: Gneisenau, Nürnberg and Leipzig are sunk.
• 1915, 14 March: The escaped Dresden is scuttled at the Juan Fernández Islands.

Why it matters

The Falklands battle was one of the most complete naval victories of the First World War. It avenged Coronel, cleared the oceans of Germany’s surface squadron and secured the Allied sea routes to South America, Africa and Asia for the rest of the war.