TERRIBLE STORIES

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2417, 24 March 1915, Page 6

TERRIBLE STORIES

BY PRISONERS AFTER FALKLAND ISLANDS BATTLE. Midshipman JohnE&inonde,.of H.M.S, Invincible, sou of Sir Thomas Esmonde, M.P., in a letter to his' father from Jt'ort Stanley, Falkland Islands, describes his experiences in the battlo of the Falkland Islands. The Canopus, he says, opened fire on the Scharnhorst, but the shells of both fell short. In the meantime Iwe were tearing out, trimming anything that got in our way. We cut two small boats in half. Happily there was no one in them. We tired at the Liepzig, and caused her to drop out of.the line. In the first bout with the flagship Scharnhorst we were about equal. She hit us tour times, and we did about the same to her, but we utterly out-manoeuvred, out-gunned, and out-matched her. First our left gun sent her big crane spinning over the side. Then our right blew her funnel to atoms, and then another shot sent from the left 6ent her bridge and part of her forecastle sky-high. "We were not escaping free, however. Shots were hit-ting us repeatedly, and the spray from the splashes of their shells was hiding the Scharnhorst from us. Suddenly great livid flames rushed through the gun-ports, and splinters ilew all round, and wo felt the whole 150 or 200 tons of the turret going up in tho air. We thought wo would go over the sido and get drowned. "The whistle of tho shells that flew over us grew into a regular shriek. We were hitting , the Scharnhorst nearly every time. Suddenly our right gun mis-fired. We had got a jamb, and one gun was out of action. Our left gun was doing work for two. The Scharnhorst was firing heavily, but I could see that she was in a bad way. She was down by the bows and badly on fire amidships. "I got a crowbar and brought it in to free the jambed gun, but they wanted a hack-saw as well, so I jumped out ilgain,- and just as I was coming'back I saw the Scharrihorst's ensign dip. I never knew whether it came down or not, because just then one of our lyddite shells hit hsr, and latere was a dense cloud of smoke all over her. When it cleared sho was on her side, and her propellers were lashing the water round into foam. Then she capsized, not a man .being saved. To save any was impossible.

"We turned to the Gneisnau and fought on for nearly two hours. The Germans had fought well and were done. She had a. heavy list to port, and was burning furiously. The hrst funnel was down, and sho was an absolute shambles, her turrets in splinter, and herlguns twisted into corkscrews. She looked a sad sight. It is not certain whether she hauled down her flag or hot. I think she did. She slowly heeled over to port, and then capsized just ahead of us.

"The water was all yellow, where sho had sunk, and there was a dreadful smell of lyddite. We got out all the beats we could, and so did the Inflexible, and we managed to save some 30 men, including their captain. Some of them had their heads quite turned when they wore picked up, tried to kill their rescuers, or jumped into the sea again and drowned themselves. One officer tried to shoot us with an automatic pistol, hut it was wrenched from him. "We got some awful stories from the prisoners we have on board. One was that when the chief engineer officer of the Gneisnau found he could not get enough speed out of her engines he shot live stokers with his automatic pistol for not working hard enough, tho remaining stokers rushed him and tied his ha&ds and feet, poured oil over liim, and, flinging open a furnace door, threw the wretched man in and watched him burning. "I escaped all damage except a trivial hum on one of my fingers b,v a splinter. It must have, been a regular inferno on the German ships, with heaps of dead men and fragments of them all over the decks, and the officers, whoso beads liad been turned,, shooting the men and themselves with their automatic pistols. Among the prisoners is an Irishman. He had been working on a tramp running front Newcastle to Kiel, and when the war broke out. ho had been sent out with others in an Italian ship to the Gneisnau."