THE FALKLAND ISLANDS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 922, 15 March 1930, Page 23

THE FALKLAND ISLANDS

NAVAL BATTLE OF GREAT i IMPORTANCE COMMERCE SET FREE On December S, 1914, the battle of 1 the Falklands was fought and Son, wi'iU'S the naval correspondent of the '.'sunday Times" (London.). Writers wiih high qualification and knowledge have written learnedly about the con- i , duct of the battle: whether Admiral j : Count von Spee might have extricated Ins light cruisers, whether he could have done better by closing the range, j and whether Admiral Sturdee could have ended the action sooner if he j had made other preliminary movements. Professional men may draw instruction from these matters; the I ordinary plain Englishman must re- : member the battle for other reasons, j If lie wishes ta understand why the j j victory lias a close intimate connee- ! j with his daily habits, his for- j I tunes, and his chances of happiness, i I he must try to realise what Great ' Britain's position just before, and just 1 after the action. The facts are these: When Admiral ! von Spec grasped that the entire Jap- I ! anese Navy was on his track, and that i ! a Japanese army would shortly be- I siege his only base at Tsingtau, ho j assembled his squadron at a lonely island group in the north-western ! Pacific, and then moved stealthily | eastward. He was seldom reported, j to1 ’ bis movements were the movej ments of a hunted figure, and when at : last he reached the South American coast, he had shaken off the last of ! bis pursuers. And now, as a result I °*-. mistakes and misunderstandings with which w e are not here con- | eerned, a British squadron far weaker | than the German was sent to the Chilj ean coast under Admiral Cradock. I The British admiral’s instructions ! were vague: he was to search and protect trade. He conducted' his j search with a fidelity which does him j honour. On November 1 he fell in j with Admiral von Spee. and his squad- ! ron was utterly defeated at Coronel. I

Two old cruisers were lost in that ! tragic action, and when we reflect j how small and insignificant a portion i of the British Navy was then de- j stroyed we may well marvel at the consequences. For those consequences were out of all proportion to the military losses suffered. Thousands of tons of shipping remained in port; all cargoes from Chile were immovable, and the magnate of shipping let the authorities at Whitehall know that if the victorious German squadron entered the Atlantic undefeated the Plate trade would stop automatically.

By good fortune the German admiral did not grasp the significance of his triumph. When night closed on the waste of tumbling waves off Coronel he was wondering what he ought to do. After a brief visit to Valparaiso lie returned to the lonely islands which he knew so well. He was at Mas a Fuera for many days, but his absence from the coast was to us as terrible as his presence. “All ships remained in port from Panama to Punt a Arenas..” says Mr. Fayle, the ; official historian of “Sea Borne Trade.” j I#, in these grave moments, the | cargoes of Chilean nitrates and copi per had been transported to another | planet they would not have been more , inaccessible.

i While Admiral von Spee waited and i hesitated at his silent anchorage, the j British Admiralty made a stupendous I exertion. At a quarter to five in the 1 afternoon of November -11 Admiral ; Sturdee left Devonport with two i I battle-cruisers—the Invincible and : ; the Inflexible. He steamed across the j j Atlantic as stealthily as his enemy j had moved across the Pacific, but far more rapidly. And while he moved, Spee at last moved also. After long discusions with his officers, he determined to go to the Falklands and there capture the Governor. He would have altered his plan if he had known that the Falklands was the very place i to which Admiral Sturdee was steam- ! mg with liis overwhelming concentra- | tion of ships and guns. | The British admiral was there first. ‘ On December 7 his squadron anchored | in Port Stanley, and his ships at once began to coal. All that night the seamen in the Carnarvon, the Glasgow, and the Britstol worked at the coaling lifts by the glow of arc-lights. When day came up, the battle-cruisers were making ready for the colliers to come alongside, and just as the tired seamen were preparing to go below j for breakfast, the signal station re- ; ported that ships of war were approaching the harbour. Those j strange ships were the vessels which ; had crossed the Pacific, which had struck a blow at British prestige al- | most without precedent in history, j and which had now reached their | destination just one day too late. ! By ten o’clock Adinjfal Sturdee was j ; at sea with his grimy ships and their ! grimy crews. Admiral von Spe:e fled j ! south-eastwards—he could do nothing j I else—and during the first pursuit the : British seamen prepared for battle. : They washed their faces and their bodies, put on clean suits, had a meal, i and soaked the decks of their ships | with water as a precaution against i fire. The pursuing squadron consisted !of two ballte-cruisers. the armoured cruisers Carnarvon. Kent, and Corn- ! wall, and the light cruiser Glasgow. ; The German squadron consisted of i the heavy cruisers Gneisenau and i Scharnhorst. and the light cruisers | ! Leipzig, Xurnberg, and Dresden. .Just ! before one o’clock the action began. j

End of the Battle All that afternoon the battle iaged. and by seven o’clock it was over. The last two hours were punctuated by a succession of German disasters. At a quarter past, four the Scharnhorst sank, at half-past five the Gneisenau went qown. The Leipzig and Nurnberg, though now separated* by many miles, ceased fire almost simultaneously toward seven o'clock. Only one ship, the Dresden, escaped into the gathering darkness. She fled back into the Pacific, and sought the coral reefs and volcanic islands which had sheltered the German vessels for so long. She was destroyed at her anchorage in Mas a Tierra three months later. But long before this, the consequences of the battle were evident in every Atlantic port of shipment. A day before the battle, the vast machinery which transports the American grain and cotton, the West Indian sugar, the Argentine ma ze and chilled meat, was creaking. greaning. and working in jerks. Twenty-four hours after the battle the entire machinery was again operating steadily, methodically. and without hesitation. This was the significance of the battle 15 years ago, and this is its significance today. -If tho Falklands campaign showed anything, it showed how vulnerable

were Great Britain’s sources of supply, and what tremendous exertions were necessary to restart a flow of trade if it had once ceased. The mechanism of transportation is as delicate today as it was then; the nature of its protection against damage and dislocation has not been altered. The thousand million gallons of oil, the fifty million Tons of wheat and grain, the three million tons of meat and sugar, the fifteen million centals of cotton, which are carried annually to Great Britain over the ocean highways, will only be safely delivered in British harbours if the King’s ships and seamen aro in strength and numbers sufficient to strike quick and hard in thc hour of danger.