Castles of Steel (43 page)

[Soon after sending this signal to Cradock, Grant discovered that his engineer officer was a sick man whose health had been so undermined by the strain of maintaining the battleship’s ancient machinery with a scratch crew that he had deliberately exaggerated her mechanical difficulties. This engineer commander, William Denbow, who for two years had been responsible for
Canopus
’s engines while she was laid up in Care and Maintenance, was unwillingly sent off to war along with the old ship and her old engines. When he found himself bound on a long voyage for the South Atlantic, his nerves failed. During the voyage, he never left his cabin, never inspected the engines, and never spoke to his subordinates. Captain Grant, apparently, knew nothing of this. Not until after Cradock had been told that the ship’s engines were suffering from faulty condensers and could produce no more than 12 knots did a junior officer find the courage to tell the captain that Denbow “lived in his cabin. The day before we reached Port Stanley, I sent to the Captain . . . a written report about the Engineer Commander’s strange behavior.” By the time Grant knew, Cradock had sailed from Port Stanley, and Grant decided not to pass along the story. Denbow was placed under medical surveillance and, at Vallenar on the Chilean coast, he was transferred to a supply ship, to be invalided out of the navy.]

Dismayed, Cradock passed this news to the Admiralty on October 18, advising, “I trust circumstances will enable me to force an action, but fear that strategically, owing to
Canopus,
the speed of my squadron cannot exceed twelve knots.”

Cradock may have assumed that the absurdity implicit in the idea of a 12-knot British squadron attempting to intercept and “force an action” with a 20-knot German squadron was so obvious that someone at the Admiralty would grasp it. Then, either London would issue a new set of orders, assigning him a different mission, or send him immediate reinforcements, instructing him to await their arrival before accepting action. Unfortunately, the Admiralty simply took Cradock at his word, interpreting his message to mean that the admiral intended to keep
Canopus
with him as he had been told to do and that he would travel at her best speed. Churchill confirmed this after the war, writing, “It is clear that up to this date the admiral fully intended to keep concentrated on the
Canopus,
even though his squadron speed should be reduced to twelve knots.” Cradock thus faced a painful choice: he could obey Admiralty instructions and operate in company with
Canopus,
thereby forfeiting any chance of bringing the Germans to action; or he could fight without
Canopus
and face the probability of defeat. Churchill considered the second alternative—fighting without presence of
Canopus
—illogical and disobedient; Cradock considered the first—letting the Germans slip by unmolested—cowardly and unthinkable.

When
Canopus
finally appeared at Port Stanley on October 22, Captain Grant confirmed to Cradock that his old battleship’s best speed was 12 knots. Worse, Grant reported that he could not leave port at any speed until he repaired his leaking condensers and cleaned his boilers; even then, he would be restricted to 12 knots. Disgusted, Cradock ordered
Canopus
to remain at Port Stanley until she was ready and then to follow him—he would pause to allow her to catch up—and escort his colliers around to the west coast. That afternoon, Cradock himself sailed in
Good Hope
to join the rest of his squadron. The time for Spee’s appearance was already past; he felt that he could not leave his detached ships—
Glasgow, Monmouth,
and
Otranto
—exposed any longer on the Chilean coast without the support of
Good Hope.
Before leaving, he sent a simple report to London: “
Good Hope
left [Port Stanley] 22 October via Cape Horn.
Canopus
following on 23rd via Magellan Straits with three colliers for west coast of South America.”

At fifty-two, Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock was a small, immaculately dressed bachelor with wide-set eyes and a neatly trimmed, pointed beard; a diplomat’s wife in Mexico described him as “shining with that special, well-groomed English look.” He lived alone except for his dog, who accompanied him everywhere, but he thrived on human society. Often on board
Good Hope,
he left his admiral’s quarters and joined the ship’s officers for a drink in the wardroom. An aide to the governor of the Falklands remembered that while Cradock was at Port Stanley, he and his dog “would come wandering up to Government House every day for a yarn and a meal or else the Governor would go off to
Good Hope.
He was a dear old bloke and keen as a terrier.”

Kit Cradock had joined the navy at thirteen and had served afloat and ashore for forty years. In 1900, as an officer in the China Squadron, Cradock was playing polo in Hong Kong with his friends Beatty and Keyes when the Boxer Rebellion broke out. He went ashore with the British naval brigade to capture the Taku forts and, under heavy fire, led a company of British, German, and Japanese sailors across a sunbaked mud flat to storm the west gate of a fort. For this, the kaiser gave him the Prussian Order of the Crown with Swords. In 1910, Fisher, as First Sea Lord, announced that Captain Cradock is “one of our very best officers.” He was promoted to rear admiral and knighted, and in February 1913 took command of the prestigious North American and West Indies Station.

The navy was Cradock’s life. The majesty and invincibility of the Royal Navy formed the bedrock of empire and the cornerstone of his beliefs. For him, said the contemporary naval writer Sir Archibald Hurd, “the navy was not a mere collection of ships, but a community of men with high purpose”; in this brotherhood, tradition, courage, honor, and discipline counted more than ships, boiler power, and gun calibers. In his leisure, Cradock wrote three books about the navy, including
Whispers from the Fleet,
a volume of avuncular advice for young officers. Among topics considered, Cradock counseled on burials at sea: “When a hammock is being used as a shroud, the last stitch of the sailmaker’s needle is neatly popped through the tip of the nose. Then there can be no mistake.”

Cradock was known in the fleet as a man who “fought hard, played hard, and did not suffer fools gladly.” His favorite signal was said to be “Engage the enemy more closely.” Home from the sea in his native Yorkshire, he hunted with near recklessness and he told a friend and fellow admiral that he hoped when his time came it would be in action at sea or by breaking his neck on the hunting field. By 1914 when he went to war, Cradock was one of the Royal Navy’s most decorated admirals. Among the three rows of ribbons on the left breast of his jacket, however, one was stained with ink. “That ribbon,” he told the governor’s aide at Port Stanley, “belongs to the First Class Order of the Blue Ape, or something, that the kaiser gave me. I couldn’t tear it out without ruining all the others; so I got an ink bottle and made it look as unpleasant as possible.”

According to Luce, Cradock knew when he left Port Stanley that he was going to his doom. Sir William Allardyce, the governor of the Falklands, later told Luce that “Cradock thought his chances were small and that he had been let down by the Admiralty especially when his request for
Defence
had been denied.” Bidding Allardyce farewell, Cradock said that he would never see him again and gave him a large sealed packet to be sent home to the Admiralty as soon as his death was confirmed. The packet contained a letter to his friend Admiral Hedworth Meux, to be forwarded “only in case . . . my squadron disappears—and me too—completely. I have no intention, after forty years at sea, of being an unheard victim.” To Meux he vowed, “I will take care I do not suffer the fate of poor Troubridge.” The governor’s aide at the Falklands had a similar recollection of Cradock’s mood: “The admiral was a very brave old man; he knew that he was going to almost certain death in fighting these new and powerful ships and it seemed to be quite all right as far as he was concerned. . . . He knew what he was up against and asked for a fast cruiser with big guns to be added to his squadron for he had nothing very powerful and nothing very fast, but the Admiralty said he’d have to go without. So old Cradock said, ‘All right; we’ll do without,’ and he slipped off quietly early one morning and left
Canopus
to look after the colliers and transports and picked up
Glasgow
and
Monmouth
and set off to look for these crack Germans.”

On October 26, as
Good Hope
was steaming north up the coast of Chile, Cradock signaled his intentions to the Admiralty. He confirmed his determination to find and to fight Spee, but he also made clear his distaste for
Canopus
and his desire for
Defence:
“With reference to orders to search for the enemy and our great desire for early success, I consider it impractical on account of
Canopus
[’s] slow speed to find and destroy enemy squadron. Have therefore ordered
Defence
to join me after calling for orders at Montevideo.
Canopus
will be employed in necessary work of convoying colliers.” This message arrived on October 27, at a time of turmoil at the Admiralty. Battenberg was about to resign and, on October 30, Churchill recalled Fisher. Thus it was that on the days when
Glasgow
was off Coronel,
Good Hope, Monmouth,
and
Otranto
were steaming north to join her, and
Canopus
was laboring up from the Magellan Straits, Churchill was, in his own words, “gravely preoccupied.” He passed Cradock’s signal to the War Staff with the minute, “This telegram is very obscure and I do not understand what Cradock intends or wishes.” In fact, Cradock’s message angered the First Lord. The admiral appeared either to have obtusely misunderstood or to be deliberately thwarting Admiralty orders. Cradock was saying that
Canopus,
the “citadel” around which he had been told to concentrate his squadron, was useless to him and that he was relegating this “citadel” to convoy work. Further, Cradock was telling Stoddart to send him
Defence,
the ship around which the new east coast squadron was to be built. Indeed, Stoddart immediately protested that if
Defence
was taken from him, he must immediately be sent two additional fast cruisers to replace her. On the evening of Octo-ber 28, Churchill abruptly countermanded Cradock’s orders to Stoddart to send him
Defence:
“
Defence
is to remain on east coast under orders of Stoddart,” decreed the Admiralty. “This will leave sufficient force on each side in case the hostile cruisers appear there on the trade route.” Regarding Cradock’s decision to relegate
Canopus
to convoy work, the Admiralty made no comment.

The words “sufficient force” emphasized that the Admiralty did not consider that Cradock required any addition to his squadron in order to fulfill his mission. But had
Defence
been present at Coronel, the outcome might have been different. Her guns matched those of
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
and her presence would have given Cradock a second regular Royal Navy ship and a second fully trained Royal Navy crew. It still would been two professionally manned British ships against five Germans, but with
Good Hope
and
Monmouth
adding their guns, the scale might have been balanced. This was Cradock’s view.

[In the end,
Defence
was an unlucky ship. As Troubridge’s flagship in the Mediterranean, she had played an unheroic role in the
Goeben
fiasco. Now as Cradock went to meet Spee,
Defence
remained idle at the river Plate. Eighteen months later, she blew up and sank at Jutland.]

The Admiralty’s message probably reached the admiral around one p.m. on November 1, when
Glasgow
brought it out to the flagship from Coronel. If he read it, the signal would explain his subsequent behavior. His decision to leave
Canopus
behind apparently had been approved for the Admiralty had made no comment.
Defence
had again been denied him. And he had been assured that, without these two ships, his squadron still constituted a “sufficient force.”

Thus, five ships, of which only one—the smallest—was ready to fight a modern, well-trained foe, represented the Royal Navy off the west coast of South America on November 1, 1914. “The words ‘sufficient force’ must have seared the soul of a fearless and experienced officer whose impetuous character was well-known at the Admiralty,” Hirst wrote later. Churchill was to argue that the “sufficient force” signal never reached Cradock, who was therefore not influenced by it in reaching his bold and suicidal decision. But Hirst said it reached
Glasgow
during her visit to Coronel, that his ship brought it out to
Good Hope
just before the action, and that he was certain that Cradock read it. Thereafter, “tired of protesting his inferiority, the receipt of this telegram would be sufficient to spur Cradock to hoist, as he did half an hour later, his signal, ‘Spread fifteen miles apart and look for the enemy.’ ” Three hours later he met the East Asia Squadron. Cradock’s last signal, wirelessed to
Canopus,
was a proper epitaph for a man who had always hoped he would break his neck on the hunting field or be killed in battle: “I am going to attack the enemy now.”

Churchill later admitted that, had he not been distracted by the Admiralty upheaval over Battenberg’s departure and Fisher’s arrival, “I am sure I should have reacted much more violently to the ominous sentence ‘shall employ
Canopus
convoying colliers.’ ” October 30 was Fisher’s first day back in office as First Sea Lord and Churchill gave the old admiral a two-hour briefing on the worldwide deployment of the Royal Navy. “The critical point,” Churchill recalled, was in South American waters. “Speaking of Admiral Cradock’s position, I said, ‘You don’t suppose he would try to fight them without the
Canopus
?’ He did not give any decided reply.”