Castles of Steel (49 page)

On Monday, November 9, although the ship was still in dry dock,
Invincible
’s decks were stacked with stores and provisions. That night, the battle cruiser was moved out of dry dock to a coaling jetty. Her crew began coaling just before midnight and continued until 11:30 the next morning with a break for cocoa at 3:00 a.m. and another for breakfast at 7:30. The repairs were never finished; when she sailed,
Invincible
had several dozen workmen still on board.

Meanwhile, the Admiralty had appointed an officer to command the force. It was not to be Rear Admiral Stoddart. Command of two battle cruisers and numerous armored cruisers called for a vice admiral and, as it happened, an officer of this rank was immediately available from the inner circle of the Admiralty itself. The appointment, however, was not conceived in thoughtful discussion, but in rancor and compromise. The rancor was Fisher’s; the compromise, Churchill’s. On returning to the Admiralty as First Sea Lord, Fisher had brought with him a fierce resentment against the Chief of Staff, Vice Admiral Sir Frederick Doveton Sturdee. This feeling stemmed from an old feud. Ten years before, during his first appointment as First Sea Lord, Fisher had assigned Sturdee as Chief of Staff to Lord Charles Beresford, then Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet. According to Sturdee, before he took up his post, Fisher asked him “to keep an eye on Charlie as he was inclined to be rather rash and rather wild on Service matters. He asked me to write to him privately about my chief. This request I never complied with. Such a disloyal act was so obvious it did not require a second thought.” Subsequently, during the long, bitter vendetta waged by Beresford against Fisher that resulted in both resigning in 1910, Sturdee sided with Beresford. Fisher, with all the power of his volcanic personality, detested Sturdee. When news of Coronel reached Whitehall, and Fisher persuaded Churchill to send out two battle cruisers, the new First Sea Lord walked into Sturdee’s room to give him this information. Sturdee could not restrain himself from pointing out that he himself had suggested just such a move before Coronel but had been overruled. Fisher, believing that his initiative was being challenged, flushed and left the room. He went straight to Churchill to announce that he would not tolerate “that damned fool at the Admiralty for one day longer.”

Frederick Doveton Sturdee, then fifty-five, was a short, bulldog-shaped man with a Roman nose, a heavy lower jaw, and flourishing eyebrows. He had entered the navy at twelve, specialized in gunnery and torpedoes, and developed a reputation as a tactician. After serving under Beresford in the Mediterranean and Channel Fleets, he was promoted to rear admiral in 1910 and knighted in 1913. Appointed to the Admiralty in May 1914, he quickly made himself disliked. It was said that he was rigid, pedantic, conceited, and surly. Wanting to do everything himself, he refused to listen to advice from subordinates. When his dispositions of the fleet were criticized, he became obstinate; even after the loss of the three
Bacchante
s, Sturdee continued to press for regular cruiser patrols on the Broad Fourteens. Opinions about him split along old fault lines: Beresford described him as “one of the most brilliant, if not the most brilliant, officer of my acquaintance”; Fisher called him a “pedantic ass . . . is, has been, and always will be.” Fisher blamed Sturdee for the assignment of ships and squadrons in the weeks preceding Coronel: “Never such utter rot as perpetrated by Sturdee in his world-wide dispersal of weak units! Strong nowhere, weak everywhere!”

Nevertheless, Churchill trusted Sturdee. Fisher’s anger had to be assuaged, but the First Lord refused to make the Chief of Staff the scapegoat for Coronel. Suddenly, a solution presented itself: two battle cruisers were about to leave England on an important mission; a commander for this force was needed; Sturdee could be removed from the Admiralty and Fisher would be pleased. The First Lord summoned Sturdee and told him, “The destruction of the German [Spee’s] Squadron is an object of high and immediate importance. I propose to entrust this duty to you.” Sturdee immediately accepted, turned over his duties as Chief of Staff to Rear Admiral Sir Henry Oliver, and departed by train for Devonport. On Wednesday the eleventh, Sturdee boarded
Invincible
and hoisted his vice admiral’s flag. By midmorning, the captains of both battle cruisers reported their ships ready for sea. “Very well,” Sturdee said laconically, “we sail at four p.m.” At noon, Lady Sturdee and their daughter came aboard for a farewell meal. Sturdee brought with him the new title of Commander-in-Chief, South Atlantic and Pacific. “Your main and most important duty,” his orders read, “is to search for the German armored cruisers . . . and bring them to action. All other considerations are to be subordinate to this end.” All British ships and naval officers, including Stoddart, in all the oceans where von Spee might appear, were placed under Sturdee’s command.

The battle cruisers steamed west and south, through the Bay of Biscay, around the tip of Spain, past Portugal, past Madeira with sunrise lighting its 6,000-foot peak. Daily, the weather grew warmer and the sea shaded to deeper blues. The sea routine of the naval service set in: the officers breakfasted on porridge, fish patties, eggs, and bacon, lunched on bread, butter, jam, and cakes, and for dinner had soup, salt beef, macaroni, cheese, dessert, and coffee. Tea at 4:00 p.m. was followed by officers’ deck hockey. On Sunday mornings, the captains inspected their ships at 10:00 and church services on deck followed at 11:00. Once the weather was warm, a swimming pool was rigged by stretching a canvas between the two forward 12-inch guns; the officers used it between seven and eight a.m.; the men in the evening. On November 17, officers and men changed from their winter blue uniforms into summer white. On deck in bright sunshine, they watched groups of flying fish, like “small flocks of birds,” breaking the surface, flying, plunging, reappearing, soaring.

Six days out from England, the battle cruisers anchored in the wide, semicircular bay of Porto Grande on St. Vincent, one of the Portuguese Cape Verde Islands, off the coast of Africa. As they approached, the British sailors saw an 8,000-foot volcanic mountain, its peak wreathed in clouds, rising straight from the sea. The harbor itself was crowded with ships, including eight German steamers sheltering in the neutral port. As soon as their anchors splashed, the battle cruisers were surrounded by brightly colored boats with green oranges, bananas, and coral necklaces for sale. Colliers came alongside, and coaling continued through the night. A tragedy marred this procedure. In the middle of the night, a sixteen-year-old boy attending a cable motor on board
Invincible
dropped off to sleep. His hand, resting on the rolling cable, was caught and the boy was dragged completely around the cable drum. He died instantly. The following day,
Invincible,
under way, halted in mid-ocean and the boy was buried at sea.

Sturdee proceeded south at a constant, economical 10 knots, his speed, like Spee’s in the Pacific, dictated by coal. His ships’ appetites were huge and the distances immense: 2,500 miles from Devonport to the Cape Verde Islands; 2,300 miles from Cape Verde to the Abrolhos Rocks; 2,200 from the Abrolhos Rocks to the Falklands. The admiral wanted his approach unknown. His ships maintained radio silence and although it took Sturdee twenty-six days to travel from Devonport to the Falklands, the information that he was coming never reached Spee. This was less a success of British security than a failure of German intelligence. At Devonport, it was widely known that the two battle cruisers were off to deal with Spee. News of the voyage also became known in Rio and Montevideo, thanks to talkative radio operators, German and British, at Cape Verde. On November 17 at a club in Rio, Lieutenant Hirst of
Glasgow
overheard two Englishmen discussing the imminent arrival of the two battle cruisers. The Germans had a good cable connection with Chile, but when they did learn about Sturdee’s coming, either it was too late to reach Spee by wireless at sea or they simply did not realize the urgent nature of the news.

At dawn on November 26, Sturdee reached Abrolhos to find Stoddart’s cruiser squadron and nine colliers riding at anchor. Soon, the sea was filled with small boats going from ship to ship.
Invincible
had brought fifty-four bags of mail from England and
Inflexible
distributed a month’s provisions—including beer, which Stoddart’s men had not tasted for weeks. Then, under a merciless sun, in temperatures of 100 degrees, the battle cruisers coaled. The armored cruiser
Defence,
no longer needed to confront Spee, was dispatched to bolster the squadron at Capetown. At a conference of captains on the morning of November 27, Sturdee declared that Spee could not reach the river Plate before he did and that even if the Germans came into the South Atlantic, they probably would steam slowly up the middle of the ocean. He admitted that Spee might attack the Falklands, and arrangements were made for Port Stanley to send a daily wireless signal so that silence could be interpreted as the loss of that colony. Sturdee’s plan was that if he arrived at the Falklands before Spee came around the Horn, he would use the islands as a coaling base and then set his fast light cruisers,
Glasgow
and
Bristol,
to ferreting the harbors in Tierra del Fuego and the fjords of the Chilean archipelago. Once the prey was located, the battle cruisers were to come at high speed. The squadron, he announced, would sail from Abrolhos on the twenty-ninth. Captain Luce of
Glasgow
was surprised to hear that Sturdee intended to remain at Abrolhos for another two days. Luce, who had been at the Falklands and was aware of the deep anxiety of the inhabitants, felt that this was unjustifiable; in addition, the tactical urgency of Sturdee reaching the Falklands before Spee seemed obvious. “In some trepidation,” he wrote later, he went back to the flagship after the conference. “I hope you don’t mind me coming over, sir,” he said to Sturdee, “and please don’t imagine I am questioning your orders, but thinking it over, I do feel we should sail as soon as possible.”

“But, dammit, Luce,” Sturdee replied, “we’re sailing the day after tomorrow. Isn’t that good enough for you?” Luce persisted and Sturdee relented: “Very well, Luce, we’ll sail tomorrow.”

At 10:00 on the morning of November 28, Sturdee led his force to sea. Sweeping south in bright sunshine, the ships spread in a fanlike search pattern, each ship at the maximum distance—twelve miles in good weather—that permitted visual communication by signal light. Two days later, with the sea still calm and visibility excellent, Sturdee ordered firing practice.
Carnarvon
towed a target for
Kent,
which fired 144 rounds of 6-inch ammunition; then
Kent
towed for
Carnarvon.
The battle cruisers fired their 12-inch guns at 12,000 yards, the range at which Sturdee intended to engage.
Invincible
fired thirty-two shells, four from each gun, at a target towed by
Inflexible.
Only one hit was obtained, but the near misses were declared satisfactory.
Inflexible
then fired thirty-two rounds at an
Invincible
target and scored three hits. While
Invincible
was hauling in her target, the wire cable wrapped itself around the starboard outboard propeller. Sturdee halted the entire squadron for twelve hours in mid-ocean while divers went down and attempted to clear the fouled propeller. They failed, but to avoid wasting more time, the squadron got under way with
Invincible
steaming on only three propellers.

As the ships steamed farther south, the air grew colder, the sea changed from deep blue to green and gray, and the swells were flecked with whitecaps. Spouting whales and an albatross were seen and the crews changed from summer white uniforms back into winter blue. The Falkland Islands first appeared through rain squalls at around 9:00 on Monday morning, December 7. Twenty-seven days and 7,000 miles after leaving England, the battle cruisers passed the Cape Pembroke lighthouse, marking the entrance to Port Stanley harbor, and carefully made their way through the string of improvised mines strung across the harbor mouth. Along the shore on each side as they glided into the anchorage, the crews saw seals and penguin rookeries. Port Stanley harbor is divided by a narrow channel into two bays: Port William, the outer, deeper anchorage, and Port Stanley, the inner harbor and site of the small settlement. In Port William, the two battle cruisers and the armored cruisers dropped anchor.
Bristol
and
Glasgow,
being of shallower draft, proceeded through the narrow channel into the inner harbor, where the little settlement spread itself along the shore. Five minutes after anchoring, divers went down to clear the tightly wound cable from
lnvincible
’s propeller. Before morning, the propeller was free. The squadron needed coal, but because only two colliers were available, the warships had to take turns.
Cornwall
was given permission to put out fires in order to clean her boilers and
Bristol
was allowed to dismantle an engine for repair. The armed merchant cruiser
Macedonia
was assigned to patrol the harbor entrance and the armored cruiser
Kent,
keeping steam up inside the anchorage, was instructed to relieve
Macedonia
at 8:00 the following morning.

Then Sturdee summoned his captains on board
lnvincible.
There were reports of German colliers at Dawson Island in Tierra del Fuego, which suggested that Spee might soon be coming around Cape Horn. Sturdee, wishing to get around the Horn before the Germans, declared that the British squadron would remain at the Falklands for only forty-eight hours; they would sail, he said, on Wednesday, the ninth. Meanwhile that day, the officers of
Invincible
and
Inflexible
were to have five hours’ shore leave; the officers of the armored and light cruisers would have their turn the following day. Proceeding ashore in their ships’ boats, the battle cruiser officers saw
Canopus
dressed in her strange colors, sitting on her mudbank. They were welcomed at the small town pier by the rector of Christ Church, who invited them to afternoon tea. Returning to their ships at six o’clock, they looked at the barren hills to the west and bundled their coats tighter against the cold wind coming up from Antarctica.