Deeds That Thrill The Empire. Page 186. Volume I
The
Inglorious End Of The “Dresden”
After Sir Frederick Sturdee’s great victory over Admiral Von Spee
off the Falkland Islands on December 8th 1914, the cruiser
Dresden remained the sole representative of the regular German navy on the
high seas. Among our light
cruisers that fought at the Falklands there was but one, the Glasgow, that
might have been able to run the Dresden down; but Glasgow remained behind
to make absolutely certain of the Leipzig, and by the time she was
disposed of the other German cruiser had made good her escape, aided by
the falling daylight and a heavy drizzle of rain.
It was a curious sort of liberty that the Dresden enjoyed doe the
next few weeks. As soon as
she got clear of the British ships she doubled back to the west and into
the Pacific; but when the smaller cruisers of Admiral Sturdee’s fleet
assembled at the Falklands after their victory, a systematic search was
organised from which the solitary German could hardly hope to escape.
For some time, however, fortune lay with her.
The western coast of South America is fringed with innumerable
islands, and among these, with a fine disregard for the neutrality of
Chilli, the Dresden successfully concealed herself.
Bit by bit she worked her way up the coast, her object being either
to get into a neutral port, where she could replenish her coal supply and
slip away again before the British warship appeared on the scene, or else
to get into wireless touch with some of the auxiliaries which the Germans
had cunningly distributed all over the world ready to dash out at short
notice with any supplies that a German warship in the vicinity might
require.
The scattered squadron in search of the Dresden was under the
orders of Captain John Luce, of H.M.S. Glasgow, and it included, among
other vessels, the armoured cruiser Kent (Captain John D. Allen) and the
armed liner Orama (Captain John R. Seagrave).
The two cruisers had already distinguished themselves, the Kent at
the Falklands, and the Glasgow both there and in the glorious but fatal
action off Coronel, when the Good Hope and Monmouth were sunk, and it was
fitting enough that these two ships should be marked down to be in at the
death of the last of the original German raiders.
It was on March 4th 1915, that the Kent received a
wireless message from the Glasgow ordering her to proceed at once to a
certain spot where it was thought that she might find either the Dresden
herself or one of the supply ships which had been lying in wait in the
Chilean port of Valparaiso. Although
she had already steamed many thousands of miles since the Falklands fight,
and had not been in dock for months, the Kent at once made off at
seventeen knots for the place to which she had been directed.
For more than two days the engine room staff kept her steadily
going, and as the ship neared the appointed spot the spirits of the men
rose in the hope of meeting at last the object of their three months weary
search.
But
disappointment awaited them. At daybreak, on March 7th, the
decks were thronged with expectant men eagerly scanning the seas for the
glimpse of a sail; but there was not a speck to break the monotonous
expanse of water. She cruiser
around all day in vein, and night fell with no sign of a ship having been
seen. Next day brought the
same hopeless outlook; but before the sun set the fate of the Dresden was
to be sealed. In the middle
of the afternoon smoke was seen on the horizon.
Under careful stoking, so that belching clouds of smoke should not
betray her own presence too soon, the Kent edged down towards the
stranger, and in a few minutes it was discovered that she was no less than
the Dresden herself.
One can imagine the tremendous excitement there was on board at the
news. It was exactly three
months since, thanks to the Herculean efforts of her engineers and
stokers, the Kent had run down and sunk the Nurnberg at the Falklands, and
now the splendid fellows-no matter that they had done many months of
almost contentious steaming-went to work with tremendous energy to hunt
down their latest foe.
This time, however, the British cruiser was at a heavy
disadvantage. The nominal
speed of the Nurnberg was only half a knot greater of the engine room
staff had not only wiped this out, but had given her an advantage
sufficient to enable her to overtake her enemy and send her to the bottom.
But the Dresden was built to steam a knot and a half more than the
Kent, and as she had a lead of eight miles when the chase began, the
British ship found herself under a handicap that she could not possibly
overcome. For many hours she
pursued the foe at the top of her speed.
Everything on deck that would catch the wind and increase the
resistance was dismantled, and all the wooden fittings that could be
spared were taken below to feed the furnaces; but it was all to no
purpose. The faster Dresden
kept her lead, and when night fell and all sight of her was lost, the Kent
had not gained a fraction.
The fruits of the chase, however, wee to be reaped before another
week was out. The Dresden was
so high in the water that it was pain so high in the water that it was
plain she had not much fuel left in her bunkers, and a full speed flight
of four hours or more left her with such a very small reserve, that she
was bound either to put into a neutral port or else to get fresh supplies
from one of the waiting auxiliaries.
In point of fact, she tried to do both.
She made straight for the Chilean Island of Juan Fernandez (famous
as the scene of the adventures of Robinson Crusoe), and she sent a
wireless message to two steamships that were waiting in Valparaiso loaded
with coal. By so doing she
made her own fate doubly sure, for our ships, too, were fitted with
wireless, and the message was picked up. After her fruitless four-hour chase the Kent herself had run
short of fuel and she put into the nearest port to fill her yawning
1,600-ton bunkers. It was a
depressing wind up to their chase, but officers and men went to work with
a will, and in a few hours the cruiser, her decks still laden with coal
waiting to be stowed away, set off again on the trail.
A day or two later another wireless was received from the Glasgow,
asking if she could be in a certain spot-three hundred miles distant-by
nine o’clock on the morning of March 14th.
It meant another long spell of hard work for the engineers and
stokers, but there was never any doubt as to the answer; and at the very
hour mentioned she met the Glasgow and Orama within a few miles of the
island where the Dresden lay hidden.
The end of the German cruiser, assured by the Kent’s top speed
chase, was most un-heroic. She
had been ordered by the Chilean governor of the island to leave within
twenty-four hours of her arrival, but her captain refused to do so, and
remained in defiance of Chilean neutrality.
When the British ships arrived on the scene, the Glasgow leading,
the Dresden’s flag was flying at her masthead, and every available gun
was trained to bear on our cruisers.
She was lying within the territorial waters of a neutral Power but
in open defiance of the wishes of that Power; and it was obvious that she
intended to make at least a show of fighting.
As the Glasgow got to within about four thousand yards, she opened
fire with her six-inch guns, and almost the first round landed in the
stern of the Dresden and set her ablaze.
The German replied at once with her 4.1-inch weapons, and for a few
minutes there was a fierce exchange of fire.
Then the Kent came into action, and with the first salvo from her
powerful broadside the Germans-not one of whose shots had landed anywhere
near our ships-hoisted a white flag.
This was not a sign of surrender, but the preliminary to a piece of
consummate impudence. The
commander of the Dresden boarded a steam launch, in which he proceeded to
the ship of the Senior British officer, and represented to him that he was
outraging international law by attacking him in neutral waters!
Seeing that the Dresden had been violating the neutrality of those
same waters for nearly a week, one can quite imagine that the German
official report of what had happened after that is quite correct.
Captain Luce, we are told, informed the German commander that he
was there to sink the Dresden, and that he would precede to do so with the
utmost promptitude unless the Germans sank her themselves.
With this ultimatum in their ears the Germans hurried back in their
steam launch. The Dresden’s
boats were rapidly hoisted out, and the crew swarmed into them.
A few minutes later the noise of muffled explosions reached our
ships across the water, and the Dresden, the white flag still flying,
rapidly settled down in the water, scuttled by her own crew.
It was an inglorious end to an inglorious career, for in her seven
months of freedom the Dresden had sunk only five merchantmen belonging to
the Allies.
Her impotence and the tameness of her end were the more remarkable
in contrast with the record of her sister ship, the Emden, which in less
than half the time, managed to paralyse the commerce of a whole ocean.
The Dresden was a vessel of 3.592 tons, completed in 1909, and
armed with ten 4.1-inch guns, and it was partly in recognition of his
ingenuity in rounding up, and partly for his services at Coronel ad the
Falklands, that Captain Luce was made a Companion of the Bath, while a
similar honour was conferred upon Engineer-Commander G. E. Andrew for the
splendid way, in which, from the outbreak of war, he had handled his own
department. 
