German light cruiser Dresden built by Blohm and Voss, Hamburg, launched 5th October 1907 and completed 1908/09. Dresden formed part of the International force which intervened in the Mexican Revolution of 1910. She was part of the West Indies station under Admiral Graf von Spee and passed into the Pacific via the Magellan Straits where she joined the light cruiser Leipzig. She survived the Battle of Falklands and escaped to the Pacific but was finally trapped by British cruisers HMS Glasgow and HMS Kent and the armoured merchant cruiser Orama, off the Chilean Island of Mas a Fuera and was shelled into submission. During the ceasefire negotiations she was scuttled to avoid capture on 14th March 1915.

Displacement: 3,650 tons.  Speed: 25 knots.  Complement: 361.  Armament: 10 4.1 inch guns in single turrets, two 18 inch torpedo tubes.

Sister ship Emden.

Dresden, 1908.

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SMS Dresden

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SMS Dresden - thanks to Frank Kohlmann who identified this ship from our Unidentified Ships page

HMS Dresden at Veracruz

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 8^th 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 4^th 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 7^th, 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 14^th.  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.

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