The two forces met in battle on the afternoon of November 1, 1914. The fight started with the Germans in a better position — the British were firing into the setting sun and could not see as well. Within a few hours, von Spec’s ships had devastated Cradock’s. Cradock’s own ship, Good Hope, on fire and hit many times, exploded and sank with no survivors. HMS Monmouth also sank after a point-blank pounding from the German cruiser Nurnberg which fired seventy-five rounds into the burning ship to finish it off; there were no survivors. The Battle of Coronel was the Royal Navy’s first defeat at sea in over a century, and it filled the British with a strong desire for retribution.
After Coronel, von Spec kept his squadron in the Pacific to hunt the enemy, despite orders to return to Germany. When von Spec finally decided to move into the Atlantic, his procrastination had allowed the British enough time to create a new battle force, this one under the command of Vice-Admiral Frederick Sturdee. When von Spec and his ships arrived at the Falkland Islands to raid them, Sturdee and his fleet were waiting in ambush. The British cruisers could outrun and outgun the German ships, and in an unequal battle, Sturdee chased down and sank all but one of von Spec’s fleet. The first to die was Scharnhorst, with von Spec aboard; there were no survivors. Gneisenau sank next after a hard fight; the British pulled only 190 of the 765 crew from the water, and many of the badly wounded Germans died after being rescued. The smaller cruisers— Leipzig, Dresden and Nurnberg—ran for it, but soon Leipzig, out of ammunition, her mainmast and two funnels shot away, and sinking, stopped dead in the water. There were only eighteen survivors. Nurnberg fought until two of her boilers exploded and British shells sank her, leaving only twelve survivors.
Of all of von Spec’s squadron, only Dresden escaped the carnage, outrunning the pursuing British by sailing through bad weather that provided cover. The crew of Dresden ran with the bitter knowledge that they could do nothing to help the other German ships and that they had to try to escape to fight another day.
After returning to Punta Arenas for coal, Dresden steamed into the narrow channels of Tierra del Fuego, near Cape Horn, to hide from the British. For the next two months, British and other allied ships searched in vain for Dresden. But in early March, harassed by bad weather and with his crew restless, Ludecke decided to return to the Pacific. He felt that they could not safely make it home by running across the Atlantic with so many ships hunting for them. His concerns were underscored on March 2, when the British cruisers Kent and Glasgow discovered Dresden in the channels of the Straits of Magellan and chased her at high speed for hours until Ludecke outpaced them and escaped.
With only 80 tons of coal left, which was not enough to go anywhere, Dresden arrived at Mas a Tierra on March 8 with a rust-streaked hull and worn-out machinery. Ludecke argued with Chilean authorities for more than the legal limit of twenty-four hours for a combatant to remain in a neutral port, claiming that his coal situation and the ship’s condition required more time. He also radioed passing ships in vain, seeking more coal to help them escape. But he also knew that as a last resort he could land his crew and intern them with the ship for the duration of the war.
Mike Fletcher geared up to dive on the German cruiser Dresden, sunk off the coast of Chile. James P. Delgado The British intercepted one of Dresden’s radio calls for coal on March 13 and raced for Mas a Tierra. At 8:40 the next morning, Kent and Glasgow, along with the auxiliary cruiser (Drama, sighted Dresden at anchor in Cumberland Bay and opened fire, despite the fact that they were violating Chile’s neutrality and breaking international law. Less than three hours later, Dresden, shattered and burning, sank. Most of the crew had made it ashore and survived the final battle. They remained in Chile until 1919 as unwilling guests of the Chileans, interned in accord with the international agreements that the British had ignored. Some of the German officers escaped and made their way home to fight again in a war that would continue for three more years. But the sinking of Dresden, following the earlier destruction of Emden in the Indian Ocean, brought an end to the naval war in the Pacific. The last of the proud East Asia Squadron of the Reichsgraf von Spec lay rusting in the deep, a legacy for the future when explorers and archeologists would venture into the sea to reconstruct her final hours.
A FABLED ISLAND The empty sea surrounds our ship for as far as the eye can see, nearly 500 miles off the coast of Chile. Our ship gently rolls in the swell as we drive west at 16 knots. The Armada de Chile (Chilean Navy) ship Valdivia, an amphibious landing ship, is a day out from Valparaiso, en route to the Archipelago de Juan Fernandez and an island with a romantic name and a famous history, Isla Robinson Crusoe (also known as Mas a Tierra). The island is one of the world’s most inaccessible and remote places, home to some five hundred people and host to only a few hundred more each year. The tourists are mainly Chileans who come to visit the island’s unique ecosystem or who are drawn, like others before them, by one of literature’s most famous castaways, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.
In addition to her other duties, Valdivia makes two trips to Isla Robinson Crusoe each year. The ship carries 177 passengers, as well as their baggage and other items and equipment that have no other way of reaching this isolated Chilean colony. Our Sea Hunters crew of eleven hauls tons of dive equipment, cameras and other gear into the large tank bay below the main deck and into our berths. Our team has come to dive and film an episode about the Imperial German Navy’s small cruiser Dresden, eighty-eight years after she sank. We will be the first to dive down and return with detailed images and extensive footage of the wrecked warship in her grave 180 feet below the surface.
Our team includes Dr. Willi Kramer, the first German official to visit the wreck and the graves of some of Dresden’s sailors, who are buried ashore. Willi’s professional expertise is Viking and medieval sites, but he now finds himself drawn around the world to document the legacy of the First World War.
After twenty-eight hours at sea, we catch our first glimpse of Isla Robinson Crusoe, rising faintly out of the mist on the horizon. As we approach the island, the ship rolling in the swell, we’re struck by how small it is. Only 36 square miles in area and 2,800 feet above sea level at its highest peak, this island has, for all its isolation, long been a part of the world’s consciousness. It is a storied island that features in tales of explorers, pirates and privateers, buried treasure, shipwrecks, castaways and sea battles. One nineteenth-century visitor, the writer Richard Henry Dana, called it “the most romantic spot of earth” because of its unique history and its association with the fabled Crusoe.
If this is an island of dreams and romance, it is because of the three-hundred-year-old tale of Robinson Crusoe and his real-life inspiration, Alexander Selkirk. A native of Largo, which is north of Edinburgh on the rugged Fife coast, Selkirk was a troubled lad who ran away from the censure of his village and found a haven in a life at sea. He fared well, advancing in rank from ship’s boy to officer over the next several years. The lure of adventure and riches led him in 1703 to join a privateering venture into the Pacific led by William Dampier.
One man’s privateer is another man’s pirate, and Dampier’s ships and crews faced the wrath of Spain, which controlled the Pacific to the extent that the ocean was known as a “Spanish lake.” Thanks to Dampier’s incompetence, the venture ended badly, with very little gained and a number of men lost. One of Dampier’s ships, the privateer Cinque Ports, anchored at Mas a Tierra in October 1704, leaking and in bad condition. Her captain, Thomas Stradling, wanted to repro-vision before heading south and trying for home. Selkirk, his sailing master (mate), was convinced that the ship would never reach a safe port and decided that he would rather stay on the island than take his chances at sea.
The captain was more than happy to leave the quarrelsome, headstrong Selkirk behind and so set him ashore with a few tools, his gun and bedding, and his Bible. As the ship’s boat pulled away from the island, Selkirk regretted his decision and dashed into the surf, begging them to return. Stradling reportedly yelled back, “Stay where you are and may you starve!” Thus began a lonely exile that lasted four years and four months, until another English privateer, Woodes Rogers, landed for provisions. Rogers reported that “Immediately our pinnace return’d from the shore, and brought abundance of Craw-fish, with a man Cloth’d in Goat Skins, who look’d wilder than the first owners of them.”
Selkirk sailed with Rogers and returned to a life of privateering in the Pacific before reaching London in 1711,
