August 14, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER 
half-hour. During this half-hour, Von Spee, 
probably fearing to lose any of his broadside fire, 
did not repeat his attempt to close, and when, the 
range had reached the length which put his guns 
at a disadvantage, he turned aAvay. He had failed . 
in bringing about equal fighting conditions; so he! 
tried flight. Admiral Sturdee then ordered a: 
second chase, and in a quarter of an hour brought 
the euemy under fire again. Once more the enemy 
turned broadside on, but the Scharnhorst soon 
caught fire, and the Gneisenau was seriously hit 
by Inflexible. After half an hour of this Scharn- 
■ horst, which had suffered severely in this part of 
the engagement, some of her guns not being able 
to fire, and her third funnel gone, turned away 
once more, as the Admiral supposes, to bring her 
starboard guns into action. From this point on 
it was merely a despairing effort of the German 
ships to do what was possible before they sank. 
A STRIKING CONTRAST. 
It is surely a striking contrast that in 1805 a 
British Admiral's only idea was to bring the 
enemy as quickly as possible to action and to 
finish the business as rapidly as possible, while in 
1914 our Admiral delays the chase to allow his 
slower cruisers to get into'formation, and, possess- 
ing superior speed, allows the enemy for nearly 
two hours to keep his distance. When the enemy 
turns to fight at shorter range the British 
Admiral increases the distance. When the enemy 
flies he closes him again, and once more declines 
close action when the enemy turns a second time. 
He plays with him as a cat with a mouse. 
Now compare the Sydney and Emden fight 
«vith the Chesapeake and Shannon fight of 102 
years ago. Captain Glossop's account runs as 
follows : " I worked up to twenty knots, and at 
9.15 sighted land ahead, and almost immediately 
the smoke of a ship, which proved to be 
H.I.G.M.S. Emden, coming out towards me at a 
great rate. At 9.40 a.m. fire was opened, she 
firing the first shot. / kept my distance as much 
as possible. . . . Her fire was very rapid and 
accurate to begin with, but seemed to slacken 
very quickly, all casualties occurring in this ship 
almost immediately." 
When Lawrence, in the Chesapeake, accepted 
Broke's challenge, Shannon waited for him and 
let him come quite close up before firing the first 
shot. The broadsides of the Shannon followed 
in quick succession, and in a very few minutes 
the Chesapeake was out of control. Broke has 
relied on close action, in which his superior fire- 
discipline will tell. He now changes his tactics. 
Had Broke chosen he could have hauled off and 
finished the action with his guns, almost with- 
out risking a man. What he did was to run 
straight alongside and board without a moment's 
delay. As at Trafalgar, so here, we see the 
British commander preoccupied with one thought 
©nly, to bring the enemy to action as soon as pos- 
sible and to finish the business quickly and de- 
cisively. So long as this is ensured, there is no 
thought of losses nor any hesitation in risking 
the ship. 
Why has this tactical conception changed? 
It seems to me to be a product of three things. 
In the days of sails the movements of a ship were 
at the mercy of the weather. There was no know- 
ing that a favourable wind would last, nor how 
long the possibility of fighting would endure. An 
opportunity missed might mean that the enemy,, 
would escape altogether. This has all been' 
altered by steam. A ship whose motive power is 
self-contained can measure the opportunity for 
engagement by its superiority in speed and the 
amount of daylight available. 
It is the development of long-range gunnery^ 
that affords the second element. As we have seen, 
the greater the range the greater the disadvantage 
of the lighter shell. The principle of keeping the 
enemy at long range, so as to get the benefit of 
heavier guns, was first put forward officially in the 
Memorandum explaining the Dreadnought design. 
We see it carried into practice, and, it must be^ 
admitted, with excellent effect, both at the Falk-l 
land Islands and off Direction Island. But it does 
not at all follow that it is the last word in naval 
tactics. In these two cases the weaker side ac- ! 
cepted the stronger's conditions. Is it necessary' 
that it should do so ? What, for instance, would 
Admiral Sturdee have done had Von Spee come at 
him at full speed and persisted in his effort to 
close ? Von Spee would, of course, have sacrificed 
the fire of many of his guns, but he would have set 
up a change of range so great as to make the task 
of hitting him an exceedingly difficult one. If 
keeping away is the right tactics for the heavier- 
gunned ship, must not the converse be the right 
tactics for those with lighter guns? Both Von 
Spee and Von Miiller seem to have been aware 
of this and to have begun by attempting a closing 
movement. But they did not persist. What one 
would like to know is, did they desist because they 
were hit or because they thought they would be? 
Or was it that they knew that to turn was to throw ' • 
the guns off the range, because the hits would be 
lost? Admiral Cradock did not attempt to /' 
close the range, and in his case, owing to 
the failing light, there would seem to have been 
still stronger argument for his having done so. 
In each of the three engagements the weaker 
squadron or ship was utterly defeated; and was 
defeated at no cost. The defeat was in each case 
probably inevitable. But was it inevitable that 
it should be without loss to the stronger? Note 
that in the Heligoland affair Sir David Beatty 
makes a great point of Lion's brilliant perform- 
ance in hitting the Ariadne when she was cross- 
ing his bows at top speed. The change of range 
might have been 700 and 800 yards a minute. It 
is quoted, and rightly, as an exceptional perform- 
ance. But the range was only 5,000 yards. Could 
it have been done at 8,000 ? At long range a high 
rate of change would probably be defensive. 
The third element that explains this new , 
anxiety to keep out of range is the disturb- ; 
ing possibility of the lucky shot. Lion, be it re- j 
membered, was put out of action by a shot that ', 
injured no vital part of the ship, but just a feed 
tank. As far as the fortunes of that battle 
were concerned, it might as well have sunk her. ^ 
A commander nowadays has to remember that a j 
single well-placed shot may injure a ship irre- | 
parably. This was not so in the old days. The 
factor of endurance in the ship and the factor of 
destructiveness in the gun have changed. 
GUNFIRE AND MANCEUVRES. 
The effect of gunfire being suspended while 
ships are manoeuvring is very clearly' illustrated 
by the Falkland Islands fight. For that reason i 
give a rate graph of this fight, which I will ask the 
Supplement to LANii AND WATER, 'Aueust 14, 1915, 
•))S9« 
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