In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

THE GERMAN EAST ASIATIC Squadron was based at Tsingtao, the German concession in northern China. At this time Germany owned the Carolines and Palaus, the Marianas, the Marshalls, Bougainville, what are now New Britain and New Ireland, and German Samoa, and the squadron in effect was the only means of defense of these various colonies as well as being the means of “showing the flag” throughout the Pacific. With the deterioration of the European situation the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau made for Ponape in the Carolines where, on 6 August, they were joined by the Nürnberg, which had been at San Francisco. The three German ships then made their way to Pagan Island , in the Marianas, where they were joined by the light cruiser Emden on 12 August. With the squadron committed to making for the west coast of South America, where supplies of coal were expected to be plentiful, the Emden parted company on 14 August and made for the Indian Ocean. The Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and the Nürnberg were met by the light cruisers Dresden and Leipzig on 12 October at Easter Island, the formation leaving six days later for Chile. The Dresden had come from the Caribbean, the Leipzig from Mazatlan on Mexico’s Pacific coast. Various auxiliary cruisers and supply ships, plus the occasional prize, appeared at different times, for example, the Prinz Eitel Friedrich and Markomannia, which arrived with the Emden at Pagan on 12 August . In addition, as the German formation crossed the Pacific there were various colliers in company at different times; the Luxor, Memphis, and Ramses were just three of the colliers in German employment in South American waters. Off Coronel on 1 November 1914 this German formation met and destroyed a scratch British force that consisted of the armored cruisers Good Hope and Monmouth , the light cruiser Glasgow, and the auxiliary cruiser Otranto; in a two-hour action in the evening the two British armored cruisers were sunk in an action in which German fire was opened at a range of 12,300 yards/11,300 m. German casualties, from six hits, numbered two men wounded. The German victory resulted in no fewer than three hundred personnel being awarded appendix 9.2. the battles off coronel, 1 november, and the falklands, 8 december 1914 238 from sarajevo to constantinople Iron Crosses, though they were destined never to receive them, but perhaps more seriously the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau used 42 percent of their 8.2-in./208-mm ammunition in this action with no prospect of replenishment. Perhaps the only real point to emerge from this battle was the British folly in dispatching to southern waters two separate formations, each inferior to the German formation that they were supposed to counter . Together the two formations that had been sent would have possessed a margin of superiority in terms of numbers, but in terms of quality, with aging British ships manned primarily by reservists, these formations were no match for their German enemy. Instead of pressing forward and falling upon the British coaling station on the Falklands and British shipping in the River Plate area, the German squadron lingered in Chilean waters and did not round the Cape until 1 December. In the month’s grace thus afforded, the Admiralty gathered in the South Atlantic a force that was to ensure German defeat. The force was to consist of the second formation that had been sent to southern waters, plus the survivors of Coronel and the old battleship Canopus, which had missed that battle, the cruiser Kent that had been off the Cape Verde Islands, and two battlecruisers sent from home waters. At the same time another battlecruiser, the Princess Royal, was sent first to Halifax and then to the West Indies, where it joined the armoredcruisers Berwick, Essex, andtheLancaster, andtheirFrenchcounterpartCondé, in case the German force chose to use the Panama Canal rather than the long route around Cape Horn; in addition, the British formation in South African waters was reinforced and the planned landing in German South West Africa was postponed. What this meant was that the armored cruisers Defence, Carnarvon, and the Cornwall and the armed merchant cruisers Otranto and Orama (both with the Orient line and converted in 1914) arrived at the Abrolhos Rocks on 17 November; the armored cruiser Kent and the armed merchant cruiser Edinburgh Castle (Union Castle mail ship, 1910, converted 1914) were already there. The cruiser Bristol and armed merchant cruiser Macedonia, and then the Glasgow...

Share