At War in Distant Waters by Phillip G. Pattee

Author:Phillip G. Pattee [Pattee, Phillip G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612511955
Publisher: Naval Institute Press

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WORLD WAR I IN THE COLONIES: EXECUTING THE STRATEGY

Soon after London declared war on August 4, 1914, Britain’s colonial and dominion governments worked closely with the Admiralty to put together expeditions designed to seize Germany’s overseas ports and high-frequency radio stations. At the same time, the India Office organized the expedition to Mesopotamia to protect the Anglo-Persian oil fields. The choices political, military, and naval leaders made with respect to the overseas expeditions demonstrated that London’s decisions were foremost naval considerations. Whitehall’s priorities for overseas operations were, in order of importance, maintaining the integrity of the trade routes, eliminating logistics and intelligence bases for German commerce raiders, protecting an independent source of fuel for the Royal Navy, capturing and destroying Germany’s commerce raiders, and curtailing German trade.

PACIFIC ISLANDS

As July came to a close without an abatement of the European crisis, the Royal Navy attempted to shadow and track German warships and merchant vessels. At the war’s outbreak, it knew little about the location of Germany’s East Asia squadron, commanded by Vice Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee. This lack of knowledge demonstrated that although a peacetime intelligence system had been implemented, diligent personnel at the ports still had to track and monitor warships’ activities. On August 1, the German merchant vessel Komet was within clear communications range, about fifty nautical miles, of the British wireless station at Port Moresby in Papua. On the same day, the German armored cruiser SMS Scharnhorst communicated via high-frequency radio with the German wireless station on Yap, but the Royal Navy could not determine the warship’s position. As of August 3, 1914, British naval intelligence knew that the armored cruiser SMS Gneisenau had departed Nagasaki, Japan, on June 23 but the warship’s whereabouts were unknown. Intelligence believed Gneisenau had joined Scharnhorst and that these two marauders were near Tsingtao. The cruiser SMS Nürnberg had been at Mazatlan, Mexico, on November 13 the previous year. British intelligence believed the warship remained there or was transiting back to Tsingtao to rejoin its squadron. The cruiser SMS Leipzig was patrolling somewhere in the vicinity of Vancouver, British Colombia. The Admiralty knew, however, that the cruiser SMS Emden departed Tsingtao in company with four colliers on August 3. SMS Grier, an aging light cruiser, was transiting the Rhio Strait somewhere between Java and Singapore.

When war broke out on August 4, Australia’s governor-general, Ronald Munro Ferguson, detained several German colliers in Australian ports, preventing them from potentially supplying von Spee’s squadron. Nevertheless, some German colliers in port at Newcastle, New South Wales, slipped through Australia’s bureaucratic net and hurriedly departed the morning of August 6.1 Each of the East Asia squadron’s warships remained in communications with the German wireless station at Yap, facilitating von Spee’s ability to bring his ships together. By August 6, the Admiralty’s intelligence branch indicated Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and possibly Nürnberg were together in the vicinity of 8° south latitude and 162° east longitude, heading in a southeasterly direction.2

Rear Admiral George Patey, commander of Australian naval forces, rallied

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