On November 1, 1914, a powerful German fleet commanded by the famed admiralMaximilian von Spee destroyed a much smaller British force in a naval battle off Coronel, Chile, sinking two British cruisers and killing some 1,800 sailors of the Royal Navy, including the commander, Rear Admiral Christopher Cradock. Flush with victory in that first year of World War I, Spee next planned to destroy the British coaling station and radio facility at Port Stanley on East Falkland in the South Atlantic on the way to home port in Germany. The British Admiralty foresaw this development and quickly sent reinforcements to the Falkland Islands, so that, on arriving there on December 8, 1914, Spee found a much superior British force in port as his fleet approached.

　　Coronel had been Britain’s worst naval defeat for more than a century. Among the forces deployed to seek revenge was a squadron led by two battle cruisers—Invincible and Inflexible—vastly more powerful and considerably faster than Spee’s principal ships, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.

　　World War I Events keyboard_arrow_left

　　Battle of the Frontiers August 4, 1914 - September 6, 1914

　　Battle of Mons August 23, 1914

　　Battle of Tannenberg August 26, 1914 - August 30, 1914

　　First Battle of the Marne September 6, 1914 - September 12, 1914

　　First Battle of Ypres October 19, 1914 - November 22, 1914

　　Battle of Tanga November 2, 1914 - November 5, 1914

　　Battle of the Falkland Islands December 8, 1914

　　Christmas Truce December 24, 1914 - December 25, 1914

　　Gallipoli Campaign February 16, 1915 - January 9, 1916

　　Naval Operations in the Dardanelles Campaign February 19, 1915 - March 18, 1915

　　Second Battle of Ypres April 22, 1915 - May 25, 1915

　　Battles of the Isonzo June 23, 1915 - October 24, 1917

　　Battle of Lone Pine August 6, 1915 - August 10, 1915

　　Battle of Verdun February 21, 1916 - December 18, 1916

　　Battle of Jutland May 31, 1916 - June 1, 1916

　　Brusilov Offensive June 4, 1916 - August 10, 1916

　　First Battle of the Somme July 1, 1916 - November 13, 1916

　　Battle of Messines June 7, 1917 - June 14, 1917

　　June Offensive July 1, 1917 - c. July 4, 1917

　　Battle of Passchendaele July 31, 1917 - November 6, 1917

　　Battle of Caporetto October 24, 1917 - December 19, 1917

　　Battle of Cambrai November 20, 1917 - December 8, 1917

　　treaties of Brest-Litovsk February 9, 1918; March 3, 1918

　　Battle of Belleau Wood June 1, 1918 - June 26, 1918

　　Battle of Amiens August 8, 1918 - August 11, 1918

　　Battle of Saint-Mihiel September 12, 1918 - September 16, 1918

　　Battle of Cambrai September 27, 1918 - October 11, 1918

　　Battle of Mons November 11, 1918 keyboard_arrow_right As the Germans came in sight of Port Stanley, they quickly realized that they had sailed into trouble and turned away at full speed to try to escape. The British ships soon pursued the fleeing enemy. By early afternoon, having steamed southeast of the Falklands, Spee accepted that escape was impossible and turned back with his two slower big ships while ordering his three faster light cruisers, two colliers, and a hospital ship to flee. British Admiral Sir Frederick Doveton Sturdee sent his five cruisers after the smaller German warships (two were sunk later and one escaped) and faced Spee with his two battle cruisers.

　　The British gunnery was inaccurate at first, and the Germans maneuvered skillfully, so that it took much of the afternoon before the British made telling hits. Eventually, however, the big British shells struck home. Both German armored cruisers were sunk before about 6:00 PM, with few survivors. Spee himself was killed in the fight, as were two of his sons. The defeat at Coronel had been avenged, and even the German escapee from the battle, Dresden, was caught and destroyed while hiding in Chilean waters three months later.

　　The Battle of the Falkland Islands has been called the most important naval battle of the war, because it gave a great morale boost to the Allied war effort at a dire time, when the Allies were flailing on the Western Front and were about to get bogged down in Gallipoli. In Germany, Spee was celebrated as a national hero, and in 1936 the rapidly rearming Nazi German Kriegsmarine launched a pocket battleship named the Graf Spee in his honor. Ironically, that ship was scuttled in South American waters after having been trapped by the Royal Navy during the Battle of the River Plate in December 1939, twenty-five years to the month from its namesake’s defeat.

　　In 1927, a monument was erected in Stanley to commemorate the battle, with a representation of the goddess of victory looking out to sea. It is the southernmost monument to World War I on earth. In further commemoration, December 8 is celebrated as a holiday in the Falklands.

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