HMS Good Hope

The Vessel

HMS Good Hope was a Drake-class armoured cruiser of the Royal Navy, commissioned at the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company at Govan on 8 November 1902. She was 161 metres long, 14,100 tons standard displacement, armed with two 9.2-inch guns in single turrets fore and aft, sixteen 6-inch guns in casemate mountings, and four 18-inch underwater torpedo tubes. Her design speed was 23 knots on a two-shaft arrangement, placing her among the fastest armoured cruisers in service.

The Drake class had been designed to counter Russian fast cruisers operating in Far Eastern waters, specifically against the emerging Russian Pacific Squadron of the 1900s. Their high speed and heavy 9.2-inch main armament gave them a range of engagement capabilities beyond the conventional armoured cruiser. By 1914, however, their design rationale had been overtaken by newer battlecruisers; Good Hope and her sisters were considered obsolete by the Admiralty and were assigned to secondary stations.

Her commanding officer in the autumn of 1914 was Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock, 52, a senior Royal Navy officer whose command of the 4th Cruiser Squadron had placed him in charge of British naval operations in the South Atlantic and the west coast of South America at the outbreak of the First World War. Cradock flew his flag in Good Hope; his squadron comprised Good Hope, the armoured cruiser HMS Monmouth, the light cruiser HMS Glasgow, and the armed merchant cruiser HMS Otranto.

The Voyage

In October 1914 Cradock's 4th Cruiser Squadron was operating along the west coast of South America, searching for the German East Asia Squadron under Vice-Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee. Von Spee's squadron (the armoured cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and SMS Gneisenau, the light cruisers SMS Nürnberg, SMS Dresden, and SMS Leipzig) had departed the German Pacific base at Tsingtao in August 1914 and had been operating as commerce raiders across the Pacific. By October 1914 the squadron had crossed the Pacific and was approaching the Chilean coast.

Cradock had been ordered by the Admiralty to locate and engage von Spee's squadron, but had been given inadequate forces for the task. The Drake-class armoured cruisers of Cradock's command were outranged and outgunned by the modern German armoured cruisers: Scharnhorst and Gneisenau mounted eight 8.2-inch guns each against Good Hope's two 9.2-inch and Monmouth's fourteen 6-inch guns. The German ships were also better-trained (Scharnhorst's gunnery crew had won the annual German Navy gunnery prize in 1913) and better-equipped.

On 1 November 1914, Cradock's squadron and von Spee's squadron encountered each other at approximately 18:00 off Coronel on the Chilean coast. The sea was rough; the wind was gale-force; the light was failing. Cradock made the decision to engage despite his disadvantages in force.

The Disaster

The Battle of Coronel opened at 18:50 on 1 November 1914 at a range of 10,400 metres. The sea conditions were critical: the heavy swell caused the secondary armament of Cradock's cruisers (the 6-inch casemate guns mounted along their hull sides) to ship water and become unusable. The main 9.2-inch guns of Good Hope could still engage but at a reduced rate of fire.

Scharnhorst's opening salvos found the range almost immediately. At 19:00 on 1 November 1914, a German shell struck Good Hope's forward 9.2-inch turret, destroying it. At 19:05 another German shell penetrated Good Hope's forward magazine through the destroyed turret. The magazine detonated.

HMS Good Hope disintegrated at 19:53 on 1 November 1914 at approximately 36°48′S 74°06′W. Her bow and stern sections separated and sank within thirty seconds of the magazine detonation. All 919 officers and ratings aboard died. There were no survivors.

HMS Monmouth, her accompanying armoured cruiser, was also destroyed in the same engagement by SMS Gneisenau at 20:55 on 1 November 1914; of Monmouth's 734 crew, all died. The combined British loss at Coronel was 1,653 sailors killed in less than three hours. HMS Glasgow and HMS Otranto escaped the engagement.

The Legacy

The Battle of Coronel was the first British naval defeat at sea since the American Revolution. Rear-Admiral Cradock's decision to engage von Spee's superior force has been the subject of continuing historical debate: some historians consider his conduct reckless and ultimately responsible for the destruction of his squadron; others consider it consistent with the Royal Navy's institutional culture and with Cradock's duty to engage the enemy when encountered. His personal reputation has been described as having been substantially rehabilitated by the eventual British victory at the Battle of the Falkland Islands five weeks later.

The Royal Navy's subsequent response was immediate and overwhelming. The battlecruiser HMS Invincible (under Vice-Admiral Sir Frederick Doveton Sturdee) and HMS Inflexible were dispatched to the South Atlantic within a week of news of Coronel reaching London. The two battlecruisers, accompanied by a reinforced cruiser force, located von Spee's squadron off the Falkland Islands on 8 December 1914 and destroyed it in an engagement that produced the complete destruction of Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Nürnberg, and Leipzig (only Dresden escaped). The Battle of the Falkland Islands is conventionally cited as the strategic revenge for Coronel.

The wreck of HMS Good Hope has never been located. Her position is known approximately from the 1914 battle position; she lies at approximately 4,000 metres depth in the South Pacific, some 30 kilometres off Coronel, Chile. No subsequent Royal Navy or commercial expedition has searched for her.

The 919 dead of HMS Good Hope are commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial, the Chatham Naval Memorial, and the Plymouth Naval Memorial, depending on port of service. Rear-Admiral Cradock's name is preserved on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial among the senior officers lost at Coronel. The Coronel engagement remains one of the three canonical 'last stand' engagements of Royal Navy history, along with HMS Jervis Bay in 1940 and HMS Glowworm in 1940.