SMS Scharnhorst

The Vessel

SMS Scharnhorst was the lead ship of her class of armoured cruisers of the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial German Navy), commissioned at the AG Weser yard in Bremen on 24 October 1907. She was 144 metres long, 12,985 tons standard displacement, armed with eight 21 cm guns in two twin and four single turrets, with a secondary battery of six 15 cm guns and four 8.8 cm guns. Her design speed was 23.5 knots on three-shaft Parsons turbines.

The Scharnhorst class represented the peak of the German armoured-cruiser design tradition, commissioned approximately two years before the emergence of the British battlecruiser class rendered armoured cruisers obsolete. By 1914 her class had been overtaken by newer designs but remained in first-line service in specific theatres where the battlecruiser would have been excessive. Her role in the Pacific theatre from 1910 onwards had been as the flagship of the German East Asia Squadron under Vice-Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee.

Her commanding officer in 1914 was Kapitän zur See Felix Schultz, 42 years old, a career Imperial German Navy officer who had served in the East Asia Squadron since 1912. The squadron's operational base was at Tsingtao on the Chinese coast, the German leased territory on the Yellow Sea, which the squadron had been permitted to use since 1898.

The Voyage

At the outbreak of the First World War on 4 August 1914, von Spee's East Asia Squadron (SMS Scharnhorst, SMS Gneisenau, SMS Nürnberg, SMS Leipzig, SMS Dresden, SMS Emden) was ordered by the Kaiserliche Marine Staff in Berlin to undertake commerce raiding operations against Allied shipping across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Von Spee's specific operational plan, approved by the naval staff on 6 August 1914, was to conduct an Atlantic raid through the South Pacific and around Cape Horn, with the ultimate objective of returning the squadron to Germany via neutral Spanish or Portuguese ports.

The squadron sailed from Tsingtao on 6 August 1914. Over the following three months, it operated across the Pacific, conducting multiple successful commerce raids against Allied merchant shipping. The separation of SMS Emden from the squadron in August 1914 (for independent operations in the Indian Ocean) and the subsequent arrival of SMS Dresden from her South Atlantic operations expanded the squadron's operational reach. By October 1914 the squadron was approaching the Chilean coast.

On 1 November 1914 the Battle of Coronel was fought between von Spee's squadron and Rear-Admiral Cradock's British 4th Cruiser Squadron. The engagement resulted in the complete destruction of HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth in approximately three hours, with the loss of 1,653 British sailors. Scharnhorst's role in the engagement had been decisive: her 21 cm guns had destroyed HMS Good Hope at the opening stages of the battle.

Following Coronel, von Spee's squadron proceeded to Valparaíso, Chile, where international law permitted German warships to remain for 24 hours to re-provision. The squadron departed Valparaíso on 6 November 1914 and sailed south toward Cape Horn, intending to round the Horn and proceed into the South Atlantic for the return voyage to Germany.

The Disaster

Unknown to von Spee, the Royal Navy had dispatched a battlecruiser force under Vice-Admiral Sir Frederick Doveton Sturdee to the South Atlantic in response to the Coronel defeat. Sturdee's force (HMS Invincible, HMS Inflexible, HMS Carnarvon, HMS Kent, HMS Cornwall, HMS Bristol, HMS Glasgow, and the armed merchant cruiser HMS Macedonia) arrived at Port Stanley, Falkland Islands, on 7 December 1914 for coaling and replenishment. By coincidence, von Spee's squadron approached the Falklands on 8 December 1914 with the intention of attacking the British wireless station there.

The two forces made contact at approximately 07:50 on 8 December 1914. Von Spee, observing the British battlecruisers at Port Stanley and correctly identifying them as modern capital ships, turned his squadron to flee south. Sturdee's battlecruisers, faster than the German armoured cruisers by approximately 5 knots, gave chase. The subsequent Battle of the Falkland Islands was effectively a running engagement between two better-armed and faster British battlecruisers and the slower, less heavily armed German squadron.

Scharnhorst was engaged by Invincible and Inflexible from approximately 13:00 on 8 December 1914. The opening British salvos fell short; subsequent salvos found the range. Over approximately three hours of intermittent engagement, Scharnhorst was hit multiple times by 12-inch shells from the two battlecruisers. Her superstructure was progressively demolished; her engine rooms were damaged; her speed fell from 20 knots to 12 knots.

Von Spee signalled the squadron to scatter at approximately 15:30 on 8 December 1914. He refused to strike his colours and continued to engage. SMS Scharnhorst capsized and sank at approximately 16:17 on 8 December 1914 at approximately 52°43′S 56°15′W in approximately 1,600 metres of water. All 860 officers and ratings aboard died, including Vice-Admiral von Spee and his two sons (Heinrich, aboard Gneisenau, and Otto, aboard Nürnberg).

The Legacy

The Battle of the Falkland Islands resulted in the complete destruction of the German East Asia Squadron. SMS Scharnhorst, SMS Gneisenau, SMS Nürnberg, and SMS Leipzig were all sunk by Sturdee's force over the course of 8 December 1914; only SMS Dresden escaped (she was eventually scuttled by her own crew at Mas a Tierra, Chile, on 14 March 1915 after being cornered by HMS Glasgow). Total German losses at the Falklands were 1,871 killed, including von Spee and approximately 800 men aboard Scharnhorst.

The Battle of the Falkland Islands is conventionally cited as the decisive British revenge for Coronel. Sturdee's victory restored the Royal Navy's prestige in the South Atlantic and eliminated the German commerce-raiding threat in that theatre for the remainder of the war. The strategic consequences were substantial: after December 1914 the German Kaiserliche Marine had no significant surface force operating outside the North Sea, and the Allied blockade of Germany could be maintained without the diversion of naval force to distant stations.

The wreck of SMS Scharnhorst was located on 5 December 2019 by a joint Argentine-British marine archaeology expedition commanded by the British explorer Mensun Bound. The expedition's search, funded by the Falkland Islands Maritime Heritage Trust, had begun in 2014; the wreck was found at 1,610 metres depth, approximately 260 kilometres southeast of Port Stanley. Her position is close to the Argentine-British maritime boundary, which necessitated the joint expedition format.

The 2019 survey identified the wreck as intact and upright on the seabed, her 21 cm turret still recognizable. She is a protected war grave under international convention; the Argentine, British, and German governments have all declared the site as such. The 860 dead of SMS Scharnhorst are commemorated at the Kaiserliche Marine Memorial at Laboe, Germany, and at the Falkland Islands War Memorial at Port Stanley. Her loss, and von Spee's death with his two sons, represented one of the most dramatic single-family military tragedies of the First World War.