Part Five: The Demise of the Scharnhorst
With Spee’s striking force defanged, it was only a matter of time until the raider threat was dealt with. To be sure, the German ships and their highly trained crews were still full of fight and were dangerous, as the Allies learned to their cost, butt operating individually, and with Allied reinforcements entering the fray, it was only a matter of time.
On August 28th, Von Spee decided to disband his forces. The collier Markomania was ordered to Rabaul with wounded from the battle, and she arrived safely. Titania, carrying the captured sailors of the French mercnant Annatoile, was to head for the Philippines and a secret supply base there established before the war as part of the German Entappen scheme. Spee himself transfered his flag to the intact Nurnberg and ordered Scharnhorst to find a secluded place where she could make what repairs she could. By then he hadlearned from a wireless transmission that the German garrison in Tsingtao was besieged by Japanese forces (the Empire had declared war on Germany on August 11).
Titania never reached the Phillippines; she was captured by Newcastle on 30 September. Vice Admiral Jerram reports that her captain was “a tedious Boche of the square headed, heal clicking variety, but he was true to his oath and told us nothing”. Jerram chivalrously ignored Churchill’s suggestion that he “rough the man up” to learn more.
By September, a convoy of 17 ships, carrying thirty thousand newly raised Australian and New Zealand soldiers, departed Sydney for the Suez Canal. Admiral Patey, now flying his flag in Melbourne, led the escorting force, and had arranged with King Hall to take over the escort near the Chagos Islands. King Hall had by this time abandoned his blockade of Dar Es Salaam, as news was now widespread that Koenigsberg was wreaking havoc in the Bay of Bengal. On September 7th, the German garrison in Tsingtao surrendered to Japanese forces.
By this phase in the campaign, the Allies were beginning to coordinate their movements more efficiently. Royal Navy codes had been shared with the French, Japanese, and Russian, whose signalmen did their best to learn these codes, and the English language, as best they could. Despite many grammatical errors, the Japanese did the best at this task. The French were lacklustre students, having felt that with some justification that they were ignored by Jerram. Lieutenant Jacques Derrida, the Signals Officer of Dupleix, who went on to be a professor of Semiotics and Nonsense after the war, was heard to say, “What is the point? All messages are futile attempts to make meaning where there is none. Life is inherently meaningless”.
Undeterred by French apathy, First Lord Churchill had appointed Vice Admiral Jerram as the de facto senior commander in the Pacific, with the task of directing Allied strategy. At this point in September, the Emden was the most notorious of the raiders, and it was while searching for her that Jerram found and finished off the Scharnhorst on the night of September 14th in the Battle of Java Head.
Scharnhorsti died well. At first Jerram’s squadron was unsure of her identity, and thought that she was in company with a second warship, though this was in fact the prize ship SS Clan MacGregor. Commander Ashby of HMS Triumph wrote that “In the dark it could have been Dutch warships, and the Old Man didn’t want to start a war with them, so we flashed recognition signals and that’s when things got ugly”.
At that point, Scharnhorst turned on her searchlights, pinning the lead British ship Yarmouth and scoring multiple hits. Ashby remembers that there was shock on Triumph’s bridge at the sight, with someone exclaiming "Christ, it's the Moltke”, but the voice was silenced when Jerram snapped "Be still and do your bloody jobs”. This was one of several actions in the Pacific where the Royal Navy paid a price for not training for night actions. After several salvos, Yarmouth had staggered out of the line, badly hit, and Jerram determined to take Triumph in close where her secondary 7.5” guns could also bear.
Triumph’s rate of fire was good but it took four salvos to score a hit, which had the effect of dousing Scharnhorst’s searchlights. Commander Ashby recalled that “It was a proper heavyweight match, with us and the Germans trading shells and landing hits. We could see them stagger, but we were suffering as well”. Indeed, Triumph almost met disaster when a shell penetrated her forward 10” turret, killing the Royal Marine crew there, though the turret commander with his dying breath ordered the magazine flooded and so saved the ship.
Jerram himself recalled that “We were cheering Newcastle as she made a torpedo run, and wondering why the second Hun ship wasn’t shooting, when there was an almighty bang and I woke on the deck with my Yeoman of Signals fussing over me”. A direct hit on Triumph’s bridge had killed the Flag Captain and many of the officers, and splinters badly shredded Jerram’s right leg, but he insisted in being helped to his chair until Scharnhorst, now a burning wreck, sank and Clan MacGregor was boarded. The survivors of Scharnhorst proudly reported that Von Spee was not among them, and that he and Nurnberg lived to fight another day.
By morning it was clear that Yarmouth and Triumph were seaworthy and could make Hong Kong, but their role in the war was over. Jerram refused to leave with them, and was transferred to Newcastle by stretcher. For this action, and for stubbornly remaining on duty until the final flight of Emden, Jerram would receive the Distinguished Service Cross, but he never regained the use of his leg and the wounds no doubt contributed to his too early death. He was a gallant sailor and understood that having a pre-dreadnought and a light cruiser crippled in return for sinking Scharnhorst was undoubtedly the right play.
