On November 1, 1914, a German squadron commanded by Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee met a smaller British force off Coronel on the coast of Chile and destroyed it in less than an hour, sinking the armoured cruisers Good Hope and Monmouth with the loss of about 1,600 officers and men, among them Rear Admiral Christopher Cradock. It was the first defeat of a British squadron in a fleet action since 1812. The news shocked London.
Spee had crossed the Pacific with the East Asia Squadron after the war began, and he had orders to break up the trade routes and to avoid a stronger force. Cradock had been sent to find him with two old armoured cruisers, a light cruiser and an armed merchant ship, and his ships carried weaker armour and smaller guns, and the two forces met in heavy seas and fading light. The British could not shoot well. The odds were poor. As the sun sank behind the German line it silhouetted the British ships and left the German ones in shadow.
Cradock had asked for the modern battleship Canopus to come with him and the Admiralty had held it back, and the delay was argued over for years. The defeat pushed the Admiralty to send a much stronger force under Vice Admiral Doveton Sturdee, and on December 8, 1914, that force caught Spee at the Falkland Islands and sank almost all of his squadron. The tables turned. His ships went down with him and with his two sons.
The battle showed that a war on trade could pull a fleet far from home and into danger, and that old cruisers could not be sent against new ones with any hope. It also showed how quickly a single action could be undone. The German squadron had won a clean victory in November and had lost the war at sea within five weeks.