HMS GOOD HOPE (2)
TWELVE years after she was launched in 1901, the 14100-ton Drake-class armoured cruiser HMS Good Hope, the proud flagship of several Royal Navy admirals, was deemed obsolete and relegated to the naval reserve.
She had been named in honour of the government and people of the Cape Colony, who had contributed to her building costs.
Her two large guns and 16 smaller ones were outclassed by the monstrous weapons fitted to the powerful “dreadnoughts” (big gun battleships) that Britain and the other great powers began to build after 1906.
During her service, the fourfunnelled warship carried a crew of 900 at a top speed of 23 knots. Her power came from 43 coatfired boilers which fed two triple expansion turbines. Her gunnery scores were good and she often trounced the other ships in her squadron.
Admiral Sir Percy Scott, who hoisted his flag aboard HMS Good Hope during a goodwill visit to South Africa in 1908, was a gunnery expert who installed director firing gear during his command, but his conservative successor disliked new-fangled equipment and had it stripped out.
After being sidelined in 1913, the Good Hope was recommissioned in the middle of 1914 and returned to active service with a crew of hastily assembled naval reservists.
On June28, 1914, a Bosnian Serb student named Gavrilo Princip assassinated the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary in the small Bosnian city of Sarajevo. This precipitated retaliatory declarations of war from Austria, Serbia, Germany, Russia, France and (on August4) Great Britain.
HMS Good Hope was briefly attached to the Grand Fleet at the famous British naval anchorage at Scapa Flow, north of Scotland, before orders came to proceed to Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Arriving there in the middle of August, she became the flagship of Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock, the commander of the Fourth Cruiser Squadron.
His orders were to sweep the South Atlantic for enemy shipping, in particular the light cruisers SMS Dresden and SMS Karlsruhe. The Admiralty believed that the superseded Good Hope would not encounter stiff opposition as Germany would not risk its big newgeneration warships outside home waters.
The Good Hope was still not fully manned. Four young Canadian midshipmen were taken aboard at Halifax and 26 West Indian stokers at St Lucia.
After patrolling up and down the east coast of South America for several weeks, the squadron called at Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands for coal, prior to rounding Cape Horn and sailing into the Pacific Ocean.
Ahead lay a confrontation with the German East Asia Squadron under Vice-Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee, who was on his way south with the intention of rounding the Horn in the opposite direction and preying on shipping in the South Atlantic.
Next week: The Battle of Coronel.
After being sidelined in 1913, the Good Hope was recommissioned in the middle of 1914 and returned to active service