The Battles of Coronel and the Falklands, 1914

A history of two South American World War I naval battles between Germany and Great Britain. The defeat that Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock suffered at Coronel in 1914 at the hands of Maximilian Graf von Spee, one of Germany’s most brilliant naval commanders, was the most humiliating blow to British naval prestige since the eighteenth century and a defeat that had to be avenged immediately. On 8 December 1914, the German squadron steamed towards Port Stanley, unaware that in the harbour la