This day in History - November 1st

November 1, 1914 Naval Battle of Coronel

Battle of Coronel, November 1, 1914, World War I naval battle off Coronel, Chile, South America, in which Germany defeated Britain. When the war began in August 1914, Germany's East Asiatic squadron, under Count Maximilian von Spee, was visiting the Caroline Islands. Eluding British and Japanese pursuers, von Spee sailed east across the Pacific with six vessels: the heavy cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the light cruisers Enden, Leipzig, and Nürnberg, as well as the cruiser Dresden. As he approached the west coast of South America, the British sent the cruisers Good Hope and Monmouth, the battleship Canopus, the light cruiser Glasgow, and the armored liner Otranto to intercept him. On November 1 the British squadron, commanded by Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock, met and engaged von Spee off Coronel. The Germans sank the Good Hope (Cradock's flagship) and the Monmouth, with all hands lost, and drove off the other British vessels. Britain avenged this defeat a month later at the Battle of the Falkland Islands.


HMS Good Hope