"As rapidly as possible the various British warships in the South Atlantic rendezvoused off Montevideo to discuss a plan of action. What the next move of the victorious Von Spee would be we could only surmise. German prisoners picked up after the Falklands battle said his ultimate plan--after seizing Port Stanley for a base, and undergoing such a refit there as was practicable with the means at his disposal--was to scatter his ships as commerce raiders all over the Atlantic, cutting, if possible, the main sea arteries of England to North America. The Germans figured, according to these prisoners, that the suspension of the North Atlantic traffic for even a month (no impossible thing for five speedy cruisers in the light of the delays to sailings caused by the _Emden_ and _Karlsruhe_ working alone) would practically paralyse England's war efforts and reduce her military effort in France to almost negligible proportions. I am much more inclined to believe that this--rather than escorting a fleet of German merchantmen, bearing German reservists from Argentina, Uruguay, and Southern Brazil, to South-West Africa from Buenos Aires and Montevideo--was the real plan of Von Spee. However, it was the immediate rather than the ultimate plans of the Germans that was our chief--in fact, our only--concern. Whether Von Spee intended heading for the North Atlantic later or South Africa, or up the Thames--the only way he could clear the road to any of these objectives was by first destroying such British warships as still remained in South American waters. It was these ships which had hurried to get together off Montevideo, in order to make the path of the enemy as thorny and full of pitfalls as possible. "They had no illusions respecting what the immediate future held for them, that little group of cruiser captains that gathered in the Admiral's cabin of the _Defence_ to formulate a plan of action. We knew nothing at that time of what had been decided upon at the Admiralty; indeed, we were quite in agreement that it would be deemed inexpedient to send any battle cruisers away from the North Sea, where they might be imperatively needed any day, on a voyage to the South Atlantic that might easily resolve itself into a months'-long wild-goose chase. Our plans, therefore, were laid entirely on the assumption that we should have to do the best we could with the ships already available. "There was not a man of us who was not keen on the chance of a fight at even the prohibitive odds under which it appeared inevitable that the one ahead of us must be fought, but the prospects of success were anything but alluring. Every day that passed had brought reports revealing the completeness of the enemy's victory at Coronel, and all of these were more than confirmed when the _Glasgow_--whose captain had had the good sense to retire from a battle in which there was no longer a chance for him to be of any use--came in and joined us.