"The _Carnarvon_ and the _Cornwall_ were to be given the formidable task of keeping the _Gneisenau_ so busy that she could not help her sister fight the _Defence_. Our combined displacement was about equal to that of our prospective opponent, but the four seven-point-fives and twenty six-inch (all we had between us) could hardly have prevented her pounding us to pieces with her eight-point-twos, in the event that she elected to use her speed to keep beyond the effective range of our lighter guns. By dashing into close range we might have had a chance with her, or, again there was the possibility we might lead her a dance that would take her out of the way long enough to give the _Defence_ time to finish polishing off the _Scharnhorst_, in which event the former might have been able to intervene in our favour. "Small as would have been our chance of carrying through our part of the programme successfully, the _Gneisenau_ was the one opponent I desired above all the others, on account of the way I knew it would buck up the ship's company to feel that they were having a whack at the ship that sunk the _Monmouth_. There were a good many men in the _Monmouth_ who had gone to her from the _Cornwall_, and our men never tired cursing the Hun for letting their mates drown at Coronel without making any effort to save them. They had something to say on that score when their turn came at the Falklands. "The _Glasgow_ we were going to give a chance to wipe out her Coronel score by sending her in against the _Nürnberg_. With her superior speed, and her two six-inch and ten four-inch guns against the latter's ten four-point ones, she would probably have had the best of what could not but have been a very pretty fight if no one had interfered with it. Here again, unluckily, the chances were against a duel to the finish. Against the _Dresden_--a very worthy sister of the _Emden_--the very best we could muster was the armed merchantman, _Orama_. This (unless another armed merchantman--the _Otranto_, which had escaped with the _Glasgow_ from Coronel--became available) left us nothing to oppose to the _Leipzig_, which, in that event, would have been a sort of a 'rover,' free to bestow her attention and shells wherever they appeared likely to do the most harm. And (from the way she was fought at the Falklands, where she was my 'opposite number') let me tell you that a jolly troublesome 'rover' she would have been.