The new First Sea Lord was soon confronted with the task of avenging a grave British naval defeat. On November 6 it was announced that on Sunday, November 1, five German warships, the _Scharnhorst_, _Gneisenau_, _Leipzig_, _Dresden_, and _Nürnberg_, had concentrated off Santa Maria Island, near Coronel, Chile, and engaged a British squadron under Rear-Admiral Cradock, consisting of the cruisers _Good Hope_ and _Monmouth_, the light cruiser _Glasgow_, and the armed merchant cruiser _Otranto_, and that the _Good Hope_ and _Monmouth_ had been sunk and the _Glasgow_ seriously damaged. The details remained obscure for some time, even to the Admiralty; but it was eventually learnt that the British ships had been met near sunset by the German squadron, that the Admiral had determined to engage notwithstanding his inferiority in speed and gun-power, and had warned off the battleship _Canopus_, which was coming up from the Straits of Magellan, as her speed was insufficient to cope with the Germans, and had ordered the _Otranto_ to keep out of danger; that the Germans forced the British ships into a position where the setting sun interfered with their aim, that the British guns were outranged and that the _Monmouth_ was sunk, and the _Good Hope_ blown up while making for the shore, the _Glasgow_ escaping. The loss of men was heavy; so was the blow to British prestige. It was tolerably clear, moreover, that the German ships, coming as they did from the Chinese coast, could not have obtained coal or provisions without some violation of neutrality; and it was found that they had been supplied by Kosmos liners from Chilean ports, by an American collier at Juan Fernandez, and by other ships at the Galapagos Islands, belonging to Ecuador. The Chilean Government had not been involved; but Ecuador and Colombia were suspected of breaches of neutrality. And in other quarters there were new dangers. The collapse of Maritz's rebellion at the Cape had been followed by a more serious rising led by Generals de Wet and Beyers; and the British forces had suffered a serious reverse on November 2 in German East Africa.