Two quite important questions arise at this point. Was it good policy on the part of Admiral Sturdee to allow _Canopus_ to open fire and so drive the Germans away? If, indeed, it was _Canopus_ that drove them off. He knew, of course, that it would take him at least half an hour to forty minutes before all his squadron could be clear of the harbour, and ready to begin the chase. Would it have been wiser if he had allowed the Germans to come right up and so to have made sure of having them within easy range when he did come out? The answer to this criticism is obvious. _Gneisenau_ was a great deal more than a match for _Kent_, and no British ship could have got out to her assistance in time to prevent her destruction if _Gneisenau_ had been allowed to close. The speed of Admiral Sturdee’s battle-cruisers was such--he had certainly a five, if not a six knot advantage over the armoured cruisers--that he knew he had it well within his power with the whole day before him, to give the Germans forty minutes’ start, and catch them and finish them off before evening. And it was his business to do this, if he could, with the smallest possible loss of life and the least possible damage to his ships. That is the first point. But next, it was quite within the possibilities of the case that _Canopus’s_ guns would make a hit either on _Gneisenau_ or _Nürnberg_. Indeed, so close did the fourth and fifth rounds go that it was thought on shore that there had been a hit; but this was afterwards proved to be a mistake. There was a good chance then of laming one of them and so making a quick capture certain. Finally, it was not altogether the fire of _Canopus_ but the sight of the battle-cruisers’ masts that decided Von Spee, or rather the Captain of _Gneisenau_, to retreat.