There was this difference between the enemy’s manœuvres on this occasion and that of an hour and a half before. At 1:25 he simply turned sufficiently to bring his broadside to bear. This time he turned not less but much more than a right angle, and Admiral Sturdee was considerably behind him when he opened fire at a quarter to three. Had the British squadron not turned shortly afterwards, the Germans could have closed the range to collision point. As a matter of fact, immediately after the Germans turned, Admiral Sturdee turned too, but not so large an angle, and the consequence was that at 3 o’clock the range had been reduced to 12,000 yards, and at one time it had shortened down to about 9,000. It was apparently Von Spee’s intention at this stage to shorten the range to an extent that would give his guns the opportunity of doing some real damage to our ships. This is of course the proper policy to adopt if a squadron has inferior gun-power and is unable to escape by flight. But it will be observed that Von Spee did not persist in this manœuvre, and it is obvious that he adopted it too late. He missed his first opportunity of inflicting serious and possibly decisive injury, when he failed to engage the British ships as they were coming out of harbour. He missed the second when, on Admiral Sturdee turning away from him at 1:45, he held on his course and allowed the range to be increased. He missed it again when at 2:10, instead of holding on his course and going across Admiral Sturdee’s bows, he began his second and necessarily futile flight. When the fourth chance came it was probably too late. Both ships had been hit and _Scharnhorst_ seriously. But for about twenty minutes the German Admiral did now close the range and come in almost direct pursuit of the British. So much so that shortly after a quarter past three Admiral Sturdee turned away from him, and describing a kind of circle with his ships from left to right, brought his squadron round so as to be directly behind the German ships. He had two reasons for making this turn. His course was straight up wind, so that gunnery conditions were bad, and the turn brought him to the most favourable possible position for concentrating fire upon the enemy, while they had only a minimum number of guns bearing. This position Von Spee found intolerable. Both his ships were suffering, and one of the _Scharnhorst’s_ funnels was carried away. It must have been evident to him that the end was not far off when he turned at half past three. Never since the first twenty minutes had the enemy’s fire been really good, and now the thing was assuming the dimensions of a military execution. The second phase of gunfire between a quarter to three and half past had been decisive as far as the _Scharnhorst_ was concerned.