In the light of after-events one cannot but feel regret that the old battleship _Canopus_ was attached to the Southern Squadron—Cradock’s—instead of the armoured cruiser _Defence_, a much more useful if less powerfully armed vessel. The _Defence_ was comparatively new, completed in 1908, had a speed of some twenty-one to twenty-two knots, and was more powerful than either the _Scharnhorst_ or the _Gneisenau_. The three sisters, _Defence_, _Minotaur_, and _Shannon_, had indeed been laid down as replies to the building of the _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_, and carried four 9.2-inch guns and ten 7.5-inch as against the eight 8.2-inch and six 6-inch guns of the German cruisers. I have reached a point in my narrative when it becomes necessary to take up the story from the German side, and to indicate how it came about that five cruisers, which at the beginning of the war were widely scattered, became concentrated into the fine hard-fighting squadron which met Cradock at Coronel. The permanent base of the _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_ was Tsing-tau in China, but it happened that at the end of July, 1914, they were more than 2,000 miles away in the Caroline Islands. The light cruisers _Nürnberg_ and _Leipzig_ were upon the western coast of Mexico, and, as I have already told, the _Dresden_ was off the eastern coast of Mexico. The _Emden_, which does not concern us, was at Tsing-tau. The _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_ were kept out of China waters by the Japanese fleets and hunted for and chased to Fiji by the Australian Unit. On September 22nd von Spee bombarded Tahiti, in the Society Islands, at the moment when the _Dresden_, having safely passed through the Atlantic, was creeping up the Chilean coast and the _Nürnberg_ and _Leipzig_ were coming down from the north. All the German vessels had been ordered to concentrate at Easter Island, a small remote convict settlement belonging to Chili and lost in the Pacific far out (2,800 miles) to the west of Valparaiso.