The _Glasgow_ would also have been lost had she not been a new ship with speed and commanded by a man with the moral courage to use it in order to preserve his vessel and her crew for the further service of their country. Von Spee, who had the mastery of manœuvre, brought Cradock to action when and how he pleased, and emphasised for the hundredth time in naval warfare that speed and striking power and squadron training will win victory certainly, inevitably, and almost without hurt to the victors. Like the Falkland Islands action of five weeks afterwards, that off Coronel was a gun action. No torpedoes were used on either side. Probably it was one of the last purely gun actions which will be fought in our time. * * * * * At the end of October the British and German squadrons were near to one another, though until they actually met off Coronel the British commanders did not know that the concentrated German Squadron was off the Chilean coast. Von Spee knew that an old pre-Dreadnought battleship had come out from England, though he was not sure of her class. He judged her speed to be higher than that of the _Canopus_, which, though powerfully armed, was so lame a duck that she would have been more of a hindrance than a help had Cradock joined up with her. Von Spee had an immense advantage in the greater handiness and cohesiveness of his ships. The _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_ were sisters, completed in 1907, and alike in all respects. Their shooting records were first-class; they were indeed the crack gunnery ships under the German ensign. Their sixteen 8.2-inch guns—eight each—fired shells of 275 lb. weight, nearly three times the weight of the 100-lb. shells fired from the 6-inch guns which formed the chief batteries of their opponents the _Good Hope_ and _Monmouth_. They were three months out of dock but they could still steam, as they showed at Coronel, at over twenty knots in a heavy sea. The light cruisers _Dresden_, _Leipzig_ and _Nürnberg_ were not identical though very nearly alike. Their armament was the same—ten 4.1-inch guns apiece—and their speed nearly the same. The _Dresden_ was the fastest as she was the newest, a sister of the famous _Emden_. None of the German light cruisers was so fast or so powerful as the _Glasgow_, but together they were much more than a match for her, just as the _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_ together were more than a match for the _Good Hope_ and _Monmouth_. When, therefore, von Spee found himself opposed to the British armoured cruisers he was under no anxiety; he had the heels of them and the guns of them; they could neither fight successfully with him nor escape from him. The speedy _Glasgow_ might escape—as in fact she did—but the _Good Hope_ and the _Monmouth_ were doomed from the moment when the action was joined.