MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Battle of Falklands, commemoration of the 110th anniversary of the great naval engagement of 8 December 1914

The Memorial to the naval Battle of the Falklands in Stanley

Next Sunday, the 8th December 2024, the Falkland Islands commemorate the 110th anniversary of the first great victory of the Royal Navy in the First World War. The Falklands naval engagement took place to the south east of the Islands, chasing and sinking the pride of the German Imperial Navy, the East Asia squadron led by Admiral Graf von Spee.

The action became a great morale boost for the Royal Navy, the UK and obviously the Falklands, again in the world map and with a demonstration of total allegiance to the Crown and British Family.

It all started on December 8th 1914, when an Imperial German fleet which intended to capture the Falkland Islands, given their strategic position, was surprised, chased and sunk with the loss of 2,260 German sailors, including its commander Graf von Spee.

The German East Asia squadron came in from the Pacific where on November first met and overpowered a British squadron commanded by Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock next to the Chilean city of Coronel. Despite the odds heavily against him, Cradock went into battle and Graf Spee had an easy victory, destroying two armored cruisers for just three men injured. The Royal Navy lost HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth, and the lives of 1,660 British officers and Cradock himself. However the engagement also cost Graf von Spee almost half his supply of ammunition, and was also in need of coal.

UK and the Royal Navy were on shock following the disastrous naval engagement of Coronel and thus a British squadron under the command of Vice-Admiral Doverton Sturdee, was rushed to the South Atlantic. The squadron consisted of battle cruisers HMS Invincible and Inflexible, the armored cruisers HMS Carnarvon, Cornwall and Kent, the armored merchant cruiser HMS Macedonia and light cruisers HMS Bristol and Glasgow, and was under the command of the victorious Vice-Admiral Doverton Sturdee.

The German squadron consisted of two armored cruisers, SMA Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, the light cruisers, SMS Nurnberg, Dresden and Leipzig and the colliers SS Baden, SS Santa Isabel and SS Seydlitz.

And on the 8th December 1914, the Royal Navy squadron in the Falklands was warned by local farmers of the incoming enemy squadron, and the great naval engagement started, with Surdee chasing and sinking all German vessels except for the Dresden  and Seydlitz, south east of the Islands..

The date thus is iconic from a naval point of view but also significantly important for the Falkland Islands, (it was the main date in the Islands’ calendar now behind Liberation Day, 14 June 1982) so on Sunday 8 December 2024, at 12.00 (noon) following short prayers from representatives of “Churches Together”, the Acting Governor Dave Morgan and MLA Gavin Short will lay wreaths at the Battle Memorial.

Members of the public are welcome to attend, “however there will not be a parade”, reads the official release. Just to mention that this has caused certain irritation among some representative members of the community, but this is because Ross Road leading to the Battle memorial in undergoing repairs and maintenance.

On the bright side currently in the Falklands is Mensun Bound, a Falkland Islander and internationally distinguished maritime archeologist known as the director of exploration to the Weddell Sea which led to the discovery in 2022, at 3,000 meters deep, of the Endurance, the expedition vessel of Sir Ernest Shackleton trapped and crushed by the Antarctic ice.

Mensun was also involved in 2014/15 in the search of the Imperial German squadron sunk in the Battle of Falklands in 1914. Eventually he located the squadron’s flagship SMS Scharnhorst on April 2019. The vessel lies upright at a depth of about 900 meters, some 98 nmi (181 km; 113 mi) southeast of Stanley. Discovery Channel has called Bound “the Indiana Jones of the Deep”.