East Asia Squadron
The German East Asia Squadron (
Background
The Treaty of Peking of September 1861 between the Kingdom of Prussia and China allowed Prussian warships to operate in Chinese waters. As East Asia grew in economic and political importance to the recently united Germany, in 1881 a flying squadron was formed for the area under the command of a flag officer.[1] Since African colonies were then seen as of greater value, an African Cruiser Squadron was established in 1885 with permanent status, and shortly thereafter the Imperial German Navy reduced the East Asia presence to two small gunboats.
From 1888 to 1892,
The ship entered the Mediterranean on October 28 and joined the training squadron off the island of Mitilini on November 1. The emperor met Deinhardt on November 6, who was returning from Constantinople, honored the members of the East-African cruiser squadron with a special cabinet order. All the German vessels left for Italy and docked at Venice on November 12 to continue repairs interrupted at Cape Town. After December 15 they departed for Malta waters then headed to Port Said, where Christmas and New Years was spent.
Sailing solo, Leipzig set out for the Far East on January 27, 1890, with
In May 1891, at Jokohama, Valois was ordered to protect German interests in Chile against the
Formation
With the outbreak of the
Rear Admiral
Rear Admiral Otto von Diederichs succeeded Tirpitz as commander of the Cruiser Division. Although the navy had not yet committed to a specific site for a base due to high-level indecision, Diederichs asserted "Kiautschou alone is the goal of my efforts."[6]
Seizure of Tsingtao
German offers to buy the site were refused, but the murder of two German missionaries on 1 November 1897 provided the casus belli for Diederichs to land troops on 14 November 1897. The imperial navy had a rather tenuous hold on Jiaozhou until the region was reinforced by the arrival of the protected cruiser SMS Kaiserin Augusta and in January 1898 the marines of the Seebataillon disembarked to form the garrison for Tsingtao (now Qingdao).[7]
With the convention at Peking on 6 March 1898, the German ambassador and Chinese viceroy signed a 99-year lease for Jiaozhou and
Diederichs was recalled to Berlin in 1899 to serve as chief of the admiralty staff; he was succeeded at Tsingtao by Rear Admiral
Boxer Rebellion
From February 1900 until 1902 Admiral Felix von Bendemann commanded the East Asia Squadron (Ostasiengeschwader) from his flagships SMS Irene, and then
1913
In January 1913, the squadron visited Batavia (now Jakarta), Indonesia.
World War I
In 1914, the East Asia Squadron numbered a total of five major warships under the command of Spee:
Also assigned to the squadron in 1914 were the old Bussard-class unprotected cruisers SMS Geier and Cormoran, torpedo boats SMS S90 and SMS Taku, and a variety of gunboats.
At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Spee found himself both outnumbered and outgunned by Allied navies in the region. He was especially wary of the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Royal Australian Navy — in fact he described the latter's flagship, the battlecruiser HMAS Australia, as being superior to his entire force by itself.
Spee said of his predicament: "I am quite homeless. I cannot reach Germany. We possess no other secure harbour. I must plough the seas of the world doing as much mischief as I can, until my ammunition is exhausted, or a foe far superior in power succeeds in catching me."[11]
The initial successes by Emden led to Spee allowing her captain, von Muller, to take his ship on a lone commerce-raiding campaign in the Indian Ocean, while the cruisers of the squadron would head towards the eastern Pacific and the South American coast, where there were neutral countries with pro-German sympathies (notably Chile) where Spee could potentially obtain supplies.[12] The cruiser Cormoran was left behind due to the poor state of her engines, which had led her to be stripped to outfit the captured Russian vessel Ryazan as a commerce raider renamed SMS Cormoran.
Raids by Emden
Emden disrupted trade throughout the Indian Ocean, intercepting 29 ships and sinking those belonging to Britain or its allies. At the
Sailing the Pacific
At the outbreak of World War I, nearly all the ships of the East Asia Station were dispersed at various island colonies on routine missions; the armored cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were at anchor at
The main body of the squadron engaged the British West Indies Squadron on 1 November 1914 at the Battle of Coronel, sinking two British cruisers, HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth. It was while attempting to return home via the Atlantic that most of the squadron was destroyed on 8 December 1914 in the Battle of the Falkland Islands by a superior British force of battlecruisers and cruisers. SMS Dresden and a few auxiliary vessels escaped destruction and fled back to the Pacific, where the auxiliaries were interned at Chilean ports and Dresden was scuttled at the Battle of Más a Tierra.
The four small gunboats Iltis, Jaguar, Tiger, Luchs and the torpedo boats SMS Taku and S90 of the East Asia Squadron that had been left at Tsingtao were scuttled by their crews just prior to the capture of the base by Japan in November 1914, during the Siege of Tsingtao. Four small river gunboats and some two dozen merchantmen and small vessels evaded Allied capture in inland waters of China until 1917, when China seized most of them save for two river gunboats, which were destroyed by their crews.[13]
Notes
- ^ Gottschall, By Order of the Kaiser, p. 134. Kingdom of Prussia was not included in the party members of the Treaty of Peking, though British royal and German peer families were relative by marriage then.
- ^ Gottschall, p. 135
- ^ naval nomenclature designated eight-ship units as 'squadrons' and four-ship units as 'divisions'
- ^ Gottschall, p. 136
- ^ Gottschall, p. 137
- ^ Gottschall, p. 149
- ^ This formation was the only all-German force in the colonies
- ^ Massie, Castles of Steel, p.180
- ^ By order of the Kaiser: Otto von Diederichs and the rise of the Imperial German Navy, 1865–1902 by Terrell D. Gottschall; Institute Press, 2003, 337 pages
- ^ The origins of the Boxer War: a multinational study by Lanxin Xiang; Routledge, 2003, 382 pages, p. 282.
- ^ Bennett, p.167
- ^ Bennett, p.171
- ^ "中國海軍史上第一次戰利艦". Archived from the original on 2010-07-04. Retrieved 2013-04-12.
See also
References
- Gottschall, Terrell D. (2003). By Order of the Kaiser, Otto von Diederichs and the Rise of the Imperial German Navy 1865–1902. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-55750-309-5.
- Marder, Arthur (1961–1970). From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow (5 Vols). London: Oxford University Press.
- ISBN 0-224-04092-8.
- Bennett, Geoffrey (2006). The Pepper Trader: True Tales of the German East Asia Squadron and the Man Who Cast Them in Stone. Jakarta: PT Equinox Publishing. ISBN 979-3780-26-6.
External links
- Friedrich Carl Peetz Photograph Album (1900), Duke University Libraries Digital Collections – includes photographs of the German East Asia Squadron during the Boxer Rebellion.