The Battle Cruisers at the Action of the Falkland Islands

his title gives Commander Verner's narrative of the sinking of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in 1914, along with an account from the point of view of the cruiser Gneisenau - of the German Kaiserliche Marine - as described by its German officers. The second half of the book includes a detailed memoir that transcribes his diary of 1914 with operations in the Dardanelles in February and March 1915 up to when he was killed in action while Commander of HMS Inflexible, on 18th March, whilst directing the guns in the attack on the Dardanelles. This is all accompanied by five full-page colour plates showing annotated ship sketches by Commander Verner that depict the naval action between the British Royal Navy and the Imperial German Navy in the South Atlantic. Commander Verner is remembered on the Chatham Naval Memorial and the War Memorial at St. Mary's Church on the Elvetham Estate near Hartley Wintney in Hampshire. Rudolf Henry Cole Verner was born on 16th January 1883. His parents were Lt. Col. William Willoughby Cole Verner and the Hon. Elizabeth Verner. Lt Col Verner served with the Rifle Brigade and was professor of Military Topography at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. He was also a famous writer, ornithologist and the inventor of a certain type of compass. Rudolf was present at the Battle of the Falkland Islands and wrote a book "Battle Cruisers at the action of the Falkland Islands" which was published in 1920 after his death; this was edited by his father. While Commander of HMS Inflexible, Rudolf was wounded in action in the Dardanelles on 18th March 1915 and died later that day aboard the hospital ship HMS Soudan. The Battle of the Falkland Islands was the naval action between the British Royal Navy and the Imperial German Navy on 8th December 1914, during the First World War in the South Atlantic. The British, after the defeat at the Battle of Coronel on 1st November, sent a large force to track down and destroy the victorious German cruiser squadron. Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee, commanding the German squadron of two armoured cruisers, SMS Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, the light cruisers SMS Nurnberg, Dresden and Leipzig and three auxiliaries, attempted to raid the British supply base at Stanley in the Falkland Islands. The British squadron, consisting of the battlecruisers HMS Invincible and Inflexible, the armoured cruisers HMS Carnarvon, Cornwall and Kent, the armed merchant cruiser HMS Macedonia and the light cruisers HMS Bristol and Glasgow, had arrived in the port the day before. Visibility was at its maximum, the sea was placid with a gentle breeze from the northwest, and the day was bright and sunny. The advanced cruisers of the German squadron were detected early. By nine o'clock that morning the British battlecruisers and cruisers were in hot pursuit of the five German vessels, which had taken flight in line abreast to the southeast. All except the auxiliary Seydlitz were hunted down and sunk.