Brown on Resolution by C.S. Forester — Read

The beginning of the war found Charybdis at Singapore. There was a buzz of joy throughout the lower deck; even among the ratings of the Navy the opinion had grown stronger and stronger that Germany's huge naval effort could only end in war between England and Germany, and for years now the English sailor had forgotten the centuries-old blood feud with France and had awaited with joyous expectation the North Sea clash, in anticipation of which he had been steadily withdrawn from the Mediterranean and the Pacific by the foresight of his supreme controllers, so that at the very time when England's Navy was stronger than ever it had been there was a smaller English force than ever before in Eastern waters. And that summer night when the First Fleet, happily mobilized, went speeding northwards to its gloomy war station at Scapa, the "preparative" flashed by wireless and cable to the few scattered units which flew the White Ensign in the Pacific.

For there was cause for some anxiety there. Von Spee was lost in the vast expanse of the ocean; he had cannily cleared from Tsing-tao before ever the war clouds had grown over-ominous, and no one knew where he might appear or where he might strike. His armoured cruisers, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, held the big gun records of the German fleet, and what that meant was all too clear to the minds of those who had gained an insight into the achievements of German naval gunnery. There were light cruisers with him too; whether others had joined him since his departure from Tsing-tao was not known for certain -- Muller with the Emden and von Lutz with the Ziethen were free to attach themselves to him if they wished -- but it was obvious enough that he had a fast-moving, hard-hitting squadron which any English fleet without battleships might without shame be chary of encountering. No one knew where he might appear; he could strike at the South American nitrate trade, at the Indian shipping, at the South African coast where were Boer rebels and German armies to welcome him; on the high seas there were fleets bearing Australian troops, New Zealand troops, Indian troops, English troops. If one such fleet were left unconvoyed he might encounter it and deal one of the most terrible blows given in war. At every point of danger there had to be stationed against him a squadron of strength superior to his own, and England was, as ever at the outbreak of war, woefully short of cruisers. The naval might of England had definitely asserted its superiority -- the German merchant flag had vanished from the seas with the outbreak of war, and the German battle fleet had withdrawn in sullen impotence to the protection of its minefields -- but here in the Pacific there was this one rebel, hopeless and desperate, who might yet strike a fierce blow or two before Fate overtook him.