Falkland Islands, Battle of

Falkland Islands, Battle of, decisive naval engagement of World War I, fought on December 8, 1914, off the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), between a British squadron of cruisers and a battleship under Admiral Sir Frederick Charles Doveton Sturdee and a German squadron of cruisers and supply ships under Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee.

On the morning of December 8, the Gneisenau and the Nürnberg, German ships that von Spee had dispatched on a reconnoitering mission, were sighted off Stanley, where Sturdee's ships lay at anchor. The British battleship Canopus opened fire, but the range was too great, and the two German ships veered away to rejoin the main naval body, which steamed eastwards at full speed to avoid action. At 9.45 a.m. most of the British squadron started in pursuit. About 1 p.m. the rear ships of the German column were within firing range of the British Invincible and the Inflexible. By 6 p.m. the Scharnhorst, with von Spee on board, and the Gneisenau were sunk. The remaining German ships were also sunk, with the exception of the Dresden, which escaped.

The victory gave Great Britain control of the ocean trade routes and avenged the defeat inflicted by von Spee a month earlier in the Battle of Coronel off the coast of Chile.