Coronel, Battle of

Coronel, Battle of, November 1, 1914, World War I German naval victory over the British off Coronel, Chile, South America. When the war began in August 1914, Germany's East Asiatic squadron, under Count Maximilian von Spee, was visiting the Caroline Islands. Eluding British and Japanese pursuers, von Spee sailed east across the Pacific with six vessels: the heavy cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, the light cruisers Enden, Leipzig, and Nürnberg, and the cruiser Dresden. As he approached the west coast of South America, the British sent the cruisers Good Hope and Monmouth, the battleship Canopus, the light cruiser Glasgow, and the armoured liner Otranto to intercept him. On November 1 the British squadron, commanded by Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock, met and engaged von Spee off Coronel. The Germans sank the Good Hope (Cradock's flagship) and the Monmouth, with all hands lost, and drove off the other British vessels. Great Britain avenged this defeat a month later at the Battle of the Falkland Islands.