What a tranquil scene, some 110 years ago today: The 3,700-ton Bremen-class light cruiser SMS Leipzig, part of KAdm Maximilian von Spee’s exiled German East Asia Squadron, is seen coaling in Guaymas on Mexico’s Gulf of California/Sea of Cortez, on 8 September 1914. Of note, she is only about 240 miles south of the Arizona border.
You’d almost think there wasn’t a war on.
Leipzig. She had an all-up armament of 10 4.1-inch SK L/40 guns as well as a battery of smaller 37mm guns and two torpedo tubes.
Leipzig would prove fast on the trigger just seven weeks later at the Battles of Coronel in November, firing 407 4.1-inch shells– four times what fellow German light cruisers Dresden (102) and three times what Nurnberg (135) managed.
Engaged with the larger (5,300 ton) British Bristol-class light cruiser HMS Glasgow, the latter was only lightly damaged by five hits, leaving four lightly wounded ratings and, sadly, killing some parrots that the men had purchased while on a South American port call– an act of Teutonic barbarity that shocked the crew.
Leipzig, meanwhile, came away undamaged.
The Bristol class light cruiser HMS Glasgow. She carried two 6-inch guns, one aft and one forward, as well as 10 4-inch guns, arranged five on each side. IWM (Q 21286)
On 8 December, Glasgow would have a rematch at the Battle of the Falkland Islands where, assisted by the Monmouth-class armored cruiser HMS Cornwall (9,800t, 4×10-inch), her parrot-mourning crew would watch Leipzig battered below the waves. Leipzig in return had hit Glasgow twice, killing a single man and wounding four, and hit Cornwall 18 times, causing a slight list on that bruiser but no casualties.
Only 18 of Leipzig’s nearly 300-member crew were pulled from the freezing water of the South Atlantic.
SMS Leipzig sinking in a painting by William Lionel Wyllie as HMS Cornwall and HMS Glasgow look on