The German East Asia Squadron (German : Kreuzergeschwader / Ostasiengeschwader) was an Imperial German Navy cruiser squadron which operated mainly in the Pacific Ocean between the mid-1890s until 1914, when it was destroyed at the Battle of the Falkland Islands. It was based at Germany's Jiaozhou Bay Leased Territory in China.
The Treaty of Peking of September 1861 between the Kingdom of Prussia and China allowed Prussian warships to operate in Chinese waters. As East Asia grew in economic and political importance to the recently united Germany, in 1881, a flying squadron was formed for the area under the command of a flag officer. [1] Since African colonies were then seen as of greater value, an African Cruiser Squadron was established in 1885 with permanent status, and shortly thereafter the Imperial German Navy reduced the East Asia presence to two small gunboats.
From 1888 to 1892, Leipzig was flagship of the German East Asia Squadron, initially under Vice Admiral Karl August Deinhardt, appointed 14 July when the ship was in Aden and took command of the ship at Zanzibar on 2 August, and of the squadron 31 August at Manda-Bay (Kenya). The planned voyage to the South Sea was cancelled with the first signs of troubles in East Africa. As such she took part in the suppression of the Abushiri Revolt in German East Africa. On 8 May 1889 a landing party from the ship also took part in the storming of the Buschiri lager near Bagamojo. Another landing party from the ship took part in the capture of Pangani on 8 July 1889. After the end of the uprising, the ship put into Cape Town for an overhaul (August/September). In early September, Deinhardt received a telegram from Emperor Wilhelm II to report to his ship in the eastern Mediterranean.
The ship entered the Mediterranean on 28 October and joined the training squadron off the island of Mitilini on 1 November. The emperor met Deinhardt on 6 November, who was returning from Constantinople, honored the members of the East African cruiser squadron with a special cabinet order. All the German vessels left for Italy and docked at Venice on November 12 to continue repairs interrupted at Cape Town. After 15 December, they departed for Malta waters then headed to Port Said, where Christmas and New Years was spent.
Sailing solo, Leipzig set out for the Far East on 27 January 1890, with SMS Carola, SMS Schwalbe, and SMS Sperber returned to East Africa, traveling only with gunboats Iltis and Wolf. The squadron's new commander Rear Admiral Victor Valois assumed command on 16 March. This was a routine period, including visits to Kotchin in India (20 March), traveled to Chinese and Japanese ports where Valois meet-up with his flagship at Nagasaki, From there they traveled to Hong Kong, and Manila to Singapore, where they meet up with SMS Sophie. They subsequently traveled in July through Indonesia, the Strait of Dampier, the Bismarck Archipelago, then to Newcastle, Sydney (15 September) and Jervis Bay in Australia. They were joined by SMS Alexandrine in Australia and after repairs to the Leipzig from damage that occurred in the Suez Canal, they traveled on to Samoa and New Zealand (November), and at the start of 1891 some visits to Hong Kong (14 February) and Chinese ports in March, running aground at Wusung-Road before its visit to Nanking.
In May 1891, at Yokohama, Valois was ordered to protect German interests in Chile against the Chilean Civil War. She ran out of coal on the way there and had to be towed for 97 hours. After stopping briefly in San Francisco, she traveled to Valparaiso arriving on 9 July. They traveled on to Iquique and Coquimbo during July and August. As the war came to a head, they returned to Valparaiso on 20 August and Leipzig and the British corvette HMS Champion sent a joint landing party to Valparaíso to protect the British and German quarters of the city. At the end of the Civil War, Leipzig visited various South American ports and then Cape Town. In March 1892, she anchored in Delagoa Bay, from which the Cruiser Squadron's new commander Friedrich von Pawelsz led a delegation to Paul Kruger, the new president of the South African Republic. The African Cruiser Squadron itself returned to Germany for deactivation at Kiel in 1893. [2]
With the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894, Germany revived her interest in China. With full support from Kaiser Wilhelm II, the German admiralty created an East Asia Cruiser Division (Kreuzerdivision in Ostasien) [3] with the modern light cruiser SMS Irene and three aging small ships under the command of Rear Admiral Paul Hoffmann. "His orders directed him to protect German interests and to examine possible sites for a German base in China." [4] Hoffmann found his ships lacking for the job and petitioned the admiralty for replacements for the three aging ships. His request was granted and the armored frigate SMS Kaiser, the light cruiser SMS Prinzess Wilhelm and the small cruiser SMS Cormoran were sent. But without a base, Hoffmann depended on the British at Hong Kong, the Chinese at Shanghai and the Japanese at Nagasaki for technical and logistical support of his ships. Wilhelm II, his chancellor, foreign minister and the naval secretary all saw the need for a base in East Asia; the German ambassador to China complained "... our ships cannot swim about here forever like homeless waifs." [5]
Rear Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz replaced Hoffmann in June 1896 with orders to find a site for a base and to evaluate four potential locales on the Chinese coast. Although Tirpitz favored the bay at Jiaozhou, others in the government advocated for other sites, and even Tirpitz wavered on his commitment in his final report. Tirpitz was recalled by Wilhelm II, and after he returned to Berlin he lost interest in East Asia; he was now developing a battle fleet.
Rear Admiral Otto von Diederichs succeeded Tirpitz as commander of the Cruiser Division. Although the navy had not yet committed to a specific site for a base due to high-level indecision, Diederichs asserted "Kiautschou alone is the goal of my efforts." [6]
German offers to buy the site were refused, but the murder of two German missionaries on 1 November 1897 provided the casus belli for Diederichs to land troops on 14 November 1897. The imperial navy had a rather tenuous hold on Jiaozhou until the region was reinforced by the arrival of the protected cruiser SMS Kaiserin Augusta and in January 1898 the marines of the Seebataillon disembarked to form the garrison for Tsingtao (now Qingdao). [7]
With the convention at Peking on 6 March 1898, the German ambassador and Chinese viceroy signed a 99-year lease for Jiaozhou and colonization of the territory began in earnest. A naval base with a supporting, neighboring infrastructure (including the Tsingtao brewery) was then built at the impoverished fishing village of Tsingtao to create the Ostasiatische Station [East Asian Station] of the Imperial Navy. [8]
Diederichs was recalled to Berlin in 1899 to serve as chief of the admiralty staff; he was succeeded at Tsingtao by Rear Admiral Prince Heinrich of Prussia. A series of other commanders of the East Asia Cruiser Squadron followed: Rear Admirals Curt von Prittwitz, Felix von Bendemann, Alfred Breusing, Carl Coerper, Friedrich von Ingenohl, Erich Gühler, Günther von Krosigk, and the fleet's last commanding officer, Maximilian von Spee. In these years a broad replacement and upgrade program provided for the assignment of modern ships to Tsingtao.
From February 1900 until 1902, Admiral Felix von Bendemann commanded the East Asia Squadron (Ostasiengeschwader) from his flagships SMS Irene, and then Hertha. When Bendemann took command of the East Asia Squadron, he found it unprepared for the challenges presented by the brewing Boxer Rebellion. He actually had to borrow charts from the Russians and maps from the British in order to operate in the Yellow Sea. [9] Nevertheless, he forcefully advanced the idea of taking the Taku Forts and the ships under his command were able to make a noteworthy contribution in the Battle of Taku Forts (1900). [10] On 8 June 1900, he brought the large cruisers SMS Hansa, SMS Hertha and the small cruisers SMS Gefion and SMS Irene before the Taku Forts (together with warships of other nations) to land detachments of marines (Seebatallione) for the protection of their citizens in Tientsin. Lieutenant Otto Weniger, the commander of SMS Gefion then became commander of a landing corps of 500 marines, which took part in the failed Seymour Expedition for the relief of the Peking delegations later in June.
In January 1913, the squadron visited Batavia (now Jakarta), Indonesia.
In 1914, the East Asia Squadron numbered a total of five major warships under the command of Spee:
Also assigned to the squadron in 1914 were the old Bussard-class unprotected cruisers SMS Geier and Cormoran, torpedo boats SMS S90 and SMS Taku, and a variety of gunboats.
At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Spee found himself both outnumbered and outgunned by Allied navies in the region. He was especially wary of the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Royal Australian Navy — in fact he described the latter's flagship, the battlecruiser HMAS Australia, as being superior to his entire force by itself.
Spee said of his predicament: "I am quite homeless. I cannot reach Germany. We possess no other secure harbor. I must plough the seas of the world doing as much mischief as I can, until my ammunition is exhausted, or a foe far superior in power succeeds in catching me." [11]
The initial successes by Emden led to Spee allowing her captain, von Muller, to take his ship on a lone commerce-raiding campaign in the Indian Ocean, while the cruisers of the squadron would head towards the eastern Pacific and the South American coast, where there were neutral countries with pro-German sympathies (notably Chile) where Spee could potentially obtain supplies. [12] The cruiser Cormoran was left behind due to the poor state of her engines, which had led her to be stripped to outfit the captured Russian vessel Ryazan as a commerce raider renamed SMS Cormoran.
Emden disrupted trade throughout the Indian Ocean, intercepting 29 ships and sinking those belonging to Britain or its allies. At the Battle of Penang she sank the Russian protected cruiser Zhemchug and the French destroyer Mousquet, catching the Russian ship by surprise while in harbor. At Madras she destroyed oil-storage facilities through shelling. The ship finally met its end on 9 November 1914 after a prolonged struggle with HMAS Sydney at the Battle of Cocos.
At the outbreak of World War I, nearly all the ships of the East Asia Station were dispersed at various island colonies on routine missions; the armored cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were at anchor at Ponape in the Carolines. The fleet then rendezvoused at Pagan Island in the northern Marianas – the commanders planning the logistics of their long journey to Germany, with the ships coaling. The light cruiser Nürnberg was dispatched to Honolulu in the United States Territory of Hawaii to gather war news since all German undersea cables through British controlled areas were cut. Spee headed for German Samoa with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, then east, conducting the Bombardment of Papeete in French Polynesia. The East Asia Squadron coaled at Easter Island from colliers that had been on station throughout the Pacific. The unprotected cruiser Geier, which had failed to rendezvous at Pagan, tried to join Spee's squadron until forced to intern itself at Hawaii on 17 October 1914 due to mechanical breakdowns. Realizing that Allied activity in the Pacific had increased to such a level that he was vastly outnumbered and losing the element of surprise, Spee decided to move his fleet around Cape Horn into the Atlantic and force his way north in an effort to reach Germany. While off the coast of Chile, the squadron met up with the light cruiser Dresden, which had been operating as a commerce raider in the Atlantic and had rounded Cape Horn in an effort to increase chances of success. At this point, Dresden joined Spee's flag and set out with the rest of the East Asia Squadron.
The main body of the squadron engaged the British West Indies Squadron on 1 November 1914 at the Battle of Coronel, sinking two British cruisers, HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth. It was while attempting to return home via the Atlantic that most of the squadron was destroyed on 8 December 1914 in the Battle of the Falkland Islands by a superior British force of battlecruisers and cruisers. SMS Dresden and a few auxiliary vessels escaped destruction and fled back to the Pacific, where the auxiliaries were interned at Chilean ports and Dresden was scuttled at the Battle of Más a Tierra.
The four small gunboats Iltis, Jaguar, Tiger, Luchs and the torpedo boats SMS Taku and S90 of the East Asia Squadron that had been left at Tsingtao were scuttled by their crews just prior to the capture of the base by Japan in November 1914, during the Siege of Tsingtao. Four small river gunboats and some two dozen merchantmen and small vessels evaded Allied capture in inland waters of China until 1917, when China seized most of them save for two river gunboats, which were destroyed by their crews. [13]
Maximilian Johannes Maria Hubert Reichsgraf von Spee was a naval officer of the German Kaiserliche Marine, who commanded the East Asia Squadron during World War I. Spee entered the navy in 1878 and served in a variety of roles and locations, including on a colonial gunboat in German West Africa in the 1880s, the East Africa Squadron in the late 1890s, and as commander of several warships in the main German fleet in the early 1900s. During his time in Germany in the late 1880s and early 1890s, he married his wife, Margareta, and had three children, his sons Heinrich and Otto and his daughter Huberta. By 1912, he had returned to the East Asia Squadron as its commander, and was promoted to the rank of Vizeadmiral the following year.
The Battle of Coronel was a First World War naval battle that led to an Imperial German Navy victory over the Royal Navy on 1 November 1914, off the coast of central Chile near the city of Coronel. The East Asia Squadron of the Imperial German Navy led by Vice-Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee met and overpowered a British squadron commanded by Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock.
SMS Scharnhorst was an armored cruiser of the Imperial German Navy, built at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany. She was the lead ship of her class, which included SMS Gneisenau. Scharnhorst and her sister were enlarged versions of the preceding Roon class; they were equipped with a greater number of main guns and were capable of a higher top speed. The ship was named after the Prussian military reformer General Gerhard von Scharnhorst and commissioned into service on 24 October 1907.
The Battle of the Falkland Islands was a First World War naval action between the British Royal Navy and Imperial German Navy on 8 December 1914 in the South Atlantic. The British, after their defeat at the Battle of Coronel on 1 November, sent a large force to track down and destroy the German cruiser squadron. The battle is commemorated every year on 8 December in the Falkland Islands as a public holiday.
SMS Leipzig was the sixth of seven Bremen-class cruisers of the Imperial German Navy, named after the city of Leipzig. She was begun by AG Weser in Bremen in 1904, launched in March 1905 and commissioned in April 1906. Armed with a main battery of ten 10.5 cm (4.1 in) guns and two 45 cm (18 in) torpedo tubes, Leipzig was capable of a top speed of 22.5 knots.
The siege of Tsingtao was the attack on the German port of Qingdao (Tsingtao) from Jiaozhou Bay during World War I by Japan and the United Kingdom. The siege was waged against Imperial Germany between 27 August and 7 November 1914. The siege was the first encounter between Japanese and German forces, the first Anglo-Japanese operation of the war, and the only major land battle in the Asian and Pacific theatre during World War I.
SMS Deutschland was the second and final ship of the Kaiser-class ironclads; SMS Kaiser was her sister ship. Named for Germany, the ship was laid down in the Samuda Brothers shipyard in London in 1872. The ship was launched in September 1874 and commissioned into the German fleet in July 1875. Deutschland mounted a main battery of eight 26 cm (10.2 in) guns in a central battery amidships. She was the last capital ship built for the German Navy by a foreign ship-builder; all subsequent ships were built in Germany.
During World War I, conflict on the Asian continent and the islands of the Pacific included naval battles, the Allied conquest of German colonial possessions in the Pacific Ocean and China, the anti-Russian Central Asian revolt of 1916 in Russian Turkestan and the Ottoman-supported Kelantan rebellion in British Malaya. The most significant military action was the careful and well-executed Siege of Qingdao in China, but smaller actions were also fought at Bita Paka and Toma in German New Guinea.
SMS Kaiser was the lead ship of the Kaiser-class ironclads; SMS Deutschland was her sister ship. Named for the title "Kaiser", held by the leader of the then newly created German Empire, the ship was laid down in the Samuda Brothers shipyard in London in 1871. The ship was launched in March 1874 and commissioned into the German fleet in February 1875. Kaiser mounted a main battery of eight 26 cm (10.2 in) guns in a central battery amidships.
The Bombardment of Papeete occurred in French Polynesia when German warships attacked on 22 September 1914, during World War I. The German armoured cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and Gneisenau entered the port of Papeete on the island of Tahiti and sank the French gunboat Zélée and freighter Walküre before bombarding the town's fortifications. French shore batteries and a gunboat resisted the German intrusion but were greatly outgunned. The main German objective was to seize the coal piles stored on the island, but these were destroyed by the French at the start of the action.
The Kiautschou Bay Leased Territory was a German leased territory in Imperial and Early Republican China from 1898 to 1914. Covering an area of 552 km2 (213 sq mi), it centered on Kiautschou Bay on the southern coast of the Shandong Peninsula. The administrative center was at Tsingtau (Qingdao). It was operated by the East Asia Squadron of the Imperial German Navy. The Russian Empire resented the German move as an infringement on Russian ambitions in the region.
Ernst Otto von Diederichs was a German admiral of the Prussian Navy who served both the Kingdom of Prussia and the German Empire. He was the first governor of the German Jiaozhou Bay concession in China.
Victor Valois (1841–1924), also called Anton Friedrich Victor Valois, was a vice-admiral (Vizeadmiral) in the German Imperial Navy. He graduated from the post-graduate Naval War College, the Imperial Naval Academy (Marineakademie) in 1874 in a class with three other future admirals: Otto von Diederichs, Felix von Bendemann, Gustav von Senden-Bibran.
Felix von Bendemann was an Admiral of the German Imperial Navy.
SMS Irene was a protected cruiser or Kreuzerkorvette of the German Imperial Navy and the lead ship of the Irene class. She had one sister, Prinzess Wilhelm; the two ships were the first protected cruisers built by the German Navy. Irene was laid down in 1886 at the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin, launched in July 1887, and commissioned into the fleet in May 1888. The cruiser was named after Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine, sister-in-law of Kaiser Wilhem II. As built, the ship was armed with a main battery of fourteen 15 cm (5.9 in) guns and had a top speed of 18 knots.
SMS Prinzess Wilhelm was a protected cruiser of the German Imperial Navy. She was the second Irene-class cruiser; her only sister ship was SMS Irene. Prinzess Wilhelm was laid down in 1886 at the Germaniawerft shipyard in Kiel, launched in September 1887, and commissioned into the fleet in November 1889. The cruiser was named after Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, first wife of Kaiser Wilhem II. As built, the ship was armed with a main battery of fourteen 15 cm (5.9 in) guns and had a top speed of 18 knots.
The German commerce raiders of World War I were surface vessels used by the Imperial German Navy for its Handelskrieg, a campaign against Allied seaborne trade. The ships comprised warships, principally cruisers, stationed in the German colonial empire before the war began, express liners commissioned as auxiliary cruisers and later, freighters outfitted as merchant raiders. These vessels had a number of successes and had a significant effect on Allied naval strategy, particularly in the early months of the war.
SMS Cormoran was an unprotected cruiser of the Bussard class, the fifth member of a class of six ships. She was built for the Imperial German Navy for overseas duty. The cruiser's keel was laid down in Danzig in 1890; she was launched in May 1892 and commissioned in July 1893. Cormoran was armed with a main battery of eight 10.5-centimeter (4.1 in) guns, and could steam at a speed of 15.5 knots.
SMS Arcona was a member of the Carola class of steam corvettes built for the German Kaiserliche Marine in the 1880s. Intended for service in the German colonial empire, the ship was designed with a combination of steam and sail power for extended range, and was equipped with a battery of ten 15-centimeter (5.9 in) guns. Arcona was laid down at the Kaiserliche Werft in Danzig in 1881, she was launched in May 1885, and she was completed in December 1886.
This is the order of battle of the Imperial German Navy on the outbreak of World War I in August 1914.
