On August 12, 1914, eight days after Britain’s declaration of war on Germany completed the initial line-up of European belligerents of the First World War, Vice Admiral Count Maximilian von Spee used wireless telegraphy to coordinate the rendezvous of five warships of his German East Asiatic Squadron with seven supply ships and colliers at Pagan in the Marianas. The western Pacific island, nearly 2,000 miles (3,200 km) southeast of the squadron’s home port at Tsingtao (Qingdao), China, would be the last place that this particular constellation of vessels ever assembled. Facing the prospect that Japan, Britain’s Far East ally, might soon enter the war, Spee oversaw a frenzied day of activity, as supplies and coal were loaded aboard the warships and personnel exchanged to address various staffing needs. Captain Hans Pochhammer, first officer of the armored cruiser Gneisenau (and, six months later, the highest-ranking German survivor of the Battle of the Falklands), remarked that the likelihood of Japanese intervention meant “only one course could now be taken” by the squadron, “to go east through the side that was still open, in order to escape from the pressure of superior forces closing around us, and to seek other hunting grounds.” The following day, Spee’s warships “disappeared…into the immensity of the Pacific Ocean, without leaving any trace behind us.” The burden of secrecy placed demands on every crew member, as all had to be “careful that nothing fell overboard that might betray our passage,” and thereby forfeit “our greatest advantage, which was that no one knew precisely where we were.”

As soon as the war began, it became clear that the Germans had too few colonies and bases to sustain a worldwide naval campaign. The coaling and supply of overseas cruisers became their Achilles’ heel, a weakness they could overcome only through boldness, ingenuity, and effective use of the latest communication technology. It helped their cause that the warship deployment trends of the prewar years, culminating in the decision by the European powers to concentrate their capital ships in European and Mediterranean waters, gave a fighting chance to units caught far from home, in particular the ships of Spee’s formidable squadron.