Obviously an action could not be fought upon these lines unless time and space sufficed in which to bring about the desired result. In point of fact, when the disparity of force is considered, the time taken was extraordinary. _Inflexible_ opened fire on the German cruisers at five minutes to one, _Scharnhorst_ sank at seventeen minutes past four, and _Gneisenau_ just after 6 o’clock. If we suppose only twelve 12-inch guns to have been bearing throughout the action, we have one hundred 12-inch gun hours! There was time therefore--at a battle-practice rate of fire--for both ships to have fired away their entire stocks of ammunition at least dozens of times over. What they did, of course, was to fire extremely deliberately when the target was within range and the conditions suitable, and to cease fire altogether when they were manœuvring.
In the _Cornwall_-_Glasgow_-_Leipzig_ action, fire was opened at about 4 o’clock, and it was not till about 7:8 that the enemy was beaten. An hour afterwards he sent up signals of distress and surrendered. Here there were eleven 6-inch guns in the two British broadsides, and five 4-inch, against a handful of 4.25. The disparity in force was perhaps not quite so great as in the battle-cruiser action, but these things are difficult to compare, and from all accounts 6-inch lyddite, once the hitting begins, does not take long to put a light cruiser of the _Leipzig_ class completely out of action.
Captain Allen’s action against _Nürnberg_ is in very sharp contrast to this. He opened fire at 5 o’clock, some few minutes after the enemy had attacked him. The range was about 11,000 yards, and for some time no apparent damage was done. At 5:45, however, though _Nürnberg_ seemed still undamaged, the range was reduced by 4,000 yards, owing to _Nürnberg’s_ sudden loss of speed. There then followed twenty minutes of action at ranges between 6,000 and 3,000, and these sufficed to finish the enemy off altogether. It may be objected to Captain Allen’s tactics that he received twice as many hits as the _Cornwall_ and had twelve men wounded and four killed. But as Admiral Sturdee points out in his despatch these casualties were almost entirely caused by a single chance shell that burst in a gun position, right amongst the crew. No one in any of the very exposed positions--control tops, rangefinder positions, etc.--was even touched. Too much, therefore, must not be made of the casualties, for in this matter chance enters too largely for safe deductions to be made. _Invincible_, for instance, received twenty-two hits without a single casualty, _Inflexible_ three hits and three casualties. _Cornwall_ and _Kent_ were sister ships, and if the gun shields of _Kent_ were unable to protect one crew, any one of the eighteen shells that hit _Cornwall_ might have done equal damage to that suffered by _Kent_. The value, as it seems to me, of the _Kent_-_Nürnberg_ example lies in this, that for all practical purposes exactly the same result was obtained, at the same cost, in one hour--of which twenty minutes was at almost point-blank range--in this action, as was got by two ships in three hours in the _Leipzig_ action, and by two battle-cruisers in five hours in the battle cruiser action.