Eight sailors and Royal Marines aboard the cruiser were killed during the 1914 Battle of the Falklands, when the Royal Navy routed a German cruiser squadron in the South Atlantic.
Damage on the upper deck of HMS Kent during the Battle of the Falklands. In the left of the shell hole in the bulkhead is Sgt George Mayes Royal Marines Light Infantry who received the CGM for extinguishing a fire in one of the cruiser's magazines. Pictures: Imperial War Museum
THE people of Kent will honour the sacrifices made by their own warship to mark the Royal Navy’s first major victory of the Great War.
A service of commemoration will be held at Canterbury Cathedral on December 8, 100 years to the day that the roaming squadron of German Admiral Graf von Spee was all but wiped out by a superior British force off the Falkland Islands.
Spee’s cruisers, which had dealt a severe blow to the RN’s pride by defeating a much weaker British squadron in the Pacific a month earlier at Coronel, was hunted down by a force which included battle-cruisers.
Also avenging Coronel that day – and her sister ship HMS Monmouth, which was blown up with the loss of all hands – was armoured cruiser HMS Kent.
After a lengthy chase, she sank the light cruiser SMS Nürnberg – younger and lighter than the Kent, her ten 4.1in guns lighter but with a greater range than the 14 6in guns of the Royal Navy vessel.
Those guns took a fearful toll of the Nürnberg in her final moments – the German ship was on fire from bow to stern as most of her crew abandoned the cruiser.
“The sight was one of absolute awe, yet she turned over and sank as peacefully and as gracefully as would a cup in a basin of water,” one Kent crewman wrote in his diary.
“Those who went with her were ‘game’ to the end. We saw a party of her men standing on her poop deck waving the German Ensign (tied to a staff) and they went under with the ensign still in their grasp.”
Just seven German sailors were rescued from the Nürnberg from a crew of well over 300. In all, the Kaiser’s Navy lost nearly 1,900 men that day.
Kent took several hits from the German cruiser and of the ten Britons killed in the Falklands battle, eight died on the Kent, with a similar number wounded.
Those fallen are honoured with a memorial plaque, erected by their shipmates, in Canterbury Cathedral.
Descendants of Kent’s ship’s company at the Falklands are invited to attend to the centennial commemorative service.
They should contact Brig Gen John Meardon, a retired Royal Marine who spent 34 years in the Corps and is now the cathedral’s Receiver General: john.meardon@canterbury-cathedral.org