The stranger proved to be an Australian light cruiser, HMAS Sydney, commanded by Captain John Glossop. The fifty-six-hundred-ton Sydney mounted eight 6-inch guns, and was capable of a flank speed of twenty-five knots. In the three areas that mattered—speed, firepower, and armor—it far outclassed Emden. Absent a storm—and the weather was clear—Emden could neither outfight its opponent nor escape.

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Müller’s one hope lay in the torpedo. Outside the harbor he turned toward his adversary, who himself turned so that both vessels were heading north. Müller later wrote, “I had to attempt to inflict such damage…with the guns that he would be slowed down in speed significantly before I could switch to a promising torpedo attack.” Captain Glossop would write, “I…sighted…almost immediately the smoke of a ship, which proved to be Emden, coming out towards me at a great rate….I kept my distance as much as possible to obtain the advantage of my [heavier] guns.”

Briefly, Emden demonstrated the superior gunnery that would become a hallmark of the kaiser’s fleet. The raider scored repeatedly with its 4.1-inch guns, but the 35-pound projectiles inflicted only superficial damage. Then Sydney began to batter the raider with its 6-inch guns. One of Emden’s engineering officers recalled: “After the first enemy shells struck us, the motor for working the fans broke down. The temperature [reached] 152 F. About fifteen minutes after the action opened, hits were felt near the engines, noticeable by…the ship listing to port, by floor-plates starting…[and] by objects on the walls being torn from their fixtures.”

An Australian correspondent on Sydney wrote: “After the lapse of about three-quarters of an hour, the Emden had lost two funnels and the foremast; she was badly on fire aft and amidships, so that at times nothing more than the top of the mainmast could be seen amid the clouds of steam and smoke. Her guns, now occasionally firing, gave out a short yellow flash by which they could be distinguished by the dark red flames of the Sydney<’s bursting lyddite.”

Two hours after the battle had opened, the two antagonists were on a northern course, with Sydney keeping to the east of its opponent. Aboard the shattered Emden, Müller ordered a change of course toward North Keeling Island. There, he drove his vessel onto a reef, hoping both to damage the cruiser beyond salvage and to give surviving members of the crew a chance to swim to safety. Fire blackened the totally wrecked German raider.

A lull in the fighting ensued while Sydney captured Müller’s collier, which had appeared at a very inopportune moment. The Australian cruiser then returned to Emden and, lacking any evidence of its having surrendered, opened fire once again. Only after Glossop had delivered, under flag of truce, an invitation to surrender with the honors of war did Müller show a white flag from his one remaining mast. Emden’s crew had suffered 134 fatalities, including seven officers and the ship’s three Chinese laundrymen.

Emden was the first but hardly the last of Spee’s squadron to meet its match early in the war. Spee, after destroying a vastly inferior British squadron off the coast of Chile and successfully rounding Cape Horn, would run afoul of a powerful British task force at the Falkland Islands; all the Ger­man ships ended up in Davy Jones’ locker.

By this time, surface raiders as a class were obsolete. Germany, which had begun the war with fewer submarines than the Royal Navy, had discovered the value of the U-boat. Surface raiders would play only a minor role in the last three years of the war. The day of the “gentleman” raider had passed.

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