page_title: East Asia Squadron
section_title: Sailing the Pacific
hierarchical_section_title: East Asia Squadron / World War I / Sailing the Pacific
caption_attribution_description: English: Battle of the Falkland Islands, 1914. Scharnhorst rolls over and sinks while Gneisenau continues to fight. 日本語: フォークランド沖海戦（1914年）。砲撃を受けて横転沈没するシャルンホルストと戦闘を続行するグナイゼナウ。
context_page_description: The German East Asia Squadron 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.
context_section_description: 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.  Admiral von 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 SMS 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, Admiral von 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 Mas 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.
caption: The Battle of the Falkland Islands was a crushing defeat for the East Asia Squadron.
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