Arthur John Spicer 1884 - 1914

Stoker 1st Class Arthur John Spicer, Service Number 301561, was drafted on 13th July 1914 to H.M.S. Good Hope, an armoured cruiser of 14,100 tons from the ‘mothball fleet' she had been launched in 1901. Capable of 23.5 knots, her crew were mostly reservists. She carried two 9.2" and sixteen 6" guns plus torpedoes.

The cruiser sailed on 6th August for
Newfoundland to intercept armed German merchant ships in the area.

By 16th August Good Hope had been ordered south towards Panama under Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock's flag and she was later joined by other units on 14th September.

These were the armoured cruiser Monmouth of 9,800 tons plus two smaller ships. One was the light cruiser, Glasgow of 4,800 tons and the other a former liner mounting a few obsolete guns. The new quarry by now was far more dangerous than any armed merchantman.
The escape into the vastness of the Pacific Ocean by the German East Asia Squadron, from its base at Tsingtao, Northern China, was causing great anxiety in the Admiralty. That squadron, under the very able Admiral Graf von Spee, consisted of several modern cruisers. Two, especially the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau, were better armed, better armoured and better equipped than anything Cradock had at his disposal. They exercised regularly as a fighting force and were expert in naval gunnery, ammunition being plentiful for training. Various units were periodically detached from the main force to wage war independently. The German plan was to disrupt the allied trade with Australia, New Zealand and India. In this task elements of von Spee's force were eminently successful. It became imperative to find and destroy the German fleet and to this end many ships were deployed across the seas.

Cradock's fleet was assigned the task of searching the southern ocean. It proceeded to the Falklands before scouring the dangerous waters around Cape Horn looking for the enemy. His quest took him into the Pacific. Cradock had repeatedly requested reinforcements in the shape of H.M.S. Defence, a modern and powerful battle-cruiser. This was denied him and instead the Admiralty formed a second cruiser squadron to which Defence was attached, and assigned that new force the southern Atlantic to patrol. Cradock was ordered into the Pacific and allocated instead an obsolete and worn out battleship, H.M.S. Canopus. She was more of a hindrance than a help as she was too slow to keep up with the other ships in the event of a chase. Every reported sighting was investigated and the strength of intercepted radio signals from some of the German ships meant that they were not too far distant.

At 4.20pm on 1st November 1914 the two fleets caught their first glimpses of each other. Admiral Cradock frantically radioed for Canopus to try to catch up. It was a hopeless task as she was some 250 miles behind. Each squadron commander sized up the situation and tried to manoeuvre for best position. The British attempted to open the engagement early with the sun behind them in the hope of a swift victory. The Germans who would have had to look into the sun avoided battle at that time. As the day wore on however, the sun began to set and presented the British fleet in sharp silhouette against the horizon. The German ships were by now almost invisible in the gathering gloom and finally sought to commence the inevitable battle from their tactical advantage.

The Scharnhorst scored a direct hit with her third salvo and destroyed the forward 9.2" main turret of Good Hope. Three minutes later Monmouth was set on fire by Gneisenau's accurate gunnery. The British ships fired all available guns but with little serious effect except for a couple of damaging hits on the Gneisenau by Monmouth. Gradually the superior German gunnery and battle tactics began to tell. By 7.35pm von Spee estimated the Good Hope had been hit thirty times. She was on fire in several places but still fighting. She even tried to close on Scharnhorst so as to launch a torpedo attack. The German ship kept its distance and continued to shoot. Shortly after dark the brilliant flash of a massive explosion came from the area where H.M.S. Good Hope had last been seen. Nothing was ever found of her and Admiral Cradock, together with the entire ship's compliment of 900 men, perished. Stoker 1st Class Arthur John Spicer naturally has no known grave and he is commemorated on Portsmouth Naval Memorial