Before HMS Princess Royal could reach the battle, Lion took another hit.
Moltke's next salvo came down hard around the wounded British battlecruiser, throwing great columns of water across both sides of her hull. Most of the shells missed, but one struck near the base of the after funnel and drove deep through the uptake spaces before its delayed fuze finally functioned.
The explosion erupted from inside Lion like a volcano. Smoke, flame and fragments burst upward around the funnel as boilers and steam lines ruptured beneath it, filling the machinery spaces with debris and scalding white vapour. Men disappeared inside the blast before they could understand what had happened, while others were burned, crushed or thrown through the compartment. Pipes split, electrical cables failed and internal telephone lines went silent almost at once.
The effect upon the ship was immediate. Steam pressure collapsed, the turbines lost power and Lion's wake shortened rapidly until the great battlecruiser was barely driving herself through the Atlantic at all. Already heavy by the bow from the earlier flooding, she began wallowing awkwardly among the swells while smoke poured from the damaged funnel and rolled aft across the upper works.
Beatty caught himself against the bridge rail as the ship shuddered beneath him. "Oh, shit."
Chatfield was already demanding reports, but answers no longer came properly. Several telephones were dead, the voice pipes carried little beyond broken shouting from below and runners disappeared into smoke-filled passages without immediately returning. The bridge could still command the ship in theory, but in practice much of Lion had begun fighting its own separate battle. Engineers isolated whatever boilers they could, sailors closed watertight doors and damage-control parties fought fire, steam and flooding wherever they found them, often without knowing what was happening only a few compartments away.
Still, the guns remained alive.
Beatty stared across the water at Moltke, refusing to accept what was happening around him while the German battlecruiser remained afloat. "Come on," he muttered. "One hit. That's all we need."
As though answering him, Lion's surviving guns fired.
The salvo was ragged, thrown from a ship that had lost much of her speed and was rolling badly in the Atlantic swell, but one British shell nevertheless found its mark. It struck Moltke's forward turret in a tremendous orange flash and swallowed the entire gunhouse behind smoke.
"Hit!"
For the first time in several minutes something like hope moved across Lion's bridge. Beatty raised his binoculars almost eagerly.
"Come on..."
Then the smoke cleared.
The turret was still there.
The British shell had functioned too quickly and burst against the heavy faceplate rather than forcing its way through. The explosion blackened the armour, smashed fittings and drove fragments from the inner surface through the fighting chamber, killing or wounding most of the men inside. For the moment the turret fell silent, but the armour itself had held. The barbette was intact, the guns remained mechanically recoverable and German reserve crews were already being summoned to replace the dead.
From Lion, none of that could be seen. Beatty saw only three enormous barrels emerging once again through thinning smoke from an armoured structure that should, in his mind, have been torn apart.
"Christ," someone whispered.
Beatty kept staring through his binoculars. "How thick is their bloody armour?"
Nobody answered him.
Until that moment he had continued telling himself that Lion had simply been unlucky. German shells had happened to find better places; British shells had not. Eventually the balance would correct itself. One proper hit would wreck a turret, reach the machinery or tear open some vital part of Moltke and suddenly the duel would look very different.
Now that hit had finally come, and it had not been enough.
The realization settled slowly and unpleasantly. Moltke had begun the fight with more heavy guns, had retained more of them, carried heavier protection than Beatty had expected and had continued making speed while Lion was being dismantled around him. Perhaps they had not merely been unlucky. Perhaps the assumption beneath the entire duel had been wrong.
Perhaps Lion had been outmatched from the beginning.
"Sir?" Chatfield said.
Beatty lowered his binoculars, but before he could answer, Moltke fired again.
The next German salvo arrived almost immediately. One shell struck Lion low amidships, close to the waterline, punched through the weakened side and exploded behind the armour. The blast tore open the hull and shattered internal bulkheads, and the Atlantic came rushing through the wound with frightening force.
The ship lurched to starboard.
Men fell across the bridge as loose equipment slid toward the rail. Below, sailors fought to close doors and hatches while water poured through compartments that had remained dry throughout the battle. Pumps started where electrical power still existed and failed where it did not. One damaged bulkhead held for only moments before buckling under the pressure and allowing the flooding to spread farther inward.
Lion did not come upright again.
A runner finally reached the bridge soaked almost to the waist, blood running from one side of his face. "Flooding amidships, sir! Pumps are gone in several compartments. They can't hold it."
"Engine rooms?" Chatfield demanded.
"Don't know, sir. We can't reach them."
Another deep metallic groan travelled through the hull, and the deck tilted slightly farther beneath their feet.
Chatfield looked at Beatty. "Sir, we have to abandon her."
"No."
"Admiral—"
"Princess Royal is almost here."
"So is the bloody Atlantic."
Beatty turned toward the northern horizon. Through smoke and haze, the approaching British battlecruiser was finally visible, and for several desperate seconds he simply stared at her. If Brock reached them, if Lion could remain afloat just a little longer, perhaps the German would finally be forced away.
Then Lion rolled farther to starboard and stayed there.
Water washed across the lower edge of the deck.
Chatfield looked down the length of his ship, saw men already emerging from below and finally lost whatever patience remained.
"Oh, fuck this."
Beatty turned toward him.
"Abandon ship!" Chatfield shouted. "All hands abandon ship! Get everybody out now!"
For several seconds Beatty simply stared at him.
"Captain—"
"She's gone!"
The order spread through what remained of Lion's internal communications, and where wires and alarms no longer worked, men carried it themselves. Sailors shouted through passageways, runners hammered upon doors and wounded men were dragged toward ladders and upper decks. Some boats could still be lowered; others hung uselessly because of the increasing list. Carley floats went over the side, followed by men who had no better way off the ship.
There was little time for ceremony. Sailors emerged blackened by smoke, soaked in seawater and bloodied from fragments, some carrying men who could no longer walk. Others reached the deck and immediately turned back to help whoever was still behind them. The machinery spaces, magazines and damaged compartments had become isolated worlds, and some men learned that the ship was being abandoned only when they felt the deck beneath their feet continuing to tilt.
Beatty remained upon the bridge.
He seemed almost unable to accept what he was seeing. This was HMS Lion, his flagship and one of Britain's finest battlecruisers, and she was going down while Moltke remained afloat. There would be no German wreck to balance the loss, no victory beside the disaster. Only questions about why he had engaged alone and why one of the Royal Navy's proudest ships had been destroyed beneath him.
"Sir!"
Chatfield seized his arm.
"I'm staying."
"No, you're bloody not. You're transferring your flag to Princess Royal."
Beatty pulled against him once, almost instinctively, then looked back across the sea.
Moltke was still there.
Still moving.
Still alive.
The German forward turret was silent for the moment, but men were already working around it. Even the British hit he had prayed for had failed to destroy the damned thing.
Another roll sent the deck farther toward the sea.
Chatfield shoved him toward the ladder. "Go!"
This time Beatty went.
He was half-guided and half-dragged through the wreckage of the upper works while sailors continued abandoning ship around him. Smoke rolled across the deck, water washed over the starboard side and somewhere below another dull explosion travelled through the hull. By the time Beatty reached the waiting boat, he seemed scarcely aware of how he had got there.
The sailors pulled him aboard among wounded and exhausted men.
Across the water, Moltke's guns fell silent.
Spee had seen the boats going over the side and the British sailors entering the Atlantic. Whatever Lion had been minutes earlier, she was no longer a fighting ship.
"Cease fire," he ordered.
There was no celebration upon Moltke's bridge. The German battlecruiser had won, but men were dead aboard her as well, particularly inside the turret struck by the final British shell. The armour had saved the mounting, not the crew behind it. Replacement men were already being gathered and the damaged mechanisms inspected, but Spee had no intention of gambling his victory by chasing a defeated enemy toward approaching reinforcements.
HMS Princess Royal was close enough now to recover survivors, but she did not charge directly into the fight. Beyond Moltke, another column of smoke was growing as SMS Seydlitz approached, while farther away Queen Mary remained occupied with Goeben. Brock therefore kept his distance, close enough to become a lifeline for Lion's crew but far enough to avoid being drawn into another isolated battle against two German battlecruisers.
Beatty watched his flagship die from the lifeboat.
Lion's starboard list deepened as the Atlantic continued filling her damaged compartments. Waves rolled freely across the shattered bow, smoke drifted from the wounded superstructure and the stern rose slowly as the forward half of the ship settled deeper. For several moments the battlecruiser seemed to hang upon her side, reluctant to surrender the last of her buoyancy.
Then the bow began to disappear.
Water climbed across the ruined turrets and swallowed the battered bridge from which Beatty had commanded the fight. The stern remained above the Atlantic for a little longer before sliding after the rest.
HMS Lion was gone.
Beatty sat among the survivors and stared at the empty water where his flagship had been. Around him floated wreckage, lifebelts and crowded boats. Farther away, Moltke remained upon the horizon, scarred and bloodied but still under power.
That alone told him how completely the morning had gone wrong.
Spee did not pursue. Moltke turned gradually back toward open water as Seydlitz joined her, while farther away Queen Mary and Goeben also began opening the distance between them. The German raiders had ships to repair, dead to bury and ammunition to count, but the purpose that had brought them into the Atlantic remained unchanged. British commerce still crossed those waters, and the war would continue long after the smoke of Lion's sinking had disappeared.
Behind them, Princess Royal gathered the survivors.
Men came aboard burned, soaked and bleeding, sometimes carrying little more than the clothes they wore. British sailors pulled one another over the side, wrapped blankets around shivering shoulders and searched each new boat for familiar faces.
Among them was a young rating whose uniform had been torn open across the chest.
As two sailors hauled him aboard, something slipped free from beneath his shirt and caught briefly against the grey Atlantic light.
A small silver cross.
Not the familiar shape worn by most British Christians, but the unmistakable sun-mark of the Church of the New Dawn.
One of the sailors helping him aboard noticed it.
For a moment he simply stared.
Then another survivor climbed over the rail wearing one as well.
The German ships were already disappearing into the haze.
The faith that had followed them across Europe, however, had arrived in Britain long before their guns ever had.