One hundred years ago, 7,500 miles from London, the British Empire took a bruising knock.
Off the coast of Chile near Coronel, on 1 November 1914, squadrons from the German and British navies exchanged fire. The British were hopelessly outgunned and two ships, HMS Monmouth and HMS Good Hope, were lost, along with all the souls – nearly 1,600 – on board. It was Britain’s first naval defeat in more than a century of much-touted supremacy over the waves.