Maximilian von Spee

The somewhat farcical and failing efforts to fix the radio station had been observed by the Samoan locals, with the prestige and reputation of the New Zealanders being adversely impacted.

On hearing of the occupation of German Samoa, von Spee, who was yet to head to South America, sailed to the islands.

His approach was observed with trepidation by the Kiwis.

Concerned for the potential damage to German property in Apia, no shots were fired from von Spee's ships, the Scharnhorst or the Gneisenau.

A landing party away from the town managed to get some intelligence on the New Zealand strength from a German resident, who was later interned.

Perhaps frustrated by his impotence here, von Spee made for the French island of Tahiti and shelled the port of Papeete before heading east to Coronel.

On the Tahiti islands, there were no known German assets or property.

When most of the SEF returned to New Zealand, Colonel Logan remained on the island as its chief administrator.

A key consideration now became coal supply.

Von Spee knew the Indian Ocean with its dominance of British Empire shipping and ability to resupply easily was not an option for the whole squadron.

So he decided to head east across the Pacific towards South America.

His ultimate plan was to get back to Atlantic waters and Germany.

Von Spee wrote...

I am quite homeless.

If I cannot reach Germany, we possess no other secure harbour.

At this point, Carl von Muller, the captain of SS Emden, a light cruiser, made a case for detaching just one ship to head south.

After Japan's capture of the Marshall Islands from its future German allies in 1914, a supply ship bound for the newly claimed islands named Soryu vanished after a fuel stopover in Manila, leaving the bay.

This vanishing raised worries for a time in Japan that the German Imperial Navy had active hunting raiders still in the South Sea, perhaps having remained behind during the famed cross-Pacific flight of Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee's East Asia Squadron earlier in the year.

But no such German force existed to trouble Japan as it made its opportunistic moves in the east, and eventually, the scant crew and cost of the Soryu was forgotten.

Decades later, on the 8th of December 1941, just hours after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese would attack American installations and ships stationed in Manila, with most damage being done by air.