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destined for Australia, predictably provoking another harsh encrypted reprimand for Stoddart from Fisher.
    By this time there had been many reported sightings of the Dresden , including one by HMS Kent . But once again she slipped the net, causing yet another senior naval officer, this time the captain of the Kent , J. D. Allen, considerable anger and frustration. A few days later, after receiving news of his C.B. for his part in the Falklands Battle, Allen would write: ‘I felt no pleasure, as our failure to catch the Dresden was too recent. I should rather have sunk her than have every honour there is.’ 8
    But by now Stoddart was a baffled, if not to say harassed, man. Conscious of the importance London attached to his achieving the Dresden’s destruction, and no less aware of the difficulties which the failure to do so had inflicted on his predecessor’s relations with the Admiralty, he determined to take up the intelligence chase personally. Meeting with Milward, he received a persuasive report that the Dresden was still in the area. Unfortunately, the Admiralty was getting reports, carefully spread by Canaris via Patagonia, that the ship was in the Vast Hope Inlet, the remotest recess of that maze of fiords that spreads northwards from Smyth’s Channel. Churchill at the Admiralty, and consequendy Stoddart, fell for this ruse. In vain did the hapless Milward cable that it was only a feint. HMS Glasgow, Kent, Orama and Bristol all set off on the wild-goose chase. And yet another cross signal from Fisher reminded Stoddart that these ships were needed in the North Sea. This sporting ruse not only drew off the only four British ships in the area, allowing the Dresden to set sail for the Pacific, it also resulted in one of the ships, the Bristol , seriously damaging her rudder on an uncharted coral, so putting her into dry dock.
    By now half a dozen British cruisers had been playing hide and seekwith the Dresden for three months. But yet again, the Admiralty was hoodwinked by a Canaris deception, to the effect that the Dresden was back at Good Hope. The hapless Luce was again ordered to change course and search this unlikely place.
    But this time, the legendary Room 40 of the Naval Intelligence Division under the able direction of Admiral ‘Blinker’ Hall and staffed largely by Cambridge-educated code breakers and the odd naval officer of German extraction, intervened to bring Canaris’ run of luck to an end.
    Hall, who was on this occasion to act as Canaris’ nemesis, had visited Kiel in 1908 where, according to Banfield, he had met the young Canaris. As Hall had been on a covert intelligence gathering mission, he would no doubt have made notes on all the officers he met, especially the promising cadets who spoke excellent English, as Canaris did long before his tutor at Kiel, Hughes, praised his written English.
    Hall, whose gaze was described as ‘seeing the very muscular movements of your immortal soul,’ was perhaps the most appropriate opponent for the Dresden and her wily intelligence officer. Years later, during the second ‘German War’, Canaris would betray his own respect for Hall when, on hearing the news of a new chief of naval intelligence in London, he noted: ‘The Naval Intelligence Division is not as circumspect as it was in Admiral Hall’s day.’ 9
    In the words of the signal officer on HMS Glasgow , ‘Our luck turned.’ Hall’s team decoded a simple signal sent by Canaris to a collier. It read ‘Am proceeding Juan Fernandez. Meet me there March 9th. Very short of coal.’
    This was all Luce needed. Together with Kent and Orama , a course was plotted to intercept the Dresden . Lüdecke, meanwhile, received a telegram from the Kaiser allowing him absolute discretion to accept internment. On receipt of this, Lüdecke informed the Chilean authorities that he would await the dispatch of a Chilean warship to oversee internment