Gert Bürgel, Dresden and Günther Held, Flensburg
The small battlecruiser DRESDEN

Of all the ships named after the City of Dresden, the small battlecruiser "His Majesty's Ship-DRESDEN" had the most interesting history. Launched in 1907 the cruiser's voyages and her fate became legendary. However, today she only plays a secondary role in Dresden's collective memory.
The most comprehensive book about the ship was written by the Chilean author Maria Teresa Parker de Bassi and was published in 1987. The book describes the odyssee of the DRESDEN, the longest operational voyage a warship had to endure.
After her involvement in an evacuation of German and American citizens from Mexico in 1914 the outbreak of WW I brought the DRESDEN around the Cape Hoorn into the Pacific, where it joined the East Asia Squadron led by Admiral Count von Spee.
After a victorious battle against British ships in the Pacific (the battle of Coronel) von Spee made a fatal mistake in cruising around Cape Hoorn towards the Falkland-Islands in the Atlantic in November 1914, where he didn't expect any British defences. The DRESDEN was the only surviving German ship. She fled north the coast, hiding in the Patagonian channels eventually re-entering the Pacific on February, 14, 1915. She was brought up by her British pursuers on March, 14, 1915.

The battle of Coronel

Her captain gave orders for the self-destruction of the ship, after it had suffered huge damages by enemy-fire.
The crew were interned on a small island off the Chilean coast. Some were able to flee, but most, over 300 had to wait until October 1919 to be set free. Some actually stayed in Chile, and their descendants still live there today. A memorial stone remembers those who perished during their internment.
At the southern tip of Chile the places where the DRESDEN took port bear the name of the ship. We find a Dresden-harbour, a Dresden-firth and a Dresden-lake in the area. Even in British Columbia in Canada one mountain top of the Chilko-range was named after the DRESDEN because all tops of the range carry the names of the ships involved in the battle of Coronel.

The Chilko-range, Canada

Pilot-Captain Albert Pagels called his daughter "Dresden", when she was born in Punta Arenas while he was steering a supply boat towards the DRESDEN in 1915. She and her father visited Dresden in the late thirties but her entry in the City's Golden Book was destroyed when Dresden was bombed in February 1945.
A small primary school in the village San Juan Bautista (400 inhabitants) on the island Robinson Crusoe is called Escuela "Dresden" . For the first time since 80 years a contact has been established between this school and a Spanish-class of the grammar school in Dresden-Rossthal.