by Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee, who sailed across the Pacific, raiding Papeete and winning the Battle of Coronel before being defeated and mostly destroyed at the Battle of the Falkland Islands. The last remnants of Spee's squadron were interned at Chilean ports and destroyed at the Battle of Mas a Tierra. Allied naval forces captured many of the isolated German colonies, with Samoa, Micronesia, Qingdao, German New Guinea, Togo, and Cameroon falling in the first year of the war. As Austria-Hungary refused to withdraw its cruiser from the German naval base of Qingdao, Japan declared war in 1914 not only on Germany, but also on Austria-Hungary. The cruiser participated in the defense of Qingdao where it was sunk in November 1914. Despite the loss of the last German cruiser in the Indian Ocean, , off the coast of German East Africa in July 1915, German East Africa held out in a long guerilla land campaign. British naval units despatched through Africa under Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Spicer-Simson had won strategic control of Lake Tanganyika in a series of engagements by February 1916, though fighting on land in German East Africa continued until 1918. Fleets overview Allied Powers Central Powers Neutral powers References Further reading Benbow, Tim. Naval Warfare 1914–1918: From Coronel to the Atlantic and Zeebrugge (2012) excerpt and text search Dupuy, Trevor Nevitt and The military history of World War I: naval and overseas war, 1916–1918 (1967) Friedman, Norman. Naval Weapons of World War One: Guns, Torpedoes, Mines, and ASW Weapons of All Nations: An Illustrated Directory (2011) Halpern, Paul. A Naval History of World War I (1994), the standard scholarly survey excerpt and text search Herwig, Holger H. Luxury Fleet: The Imperial German Navy, 1888–1918 (1987) Marder, Arthur. From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow: The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era (5 vol, 1970), vol 2–5 cover the First World War Morison, Elting E. Admiral Sims and the Modern American Navy (1942) Stephenson, David. With our backs to the wall: Victory and defeat in 1918 (2011) pp 311–49 Terrain, J. Business in Great Waters: The U-Boat wars, 1916–1945 (1999) External links Osborne, Eric W.: Naval Warfare, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War. Halpern, Paul G.: Mediterranean Theater, Naval Operations, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War. Bönker, Dirk: Naval Race between Germany and Great Britain, 1898-1912, in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World