The pace of innovation in naval shipbuilding in the begining of the 20th Century, a time of powerful dreadnoughts and fast battlecruisers meant that armoured cruisers rapidly became endangered "missing links." SMS Scharnhorst and her sister ship Gneisenau were already out-of-date when they were finished in 1906. These eight-inch gun cruisers (max. displacement almost 13,000 tonnes) were relegated into a kind of naval "Lost World"- the Pacific colonies, forming the core of the Kaiser's East-Asian Squadron under Vice Admiral Maximillian Von Spee. Germany's Pacific colonies indeed became a "lost world" with the outbreak of hostilities in 1914. Eluding pursuing fleets, Von Spee's small force briefly roamed the ocean, scoring some successes before being overwhelmed by the Royal Navy at the Battle of the Falkland Islands on December 8th 1914. Rendered in Vue 8 Esprit SMS Scharnhorst model: De'Espona