SEA FIGHTS OF THE OCEAN PATROL

There were some minor naval operations in the waters of Europe which have been neglected while larger actions elsewhere were recorded. During the month of September, 1914, the British admiralty established a blockade of the mouth of the River Elbe with submarines, and the German boats of the same type were showing their worth also. On August 28,1914, the day after the raid on Libau by the German cruiser Augsburg, the date of the battle of the Bight of Helgoland, the two Russian protected cruisers Pallada and Bayan, while patrolling the Russian coast in the Baltic Sea, were attacked by German submarines. Surrounded by these small craft, which made poor targets, the two Russian ships sought to escape by putting on full speed, but the former was hit by a torpedo and sank. The other got away.

All of the Allies, with the exception of France, had by the beginning of September, 1914, suffered losses in their navies. The navy of the republic was engaged in assisting a British fleet in maintaining supremacy in the Mediterranean, and kept the Austrian fleet bottled up in the Adriatic Sea. French warships bombarded Cattaro on September 10, 1914, to assist the military operations of the Montenegrin Government. These ships then proceeded to the island of Lissa and there destroyed the wireless station maintained by Austria. The Austrian navy made no appearance while the allied fleets scoured the lower coast of Dalmatia, bringing down lighthouses, destroying wireless stations, and bombarding the islands of Pelagosa and Lesina. On the 19th of September, 1914, they returned to Lissa and landed a force which took possession of it, thus establishing a new naval base against the Central Powers' navies.

Duels between pairs of ships took place in various seas. The career of the raider Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, a fast converted liner, was ended by the British ship Highflyer, a cruiser, near the Cape Verde Islands, on August 27, 1914, after the former had sunk the merchantman Hyades and had stopped the mail steamer Galician. The greater speed of the German vessel was of no advantage to her, for she had been caught in the act of coaling. What then transpired was not a fight, for in armament the two were quite unequal. She soon sank under the Highflyer's fire, her crew having been rescued by her colliers.

The next duel took place between the Carmania and Cap Trafalgar, British and German converted liners, respectively. They met on September 14,1914, in the Atlantic off South America. In view of the fact that at the beginning of the war these two ships had been merchantmen and had been armed and commissioned after the outbreak of hostilities, this engagement was something of the nature of those between privateersmen in the old days. In speed, size, and armament they were about equal. For nearly two hours they exchanged shots between 3,000 and 9,000 yards, and markmanship was to determine the victory. The shots from the Carmania struck the hull of the other ship near the water line repeatedly, and the British commander was wise enough to present his stern and bow ends more often than the length of the Carmania's sides. At the end of the fight the German ship was afire and sank. Her crew got off safely in her colliers, and the British ship made off because her wireless operator heard a German cruiser, with which the Cap Trafalgar had been in communication, signaling that she was hastening to the liner's aid.

Only two days before this the British cruiser Berwick captured the converted liner Spreewald in the North Atlantic, where she had been trying to interrupt allied commercial vessels.

Germany kept up her policy of attrition by clever use of submarines and mines. The British battleship Audacious, while on patrol duty off the coast of Ireland in the early days of the war, met with a disaster of some sort and was brought to her home port in a sinking condition. The rigors of the British censorship almost kept the news of this out of the British papers and from the correspondents of foreign papers. It was reported that she had struck a mine, that she had been torpedoed, and that she had been made the victim of either a spy or a traitor who caused an internal explosion. The truth was never made clear. Rumors that she had gone down were denied by the British admiralty some months later, when they reported her repaired and again doing duty, but this was counteracted by a report that one of the ships that was completed after the start of hostilities had been given the same name.

About the sinking of the Hawke there was less conjecture. This vessel had gained notoriety in times of peace by having collided with the Olympic as the latter left port on her maiden voyage to New York. On the 15th of October, 1914, while patrolling the northern British home waters she was made the target of the torpedo of a German submarine and went down, but the Theseus, which had been attacked at the same time, escaped.

Four German destroyers were to be the next victims of the war in European waters. On October 17,1914, the S-115, S-117, S-118, and S-119 while doing patrol duty off the coast of the Netherlands, came up with a British squadron consisting of the cruiser Undaunted and the destroyers Legion, Lance, and Loyal. An engagement followed, in which damage was done to the British small boats and the four German destroyers were sunk. Captain Fox, senior British officer, had been on the Amphion when she sank the KÖnigin Luise and had been rescued after being knocked insensible by the explosion of the mine that sent the Amphion to the bottom.

The exploit of Lieutenant Commander Horton in the British submarine E-9 when he sank the Hela has already been narrated. The same commander, with the same craft, during the first week of October, 1914, proceeded to the harbor of the German port of Emden, whence had sailed many dangerous German submarines and destroyers that preyed on British ships. He lay submerged there for a long period, keeping his men amused with a phonograph, and then carefully came to the surface. Through the periscope he saw very near him a German destroyer, but he feared that the explosion of a torpedo sent against her would damage his own craft, so he allowed her to steam off, and when she was 600 yards away he let go with two torpedoes. The second found its mark, and the S-126 was no more. He immediately went beneath the surface and escaped the cordon of destroyers which immediately searched for him. By October 7 the E-9 was back in Harwich, its home port.

On the 31st of October, 1914, the cross-channel steamer Invicta received the S. O. S. signal and went to rescue the crew of the old British cruiser Hermes, which had been struck by two torpedoes from a German submarine near Dunkirk. All but forty-four of her men were saved.

The next victim of a German submarine was the gunboat Niger, which, in the presence of thousands of persons on the shore at Deal, foundered without loss of life on November 11, 1914. But one of the German submarines was to go to the bottom in retaliation. On the 23d of November the U-18 was seen and rammed off the Scotch coast, and some hours later was again seen near by. This time she was floating on the surface and carrying a white flag. The British destroyer Garry brought up alongside of her and took off her crew, just as she foundered.

Three days later the Bulwark, a British battleship of 15,000 tons and carrying a crew of 750 officers and men, was blown up in the Thames while at anchor at Sheerness. It was never discovered whether she was a victim of a torpedo, a mine, or an internal explosion. It is possible that a spy had placed a heavy charge of explosives within her hull. Only fourteen men of her entire complement survived the disaster.

It was in November, 1914, also, that the sometime German cruisers Goeben and Breslau, now flying the Turkish flag, became active again. As units in a Turkish fleet they bombarded unfortified ports on the Black Sea on the first day of the month. Retaliation for this was made by the Allies two days later when a combined fleet of French and English battleships bombarded the Dardanelles forts, inflicting a certain amount of damage. On the 18th of November, 1914, the Goeben and Breslau engaged a Russian fleet off Sebastopol. The composition of this Russian fleet was never made public by the Russian admiralty, but it is known that the Russian battleship Evstafi was the flagship. She came up on the starboard side of the two German ships and opened fire on the nearer, the Goeben, at a distance of 8,000 yards. The latter, hit by the Russian 12-inch guns was at first unable to reply because the first shots set her afire in several places, but she finally let go with her own guns and after a fourteen-minute engagement she sailed off into a fog. Her sister ship the Breslau took no part in the exchange of shots, and also made off. The damage done to the Goeben was not enough to put her out of commission; the Evstafi suffered slight damage and had twenty-four of her crew killed.

The British submarine commander, Holbrook, with the B-11 upheld the prestige of this sort of craft in the British navy. He entered the waters of the Dardanelles on the 13th of December, 1914, and submerging, traveled safely through five lines of Turkish mines and sent a torpedo against the hull of the Turkish battleship Messudiyeh. The B-11 slowly came to the surface to see what had been the result of her exploit, and her commander, through the periscope saw her going down by the stern. It was claimed later by the British that she had sunk, a claim which was officially denied by the Turks. Her loss to Turkey, if it did occur, was not serious, for she was too old to move about, and her only service was to guard the mine fields. The B-11 after being pursued by destroyers again submerged for nine hours and came successfully from the scene of the exploit.[Back to Contents]