[S] The dispositions remained in force until the 14th, no enemy vessels being sighted; the report was probably incorrect.
The submarines of the 11th (Grand Fleet) Flotilla were active during the month in the Kattegat and patrolling off the Horn Reef. They reported on the 20th that nothing but enemy submarines and aircraft were visible.
The attacks by enemy submarines on warships reported during the month were:
The mine-sweeping sloop Rosemary of the Southern Force was torpedoed on the 4th, but was towed into the Humber.
The light cruiser Galatea was missed by a torpedo on the 12th, in Lat. 57.43 N., Long. 1.14 E.
The armed boarding-steamer Duke of Cornwall was missed by two torpedoes on the 13th, whilst engaged in boarding a ship south-east of the Pentland Skerries.
The light cruiser Yarmouth was missed by a torpedo on the 26th.
Three armed trawlers of the Peterhead patrol were sunk by the gunfire of four enemy submarines, on the 11th, in Lat. 57.14 N., Long. 1.11 E., their guns being entirely outranged by the 4-inch guns with which the submarines are armed. This combined attack on the trawlers of the Peterhead patrol, although resulting in the regrettable loss of the three trawlers, was a great and well deserved tribute paid by the enemy to the work of that patrol which had been uniformly successful, and had proved a great annoyance to the German submarines.
Attempts were made to locate and destroy enemy submarines on the 7th, to the eastward of the Pentland Firth; on the 12th, two divisions of destroyers were sent from Scapa to attack the submarine that had fired at the Duke of Cornwall, the Musketeer dropping a depth charge close to the periscope of the submarine, and it was thought considerably damaging her; on the 15th, destroyers and sea-planes from Scapa were sent after a submarine reported by the armed boarding steamer Dundee as sighted 10 miles east-south-east of the Pentland Skerries, but she was not seen again; on the 29th, a division of destroyers again attempted to locate a submarine in that vicinity, but failed to do so.
Mines laid by an enemy submarine were discovered by the sweeping trawlers in the southern channel in the Moray Firth on the 26th, and were swept up by trawlers and fleet sweepers before any damage was done.