They were not yet hidden in the fog when Lieutenant Ingoldsby's submarine, manoeuvring to torpedo them, ran up against one of their mines and was instantly sunk, with the loss of her gallant commander and every one of his crew. Hardly had the H29 disappeared when two of the patrolling trawlers, steaming up to her rescue, were also sent to the bottom.
The German light cruisers must have been fitted for this purpose of mine sowing. When the battleships were advancing, these smaller, high-speed scouts would act as a screen, and in retreat they would keep astern of the big ships, dropping a trail of small mines overboard as they fled.
The sacrifice of the H29 and the two trawlers was a serious disaster; but at the same time it taught our Navy a valuable lesson in tactics. Never again would any British warship pursuing a German follow directly in the wake, but always on a parallel course.
It was the wounded Kingfisher which brought into Haddisport the news that a new mine-field had been sown. A fleet of mine-sweepers, led by the gunboat Stormcock, was at once sent out. It included the Dainty, with Mark Redisham on board, and throughout the rest of that exciting day the people on shore were startled by repeated loud detonations as the floating mines were one after another exploded by gunfire from the trawler's decks.
The Dainty and three of her consorts remained at sea for a week, doing patrol duty—cruising between the English coasts and the Bight of Heligoland in search of enemy ships or ships carrying contraband of war. They were now armed with machine-guns and could defend themselves in emergency.
At this time the chief interests of the war were centred upon the commerce destroyers on the outer seas and the military operations in France and Flanders. The Germans were making their great effort to force a way through to Calais. Their navy was hemmed in by the watchful British Fleet, and for a long time after the bombardment of Haddisport the North Sea was clear of their ships. There was no target for British naval guns.
Some few of their destroyers and submarines, it is true, contrived to steal out from the protection of their fortified harbours, and two British cruisers—the Hawke and the Hermes—were sunk by their torpedoes.
Fearing to risk their battleships in an engagement on the open sea, the enemy were using their small craft in the pirate work of sinking innocent merchantmen and fishing boats. They had seized the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, and were making this a base for submarines.
It was surmised that they intended also to station a force of torpedo boats at Antwerp, in spite of the breach of Dutch neutrality which the use of the River Scheldt would imply. But to enter either seaport they had to run the gauntlet of our North Sea patrols, and on at least one occasion they met with complete disaster.
A patrol of English trawlers was cruising off the Dutch coast, not far from the mouth of the Scheldt. Mark Redisham, on board the Dainty, was enduring as best he could the dull monotony of his confined life on a small vessel pitching uncomfortably on a rough sea in a bitterly cold wind. He was walking the wet deck, his oilskins dripping with rain, when he saw smoke on the dim horizon to the north. It came from the funnels of four torpedo-boat destroyers.