Another former Hamburg-American liner, the Cincinnati, renamed the Covington, and serving as a U. S. transport, was sunk while returning to the U. S. Six of her crew lost their lives.
On July 14, 1918, the French transport Djemnah was sunk in the Mediterranean with a loss of 442 lives. The well-known former Cunard liner Carpathia, remembered especially for her services to the survivors of the ill-fated Titanic and the Volturno, was sent to the bottom off the west coast of Ireland on July 17, 1918. Three days later the White Star liner Justicia was sunk off the north Irish coast after a fight with a submarine lasting 24 hours.
Losses, not resulting from naval actions, to the naval forces of the various belligerents, as far as they became known, were comparatively small. Germany, besides her losses of submarines, lost some destroyers and mine sweepers. Austria, in May, 1918, lost the battleship Wien. England lost some destroyers, torpedo boats, and mine sweepers. Seven British submarines, caught in Russian waters by the collapse of Russia, were sunk by their own crews off Helsingfors between April 3 and 8, 1918, upon the approach of German naval forces and transports. The Japanese battleship Kawachi, of 21,420 tons and 20 knots, blew up on July 12, 1918, while at anchor in Tokuyama Bay, and sank with a loss of over 500 officers and men. The U. S. armored cruiser San Diego was sunk off Fire Island, N. Y., on July 19, 1918, by a mine apparently having been laid by one of the German submarines then operating in American waters.
On February 24, 1918, the German Government announced that the auxiliary cruiser Wolf had returned to the Austrian harbor Pola, after a 15 months' cruise in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. Claims as to the number and tonnage of ships sunk by the Wolf as made by the German authorities differed widely from the losses compiled by the British authorities, the former amounting to 35 ships of 210,000 tons, the latter to 17 ships of about 40,000 tons. One of the boats attacked by the raider, the Spanish S. S. Igatz Mendi, was captured, and, after a prize crew had been sent aboard, took over the passengers and crews of half a dozen ships which had been sunk. Attempting to return to a German port, she stranded on February 25, 1918, off the Danish coast. Passengers and members of the crews with civil status were sent to their various homes, while the German prize crew and some British military men were interned.
A number of minor naval engagements were fought between small units of the belligerents' naval forces.
Italian naval exploits.
A swift raid was made by a flotilla of large German torpedo-boat destroyers early in the morning of February 15, 1918, on British patrol forces in the Dover Straits. One trawler and 7 drifters, which were occupied in hunting a submarine, which had been sighted in the patrol, were sunk. After having sunk these vessels the German destroyers returned rapidly to the north before any of the Allied forces could engage them. A large number of the crews of the vessels sunk lost their lives.
A light Franco-British division, composed of three French destroyers and three British ships, joined battle in the North Sea early in the morning of March 21, 1918, with a detachment of German torpedo vessels of the "A" type, two of which were sunk. Shortly afterward, the same light division fought a second action with five big destroyers which had been bombarding Dunkirk. One German destroyer was sunk, and it is probable that two other enemy destroyers were lost.