The first naval movements in the Great War occurred on the morning of August 5, 1914. The British ship Drake cut two cables off the Azores which connected Germany with North and South America, thus leaving these eleven German fighting ships without communication with the German admiralty direct. And the war was not a day old between England and Germany before the German ship Königin Luise was caught sowing mines off the eastern English ports by the British destroyer Lance.
[CHAPTER XXXIII]
FIRST BLOOD—BATTLE OF THE BIGHT
The Germans had taken heed of the value of mines from lessons learned at the cost of Russia in the war with Japan, and set about distributing these engines of destruction throughout the North Sea. The British admiralty knowing this, sent out it fleet of destroyers to scour home waters in search of German mine layers.
About ten o'clock on the morning of August 5, 1914, Captain Fox, on board the Amphion, came up with a fishing boat which reported that it had seen a boat "throwing things overboard" along the east coast. A flotilla, consisting of the Lance, Laurel, Lark and Linnet, set out in search of the stranger and soon found her. She was the Königin Luise, and the things she was casting overboard were mines. The Lance fired a shot across her bow to stop her, but she put on extra speed and made an attempt to escape. A chase followed; the gunners on the British ship now fired to hit. The first of these shots carried away the bridge of the German ship, a second shot missed, and a third and fourth hit her hull. Six minutes after the firing of the first shot her stern was shot away, and she went to the bottom, bow up. Fifty of her 130 men were picked up and brought to the English shore.
The first naval blood of the Great War had been drawn by Britain on August 5, 1914. The Königin Luise's efforts had not been in vain. She had posthumous revenge on the morning of August 6, when the Amphion, flagship of the third flotilla of destroyers, hit one of the mines which the German ship had sowed. It was seen immediately by her officers that she must sink; three minutes after her crew had left her there came a second explosion, which, throwing débris aloft, brought about the death of many of the British sailors in the small boats, as well as that of a German prisoner from the Königin Luise.
All the world, with possibly the exception of the men in the German admiralty, now looked for a great decisive battle "between the giants" in the North Sea. The British spoke of it as a coming second Trafalgar, but it was not to take place. For reasons of their own the Germans kept their larger and heavier ships within the protection of Helgoland and the Kiel Canal, but their ships of smaller type immediately became active and left German shores to do what damage they might to the British navy. It was hoped, perhaps, that the naval forces of the two powers could be equalized and a battle fought on even terms after the Germans had cut down British advantage by a policy of attrition.
A flotilla of German submarines on August 9 attacked a cruiser belonging to the main British fleet, but was unable to inflict any damage. The lord mayor of the city of Birmingham received the following telegram the next morning: "Birmingham will be proud to learn that the first German submarine destroyed in the war was sunk by H. M. S. Birmingham." Two shots from the British ship had struck the German U-15, and she sank immediately.
The German admiralty, even before England had declared war, suspected that the greatest use for the German navy in the months to come would be to fight the British navy, but they ventured to show their naval strength against Russia beforehand. Early in August they sent the Augsburg into the Baltic Sea to bombard the Russian port of Libau, but after doing a good bit of damage the German ship retired. It is probable that this raid was nothing more than a feint to remind Russia that she continually faced the danger of invasion from German troops landed on the Baltic shores under the cover of German ships, and that she must consequently keep a large force on her northern shores instead of sending it west to meet the German army on the border.