hips, to which automatically fell
the task of protecting the thousands of ships which, flying the German
red, white, and black, were carrying freight and passengers from port
to port.

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 _Koenigin 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 a 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 _Koenigin
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 _Koenigin 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 debris aloft, brought about the death
of many of