ff Felixstowe, and her engines were disabled by the
explosion, which killed eleven men in her boiler-room. A south-east
gale was blowing and a high sea was running. Attempts were made to
take her in tow, but the hawsers parted, and she drifted helplessly on
to the Cutler shoal in a sinking condition. Her back was broken, and
she fell in two.

A dreadful incident of this tragedy was the attempt of a stoker,
maddened by pain, to escape from below by climbing up the inside of
the funnel. He was seen appearing over the top of the funnel, and was
helped down. His clothes had all been burnt off; his injuries were
terrible, and he shortly afterwards died. The fate of the stokers
trapped below, when disaster comes in this fashion, is a feature of
naval warfare horrible to contemplate.

One of the _Arethusa's_ stokers, by the way, must have been a very
powerful sleeper. While the ship was breaking up and all the
survivors--so it was supposed--had been taken off, a man appeared on a
portion of the wreck, waving his hand for help. He was rescued, and
proved to be a stoker, who had been sleeping below tranquilly through
the explosion, the wreck, and the breaking up of the ship. It was only
when he was awash and the water was pouring over his face that he woke
to the situation.

CHAPTER III

OTHER ACTIONS

CHAPTER III

OTHER ACTIONS

The battle of the Dogger Bank--The sinking of the
_Bluecher_--The Lowestoft raid--The action off Texel.

In the actions that were fought in the North Sea whenever the heavy
ships of the enemy came out and encountered our own, the light Harwich
Force played its part in harassing the enemy and in invaluable
reconnaissance. In the battle of the Dogger Bank, January 28, 1915,
its object was to sight the enemy battle cruisers and to put our own
upon them. It will be remembered that on this occasion the German
battle cruisers turned and hurried towards home as soon as they
sighted our ships. The battle therefore resolved itself into a stern
chase on the part of Admiral Beatty's fleet, which gradually gained on
the enemy and closed the range. The enemy's destroyers covering the
German retirement delivered vigorous attacks in order to delay the
pursuit, but were driven back by our destroyers of the Harwich
flotillas. When the German armoured cruiser _Bluecher_, which had been
damaged badly by our fire, dropped astern of the German line, the
_Indomitable_ was detached to finis