could not make the many
repairs which his vessel needed. To put them off at a neutral port or
to let them go in one of the ships he captured would mean that his
position would be reported to British ships within a week. He
therefore decided to end his raiding and put in at Newport News. His
vessel was interned in the American port.

We may now return to the story of the blockade against Germany and the
retaliation she sought. The Allies were now stopping as much shipping
on its way to Germany as they dared without bringing on trouble with
neutral powers. The _Dacia_, formerly a German merchantman, was taken
over, after the outbreak of the war, by an American citizen and sailed
from New Orleans for Rotterdam with a cargo of cotton on February 12,
1915. She was stopped by a French warship and taken to a French port
February 27, 1915, and there held till the matter of the validity of
her transfer of registry could be settled.

On the other hand the German submarine exploits continued and found
among their victims a British warship, along with the many
merchantmen. On March 11, 1915, the British auxiliary cruiser
_Bayano_, while on patrol duty became the victim of a German torpedo
off the Scotch coast. She went down almost immediately, carrying with
her the greater part of her crew.

But not always were the submarines immune. Only the day before the
British destroyer _Ariel_ rammed the German submarine _U-12_ and sent
her to the bottom, after rescuing her crew. She was of an older type,
built in 1911, of submarine, and had played an active part in the
raiding in British waters. On February 21, 1915, she had sunk the
Irish coasting steamer _Downshire_ in the Irish Sea, and her
destruction was particularly welcome in British shipping circles.

Once more an incident in the naval warfare of the Great War was to
involve diplomatic exchanges between the belligerents and the United
States. The African liner _Falaba_, a British ship on her way from
Liverpool to Lisbon, was torpedoed in St. George's Channel on the
afternoon of March 28, 1915. She had as one of her passengers an
American, L. C. Thrasher, who lost his life when the ship sank.

The naval warfare was proceeding like a game of checkers. When on
March 14, 1915, there came the end of still another of the German
raiding cruisers, the _Dresden_. She was a cruiser built in 1907 and
having a displacement of 3,544 tons. Her speed was good--24.5
knots--and her armament of