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 _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 the British sailors
in the small boats, as well as that of a German prisoner from the
_Koenigin 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 Briti