elonging to the Allies as they sailed from America,
while she was keeping watch against warships flying the enemies'
flags. Still more important was the sailing from New York of the
German liner _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_. This ship had a speed of
22.5 knots and a displacement of 14,349 tons. During the first week
of the war she cleared the port of New York with what was believed to
be a trade cargo, but she so soon afterward began harassing British
trading ships that it was believed that she left port equipped as
a vessel of war or fitted out as one in some other neutral port.
The continued story of the German raids on allied trading ships
must form a separate part of this narrative. It was only a month
after the outbreak of hostilities that the fleets of the allied
powers had swept clean the seven seas of all ships flying German
and Austrian flags which were engaged in trade and not in warlike
pursuits.

The first naval battle of the Great War was fought on August 28,
1914. "A certain liveliness in the North Sea" was reported through
the press by the British admiralty on the 19th of August. Many
of the smaller vessels of the fleet of Admiral von Ingenohl, the
German commander, such as destroyers, light cruisers, and scouting
cruisers, were sighted. Shots between these and English vessels of
the same types were exchanged at long range, but a pitched battle
did not come for still a week. Meanwhile the British navy had been
doing its best to destroy the mine fields established by the Germans.
Trawlers were sent out in pairs, dragging between them large cables
which cut the mines from the sea-bottom moorings. On being loosened
they came to the surface and were destroyed by shots from the trawlers'
decks.

On the 28th of August came the battle off the Bight of Helgoland.
The island of Helgoland had been a British possession from 1807
till 1890, when it was transferred to Germany by treaty. It was
seen immediately by the Germans that it formed an excellent natural
naval base, lying as it does, thirty-five miles northwest of Cuxhaven
and forty-three miles north of Wilhelmshaven. They at once began to
augment the natural protection it afforded with their own devices.
Two Zeppelin sheds were erected, concrete forts were built and 12-inch
guns were installed. The scene of the battle which took place here
was the Bight of Helgoland, which formed a channel eighteen miles
wide some seven miles north of the island and near whic