use was the next target chosen by the Germans, one of
their shells going right through it, but leaving it standing. Within
fifty minutes 1,500 German shells were fired into the town and harbor.
While two of the three cruisers which were engaged in bombarding
drew off further to sea and fired at Hartlepool, the third remained
to finish the battery on shore, but in spite of the fact that it
was subjected to long and heavy firing, it was not so terribly
damaged. Many of the shells from the other two ships went over
the towns entirely and buried themselves in the countryside that
heretofore had been turned up only by the peaceful plow. Other shells
did havoc in the business and residential sections of Hartlepool
and West Hartlepool, bringing down buildings and killing civilians
in them as well as on the streets.

At about the same hour the coast guards near Scarborough reported
the approach of foreign ships off the coast, and then telephoned
that the strangers were German cruisers and that they had begun
to bombard the town. A German shell destroyed the shed from which
the telephone message had come and the warnings from it ceased.
It was seen by those on shore that the attack here was being made
by four ships, two of them cruisers and two of them mine layers,
only 800 yards out in the water. This time they were not handicapped
by the fact that they had to stand out so far from shore, and it
was a surprise to the natives to see ships of such draft come so
close to land--a fact which convinced the British authorities that
spies had been at work since the first raid, sending to the German
admiralty either charts or detailed descriptions of the region.

The castle was badly damaged by their fire; the town itself came
next, the Grand Hotel coming in for its share of destruction. They
did little injury to a wireless station in the suburbs, but hit
quite a number of residences, the gas and water works.

Half an hour afterward the two cruisers which had fired upon Scarborough
appeared off Whitby and began to fire at the signal station there.
In the ten minutes that the bombardment of Whitby lasted some 200
shells fell into the place. This time the fact that the German
ships came close to the shore worked against them, for there are
high cliffs close to the water at the spot and it was necessary
for the German gunners to use a high angle, which did not give them
much chance to be accurate. The German ships next turned seaward
a