s ship had
been protecting a part of the French fleet from flank attack inside
the straits, and under the cover of darkness had been approached by
a Turkish destroyer which fired the fatal torpedo. It sank almost
immediately.

The submarines of the German navy which had made the long journey
to participate in the action near the Dardanelles got in their
first work on May 26, 1915, when a torpedo fired by one of them
struck the British battleship _Triumph_ and sent her to the bottom.
Of interest to naval authorities all over the world was the fact
that this ship at the time she was struck had out torpedo nets
which were supposed to be torpedo-proof; but the German missile
tore through them and reached the hull. A hunt was made for the
hostile submarine by the British destroyers, but she was found
by the British battleship _Majestic_; but before the British ship
could fire a shot at the German submarine, the latter fired a torpedo
that caught the battleship near her stern and sank her immediately.
Apprehension was now felt for the more formidable ships such as
the _Queen Elizabeth_ and others of her class which were in those
waters; inasmuch as the operations at the Dardanelles assumed more
and more a military rather than a naval character, the British
admiralty thought it wiser to keep the _Queen Elizabeth_ in safer
waters; she was consequently called back to England. Only old
battleships and cruisers were left to cooperate with the troops
operating on the Gallipoli Peninsula.

Naval warfare in southern waters was continued against British
warships by the Austrian navy. On June 9, 1915, the Austrian admiralty
announced that a cruiser of the type of the _Liverpool_ had been
struck by a torpedo fired by an Austrian submarine while the former
was off San Giovanni di Medua, near the Albanian coast. Reports of
the incident issued by the Austrian and British naval authorities
differed, the former claiming that the cruiser had sunk, and the
latter that it had remained afloat and had been towed to an Adriatic
port.

Most unique was an engagement between the Italian submarine _Medusa_
and a similar craft flying the Austrian flag on June 17, 1915.
This was the first time that two submarines had ever fought with
each other. On that day the two submarines, the presence of each
unknown to the other, lay submerged, not a great distance apart.
The _Medusa_, after some hours, came up, allowing only her periscope
to show; seeing no