The German admiralty on August 1 had issued orders to German merchantmen to keep within neutral ports, and by this means such important ships as the Friedrich der Grosse and the Grosser Kurfuerst eluded capture.  In the harbor of New York was the Kronprinzessin Cecilie, a fast steamer of 23.5 knots.  She left New York on July 28 carrying a cargo of $10,000,000 in gold, and was on the high seas when England declared war.  Naturally she was regarded by the British as a great prize, and the whole world awaited from day to day the news of her capture, but her captain, showing great resourcefulness, after nearly reaching the British Isles, turned her prow westward, darkened all exterior lights, put canvas over the port holes and succeeded in reaching Bar Harbor, Me., on the morning of August 5.

Similarly the Lusitania and the French liner Lorraine, leaving New York on August 5, were able to elude the German cruiser Dresden, which was performing the difficult task of trying to intercept merchantmen belonging 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.