Helgoland.  The Mainz then received the attention of all available British guns, including the battle cruiser Lion, and soon fire broke out within her hold.  Next her foremast, slowly tottering and then inclining more and more, crashed down upon her deck, a distorted mass.  Following that came down one of her funnels.  The fire which was raging aboard her was hampering her machinery, and her speed slackened; the moment to strike with a torpedo had come, and one of these “steel fishes” was sent against her hull below water.  In the explosion which followed one of her boilers came out through her deck, ascended some fifty feet and dropped down near her bow; her engines stopped, and she began to settle slowly, her bow going down first.

It was now noon.  From behind the veil of the surrounding mist came the Falmouth and Nottingham, which with the guns in their turrets completely finished the hapless Mainz, and their sailors openly admired the bravery of her crew, which, while she sank, maintained perfect order and sang the German national air.

There was yet the Koeln with which the Arethusa had to do battle.  But by now the heavy British battle cruisers Lion and Queen Mary had also come down from the northwest to take part in the fighting, and letting the Arethusa escape from the range of the light cruiser Koeln, they went for the German, which, overpowered, fled toward Helgoland.  While the chase was on the Ariadne again made her appearance and came to the aid of the Koeln, but the light cruiser Ariadne carried no gun as effective in destructive power as the 13.5-inch guns of the Lion, and she, too, had to seek safety in flight.  The British ships then finished the Koeln; so badly was she hit that when the British small boats sought the spot where she quickly sank they found not a man of her crew afloat.  Every man of the 370 of her crew perished.

The afternoon came, and with its advent the mist, which had kept the guns of Helgoland’s forts out of action, had cleared off the calm waters of the North Sea.  By the time the sun had set only floating wreckage gave evidence that here brave men had fought and died.  By evening the respective forces were in their home ports, being treated for their hurts.  The Germans had lost the Mainz, Koeln, and Ariadne, and the Strassburg had limped home.  The loss in destroyers and other small craft in addition to that of the V-187 was not known.  The loss on the British side had not entailed that of a large ship, but the Arethusa when she returned to her home port was far from being in good condition, and some of the smaller boats were in the same circumstances.

Admiral von Ingenohl was committed more strongly than ever, as a result of this engagement, to the belief that the best policy for his command would be to keep his squadrons within the protection afforded by Helgoland and that the most damage could be done to the enemy by picking off her larger ships one by one.  In other words, he again turned to the policy of attrition.  He immediately put it into force.