Chasing the various units of the broken line of German ships had taken the British ships miles from each other, but after ten o’clock they began to reach each other by wireless signals and all made again for Stanley.  It was not until the afternoon of the next day, however, that word came from the Kent, for her pursuit had taken her farther than any of the other British ships.

The Bristol and Macedonia had made good in their pursuit of the Santa Isabel and Baden, but in going after the Dresden the Bristol was not successful; the German ship got away in the rainstorm which came up during the evening, and the Bristol, which had hurried out of the harbor at Stanley not quite ready for battle, was unable to keep on her trail.  The fast Eitel Friedrich, which as a merchant ship converted into a man-o’-warsman had greater speed than any of the ships on either side, was able to get away also.  These two German ships now took up their parts as raiders of allied commerce, and were not accounted for till months later.  There was now on the high seas no German squadron.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXXVII

SEA FIGHTS OF THE OCEAN PATROL

There were some minor naval operations in the waters of Europe which have been neglected while larger actions elsewhere were recorded.  During the month of September, 1914, the British admiralty established a blockade of the mouth of the River Elbe with submarines, and the German boats of the same type were showing their worth also.  On August 28, 1914, the day after the raid on Libau by the German cruiser Augsburg, the date of the battle of the Bight of Helgoland, the two Russian protected cruisers Pallada and Bayan, while patrolling the Russian coast in the Baltic Sea, were attacked by German submarines.  Surrounded by these small craft, which made poor targets, the two Russian ships sought to escape by putting on full speed, but the former was hit by a torpedo and sank.  The other got away.

All of the Allies, with the exception of France, had by the beginning of September, 1914, suffered losses in their navies.  The navy of the republic was engaged in assisting a British fleet in maintaining supremacy in the Mediterranean, and kept the Austrian fleet bottled up in the Adriatic Sea.  French warships bombarded Cattaro on September 10, 1914, to assist the military operations of the Montenegrin Government.  These ships then proceeded to the island of Lissa and there destroyed the wireless station maintained by Austria.  The Austrian navy made no appearance while the allied fleets scoured the lower coast of Dalmatia, bringing down lighthouses, destroying wireless stations, and bombarding the islands of Pelagosa and Lesina.  On the 19th of September, 1914, they returned to Lissa and landed a force which took possession of it, thus establishing a new naval base against the Central Powers’ navies.