abrupt close. On July 2 the Russia'n armoured cruisers " Ad- miral Makaroff " and " Bayan " (both 2 8-in., 8 6-in.), and the cruisers " Bogatyr " and " Oleg " (both 12 6-in.), all old ships, met the light cruiser "Augsburg" (12 4-i-in.) and minelayer " Albatross " off the coast of Courland and drove the latter ashore at Ostergarn on the E. coast of Gothland (Sweden). The German armoured cruisers " Roon " (4 8-2, 10 6-in.) and. the " Liibeck " (10 4-i-in.) proceeded to reinforce them but were chased off by the "Rurik" (4 io-in., 8 8-in.), and when the old armoured cruiser "Prinz Adalbert" (4 8-2-in., 10 6-in.) was hurrying to the spot, she was torpedoed and seriously damaged by Eg (Comm. Max Horton) in the Gulf of Danzig. In Aug. 1915 a strenuous attempt was made by the German Baltic squadron to force the Gulf of Riga, whose possession would have enabled them to take the Russian army in rear, and the ist and 4th Squadrons were assembled in the Baltic for the purpose, but the Russian minefields offered a serious obstacle and British submarines were again active. On Aug. 19, Ei (Comm. Laurence) torpedoed and seriously injured the German battle-cruiser " Moltke," and she had to return to Kiel at 15 knots. Next day the order came to abandon the operations; all the High Sea Fleet ships were sent back, and there ensued a long period of minor activity in the East Baltic, though British submarines still remained there and did much to disturb the important German iron-ore trade with Sweden during the latter months of 1915.
Meanwhile the Grand Fleet had been carrying out occasional sweeps into the North Sea. The 3rd Cruiser Squadron with the " Nottingham " and " Birmingham " left the Forth on June
18 1915 for a sweep of this sort towards the Skagerack, and crossed the path of a line of four German submarines stationed off the Forth. Five torpedoes were fired at them, but all missed except one on the 2oth from 1138, which hit the " Roxburgh " and sent her into dock for a time. Some three weeks later came the last echo of the cruiser warfare, when news arrived from the East Indies of the destruction of the " Konigsberg " in the Rufiji river on July n 1915.
After sinking the " Pegasus " off Zanzibar on Sept. 20 1914, she had hidden herself on the E. coast of Africa in the swampy delta of the Rufiji river opposite Mafia I. and the light cruisers " Chatham," " Weymouth " and " Dartmouth " had been sent from the Mediterranean to look for her. The papers of a cap- tured German ship, the " Praesident," gave the first clue to her position, showing that coal had been sent 6 m. up the Rufiji for her use. The " Chatham " (Capt. S. R. Drury-Lowe) arrived off the Rufiji on Oct. 30 and learnt from the natives that a ship was lying up the Suninga branch of the river. The river was blockaded and a blockship sunk in the mouth of the creek. A supply ship, the s.s. " Rubens " (formerly British), had been sent to her from Germany and had made the long journey round Africa in safety, but exact intelligence had been received of her, and the cruiser " Hyacinth " (Rear-Adml. King-Hall) met her off Mansa Bay (near Tanga) and set her on fire. The monitors " Severn," " Humber " and " Mersey " (under Capt. E. J. Fullerton) were sent out later with an aero- plane, and their final attack was made on July u 1915. Fire was opened by the " Mersey " at 9,500 yd., and hitting was established with the aeroplane's help after the eighth salvo. An explosion was followed by a dense cloud of smoke, and the last German cruiser was left a blazing wreck in the swamp of an African jungle. The ship sunk by the " Hyacinth " in Ger- man E. Africa was not the only one which ventured into the North Sea. The " Meteor " slipped over to the Scottish coast in Aug. 1915 and on the night of Aug. 7-8 laid a large minefield of 380 mines off the Moray Firth, sinking the patrol vessel " Ramsey " and taking the survivors of her crew prisoners. Intelligence came of her movements, and the " Harwich " destroyers went off at full speed to intercept her, but her captain sunk her and escaped in a Swedish vessel.
In Germany the submarine warfare controversy had reached an acute stage. After the sinking of the " Arabic " on Aug.
19 1916 by 1/24, orders were issued that no passenger steamers
were to be sunk without warning and rescue. The chief of the admiral staff resigned, to be succeeded by Adml. von Holtzen- dorff. Tirpitz sat at his " lonely table " at Great Headquarters, discontented and furious, and all submarine activities in the Channel and to the westward ceased for a time.
The pressure of the blockade was beginning to be felt (see BLOCKADE). It was the British navy's part to intercept all shipping entering the North Sea, in itself an immense task lost to sight in the greater immensity of the war. In the north this work was performed by the loth Cruiser Squadron, but the New Year of 1916 saw the " Moewe " (Lt.-Comm. Count Nikolas zu Dohna-Schlodien), one of the most notable German raiders, slip through its weather-beaten lines and get safely out to sea, after laying a large minefield on the west side of the Orkneys, where the " King Edward VII." was lost Jan. 5 1916.
Operations in iQid. The year 1916 saw an important change in German naval policy. Adml. von Pohl had been seriously injured in an accident, and his place was taken on Jan. 18 by Adml. Scheer, a strong advocate of an offensive strategy at sea. He received his appointment as commander-in-chief on Jan. 18, and after a conference with the chief of the naval staff, Adml. von Holtzendorff, it was decided to adopt bolder measures.
One of the first fruits of the new policy was the dispatch of the German and, 6th, and 9th Torpedo Flotillas to the Dogger Bank on Feb. 10 1916, where they attacked the loth Sloop Flotilla belonging to the Humber Patrol and sank the " Arabis." Meanwhile the safe passage of the " Moewe " had induced another raider, the " Greif " (4 5'9-in. and two torpedo tubes), to try and get to sea. The commander-in-chief Grand Fleet had received intelligence of some project of the sort, and his patrols were posted between the Shetland Is. and Norway to intercept her. The "Greif" (with a crew of 306) was sighted by the " Andes " of the loth Cruiser Squadron on Feb. 29 some 90 m. N.E. of the Shetlands, and the " Alcantara " (Capt. Thos. Wardle) joining in the chase got within 6,000 yd. of her at 9:15 A.M. and ordered her to stop. She was then flying the Norwegian flag and gave the' name of the Norwegian s.s. " Rena " from Rio to Trongjhem, but when the " Alcantara " lowered a boat to board, the German ensign fluttered out at the main and she opened fire. A hot action ensued, in which the " Greif " was sunk but the " Alcantara " was hit by a torpedo and went down as well. That same night the " Moewe " managed to slip through the dislocated patrol line and reach home. Directionals had been received that night at 2:53 A.M. of an enemy vessel off Ekersund, but unfortunately, on the assumption that she was coming westward, the patrols had been redisposed to the westward and missed her. Her cruise in mid- Atlantic in the regions of trade winds and flying fish had been a great and successful adventure. She had captured 15 ships of 57,835 tons, of which 14 were sunk. Her most important capture was the " Appano " (Jan. 15, 135 m. east of Madeira), an Elder Dempster liner of 7,781 tons, with the governors of Sierra Leone and Nigeria and a cargo worth 2,000,000 on board. She was sent in to Newport News, where she arrived on Feb. 15, but the German Government's claim was disallowed by the U.S. Supreme Court in March 1917, on the grounds that she arrived without convoy and was sent in with the inten- tion of being laid up indefinitely.
A weightier matter than the return of the " Moewe " was now engaging the attention of Great Headquarters. Scheer when he took over the command had fully expected to see the inauguration of unrestricted submarine warfare in March 1916. Von Tirpitz and von Holtzendorff had appeared at a council of war on March 4 1916 and pressed for a decision, but the Chancellor had again carried the day. Von Tirpitz, unable to bear the constant frustration of his schemes, resigned, and Adml. von Capelle took his place.
The German air raids on England had instigated a counter- attack and on March 24 1916 the Harwich flotillas sailed with the " Cleopatra," " Undaunted," " Penelope " and " Conquest " in support of an aerial operation carried out by the " Vindex " and five aeroplanes against the Zeppelin sheds at Tondern.
