Busy at work. Finished early. Grand day. News of one Danish & one Norwegian ship being blown up in the North Sea. The British navy has landed marines at Ostend for its protection. The Cruiser “Highflyer” has sunk the German cruiser “Kaiser Wilhelm the Great”1 off the West Coast of Africa. Joe showed me some of Willie Wanless’s writings and we talked a bit about it. Had walk out last thing. The German cruiser Magdeburg2 sunk by Russians.
Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse was a commerce raider; Highflyer, an elderly (1898) 6” gun cruiser, found her coaling off the Spanish/Saharan Rio del Oro and demanded her surrender. She refused, saying she was in neutral territorial waters; which neutrality she had however herself been violating, so Highflyer sank her, her crew escaping to the shore. ↩
Magdeburg: actually ran aground on 26 August off Odensholm (Estonia), and was captured by Russian cruisers. They seized code books, giving one copy to the RN, which was useful eg. before Jutland. ↩