Raid
At 16:30 on 2 November 1914, the battlecruiser squadron left its home base on the Jade River. Two squadrons of German battleships followed them from harbour slightly later, to lay in wait for any ships which the battlecruisers might be able to entice to chase them back. By midnight, the squadron was sufficiently north to be passing fishing trawlers from various countries. By 06:30 on 3 November, the patrol sighted a marker buoy at "smith's Knoll Watch", allowing them to determine their exact position and close in to Yarmouth.
Yarmouth coast was patrolled by the minesweeper HMS Halcyon and the old destroyers HMS Lively and Leopard. Halcyon spotted two cruisers, which she challenged. The response came in the form of shellfire, first small, then from larger calibre guns. Lively—some 2 mi (1.7 nmi; 3.2 km) behind—started to make smoke to hide the ships. German shooting was less accurate than it might have been because all the battlecruisers fired upon her at once, making it harder for each ship to tell where their own shells were landing and correct their aim. At 07:40, Hipper ceased firing at Lively and instead directed some shells toward Yarmouth, which hit the beach. Once Stralsund had finished laying mines, the ships departed.
Halcyon—out of immediate danger—radioed a warning of the presence of German ships. The destroyer HMS Success moved to join them, while three more destroyers in harbour started to raise steam. The submarines HMS E10, D5 and D3—inside the harbour—moved out to join the chase, but D5 struck a just-laid mine and sank. At 08:30, Halcyon returned to harbour and provided a report of what had happened.
At 09:55, Admiral Beatty was ordered south with a British battlecruiser squadron, with squadrons of the Grand Fleet following from Ireland. By then, Hipper was 50 mi (43 nmi; 80 km) away, heading home. German ships returning home waited overnight in Schillig Roads for fog to clear to return to harbour. In the fog, the armoured cruiser SMS Yorck—which was traveling from the Jade Bay to Wilhelmshaven—went off course and hit two mines. A number of the crew survived by sitting on the wreck of the ship, which had sunk in shallow water, but at least 235 men were killed (reports vary).
Read more about this topic: Raid On Yarmouth
Famous quotes containing the word raid:
“John Brown and Giuseppe Garibaldi were contemporaries not solely in the matter of time; their endeavors as liberators link their names where other likeness is absent; and the peaks of their careers were reached almost simultaneously: the Harper’s Ferry Raid occurred in 1859, the raid on Sicily in the following year. Both events, however differing in character, were equally quixotic.”
—John Cournos (1881–1956)
“Each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)