“We were firing all the time, of course. I attended to the W/T, and passed the messages to the Gunnery Lieutenant, who made the corrections and passed them to the guns. ---- watched the aeroplane and the banks as far as possible. ---- attended to the conning tower voice pipe. We got H. T. fairly soon, and the _Koenigsberg’s_ salvoes were now only four guns. We heard the boom; then before it had finished came whizz-z-z-z or plop, plop, plop, plop, as the shells went just short or over. They were firing much more rapidly than we, and I should think more accurately, but if I had been in the _Koenigsberg_ I should, probably, have thought the opposite! All this time the 3-pounders had occasional outbursts as they saw, or thought they saw, something moving. Occasionally, too, the smoke and fumes from our funnel drifted across the top, and it was unpleasant for a minute or two. We could see now where the _Koenigsberg_ was, and the smoke from her funnels, or that our shells made. She was firing salvoes of four with great rapidity and regularity, about three times a minute, and every one of them close. Some made a splash in the water so near that you could have reached the place with a boat-hook. “At 7:40 (so I am told, as, though I tried I lost all count of time) a shell hit the fore 6-inch of the _Mersey_ and a column of flame shot up. Four were killed and four wounded. Part of the shield was blown away. Only one man remained standing, and after swaying about he fell dead. One had his head completely blown off. Another was lying with his arm torn out at the shoulder, and his body covered with yellow flames from a lyddite charge which caught. The R. N. R. Lieutenant in charge was knocked senseless and covered with blood, but had only a scratch on the wrist to show for it. The gun-layer had an extraordinary escape, and only lost three fingers. Two men escaped as they had just gone forward to weigh the anchor. A burning charge fell into the shell room below, but was fortunately got out. Another shell burst in the motor-boat alongside the _Mersey_ and sank it. One burst in the water about a foot from the side, and we thought she was holed. The _Mersey_ captain then wisely moved and went down river, taking up a position of 1,000 yards down, by the right bank (looking at the _Koenigsberg_). She started in again with her after gun, the other being disabled. For an hour and twenty minutes we went on, and the _Koenigsberg’s_ salvoes came steadily and regularly back, as close as ever. It seemed as if it could not go on much longer. We registered four hits, and the salvoes were reduced from four to three, and later to two, and then to one gun. Whether we had reduced them to silence or whether the _Koenigsberg’s_ crew left them and saved ammunition it is impossible to say.