“In a very short time there was a big explosion from the direction of the _Koenigsberg_, and from then on she was never free from smoke--sometimes more, sometimes less; at one moment belching out clouds of black smoke, then yellow, with dull explosions from time to time. We kept on firing regularly ourselves, one salvo to the minute--or perhaps two salvoes in three minutes, but the gun-layers were told to keep cool and make sure of their aim. There was one enormous explosion which shot up twice as high as the _Koenigsberg’s_ masts, and the resulting smoke was visible from our deck. The men sent up a huge cheer. “For some time now we had had no reply from the _Koenigsberg_. At 12:53 I fancy she fired one gun, but I was not certain. She certainly did not fire afterwards. As our guns were getting hot we increased the range from 9,550 to 9,575, and later to 9,625--as when hot the shots are apt to fall short. Fine columns of smoke, black, white, and yellow, and occasional dull reports rewarded us, but we were making no mistake and kept at it. The aeroplane was not available, and we had no one to spot for us, remember; still we could see the _K.’s_ masts from our foretop, and the smoke, etc., told its own tale. “Another aeroplane turned up, and we now signalled the _Mersey_ to pass on up stream and open fire nearer. She gave us a great cheer as she passed. “We raised our topmast and had a look at the _Koenigsberg_. She was a fine sight. One mast was leaning over and the other was broken at the maintop, and smoke was pouring out of the mast as out of a chimney. The funnels were gone, and she was a mass of smoke and flame from end to end. We had done all the firing which had destroyed her. The _Mersey_ only started afterwards. That was part of the plan. _Only one ship was to fire at a time, and then there could be no possible confusion in the spotting corrections_; it was a lesson we learned on the Tuesday before! We started. The _Mersey_ was then to move up past her and fire for an hour and so on. Fortunately it was not necessary, and as it turned out would have been impossible. If we had gone on we should probably be there now! When the _Mersey_ passed us she struck a bar about 1,000 yards higher up, and after trying to cross in two different places 100 yards apart, anchored for firing. There was only eight feet of water on the bar and the tide was falling. If we had got up we should probably have had to wait twelve hours for high tide, and probably the Germans would have annoyed us from the banks!