While the British submarines and their officers and crews were thus making themselves at home in the Sea of Marmora, a campaign as daring had already been begun in the similar enclosed area of the Baltic, Commander Max Horton in the _E9_ being in this case the pioneer. This officer had already accounted for a couple of German men-of-war, the light cruiser _Hela_ sunk in the previous September, and the destroyer _S126_ put down three weeks later It was early on a fine Sunday morning that the _E8_ had sighted the _Hela_ about six miles south of Heligoland. Two torpedoes were launched, and about half a minute after the second was despatched, the listeners on board _E9_ had heard an explosion telling them that one at any rate had got home. A quarter of an hour later, the _E9_ had emerged again to see the _Hela_ listing heavily and apparently beyond hope of redemption; and, when she had next come to the surface, it was to find the cruiser gone and her first German warship to her credit. The destroyer had been sunk three weeks later, near the mouth of the Ems River and under the very guns of Borkum. Such was the record of Commander Max Horton before he made his way into the Baltic in the following year, and began to operate there almost at the {162} same time as his colleagues established their mastery in the Sea of Marmora; and he was worthily succeeded by Francis Cromie, than whose personal story the war produced no stranger. Entering the Baltic in the summer of 1915, as a lieutenant-commander in the submarine _E19_, to die three years later, as an acting captain, in the most tragic of circumstances at Petrograd, few men can have played, in so short a time, such a bewildering variety of parts. Having arrived in the Baltic, his first task was to combat as far as possible the importation into Germany of ore from the Swedish mines. To this end he organized, therefore, and he was the first to organize, a definite and coördinated plan of campaign; and this soon bore visible fruits, not only in the number of vessels sunk, but in the precautions forced upon the enemy. Within a few days, in the early autumn, no less than ten of these vessels were put out of action, the majority being total losses. Amongst the victims were the _Lulfa_, _Nicomedia_, _Gutrune_, and _Pernambuco_--all vessels over 3,000 tons; while, a few days afterward, five German transports were torpedoed and sunk, and a sixth forced to run aground. Of these no less than ten were the actual victims of Lieutenant-Commander Cromie himself in the _E19_.