Great Britain -- Defenses; Imaginary wars and battles
This authentic news of the position of the enemy, combined with the
vague rumours of other landings at Yarmouth, along the coast at some
unknown point north of Cromer, at King's Lynn, and other places,
produced an enormous sensation in London, while the Central News
account, circulated to all the papers in the Midlands and Lancashire,
increased the panic in the manufacturing districts.
The special edition of the "Evening Star," issued about six o'clock on
Tuesday evening, contained another remarkable story which threw some
further light upon the German movements. It was, of course, known that
practically the whole of the Norfolk and Suffolk coast was already held
by the enemy, but with the exception of the fact that the enemy's
cavalry vedettes and reconnoitring patrols were out everywhere at a
distance about twenty miles from the shore, England was entirely in the
dark as to what had occurred anywhere else but at Lowestoft. Attempts
had been made to penetrate the cavalry screen at various points, but in
vain. What was in progress was carefully kept a secret by the enemy. The
veil was, however, now lifted. The story which the "Evening Star" had
obtained exclusively, and which was eagerly read everywhere, had been
related by a man named Scotney, a lobster-fisherman, of Sheringham, in
Norfolk, who had made the following statement to the chief officer of
coastguard at Wainfleet, in Lincolnshire:
"Just before dawn on Sunday morning I was in the boat with my son Ted
off the Robin Friend, taking up the lobster pots, when we suddenly saw
about three miles off shore a mixed lot of curious-looking craft strung
out right across the horizon, and heading apparently for Cromer. There
were steamers big and little, many of them towing queer flat-bottomed
kind of boats, lighters, and barges, which, on approaching nearer, we
could distinctly see were filled to their utmost capacity with men and
horses.
"Both Ted and I stood staring at the unusual sight, wondering whatever
it meant. They came on very quickly, however--so quickly, indeed, that
we thought it best to move on. The biggest ships went along to Weybourne
Gap, where they moored in the twenty-five feet of water that runs in
close to the shore, while some smaller steamers and the flats were run
high and dry on the hard shingle. Before this I noticed that there were
quite a number of foreign warships in the offing, with several
destroyers far away in the distance both to east and west.
"From the larger steamships all sorts of boats were lowered, including
apparently many collapsible whaleboats, and into these, in a most
orderly manner, from every gangway and accommodation-ladder,
troops--Germans we afterwards discovered them to be, to our utter
astonishment--began to descend.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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