A small coasting steamer entering Plymouth Sound struck a submarine mine a few cables from the Mewstone, and sank with all hands. It was subsequently discovered that the channel on either side of the breakwater had been strewn with mines, so that ere a battleship or cruiser dare leave the Hamoaze the Sound had to be "swept" as far seaward as a line joining Rame Head and Wembury Point. Meanwhile the fleet of the Triple Alliance--outnumbering Admiral Hobbes's command by no less than seven Dreadnoughts and super-Dreadnoughts, eleven armoured cruisers, and more than twenty ocean-going destroyers--sought to cut off the British fleet and compel it to give battle. Once the British fleet were destroyed the position of the Empire would be hopeless. Without landing a single hostile regiment her downfall would be only a matter of a few weeks; with her seaborne commerce captured or destroyed England would be starved into submission; the partition of the Empire would follow in due course. The minute Admiral Hobbes heard by wireless of the outbreak of war, he issued orders for the fleet to steam at its greatest speed straight for the English Channel. A man of undoubted courage and skill, he never hesitated to count the cost; disregarding the disparity of force, he resolved to take the initiative and do his best to win a decisive action. At daybreak on the day following the departure of the British fleet from Bantry Bay, two of the swift coastal destroyers signalled that the enemy's ships were standing northwest in quarter line. Unfortunately this information, though correct, was not complete, as a strong division, in line ahead, was steaming parallel to that of the main fleet, though some fifteen miles to the south-west. Thus, should the British admiral of the fleet attempt to break the enemy's line--as he decided to do--he would have to run the risk of being raked by the guns of the powerful division lying hull down on his starboard side. Admiral Bloch, in supreme command of the combined hostile fleets, had laid his plans carefully, but he had not reckoned with Captain Brookes, of the _Olive Branch_. Bloch it was who had planned the annihilation of the dreaded cruiser by means of a surprise night attack by one of the latest type of airships. The crew of the airship had cabled news of the failure of the enterprise, but unfortunately for the enemy, owing to an error on the part of a Greek telegraph operator, the code word for "destroyed" was substituted for that signifying "escaped." Consequently Admiral Bloch, imagining that all danger from that source was at an end, did not hesitate to meet the British fleet, well knowing that the latter, though powerful, was vastly inferior in numbers to his own.