There were some minor naval operations in the waters of Europe which have been neglected while larger actions elsewhere were recorded. During the month of September, 1914, the British admiralty established a blockade of the mouth of the River Elbe with submarines, and the German boats of the same type were showing their worth also. On August 28,1914, the day after the raid on Libau by the German cruiser _Augsburg_, the date of the battle of the Bight of Helgoland, the two Russian protected cruisers _Pallada_ and _Bayan_, while patrolling the Russian coast in the Baltic Sea, were attacked by German submarines. Surrounded by these small craft, which made poor targets, the two Russian ships sought to escape by putting on full speed, but the former was hit by a torpedo and sank. The other got away. All of the Allies, with the exception of France, had by the beginning of September, 1914, suffered losses in their navies. The navy of the republic was engaged in assisting a British fleet in maintaining supremacy in the Mediterranean, and kept the Austrian fleet bottled up in the Adriatic Sea. French warships bombarded Cattaro on September 10, 1914, to assist the military operations of the Montenegrin Government. These ships then proceeded to the island of Lissa and there destroyed the wireless station maintained by Austria. The Austrian navy made no appearance while the allied fleets scoured the lower coast of Dalmatia, bringing down lighthouses, destroying wireless stations, and bombarding the islands of Pelagosa and Lesina. On the 19th of September, 1914, they returned to Lissa and landed a force which took possession of it, thus establishing a new naval base against the Central Powers' navies. Duels between pairs of ships took place in various seas. The career of the raider _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_, a fast converted liner, was ended by the British ship _Highflyer_, a cruiser, near the Cape Verde Islands, on August 27, 1914, after the former had sunk the merchantman _Hyades_ and had stopped the mail steamer _Galician_. The greater speed of the German vessel was of no advantage to her, for she had been caught in the act of coaling. What then transpired was not a fight, for in armament the two were quite unequal. She soon sank under the _Highflyer_'s fire, her crew having been rescued by her colliers.