England began then to hit at the outlying parts of the German Empire with her navy. The cruiser _Pegasus_, before being destroyed by the _Koenigsberg_ at Zanzibar on September 20, 1914, had destroyed a floating dock and the wireless station at Dar-es-Salaam, and the _Yarmouth_, before she went on her unsuccessful hunt for the _Emden_, captured three German merchantmen. As far back as the middle of August, 1914, the capture of German Samoa had been planned and directed from New Zealand. On the 15th of that month an expedition sailed from Wellington, and in order to escape the _Gneisenau_ and _Scharnhorst_, went first to French New Caledonia, where the British cruisers _Psyche_, _Philomel_, and _Pyramus_ were met with. On the 23d of the month, this force, which was augmented by the French cruiser _Montcalm_ and the Australian battleships _Australia_ and _Melbourne_, sailed first for the Fiji Islands and then to Apia on Upolu Island off Samoa. They reached there on the 30th. There was, of course, no force on the island to withstand that of the enemy, and arrangements for surrender of the place were made by signal. Marines were sent ashore; the public buildings were occupied, the telegraph and telephone wires cut, the wireless station destroyed and the German flag hauled down, to be replaced by the Union Jack. The Germans taken prisoners were rewarded for the kind treatment they had accorded British residents before the appearance of this British force, and were sent to New Zealand. The next German possession to be taken was that in the Bismarck Archipelago. It was known that there was a powerful wireless station at Herbertshoehen, the island known as New Pomerania. A small landing party was put ashore on the island in the early morning of September 11, 1914, and made its way, without being discovered, to the town. The surprised inhabitants were too frightened to do anything until this party left to go further on to the wireless station. By that time it met with some resistance, but overcame it. A few days later another landing party had captured the members of the staff of the governor of New Pomerania, together with the governor himself, at Bougainville, Solomon Islands, whence they had fled. The wireless stations on the island of Yap, in the Carolines, and on Pleasant Island were destroyed during the following month.