On September 23, 1914, the Japanese were joined by a British force of 1,369 men under command of Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel Walter Barnardiston, commander of the British forces in North China, including Wei-hai-wei. Although the British did not arrive until a month after the forces sailed from Japan, the distance that separated Laoshan Bay, where the former made their landing on the original leased territory and thus avoided the breach of neutrality against China committed by the Japanese, was so much shorter and the landing place presented so much less difficulty than the Japanese encountered in their preliminary advance, that the British really arrived on the scene of actual operations just as the Japanese were finishing their first engagements in force, on September 28, 1914. Colonel Barnardiston's command consisted of 910 noncommissioned officers and men of the Second Battalion South Wales Borderers, and 450 noncommissioned officers and men of the Thirty-sixth Sikhs, besides nine staff officers. The bombardment of the Tsing-tau forts began on August 26, 1914, and on September 1, 1914, the Japanese bluejackets seized several small islands in Kiao-chau Bay, which the Germans were unable to defend except by long range fire from their shore batteries, and by mines with which the harbor had been thickly sown. Mine sweeping therefore occupied the first activities of the fleet. This operation was signalized by one of the many acts of patriotism and bravery that characterized the siege on both sides. One hundred Japanese women who made their living by diving for pearls in these waters offered to enter the water and release the mines from their moorings so that they would be carried away by the tides. Their courageous offer was declined, not because the Japanese admiral believed it could not be carried out, but because the Japanese law expressly prohibited the employment of women in warlike operations. When one of the small boats that acted as mine sweepers was blown up during the dragging that followed the women renewed their offer, but again it was declined. The first landing on the Shantung Peninsula was made September 2, 1914. Ten thousand troops were put ashore; but it was not until September 25, 1914, that the invaders made their first capture of a German outpost, Weihsien. The check on the Japanese advance, however, was due less to the defenders of Tsing-tau than to the torrential rains, which swelled the streams and for a time effectively barred further movements. The Japanese artillery was compelled to return to Lung-chow, their original base on the mainland.