Just nine days later the _King Edward VII_, a pre-dreadnought of 16,500 tons, collided with a mine in the North Sea and soon foundered. She was a second-line ship of heavy battery and carried a crew of 777 men, all of whom were taken off before the big craft sunk. This was one of the few instances in which there was no loss of life from mine or torpedo explosions. The accident occurred at a time when the _King Edward VII_ was accompanied by a number of other vessels, or most of the men aboard probably would have been drowned. On a warship, even more than a passenger vessel, it is impossible to carry enough boats for all. The price of defeat in a naval action inevitably is death. For this reason there was general thanksgiving in England that the crew of the battleship had been saved, even though the ship was lost. During the month of January, 1916, three British sailing vessels and ten steamships were sunk by enemy warships, with a respective tonnage of 153 and 31,481. Four hundred and ten lives were lost. Three steamships struck mines and foundered in the same month, having a tonnage of 3,357. Two persons died in the trio of accidents. The _Amiral Charner_, an old but serviceable French armored cruiser of 4,680 tons, was torpedoed in the Mediterranean near Syria on February 8, 1916. She went down within a few minutes, although about a hundred men managed to reach the lifeboats and rafts. The weather was bitterly cold, and only one survivor lived to bring the news. He was picked up on a raft with fourteen dead companions and told an incoherent story that bore little relation to the truth. But it was only too easy to guess what had happened. During the early period of the war the French navy escaped the heavy blows that fell upon the British, partly because Germany concentrated on her larger antagonist's navy, and partly due to the fact that the British ships were nearly all engaged in the Atlantic, while the French confined themselves more especially to the Mediterranean. With the opening of operations at the Dardanelles and the coming of German submarines the losses of the French sea forces began to grow rapidly. But they held the Mediterranean against all attacks.