Perhaps the strangest operations of naval character ever performed were the inland "sea" fights in Africa. The great Nyassa Lake in Africa was the scene of this fighting. With its entire western shore in British possession and with a goodly part of its waters within the territory of German East Africa, it was not unnatural that fighting should take place there. Both countries maintained small armed vessels on the lake. The British ship _Gwendolen_, a 350-ton craft, had been built on the Clyde and had been sent to Nyassa Lake in sections and there assembled and launched in 1898. During August she fought with a German ship and captured it. The fighting on the lake could not, however, determine the success of the military operations taking place in those regions. The preponderance of British naval strength was beginning to tell severely upon German trade by the end of 1914, and her boast that through her navy she would starve out Germany aroused the German Government greatly. In answer to these British threats, Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, German Secretary of Marine, in an interview given to an American newspaper correspondent, hinted that Germany's retaliation would be a war on British merchant ships by German submarines. The interview at the time aroused but mild comment; the idea was a new one, and the question immediately arose as to whether such action would be within the limits of international law. For the time being, however, Von Tirpitz's words remained nothing more than a threat. It was not until months later that the threat was made good, and the consequences must form a separate part of this narrative, to be given in Volume III. The seaplane, the newest naval machine at the time, and as yet an untried factor, was to see maiden service first at the hands of the British, when on the 25th of December a raid on Cuxhaven was made. Seven naval seaplanes attacked a fleet of German cruisers and destroyers lying off Schilling Roads near the German port. The men who thus made history in aviation were Francis E. T. Hewlett, son of the famous novelist, accompanied by seven pilots. A naval force consisting of a light cruiser, a flotilla of destroyers and another of submarines brought up near Helgoland during the morning. When this naval force was first discovered by the lookouts on Helgoland, there immediately appeared approaching from the German base two Zeppelins and a number of German seaplanes, together with some submarines. Meanwhile, from the decks of the British craft there went up the seven British seaplanes.