Early in the first hours of January 24, these two forces, unknown to each other were steaming head on, the Germans taking a course leading northwest and the English a course leading southeast. At twenty minutes past seven in the morning the _Aurora_ first sighted the enemy and engaged him immediately with her two 6-inch guns, sending at the same time word of her discovery to Admiral Beatty. Admiral Hipper, the German commander, as soon as he knew the enemy had sighted him, turned about and started to steam in a southeasterly direction. In view of the results of this battle, it is best to go into the matter of the tactics involved. Tactics may be of two kinds--spontaneous or premeditated. When two hostile fleets meet on the high sea far from the base of either, the object of each is the complete destruction of the other, and the tactics employed are spontaneous. Such an action was that off Coronel. But on a closed sea such as the North Sea spontaneous tactics can rarely be used, for the reason that naval bases are too near, and from these there may slyly come reenforcements to one or the other or to both of the fighting fleets, making the arrangement of traps an easy matter. This is particularly true of the North Sea, on which it is possible for a fleet to leave Cuxhaven early in the evening and to be at Scarborough early the following morning. In addition, sailing is restricted because an unusually large portion of its waters is too shallow to permit of the passage of large ships. The Germans on this occasion had arranged a trap. They knew that after making two successful raids on the English coast the British would keep even a closer watch for them. When they sailed from their base, it was with the expectation of meeting a hostile force, as was undoubtedly their expectation on the first two raids. But they did not intend to fight matters out on high waters. What they wanted to do was to get the British involved in a good running engagement, steering a southeasterly course the while and luring the British ships within striking force of a waiting fleet of superdreadnoughts and perhaps land guns and mines. This explains why Admiral Hipper turned stern as soon as he got into touch with the enemy.