When war began the Germans had the following cruisers on foreign stations: _Scharnhorst_, _Gneisenau_, _Emden_, _Nürnberg_, _Leipzig_ (China); _Königsberg_ (East Africa and Indian Ocean); _Dresden_, _Karlsruhe_ (West Indies). All these ships were fast and modern, and every one of them did us serious injury before they were destroyed. There were also several gunboats: _Geier_, _Planet_, _Komet_, _Nusa_ and _Eber_, none of which could be ignored. In addition, we expected that the Germans would try to send to sea upwards of forty fast armed merchantmen to prey on commerce. Our arrangements were, however, as has been narrated, successful in preventing all but five from leaving harbour. Of these five the largest, the _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_, was sunk by the _Highflyer_ (Captain Buller) on August 26: the _Cap Trafalgar_ was sunk on September 14 by the British armed merchant cruiser _Carmania_ (Captain Noel Grant) after a brilliant action between these two naked ships; and the three others took refuge and were interned in neutral harbours some months later. Our dispositions for preventing a cruiser and commerce-raider attack upon our trade were from the outset very largely successful, and in the few months with which this volume deals, every one of the enemy ships was reduced to complete inactivity, sunk or pinned in port. Nevertheless, it is a fair criticism that we ought to have had more fast cruisers in foreign waters, and in particular that we ought to have matched every one of the German cruisers with a faster ship as it was our intention to do.[53] The _Karlsruhe_ in the West Indies gave a chance to our hunting vessels at the outbreak of war, and the _Königsberg_ in the Indian Ocean was sighted a few days earlier. But our ships were not fast enough to bring the former to action or keep in close contact with the latter till war was declared. As will be seen, nearly every one of these German cruisers took its prey before being caught, not only of merchant ships but of ships of war. The _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_ sank the _Monmouth_ and _Good Hope_, the _Königsberg_ surprised and destroyed the _Pegasus_, and the _Emden_ sank the Russian cruiser _Zemchug_ and the French destroyer _Mousquet_. Certainly they did their duty well.