We knew what was in store for us as soon as our officers were able to make out the outlines of the approaching ships. We knew the armament and the gun equipment we had to face. We knew that each of those oncoming British battle cruisers could throw a weight of metal 10,000 pounds twice every minute--a total of fifty tons of projectiles every minute. Yet through it all some never despaired of their lives; others from the beginning gave themselves up as lost. As the nearest of the English ships drew closer, the angle of their gun fire became flatter, but still from far off on the horizon came the shells it seemed to drop from the skies. After a time we were receiving literally a hailstorm of shells--some falling from overhead down through our decks, some penetrating through the stern and travelling half way the length of the ship, and still others coming straight through the sides. And this was not all. The big British battle cruiser that led the British line thundered on past us and then began to rake us with her stern batteries. The gunners in the stern turrets of the British ship had been standing idle and restless, impatient to have a hand in the fight. As this ship drew on past us the rear guns for the first time had a chance at the _Bluecher_, and they tore our bow and forward works with their heavy shells, while the after guns of the secondary batteries raked our decks at point-blank range. We were the first under fire in the action and we were the last under fire. Practically every English ship poured projectiles into us. I have never seen such gunnery, and there has never been the like of it before in the history of the world. We could not fight such guns as the English ships had, and before long we had no guns of any kind to fight with. Our decks were swept by shot, our guns were smashed and the gun crews wiped out. One particular shell from a thirteen-and-a-half-inch gun I remember well. I saw it coming and watched it burst in the heart of the ship. This single projectile probably killed and wounded not less than fifty men. We had our floating equipment handy and soon began to put it on. Many of the men leaped into the water, preferring to trust to getting picked up by the British rather than remain for certain destruction on the doomed and helpless _Bluecher_. It was early in the action that the concentrated fire of the British guns on the _Bluecher_ landed a shell directly over our engine room. This slowed up the ship and we began to drop back. Very soon a second shell reached the engine room, and we signalled the rest of the fleet, "All engines useless." In another half hour the _Bluecher_ was a mass of flame from fore bridge to stern. One shell pierced the foundation of a turret and set off some ammunition, causing a deafening explosion and great loss of life within the turret.