Sixty officers and over 1400 men, many of them reservists, perished as a sequel to Otto Weddigen’s prowess and their own humanity, or more than the total British losses at the battles of the Glorious First of June, St Vincent, the Nile, and Trafalgar. From a naval point of view the loss of the ships was unimportant. One is apt to forget that men-of-war have often a floating population equal to many a place in the United Kingdom which prides itself on being called a town. If several hundred inhabitants of such a spot were wiped out in a few minutes it would be regarded as a terrible happening. The tragedy of the affair would come home to us because a similar thing might occur where we live. Yet often enough a naval disaster arouses nothing more than scant sympathy and a mere comment. During the Great War those at sea in our big ships faced such disasters every hour of every day and every night. Fortunately the _Aboukir_, the _Hogue_, and the _Cressy_ did not constitute the “British North Sea Fleet,” as ultra-patriotic German newspapers inferred. According to his own statement, the commander of U 9 was eighteen nautical miles to the north-west of the Hook of Holland when he first sighted the cruisers, time 6.10 a.m. The vessels were proceeding slowly in line ahead, and the first torpedo struck the _Aboukir_, which was the middle ship. The reverberations of the explosion could be felt in the submarine, for “the shot had gone straight and true.” The _Aboukir’s_ consorts closed on her, intent on offering assistance, but, as Weddigen points out, this was playing his game. They were torpedoed in rapid succession. “I had scarcely to move out of my position, which was a great aid, since it helped to keep me from detection.” One shot from the _Cressy_, he adds, “came unpleasantly near to us.” The commander pays a generous tribute to his foes: “They were brave, true to their country’s sea traditions.” In one thing only was he unsuccessful. The cruisers were unattended by a covering force of destroyers, but while U 9 was returning to her lair he came across some of these vessels. By exposing his periscope at intervals Weddigen hoped to entice them into a zone where capture or destruction by German warships was probable. Although the destroyers failed to put an end to his career, he likewise failed to get the flies into the spider’s parlour. The Admiralty held that the commanders of the _Hogue_ and the _Cressy_ committed a pardonable error of judgment, and noted that “the conditions which prevail when one vessel of a squadron is injured in a mine-field or is exposed to submarine attack are analogous to those which occur in an action, and that the rule of leaving disabled ships to their own resources is applicable, so far at any rate as large vessels are concerned.”