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Helgoland is now the key and guard of Germany's main artery of commerce, being the key to Hamburg. With the dirigible station of Helgoland to guard her, Hamburg is impregnable and on England's northern coast they have a way of looking out across the North Sea with troubled eyes, for who knows when those terrible cartridge-shaped monsters will rise into the air and sweep over the sea?
On being loosened they came to the surface and were destroyed by shots from the trawlers' decks. On the 28th of August came the battle off the Bight of Helgoland. The island of Helgoland had been a British possession from 1807 till 1890, when it was transferred to Germany by treaty.
Admiral von Ingenohl was committed more strongly than ever, as a result of this engagement, to the belief that the best policy for his command would be to keep his squadrons within the protection afforded by Helgoland and that the most damage could be done to the enemy by picking off her larger ships one by one. In other words, he again turned to the policy of attrition.
Every British manufacturer and wholesale dealer had his counting-house and depot at Helgoland. Vast warehouses, resembling palaces, rose on the plateau of the island, and approaching ships beheld them from afar.
Days lengthened into weeks now and weeks into months and the Essex was still patrolling the North Sea with others of the Grand Fleet composed besides British vessels of an American squadron in command of Vice-Admiral Sims. August passed and September came and still the Germans failed to venture from their fortress of Helgoland and offer battle to the allies. The work became monotonous.
It lasted for many hours, fighting being continued through the night of May 31-June 1. In general, the battle area extended from the Skager Rack southward to Horn Reef off the Danish coast, the center of the fighting being about 100 miles north of Helgoland, the main German naval base in the North Sea.
He recalled other German treachery and he was not at all sure in his own mind that the enemy might not attempt some other trick. Two days after the signing of the armistice, upon instructions from the admiralty, Admiral Beatty got in touch by wireless with the German fleet commander in Helgoland, Admiral Baron von Wimpfen.
"They shall be large enough to handle the vessel. That is all. The crew of each ship shall be reduced to the minimum." "And how about our submarines?" "They must be surrendered first." "But the surrender cannot be completed in one day." "I am aware of it," replied Admiral Beatty. "As I have instructed you, the first of the German fleet will leave Helgoland on the night of November 19.
On August 28, 1914, the day after the raid on Libau by the German cruiser Augsburg, the date of the battle of the Bight of Helgoland, the two Russian protected cruisers Pallada and Bayan, while patrolling the Russian coast in the Baltic Sea, were attacked by German submarines.
At seven o'clock on the morning of August 28 the positions of the fighting forces were as follows: The decoy British submarines were making a track from Helgoland to the northwest, pursued by a flotilla of German submarines, destroyers, and torpedo boats, and a fleet of light cruisers.
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