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Updated: June 14, 2025


It was on the misty afternoon of Wednesday, May 31, that Admiral David Beatty, in command of Britain's battle-cruiser squadron, sighted the vanguard of the German high-seas fleet steaming "on an enterprise to the north" from its long-accustomed anchorages in the placid waters of the Kiel Canal and under the guns of Helgoland.

The British Navy was amply adequate to deal with the German fleet should the latter ever leave its prudent retreat behind Helgoland and in the bases of Kiel and Wilhelmshaven.

I expressed astonishment at this most unusual acquaintance with the locality, and suggested that he must have spent considerable time in residence there. Conceive my astonishment when informed that he had never been out of Germany and the only voyage ever taken by him led him as far as Helgoland.

The information was flashed to Helgoland by the leading Zeppelin, which was hovering more than two miles in the air, commanding an immense area of the North Sea. The approach of the German fleet was unknown to the British, although the Zeppelins could distinguish both fleets from their great height.

Her greatest strength was concentrated in the North Sea, where the island of Helgoland, the Gibraltar of the north, and the Kiel Canal with its exits to the Baltic and North Seas, furnished excellently both as naval bases and impenetrable protection.

The members of the great secret league hastened from the north and the south of Europe to Helgoland, to hold meetings there, concert plans, and communicate to each other what they had succeeded in accomplishing. On one of the last days in September, 1812, an unusual commotion prevailed on the island. It was noon, and yet more than two hundred ships had arrived and cast anchor.

Whatever the plan was, we must assume that it was thwarted by the interposition of the British fleet; and from this point of view the battle takes on the aspect of a British victory. The German fleet is back behind the fortifications and the mine fields of the Helgoland Bight, in the waters which have been its refuge for nearly two years of comparative inactivity.

According to the report of the captain of one of the German battle cruisers, the Zeppelins, of which there were two in the early hours of the battle, sighted a strong British naval force in the North Sea, about two-thirds of the way from the British coast to Helgoland.

British submarines which had been doing reconnaissance work on the German coast since August 24 reported to the British commander, Admiral Jellicoe, that a large force of German light cruisers and smaller craft were lying under the protection of the Helgoland guns, and he immediately arranged plans for leading this force away from that protection in order to give it battle.

But we know that the fleet, if it is in reality badly crippled, will be under the necessity of making its way back to a base at once, and that the detour which it makes to avoid the British fleet will accordingly be as slight as possible. It certainly will not attempt to reach Helgoland by running north or east.

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