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Rh from dispatch riders that the force sent to the Washington Barracks was heavily engaged with the garrison in the neighborhood of the steamboat wharves, they swung around to the south and took the enemy on the right flank and rear.

An hour later the Barracks and the Army War College were captured, and by noon of April 1st, the small American forces having been annihilated or captured, Washington passed into the hands of the Germans.

At dawn of the same day, the German submarines, having passed in through the Capes by night, sank or destroyed every warship in the Norfolk yards, and at the yards of the Newport News Shipbuilding Company. Before the Germans had taken possession of Washington, the news was flashed from Philadelphia that a similar submarine raid had resulted in the sinking of the South Carolina and of the seven