Page:The Invasion of 1910.djvu/450

 liners had appeared, damaged the Atlantic cables at Valentia, and captured a British steamer in sight of Cape Clear.

After the hard work in the Channel, most of the cruisers needed coal. Detachments of the Fleet put into Falmouth, Portland, Milford, and Queenstown to fill their bunkers. Two of the "County" cruisers were sent north to watch off Cape Wrath for the approach of any German force from Lerwick. Two more of the same class were sent up the Channel and took station between Dungeness and Boulogne. Monday and Tuesday were quiet days from the naval point of view, as there was great delay in the coaling, owing to the damage done by the Germans in South Wales.

For military reasons, the Admiralty, which had now at last been freed from hampering civilian control and granted a free hand, issued orders on the Sunday night that all news of the British successes should be suppressed. It was publicly given out in London that the raiders had escaped after a sharp action in the Channel, and that only one of them had been captured. The officers and men in the British ships engaged most loyally observed secrecy, and the large number of prisoners were sent north to the Isle of Man, control of which island and the telegraph cables leading to it the Admiralty had now taken over.

It was strange and tragi-comic that, though the German ships which had made the raid were lying at the bottom of the sea or in British hands, the public furiously attacked the Navy for its failure to destroy them or prevent their attacks. The news had come during the afternoon of Sunday that heavy and continuous firing had been heard off the South Wales coast. From Newquay, reports had been telegraphed to much the same effect, of heavy gusts of cannonading during the afternoon and evening far out to sea, and had raised men's hopes and expectations.

No one was allowed to telegraph from Milford the news that a great German liner had arrived there under