Page:The Invasion of 1910.djvu/464

 On the 12th the four other cruisers of the "County" class and the destroyers reached Aberdeen early in the morning, and the Rear-Admiral set to work with zeal and energy to disturb and harass his enemy to the utmost. The Southampton and Kincardine, two of the fast cruisers, with two ocean-going destroyers, were instructed to steam direct for the German coast, and sink any vessel that they sighted. The Selkirk and Lincoln, with the rest of the destroyers, under his own orders, would clear the Forth entrance and move cautiously southward towards Newcastle, if no enemy were encountered. Yet another pair of cruisers, the Cardigan and Montrose, were to steam for the Dutch coast and there destroy German vessels and transports. Two of the older protected cruisers were brought to link up the advanced detachments by wireless telegraphy with the Forth, when the Germans were forced away from that point.

About noon the Rear-Admiral, with his cruisers, appeared off the Forth, and learnt that for three days no German vessels had been reported off the coast, but that the entrance to the estuary was believed to have been mined afresh by the Germans and was exceedingly unsafe. The armoured cruiser Impérieuse, which had been damaged in the battle of North Berwick, had now been sufficiently repaired to take the sea again. She had coaled and received ammunition, and was at once ordered to join the Northern Squadron.

The armoured cruisers Olympia and Aurora, and the battleship Resistance, which had been badly damaged in the torpedo attack that opened the war, were also nearly ready for service, and could be counted on for work in forty-eight hours. It had been supposed at the time that they were permanently injured, but hundreds of skilled Glasgow artisans had been brought over by train and set to work upon them, and with such energy had they laboured that the damage had been almost made good. For security against any German attack, the ships lay with booms surrounding them