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. He immediately
put it into force.
On the 3d of September the British gunboat _Speedy_ struck a mine
in the North Sea and went down. It was only two days later that the
light cruiser _Pathfinder_ was made the true target of a torpedo
fired by a German submarine off the British eastern coast, and she,
too, went to the bottom. But the British immediately retaliated,
for the submarine _E-9_ sighted the German light cruiser _Hela_
weathering a bad storm on September 13 between Helgoland and the
Frisian coast. A torpedo was launched and found its mark, and the
_Hela_ joined the _Koeln_ and _Mainz_. Up to this point the results
of attrition were even, but the Germans scored heavily during the
following week.
On September 22 the three slow British cruisers _Cressy, Hogue_,
and _Aboukir_ were patrolling the waters off the Dutch coast,
unaccompanied by small craft of any kind, when suddenly, at half
past six in the morning, the _Aboukir_ crumpled and sank, the victim
of another submarine attack. But the commander of the _Hogue_ thought
she had been sunk by hitting a mine, and innocently approached the
spot of the disaster to rescue such of the crew of the _Aboukir_ as
were afloat.
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