During the month of September, 1914, the British admiralty established
a blockade of the mouth of the River Elbe with submarines, and the
German boats of the same type were showing their worth also. On
August 28, 1914, the day after the raid on Libau by the German
cruiser _Augsburg_, the date of the battle of the Bight of Helgoland,
the two Russian protected cruisers _Pallada_ and _Bayan_, while
patrolling the Russian coast in the Baltic Sea, were attacked by
German submarines. Surrounded by these small craft, which made
poor targets, the two Russian ships sought to escape by putting
on full speed, but the former was hit by a torpedo and sank. The
other got away.
All of the Allies, with the exception of France, had by the beginning
of September, 1914, suffered losses in their navies. The navy of the
republic was engaged in assisting a British fleet in maintaining
supremacy in the Mediterranean, and kept the Austrian fleet bottled
up in the Adriatic Sea. French warships bombarded Cattaro on September
10, 1914, to assist the military operations of the Montenegrin
Government. These ships then proceeded to the island of Lissa and
there destroyed the wireless station maintained by Austria. The
Austrian navy made no appearance while the allied fleets scoured
the lower coast of Dalmatia, bringing down lighthouses, destroying
wireless stations, and bombarding the islands of Pelagosa and Lesina.
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