Three days later the _Bulwark_, a British battleship of 15,000 tons
and carrying a crew of 750 officers and men, was blown up in the
Thames while at anchor at Sheerness. It was never discovered whether
she was a victim of a torpedo, a mine, or an internal explosion. It
is possible that a spy had placed a heavy charge of explosives
within her hull. Only fourteen men of her entire complement survived
the disaster.
It was in November, 1914, also, that the sometime German cruisers
_Goeben_ and _Breslau_, now flying the Turkish flag, became active
again. As units in a Turkish fleet they bombarded unfortified ports
on the Black Sea on the first day of the month. Retaliation for
this was made by the Allies two days later when a combined fleet
of French and English battleships bombarded the Dardanelles forts,
inflicting a certain amount of damage.
On the 18th of November, 1914, the _Goeben_ and _Breslau_ engaged
a Russian fleet off Sebastopol. The composition of this Russian
fleet was never made public by the Russian admiralty, but it is
known that the Russian battleship _Evstafi_ was the flagship. She
came up on the starboard side of the two German ships and opened
fire on the nearer, the _Goeben_, at a distance of 8,000 yards.
The latter, hit by the Russian 12-inch guns was at first unable
to reply because the first shots set her afire in several places,
but she finally let go with her own guns and after a fourteen-minute
engagement she sailed off into a fog.
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