I have told you in these pages of scores of heroic deeds; in the multitude of them let us not forget the brave and devoted men who kept the flag flying in Zanzibar harbour, and thus showed the enemy that the British navy of to-day is still inspired by the old unconquerable spirit of Blake and Nelson.
Early in September we first heard of the famous German raider the _Emden_. She had been on the China station when war broke out, and now she appeared in the Bay of Bengal and began her career of destruction. I will tell you her full story later on, when I come to the day when she was sunk.
Now we will learn how the German commerce raider _Cap Trafalgar_ was sent to her doom. She was a fast liner, armed with eight 4-inch guns and machine guns. Strange to say, her victorious opponent was a British armed liner, the _Carmania_, of the White Star line. Liverpool boys and girls are sure to have seen the _Carmania_ lying in the Mersey, or at the Prince's landing-stage, for she has regularly crossed the Atlantic since 1905.
On 14th September the crew of the _Carmania_ were just sitting down to their midday meal when the lookout men sighted a strange vessel. She was a liner as big as the _Carmania_. She was not at first recognized as an enemy, because she had rigged up a dummy funnel, and made herself look something like a Union Castle liner. The British captain, however, was suspicious, so he ordered a shot to be fired across the stranger's bows as a signal to heave-to. No sooner had the shot plumped into the water than the stranger opened fire, and the German flag fluttered to her masthead.
The _Carmania_ let fly her port guns, and soon both vessels were fighting hammer and tongs. Both were big ships, and very good targets: the _Carmania_, for example, is 675 feet long and 60 feet out of the water, and aiming at her is like shooting at the side of a street. The _Cap Trafalgar_ hit the _Carmania_ more than three hundred times, but only two of the shots were serious. For the most part the shells flew high, and only damaged the _Carmania's_ rigging and upper works. The British gunners aimed low, and her captain so manoeuvred the ship that she was end on to her enemy most of the time.