As discussed on the previous page, separate Registers were printed for each year of the
War. I have transcribed a small amount from the first Register to give a flavour of their
contents. First, the title page:
The Naval forces of the Empire were engaged during the whole of the War in the task of
detroying the German Navy or confining it to its bases, in order to secure the safety of
British transports and merchant ships and to paralyse enemy sea-borne trade. They also
engaged from time to time in operations against enemy positions or forces on land, as in
the Dardenelles in February and March 1915; and on them depended the concentration of our
land forces in the various theatres of war.
The Navies went to War on 4th August, and began to clear the seas of enemy war vessels
and shipping.
On the 6th, the light cruiser "Amphion" was sunk by a mine in the North Sea,
and the names of 140 men from this ship are recorded on the Plymouth Memorial.
Between the 9th and the 16th August the greater part of the Expeditionary Force was
taken to France without loss under the protection of the Channel Fleet; and during August
and September the Indian Expeditionary Force "A" was transported from India to
France.
On the 26th August H.M.S. "Highflyer" sank the German armed merchant cruiser
"Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse" off the Spanish coast.
On the 28th August the action off Heligoland was fought. The light cruiser
"Arethusa" was damaged; the German fleet lost three cruisers and one destroyer.
On the 5th September the light cruiser "Pathfinder" was sunk by an enemy
submarine off St Abb's Head.
On the 14th September the armed merchant cruiser "Carmania" sank the German
armed merchant cruiser "Cap Trafalgar" in the South Atlantic.
On the 20th September the light cruiser "Pegasus" was sunk by the German
light cruiser "Königsberg" off Zanzibar.
On the 22nd September the cruisers "Aboukir", "Cressy" and
"Hogue," manned chiefly by Reservists, were sunk by an enemy submarine in the
North Sea. The bodies of about 40 men belonging to these ships were washed up on the Dutch
coast and are buried in Holland.
In October, after the fall of Antwerp and the German occupation of Ostend, the Navy
assisted in checking the German advance along the Belgian coast, and supporting the left
flank of the Allied Armies, and an intense bombardment of the coast between Ostend and
Nieuport. The bombarding squadron suffered few casualties.
On the 15th October the cruiser "Hawke" went down in the North Sea, torpedoed
by an enemy submarine, with 526 men of whom 20 belonged to the Port of Plymouth.
On the 16th October the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, and on the 17th the Australian
Imperial Force, began their voyage to France.
On the 27th October the battleship "Audacious" was sunk by a mine off Tory
Island. The whole of the crew was saved.
The Battle of Coronel (named from a small town on the coast of Chile) was fought on the
1st November. The cruisers "Good Hope" and "Monmouth" were sunk by
Vice-Admiral Graf von Spee's squadron; "Glasgow", "Otranto" and
"Canopus" escaped. Of the 738 names from "Monmouth" appearing on the
three Naval Memorials, 672 are in the Plymouth Register.
The British submarine "B11" entered the Dardanelles on the 6th November; and
on the 13th December she destroyed the Turkish battleship "Messoudieh".
On the 9th November H.M.A.S. "Sydney" sank the German light cruiser
"Emden" off the Cocos Islands.
On the 20th November the battleship "Bulwark" was blown up by an internal
explosion off Sheerness.
The last important engagement of the year was the Battle of the Falkland Islands,
fought on the 8th December in the seas South-East of that group of islands. It resulted in
the destruction (without the loss of British ship) of four out of five cruisers in Admiral
von Spee's squadron.
The following summary of the Naval actions of the year 1914,
particularly as they affect the Port of Plymouth, is material to this Register.