The First German Minefield off the British Coast

On 29 July 1914, with Europe in the inexorable grip of a deepening and rapidly deteriorating crisis, Winston Churchill ordered the vessels of what was soon to be known as the Grand Fleet northwards from the south coast of England to take up their war station at the remote anchorage of Scapa Flow.

They left in darkness, 18 miles of heavy warships, dreadnoughts, battlecruisers, and their escorts, an immensity of armour plate; sailing at high speed through the Straits of Dover and into the North Sea, northwards, towards their new base in the Orkney Islands, just beyond the top of the Scottish mainland, passing through waters newly swept by the only flotilla of minesweeping gunboats the Royal Navy then possessed. By the time this huge fleet reached Scapa on 2 August, Germany was already at war with Russia and would declare war with France the next day. Within two days of the fleet's arrival in Orkney, Germany would invade Belgium, and Britain would have been drawn into the conflict.

In theory, the giant anchorage at Scapa was well positioned to enable the Royal Navy's fleet of dreadnoughts to command the North Sea and anticipate threats from its somewhat smaller German counterpart, the High Seas Fleet. But although plans to use the anchorage had been in place for some years they had not been backed by the requisite protective expenditure, and this expensive array of dreadnoughts, soon under the command of Admiral Jellicoe, found themselves in a base blessed with very little, indeed almost nothing, in the way of modern defence works.

At 7.30 p.m. on 4 August 1914, just a few hours before Britain formally declared war on Germany, Commander Biermann on the Konigin Luise, a small Hamburg America Line excursion steamer, received orders by wireless to proceed to sea from the River Ems. Although the height of the summer, this was to be no excursion trip: no tourists thronged the little steamer's decks. Far from it: the vessel was packed with mines. Captain Biermann had orders to head for the Thames at top speed and dispose of this deadly consignment as close as possible to the shipping lanes that stretched along the neighbouring east coast of England.