Qualla: Battle off Texel

Battle off Texel: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit edited by M.Minderhoud, Public domain. At 13:50 on 17 October 1914, southwest of the Dutch island of Texel, Korvettenkapitän Georg Thiele's four old torpedo boats sailed serenely toward what they took for friendly ships. They were the remaining vessels of the German 7th Half Flotilla, on their way around the British coast to mine the mouth of the Thames. The vessels they were closing on were the brand-new British light cruiser Undaunted and four Laforey-class destroyers - Lance, Lennox, Legion, and Loyal. By the time the misidentification was realised, the British were inside gun range, and Thiele's day had a single hour left in it.

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Image: edited by M.Minderhoud | Public domain

Battle off Texel: The Emden Patrol

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit w l wyllie, Public domain. The Battle off Texel grew out of a quiet bookkeeping change in the North Sea. After the German High Seas Fleet was humiliated in August at the Battle of Heligoland Bight, the Kaiser's ships were told to avoid larger Royal Navy forces; raids and minelaying by light units were what...

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Image: w l wyllie | Public domain

Battle off Texel: Match-Up

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit edited by M.Minderhoud, Public domain. On paper this should not even have been a contest. Undaunted was an Arethusa-class light cruiser carrying two 6-inch and seven 4-inch guns - most without shields - plus eight torpedo tubes and a pair of experimental 2-pounder anti-aircraft mounts that her sisters did not have. He...

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Image: edited by M.Minderhoud | Public domain

Battle off Texel: Eighty Minutes

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit edited by M.Minderhoud, Public domain. When the Germans realised what they had wandered into, they scattered. Fox split his force - Lance and Lennox after S115 and S119, Legion and Loyal after S117 and S118 - to clear Undaunted's torpedo arcs and finish the business quickly. S118 took fire from three ships at once; he...

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Image: edited by M.Minderhoud | Public domain

Battle off Texel: The Sealed Chest

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit edited by M.Minderhoud, Public domain. Thirty-one German sailors were pulled out of the water and taken prisoner; one died of his wounds. Two more were rescued later by a neutral ship. Over two hundred German sailors had been killed, Thiele among them. The British had four men wounded - one on Legion by machine-gun fi...

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Image: edited by M.Minderhoud | Public domain

Battle off Texel: Morale and Doctrine

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit edited by M.Minderhoud, Public domain. The action was a small one by the scale of the war that was just beginning, but the timing mattered. Two days before, on 15 October, the elderly British cruiser HMS Hawke had been torpedoed by U-9 - Otto Weddigen's submarine again - with the loss of more than five hundred lives. ...

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Image: edited by M.Minderhoud | Public domain