BRITISH AUXILIARY CRUISER LOST

On March 12 the Admiralty issued a report of the loss of the large British auxiliary cruiser Bayano while on naval patrol duty in the Irish Sea.  Evidence pointed to her having been torpedoed by a German submarine.  Only 27 of the Bayano’s crew of 250 were saved.  Fourteen officers, including the commander, went down with the ship.  The Bayano was a new twin screw steel steamer of 5,948 tons.  The survivors were afloat on a raft when rescued.  The loss of the Bayano was the most serious of the submarine blockade of the British coasts up to that time.

GERMAN CRUISER DRESDEN SUNK

For several months British warships in the South Atlantic and South Pacific oceans sought in vain for the German cruiser Dresden, one of the German squadron defeated off the Falkland Islands by Admiral Sturdee in December, when she was the only German vessel to escape.  On February she sank the British ship Conway Castle off Corral in the South Pacific, and on March 14 she was caught near Juan Fernandez Island by the British cruisers Glasgow and Kent and the auxiliary cruiser Orama.  An action ensued and after five minutes’ fighting the Dresden hauled down her flag.  She was much damaged and set on fire, and after she had been burning for some time her magazine exploded and she sank.  The crew were saved.  Fifteen badly wounded Germans were landed at Valparaiso, and the remainder of the crew were taken on board the auxiliary cruiser Orama as prisoners of war.

The Dresden was a sister ship of the famous Emden, and was commissioned in October, 1907.  In the spring of 1914 the Dresden was on the Caribbean station, and was lying off Tampico when the American forces captured Vera Cruz.  Later on in the summer the Dresden was the vessel on which Victoriano Huerta, upon abandoning Mexico, traveled from Puerta to Jamaica.  Upon the outbreak of the war the Dresden was still stationed in Central American waters, and for a time was hunted by the British and French cruisers in the North Atlantic.  She steamed south, however, and after sinking the British steamer Hyades and the Holmwood off the coast of Brazil, respectively, on August 16 and 26, went through the Strait of Magellan and joined Admiral Count Von Spee’s fleet in the southern Pacific.

The sinking of the Dresden left at large on the high seas, so far as was known, only the German cruiser Karlsruhe, last reported as operating in the West Indies, and the auxiliary cruiser Kronprinz Wilhelm, which was still raiding commerce in the South Atlantic.

THE FALL OF PKZEMYSL