Duels between pairs of ships took place in various seas. The career of the raider _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_, a fast converted liner, was ended by the British ship _Highflyer_, a cruiser, near the Cape Verde Islands, on August 27, 1914, after the former had sunk the merchantman _Hyades_ and had stopped the mail steamer _Galician_. The greater speed of the German vessel was of no advantage to her, for she had been caught in the act of coaling. What then transpired was not a fight, for in armament the two were quite unequal. She soon sank under the _Highflyer_'s fire, her crew having been rescued by her colliers.
The next duel took place between the _Carmania_ and _Cap Trafalgar_, British and German converted liners, respectively. They met on September 14,1914, in the Atlantic off South America. In view of the fact that at the beginning of the war these two ships had been merchantmen and had been armed and commissioned after the outbreak of hostilities, this engagement was something of the nature of those between privateersmen in the old days. In speed, size, and armament they were about equal. For nearly two hours they exchanged shots between 3,000 and 9,000 yards, and markmanship was to determine the victory. The shots from the _Carmania_ struck the hull of the other ship near the water line repeatedly, and the British commander was wise enough to present his stern and bow ends more often than the length of the _Carmania_'s sides. At the end of the fight the German ship was afire and sank. Her crew got off safely in her colliers, and the British ship made off because her wireless operator heard a German cruiser, with which the _Cap Trafalgar_ had been in communication, signaling that she was hastening to the liner's aid.
Only two days before this the British cruiser _Berwick_ captured the converted liner _Spreewald_ in the North Atlantic, where she had been trying to interrupt allied commercial vessels.
Germany kept up her policy of attrition by clever use of submarines and mines. The British battleship _Audacious_, while on patrol duty off the coast of Ireland in the early days of the war, met with a disaster of some sort and was brought to her home port in a sinking condition. The rigors of the British censorship almost kept the news of this out of the British papers and from the correspondents of foreign papers. It was reported that she had struck a mine, that she had been torpedoed, and that she had been made the victim of either a spy or a traitor who caused an internal explosion. The truth was never made clear. Rumors that she had gone down were denied by the British admiralty some months later, when they reported her repaired and again doing duty, but this was counteracted by a report that one of the ships that was completed after the start of hostilities had been given the same name.