15 MAY 1915, Page 3

On Saturday last the Admiralty announced the loss of the

Maori,' a turbine-driven torpedo-boat destroyer of 1,035 tons of the " F " or " Tribal " class, which struck a mine while operating off the Belgian coast on the previous day. H.M.S. ' Crusader,' which was in her 00111. primp, lowered her boats to assist in picking up the crew of the ' Maori,' who took to the boats when the ship was sinking, but was fired on by shore batteries and obliged to retire. The crew of the Maori' and the boats' crews of the ' Crusader' —seven officers and eighty-eight men in all—were taken prisoners into Zeebrugge. These, it may bo noted, are the only British sailors captured at sea by the Germans. A. more serious loss was announced on Thursday, when Mr.

Churchill informed the House that Goliath' had been torpedoed by enemy destroyers on the previous night in the Dardanelles while protecting the French flank inside the Straits, and sunk with a loss of over five hundred lives, twenty officers and one hundred and sixty men having been saved. The Goliath' was a pre-Dreadnought battleship of the ' Canopus ' class of 12,950 tons, carrying four 12 in. and twelve 6 in. guns. As a set-off Mr. Churchill was able to announce that the submarine E14,' after penetrating the Sea of Marmora, had sunk two Turkish gunboats and a large transport.