Britain was a highly developed industrial nation. Every day, vast numbers of ships carried industrial raw materials to Britain from all over the world, then transported huge quantities of industrial goods from Britain to every corner of the globe. This made shipping across the Atlantic Ocean exceptionally busy.
For these British merchant ships, the sudden outbreak of war caught them completely off guard. At the same time, they had never expected German Navy warships to appear in the Atlantic Ocean.
On August 4th alone, Britain lost twenty-seven merchant ships of various sizes, with a combined tonnage of three hundred thousand tons. Without exception, all of those merchant ships were sent to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Although the German Navy released the sailors aboard before sinking the ships, they were hundreds of kilometers from the British mainland, and the sea conditions were poor. Under such circumstances, the odds of those sailors returning safely to the British mainland were vanishingly small. Unless they were lucky enough to be rescued by passing merchant ships or warships, they would be facing nine deaths and one chance at life.
Though this was somewhat too cruel for those innocent sailors, this was war. Even civilians had a very high chance of being swept up in its tide. In war, life was the most fragile thing, and the cheapest. Every moment, lives vanished.
Germany, Naval Ministry. Grand Admiral Count Tirpitz had been waiting for news from the Commerce Raiding Fleet. Those were six German Navy battlecruisers! Including the Mackensen-class battlecruisers still under construction, they accounted for half of the German Navy's total number of battlecruisers. If anything happened to those battlecruisers, the German Navy would suffer a devastating blow.
Of course, Grand Admiral Count Tirpitz also knew that the two Battlecruiser Squadrons would not run