side of Germany. A shell struck the ship in the after funnel, but it failed to detonate and did negligible damage. Two other hits inflicted minor damage. The ship and her escorts passed through an inactive Russian minefield during the bombardment. As she returned to Turkish waters, came across the Russian minelayer which scuttled herself with 700 mines on board. During the engagement the escorting Russian destroyer was damaged by two of s secondary battery shells. In response to the bombardment, Russia declared war on 1 November, thus forcing the Ottomans into the wider world war. France and Great Britain bombarded the Turkish fortresses guarding the Dardanelles on 3 November and formally declared war two days later. From this engagement, the Russians drew the conclusion that the entire Black Sea Fleet would have to remain consolidated so it could not be defeated in detail (one ship at a time) by . , escorted by , intercepted the Russian Black Sea Fleet off the Crimean coastline on 18 November as it returned from a bombardment of Trebizond. Despite the noon hour the conditions were foggy and none of the capital ships were spotted initially. The Black Sea Fleet had experimented with concentrating fire from several ships under the control of one "master" ship before the war, and held her fire until , the master ship, could see . When the gunnery commands were finally received they showed a range over in excess of s own estimate of , so opened fire using her own data before turned to fire her broadside. She scored a hit with her first salvo as a 12-inch shell partially penetrated the armor casemate protecting one of s secondary guns. It detonated some of the ready-use ammunition, starting a fire that filled the casemate and killed the entire gun crew. A total of thirteen men were killed and three were wounded. returned fire and hit in the middle funnel; the shell detonated after it passed through the funnel and destroyed the antennae for the fire-control radio, so that could not correct s inaccurate range data. The other Russian ships either used s incorrect data or never saw and failed to register any hits. hit four more times, although one shell failed to detonate, before Souchon decided to break contact after 14 minutes of combat. The four hits out of nineteen shells fired killed 34 men and wounded