pulverised S117, damaging her steering mechanism which forced her to circle before she was sunk at 15:30. At the same time, Lance and Lennox had damaged S115 to the point where only one of the destroyers was needed. Lance joined Loyal in bombarding S119 with lyddite shells. S119 managed to fire a torpedo at Lance and hit the destroyer amidships but the torpedo failed to detonate. S119 was sunk at 15:35 by gunfire from Lance and Loyal, taking the German flotilla commander down with it. S115 stayed afloat despite constant attacks from Lennox, which sent a boarding party, who found a wreck with only one German on board who happily surrendered. Thirty members of the crew were eventually rescued from the sea by the British vessels. The action ended at 16:30, with gunfire from Undaunted finishing off the abandoned hulk of S115. Aftermath Analysis The battle was seen as a great boost of morale for the British as two days previous, they had lost the cruiser to a U-boat. The effect on British morale is reflected in its inclusion in the 1915 novel The Boy Allies Under Two Flags, written by Robert L. Drake. The hospital ship , which had been sent out to rescue survivors from the sunken boats, was seized by the British for violating the Hague Convention rules on the use of hospital ships. The loss of a squadron of German torpedo boats led to a drastic change in tactics in the English Channel and along the coast of Flanders. There were fewer sorties into the Channel and the torpedo boat force was relegated to coastal patrol and rescuing aircrew. The British received a bonus on 30 November, when a trawler pulled up the sealed chest thrown off S119 by Captain Thiele. The chest contained a codebook used by the German light forces stationed on the coast, allowing the British to read German wireless communication for long afterwards. Casualties Despite the odds, no German vessel struck her colours and the flotilla fought to the end. The four ships of the German Seventh Half Flotilla were sunk by Harwich Force and over two hundred sailors were killed, including the commanding officer. Thirty-one German sailors were rescued and taken prisoner; a captured officer died of wounds soon after. Two more German sailors were later rescued by a neutral vessel. Only four British sailors were wounded and three of their