at Dover that could be called upon in the event of a raid as well as several units of Harwich Force dispersed at the Downs. Battle The German torpedo boats split into five groups, with each attacking a different section of the shipping in the channel. The German 5th Half-Flotilla sailed into the Dover Barrage and soon came into contact with five drifters of the 10th Drifter Division tending the anti-submarine nets and attacked. After hearing gunfire, Flirt—the drifters' escort—approached the unidentified vessels and challenged them. The boats responded to the British signal with a similar signal. Confused, Flirts commander decided that the approaching vessels were Allied destroyers and that drifters had been attacked by a submarine. An open boat was also launched from Flirt to rescue survivors from the sinking drifters. The German boats attacked the destroyer, surprising the crew. Outnumbered, Flirt tried to ram one of the German boats; after a brief engagement it was sunk by gunfire and torpedoes. After sinking Flirt, the Germans continued the attack on the barrage, sinking two drifters each from the 8th and 16th Drifter Divisions. Six drifters were sunk and three others damaged, as well as the trawler H. E. Straud, before the Fifth Half-Flotilla withdrew. When Admiral Reginald Bacon - the commander of the Dover Patrol - heard about the raid, he sent six Tribal-class destroyers—, , , , and —to engage the Germans. Due to a misinterpretation of his orders, the British commander of the destroyer division—Commander Henry Oliphant of Viking—deployed his destroyers in two loose groups, one consisting of Viking, Mohawk, and Tartar and the other Nubian, Amazon and Cossack. Nubian soon steamed far ahead of her group and was the first vessel to reach the scene of Flirts sinking. Another half-flotilla of German boats had caught the empty British transport Queen off Goodwin Sands as it returned from the French coast, boarded it and removed her crew before sinking her. Upon Nubians contact with the German 17th Half Flotilla, she made the same error as Flirt and mistook the German boats for Allied vessels. Surprised with a hail of gunfire, Nubian attempted to ram the last boat in the German line of battle but was struck by a torpedo that blew off her bow and reduced her to a drifting hulk. Amazon and Cossack soon arrived to aid Nubian and engaged the German boats. The Germans scored