An excerpt from an article entitled "Echo of Scarborough bombardment - Did shore leave allow Germans to escape" from 4th February edition of the Scarborough Mercury, 1916
"It is true that on the day preceding the bombardment of Scarborough and the Hartlepools, by a strange cut of ill luck, exceptional shore leave chanced to have been granted to many of the upper deck, and some time was occupied in collecting, by private motors and taxi-cabs, the officers who were spending the evening in a city a few miles from the Fleet. It was an exciting hunt and the occupants who packed the cars that rushed along the country roads in the early hours of the morning, at a speed that took every yard out of the motors, were consumed with the fear that the Fleet would put to sea before they got aboard."