On November 1, 1914, gunfire in Cork Harbour, Ireland, was like a flash of lightning across the night sky, and a torrential downpour ensued. The Irish tricolour of freedom www.biquge.info which symbolizes freedom has been raised in the port of York, Kinsale, Klonakirty, Port Skar, and Bentley, as well as the inland towns of Bandon, McRum and Vermoy, which are also part of County Cork. That same night, the Provisional Government of Free Ireland was proclaimed in Cork Harbour, with power in the hands of the Provisional Supreme Council, composed of five principal leaders of the Irish Republican Brotherhood - Mackerney, Clarke, Kanter, Plankett, and McDermott.

Next, the momentum of armed independence is unstoppable. Within two days, the counties of Carey and Limerick in the southwest of Ireland, the counties of Wicklough and Wexford in the southeast, and the counties of North Tipperary and Leisch in the center of Ireland also declared their independence from the rule of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and supported the establishment of a free Irish provisional government at Port Cork. Pro-independence militants attacked police stations and garrison barracks, took control of communication lines and railway junctions, and the British garrison units in these areas were either annihilated or besieged. At the same time, a number of transport facilities were damaged in the northern counties, which delayed the movement of British troops stationed in the north of Ireland and prevented them from rushing to the south-central counties that declared independence in the first place.

By 3 November, Ireland's declared independence urban areas had taken up nearly half of the island's area and continued to spread northward at an alarming rate. On this day, more than 2,000 armed men and a large number of supporters entered South Dublin from Wicklow County and continued their advance towards Dublin, the capital of Ireland. Dublin was under martial law, and police and troops loyal to the British government began to block access to the city, but supporters were already secretly eager to wait for the armed independence men to blow the horn of attack, and then they could join forces and turn the city in the British Isles, second only to London, into a victory for the Irish independence movement.

On the evening of the 3rd, while the supreme councillors of the Provisional Government of Free Ireland were discussing the situation of independence, a British fleet quietly appeared in Cork Bay.

Cork Harbour is a coastal inner harbour connected to the open sea by the River Lee and Cork Bay, and ships travel 10 nautical miles from Cork Harbour to the open sea, with a 3-kilometre narrow channel in between. In order to prevent the British Navy from attacking Cork Harbour along the river, the Irish Volunteers had blocked the passage with two small torpedo boats captured during the uprising and several high-speed torpedo boats they had secretly prepared, and had deployed guard patrol vessels in Cork Bay. Seeing the British fleet, the patrol ships of the Irish Volunteers immediately raised the alarm of an enemy attack.

The leaders of the Free Irish Provisional Government and the Irish Volunteers had apparently not expected the British fleet to appear so quickly in Cork Bay, but in two days the Croshaven Shore Forts they had captured from the British garrison would be able to return to the battle, and German naval submarines would arrive at Cork Bay to assist the Irish Volunteers in setting up mine lines. When the coastal defense system is completed, even if the main British fleet comes, it will not be easy to enter Cork Bay.

Alerted by a patrol vessel, the Irish Volunteer soldiers who had taken over the Crosshaven shore defense battery hurriedly went into battle. The fortifications here are very strong, but the design structure is too old, and the artillery is very old, and the deterrent effect is more than the actual combat value. Although the British fleet that came at this surprise did not have large capital ships of the battleship class, the heavy fire of the two armored cruisers crushed the defenders of the battery in half an hour. Next, the British fleet did not try to break through the narrow channel upstream, but launched a landing operation along the coast of Crosshaven. The beaches here are full of reefs, which are difficult for large ships to approach, but the British have been prepared. In less than three hours, they had brought two battalions of Marines ashore in torpedo boats, transport boats, and requisitioned small yachts, and this elite combat force had almost no difficulty in eliminating the Irish Volunteer garrison at Crosshaven, and then using the dock facilities to bring the follow-up troops ashore and equipment, including artillery.

After nightfall, the Irish volunteers sent a group of high-speed torpedo boats from the upper reaches of the Lee River into Cork Bay with the intention of attacking the British ships, but the British fleet spotted the incoming high-speed torpedo boats from a distance that night. Without any covering fire and no proper tactics, only three high-speed torpedo boats managed to approach the British fleet and fire torpedoes, but the hit rate was only one-third, and the old armored cruiser "Lancaster" of the British Navy was wounded and ran aground on the shore, while only two high-speed torpedo boats on the attacker's side were finally able to withdraw from the battle, in addition to the battleships that were directly destroyed, three battleships with killed pilots or damaged hulls were abandoned because they were not rescued, and were captured by the British Navy the next day.

The night attack by the high-speed torpedo boat group failed to achieve the desired results, and as a result, more than 800 Irish volunteers who had set out from Cork Harbour to Crosshaven were suddenly bombarded by the British fleet during the exchange of fire with the British marines. By the early next morning, the number of British troops landing at Crosshaven had increased to more than 4,000, and the British fleet had completely blockaded Cork Bay and opened fire on Cork Harbor from within the bay. The accuracy of the fleet's long-range artillery fire was low until the landing force approached the area and provided guidance to the fleet for school firing, but under continuous fire, many shells fell into the harbor area, sinking and damaging some ships and igniting some of the harbor buildings.

At this time, there were nearly 1,000 Irish volunteer soldiers and more than 3,000 newly recruited soldiers in Cork Harbour and the surrounding area, and the Provisional Government of Free Ireland declared that they would swear to defend Cork Harbour to the death, and called on all citizens to join the battle and destroy all the British invaders with street fighting, but the Supreme Provisional Council knew that it could not resist the British attack with its current strength, and quietly prepared for evacuation, and on the other hand, asked for help from the German government that promised direct military assistance.

The rescue that the Irish were desperate for, 4,000 German naval infantrymen who were scheduled to land in Ireland, had been adrift at sea for several days. Many of them were unwell from the rough winds and waves, but the landing fleet that transported them to Ireland remained steadfast in its journey towards Irish waters. By the early morning of 4 November, the landing fleet was only 200 nautical miles off the west coast of Carey County, where it was scheduled to land, and could reach it around the evening as long as it maintained a high-speed cruise of 15 knots.

Due to the torpedo-damaged "Westphalia" withdrawing from the battle, only one German capital ship directly protected the landing fleet, the "Border Governor", but the powerful German High Seas Fleet reconnaissance detachment always maintained a covering distance of about 60 nautical miles. Although the British navy's combat strength was reduced by more than half through three naval battles, the German navy's top brass still had a relatively objective understanding of the comparison of the strength of the two sides, and under the supervision of the Kaiser, the naval intelligence department did its best to collect intelligence about the British navy. The German Navy could now be sure that the British capital ships were concentrated in the southern ports of England, and that there were only a few combat and escort ships on the west coast of Britain and the ports of Ireland, and even if they were all assembled, they would not be enough to compete with Hipper's four German battlecruisers.

As a result, the main dreadnought group of the German High Seas Fleet quietly cruised in the waters north of the Faroe Islands and southeast of Iceland. From the map, they look like a flock of warhawks occupying the high ground in the sky, waiting to give the enemy's main group a pounce. As Natsuki expected, in recent days, there has been a sharp increase in the number of British ships and planes entering the Norwegian Sea to conduct reconnaissance, but the dreadnought groups of the German High Seas Fleet have never entered their field of vision, and the virtual and real radio signals continue to confuse the British naval intelligence, and the British capital ships have never left the English Channel.

In addition to surface ships, the submarine forces sent by the German Navy to the North Atlantic also assembled in Irish waters in advance, closely monitored the two major passages in and out of the Irish Sea day and night -- the North Sea Channel and St. George's Strait, and deployed two cordons in front of the English Channel to the southern waters of Ireland, but unfortunately, U-49 and U-107 successively discovered the British landing fleet heading for Cork Bay on November 3, but they could not launch an attack immediately because of their poor position, and waited for their information to be transmitted to the Irish, the landing of the British was nearing its end. By the morning of 4 November, five German submarines had been ordered to arrive off the coast of Cork Bay, waiting for an opportunity to attack the British fleet, and they soon discovered a number of British ships returning to the British island from Cork Bay, and U-36 took the lead in sinking a British transport ship returning to the sea empty, which forced the British fleet in Cork Bay to cancel the original return plan and take emergency anti-submarine measures on the spot, and the follow-up ships of the British Navy transporting troops to Cork Bay also suspended their operations, but the British troops who had landed did not suspend the attack on Cork Harbor. Less than 24 hours after they landed in Cork Bay, more than 3,000 British Marines, supported by British naval fire, stormed the port city of nearly 100,000 people, while the pro-independence Irish soldiers and civilians were still building their barricades. After more than a dozen hours of fierce fighting, the flag of the United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland was raised again in the parliament building of the "rebel county", and before the entire fall of the city of Cork Harbour, the Provisional Government of Free Ireland had withdrawn very quickly to the secret military base of the Irish Volunteers in the northern mountains of County Cork.

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