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On 5 February 1915, Germany published a formal Notice declaring all waters around Great Britain and Ireland a war zone. Then on 18 February 1915, she began a campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare within that zone against merchant ships: any shipping, including that of neutral countries, would be sunk without warning and without regard for the lives of the civilian crews. German submarines began to sink an average of 100,000 tons of shipping per month.

Unrestricted submarine warfare continued until September 1915, when it was temporarily abandoned after an international wave of condemnation and the intervention of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, following the sinking of RMS Lusitania on 7 May 1915 and other ships carrying American civilians.

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HMS Pathfinder was sunk by a torpedo fired from U 21 on 5 September 1914 and by a subsequent secondary explosion. Her wreck now lies in 64 metres of water in the Firth of Forth, off the Scottish east coast. Her damaged bow section sheared off and now lies about a mile away.