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Emden sighted the Hampshire off Sumatra but managed to elude her and go on to sink a succession of Allied vessels before being tracked and destroyed by the Australian light cruiser Sydney on 9 November near the British Cocos Islands. Once Emden had been destroyed, Hampshire was released, and on her return escorted an ANZAC troop convoy through the Indian Ocean and Red Sea to Egypt. She then returned to Britain to join the Grand Fleet where, serving with the 2nd Cruiser Squadron, she saw action at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May and 1 June 1916.

The series of defeats which had overwhelmed Russia on the Eastern Front during 1915 had made it imperative for a high-ranking British minister to go there and examine the situation. The British Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, the creator of Britain’s new volunteer army and organiser of Western Front resistance, was chosen. Russia had demanded huge consignments of munitions, so the British Minster of Munitions and his staff would go as well – Kitchener had the experience to gauge how far Britain’s munitions factories could assist.