November 24, 1914

HMCS Rainbow. CFB Esquimalt Naval & Military Museum. Photo Catalogue No. VR991.370.2.

Portland, Ore., Nov. 24 – After weeks of silence the mystery surrounding the activities of the Canadian navy, consisting of the gunboat Rainbow, has come to the surface. According to information received here today from sources said to be reliable, she met the German cruisers Leipsic and Nurnberg on the high seas and escaped “by the skin of her teeth,“ and after a large number of her crew had been wounded, only through the reinforcement of the French cruiser Montcalm.

The Rainbow, according to the story, met with the Leipsic and Nurnberg and put up a stiff battle although the odds were much against her. she was getting the worst of it when the French cruiser Montcalm appeared on the scene, and the Germans, after firing a few shots, steamed away in the face of the enemy’s superior armament.

So effective was the German fire that the Rainbow was completely disabled, the Montcalm being compelled to tow her into the Canadian naval base at Esquimalt.

She is said to be in dry dock there now undergoing extensive repairs while the majority of her crew, wounded in the engagement, are in the hospital.

Due to the strict censorship which prevails in Canada, the story of the battle was never made public and only leaked out through an unguarded statement of an Englishman acquainted with the facts.

Inasmuch as the cannonading heard off Coos Bay several weeks ago has never been satisfactorily explained, it is believed highly probable that those who heard the booming of guns were not mistaken and that it was an engagement between the Rainbow and the two German ships.

The article is a good example of the concern the paper’s editor had earlier when complaining about the consequences of censorship. The Rainbow was never in combat, never directly encountered the German cruisers, though she did miss the Leipsic by a few days off the California coast, at the outset of the war.