Within a few weeks of the outbreak of the First World War the British public were cheering a famous victory at sea, thanks to a Royal Navy captain from Elstree.

The battle won by Captain Noel Grant on September 14, 1914, attracted particular interest because it involved two cruise liners which had been adapted for war service.

Captain Grant was in command of HMS Carmania, a former Cunard luxury liner, when it came up against a German ship, the Cap Trafalgar, off the coast of Brazil.

His ship took a total of 79 hits from shells and was badly damaged in the hour-long battle, but it succeeded in sinking the German vessel.

The Carmania had been launched by the Cunard Line in 1905, at a time when British and German companies were competing to build the fastest Atlantic cruise liner.

When Britain entered the war, on August 4, 1914, the ship, which was Cunard's largest, was requisitioned and fitted with eight four-inch guns.

Grant, who is remembered on a window at St Nicholas Church in Elstree, sailed the Carmania from Liverpool to Bermuda, and arrived on August 23.

He was told that the Cap Trafalgar had been sighted and, at dawn on September 14, he found it patrolling around the small island of Trinidada, with two smaller steamers.

The island, around 700 miles from the coast of Brazil, had until recently been a German base, and the Cap Trafalgar had been sent there in a bid to regain control in the area.

The German ship had deliberately been painted in the Union Castle liner colours, as a disguise, so that it could attack British shipping and then avoid detection.

When the Carmania approached the Cap Trafalgar, it fled, but after it had been fired on from a range of 8,000 yards, it turned and attempted to defend itself.

Both ships were roughly the same size, around 700ft long and weighing in the region of 20,000 tons, and they were both manned mainly by naval reservists.

The German vessel, which had two four-inch guns and six machine guns, closed in on the Carmania so it could use the latter, and caused several fires on the British vessel.

But, despite the fact that his ship's bridge had to be abandoned because of flames, Grant managed to keep firing, and the Cap Trafalgar eventually keeled over.

Nine British sailors were killed and a further 26 were wounded in the action. Most of the crew of the Cap Trafalgar drowned, although some were rescued by its escort ships.

The Carmania was sent to Gibraltar to be repaired, and it was back in service in November 1914. It later patrolled the coast of Portugal and took part in the failed expedition at Gallipoli.

In 1920 the ship was reconditioned and put back into use as a cruise liner, on the Liverpool to New York run. Cunard continued to run the Carmenia up until 1931.

Captain Grant later rose to the rank of rear admiral and was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath, in recognition of his wartime achievements.

Grant, who was born in 1868, made a home with his wife, Mary Annette, in Elstree.

He died in 1920, at the age of 52, and his sister Louise commissioned the church window at St Nicholas in his memory.

Louise was then Lady Dawson, the wife of Sir A Trevor Dawson, the distinguished naval commander who lived at Edgwarebury House, now the Edgwarebury Hotel, in Elstree.