Read the excerpt from The Dark Game. On several occasions Room 40 received an
unexpected but welcome gift when a German
codebook was recovered after a sea battle and
presented to the British code breakers. One such gift
was a codebook from the German ship Magdeburg, a
light cruiser that ran aground on an island off of
Finland. When Russian ships quickly bore down on the
cruiser, the captain of the stranded ship immediately
did what all naval officers were taught to do: he orderec
his signalman to bring him the ship's codebook so he
could throw the book, wrapped in lead covers, into the
sea. But before the signalman could deliver the book
his captain, he was killed by Russian guns. When the
Russians recovered his body, the sailor was still
clutching the codebook in his arms.