 This attack, coupled with reports that suggested the Germans would try to break out of the Mediterranean into the Atlantic, prompted the French high command to send "Ernest Renan" and the First Light Division further west, to Algiers.After the German ships escaped to Constantinople, rather than attack the French troop transports from North Africa as had been expected, "Ernest Renan" joined the rest of the French fleet in its blockade of the Adriatic Sea.The fleet, commanded by Admiral Augustin Boué de Lapeyrère, had assembled by the night of 15 August; the following morning, it conducted a sweep into the Adriatic and encountered the Austro-Hungarian cruiser .