At the Cocos Islands, on November 9, 1914,  the crew of the Emden conducted a landing operation against the cable station on Direction Island, which was to be destroyed. In addition a meeting with the supply ship Buresk was to take place to take on fresh coal. 

In modern days this seems like a small routine operation but it was in fact at the time a very crucial operation and - if it had been successful - would have been a major blow to the allied routes of communication.

The first short submarine cables were laid as early as the 1850s. Advances in transmission technology and improved  insulation of the cables finally made in the 1860s the laying of longer intercontinental cables possible. After several failures in 1866, a permanent transatlantic connection was established. Four years later the direct cable connection between Great Britain and British India was opened. In the following decades this wiring of the world intensified, until, shortly after the turn of the century, the last major gap in the global telegraph network was closed with the two Pacific cables. Transmission capacity continuously increased. However, its basic structure changed only slightly. Distribution hubs emerged – for example on the Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean or on Fanning Island in the Pacific. The combination of strategic importance and geographic remoteness made the British telegraph stations in the Indian and Pacific Ocean logical destinations of the German Navy in World War I. The Germans assumed that it was precisely in these places that the least effort and least risk of British communications being the hardest to harm.

If you want to read more about the background of the transatlantic cables there is a fantastic website:

History of the Atlantic Cable & Submarine Telegraphy (atlantic-cable.com)

What happened at the Cocos Islands is very well described on a subpage of this website:

History of the Atlantic Cable & Submarine Telegraphy - Direction Island Cable Station & The Battle of Cocos (atlantic-cable.com)

There is a link to a  youtube video which includes many photos taken by R.H.C. Green the superintendent of the cable station and explains the action well.

A little bit further down on the same webpage is the account of Helmuth von Mücke the officer in charge of the landing party as an extract of his book "Ayesha".

Important to know is that before the landing party raided the cable station the station was able to send off a distress call which was picked up by an Australian convoy nearby.