It was much easier to hide the fact that a ship had been sunk by a mine, compared to other methods of sinking. The ship that laid the mines was rarely in sight of the field when it claimed its victims, while the ship that fired a shell or launched a torpedo was almost always within sight of its target. Even so, the news would eventually get out.

The largest warship in the Royal Navy to be sunk by a mine during WWI was the dreadnought Audacious (and indeed, the largest warship to be so sunk during the war). She was sunk by a minefield laid by the German auxiliary cruiser Berlin off Tory Island (on Ireland's north-west coast). In the morning of the 28th October 1914, she was steaming out of the Grand Fleet's temporary base at Lough Swilly to take part in gunnery practice. At 8:45, as she turned to begin firing, she struck the mine. The mine exploded on her port side, amidships, opening up two of her engine rooms to the sea. The response by her crew was slowed by confusion - it was not immediately obvious that she had struck a mine. Additionally, many of her watertight bulkheads had been pierced for speaking tubes, ventilation trunks and other piping, meaning that water could still flood the ship despite the watertight doors being closed. She attempted to steam back to Lough Swilly, but by 10:50, her starboard engine rooms had flooded too, leaving her dead in the water. By 11:00, all power aboard the ship had been lost. The cruiser Liverpool, and several destroyers, attempted to tow her, but they did not have the power to tow the giant battleship. All non-essential personnel were taken off, and a small working party of 250 men left aboard. At 13:30, the passenger liner Olympic, sister ship to the ill-fated Titanic, appeared on the scene. She was responding to the Navy's distress signals, and began to take Audacious under tow soon after she arrived. Unfortunately, bad weather and Audacious' inability to steer meant that the attempts were futile. Further attempts by Liverpool and the collier Thornhill were similarly fruitless. At 17:00, the old predreadnought Exmouth was dispatched to take Audacious under tow, but by the time she had arrived, it was too late. At 18:15, the last of the crew was taken off, and by 18:30, the list reached 30^o, though somehow she remained upright until 20:45, when she turned turtle. Roughly 15 minutes later, her magazines exploded, likely due to shells being shaken loose from their racks, then she slipped beneath the waves. Amazingly, there was only a single casualty during the entire operation, a petty officer on Liverpool crushed by a piece of debris from the explosion.

The Royal Navy made every effort to cover up the loss of Audacious. The loss was not officially admitted until the 13th November 1918. Until then, her name appeared on the RN's official fleet lists, and on movements of naval shipping. Her crew were instructed to tell anyone who asked about the ship that she had been damaged. As there had been no casualties from her crew, there was little need to lie to family members about the fate of their loved ones. The steamer Montcalm was procured and converted into a decoy version of Audacious, as part of a more general process of conversions (see here for more information on the RN's decoy steamers). Unfortunately, the presence of Olympic greatly complicated the coverup. She was on the last leg of a trip between New York and Liverpool, and had a full complement of passengers aboard. While many of these were British, and thus could be threatened with legal action if they discussed the sinking with the press, there were also neutral citizens aboard, especially Americans. Britain had no interest in provoking America to action, and did not want to interfere in the rights of these passengers. Equally, though, they had had a front-row view of the sinking of one of the RN's most modern battleships. Olympic was held in Lough Swilly for several days, before being allowed to proceed to Liverpool. The passengers were able to spread the news of the sinking. On November 14th 1914, the Philadelphia Public Ledger ran a photograph of the sinking, taken by a passenger on Olympic. Even so, the RN and British government persisted with the cover-up attempt.

Admiral Scheer, commander of the High Seas Fleet from 1916, approved of the British actions, writing in his account of the war: "In the case of the Audacious we can but approve the English attitude of not revealing a weakness to the enemy, because accurate information about the other side's strength has a decisive effect on the decisions taken". Commanders rarely had a good picture of the enemy's strength. Despite the best efforts of the Naval Intelligence Division and British codebreakers, Jellicoe thought that the Germans had up to 28 battleships (18 dreadnoughts and ten predreadnoughts) and six battlecruisers during the battle of Jutland. In fact, they had 16 dreadnoughts and six pre-dreadnoughts, plus five battlecruisers. Introducing confusion by concealing whether or not ships had been sunk, even if it wasn't fully convincing, was a great help. Even so, sinkings to mines of significant warships were very rare, and as such, it was rarely done.