The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-04-15

off the Scottish coast in small patrol boats. Men who have fished for living, men who owned 16-foot motor launches on the River Thames, men whose only Knowledge of the sea was the yearly bath at Brighton or Margate are today rated A. B.. and even wear the badges of petty officers and specialists. Sea adaptabil- ity" and the national need have. taught them and made of them first-class men of the sea. The navy has put it's mark on them and they have made good, though their task was far harder than that of the men who joined the army.
 WHAT IT NOW HAS
 When the war began the British navy lacked two absolutely essential things submarine proof harbors in the North sea and an immense mine sweeping or ganization It has both now, but only a few people know the enormous risks that were run in the weeks that were occupied with the making good of those two defects.
 Nature has not been kind to Great Britain in the matter of harbors. There are plenty of magnificent bays in Ire- land. There are fine sites for naval bases even on the west coast of Scot land. But search up and down the east
 
 and you will find only one place that can possibly accommodate the enormous assemblage of ships that we call fleet. It IS not only a matter of housing a couple of score of dreadnaughts. A bat tie fleet has mass of attendant ships, light cruisers, destroyers, dispatch boats, repair ships, store ships, distiling ships, airplane carriers and depot ships whose number may easily be 10 times that of fba hof al The base that would accommodate that number of ships had never been pre- pared for the purpose before the war. Its name was absolutely unknown to all but handful of people outside the navy. When war threatened, however, Jelli- COG took his squadrons round there and then turned all hands to work to extern- porize defenses. How they laid nets here, there and everywhere. how they mined and buoyed and trapped the waters of every approach to the base, how they organized a continuous patrol night and day by every kind of craft from the 20-year-old destroyer to the newest luxury yacht repainted navy grey in few hours, is a tale that can only be guessed at present. The British press has never been allowed to say one word about it..
 The same sort of thing had to be done at every port on the east coast that
 
 Fishing fleets were hurriedly turned out of their basins to make room for destroy CTS in half score of places. Little fish ing villages suddenly found the road stead before them crowded with the busted trawlers.
 And what. of the trawler men? Fish ing was so strictly limited as to be al- most prohibited What were they to do for living?
 
 THE GALLANT TRAWLERS
 There was a trawler section of the royal naval reserve that had been started in 1912 as a nucleus of a mine sweeping flo tilla The whole section, however, only numbered 142 officers and 1136 men when the war began. But the light cruiser Amphion blew up on mine within few hours of the outbreak of war in sight of the British coast. A German mine layer was caught at work there and sent to the bottom. The blood of the east coast fishermen was reused. They swarmed into the recruiting offices to join the trawler reserve. It grew and grew. In eight months from the start of the war the admiralty admitted that it had put 610 trawlers into commission, and of that number Grimsby alone pro- vded 400
 Americans who are adopts at business organization do not need to be told that a force of that sort does not grow by itself. Brain power was needed at the head of affairs to keep the wheels work ing smoothly. The trawlermen had all the courage that was needed. Scores of them perished in the work of sweeping up mines. But the unnamed men who sat in little offices quaysides and thrust each brick into it's place, designing the building pretty much as they went along, were the real heroes of those early months. Their work stands today in the most completely organized, smooth est running, most efficient minesweeping service in the world. It is to them that is due the fact that British patrols be- tween Dover and Newcastle can pass 21,- 600 merchant ships along g. well defined