The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-07-22
NINE SWEEPING VERY DANGEROUS
 SEA EAOCCUPATIOlN
It Is Also One of the Most z Irksome Which Men of
 Sea Have to Perform
(By CLAIR PRICE) A We'll Known Naval Writer.

"A H6u-hIlOWH NdNdl London, July 2O.-There are a number of phases of mtnesweeping which are not set down in the books, and which are of as great interest as n1oet things which are set down in the books
 Eighty per cent of Britain's sweep sPs are engaged in keeping the route for coastwise merchant traffic clean of mines.
 In the North Sea, where a large proportion of Britain's sweepers work, the winter nights are usually about fourteen hours long, and the winds which sweed the North Sea are subject to change without notice. Frequent ly 1t will be necessary for the skip per to take the bridge in the middle of the night to combat a. sudden gale which has swept down upon him. The vessels have to separate to avoid the danger of a collision. and by dawn they are scattered over good deal of the North Sea.
 Underwater Explosions.
 All the sweepers' crews will tell you that their sole envy is the cutter. This is the little craft which blows up the wrecks at the bottom of the war-chan- nel. The cutters crew are all ex- pert divers, and when the cutter has been run out to where a mined ship has gone to the bottom, the divers are sent down with dynamite to blow up the ship, and thus keep the channel clear.
 This is a tic,k1ish job, for which the sweepers are especially grateful, for If there Is any exigency which sweeper crews swear over more than any other, 1t is when their sweep-wire parts on wreck at the bottom Of the war r-channel.
 It is impossible to sweep around wreck, for any way you try to work 1t your sweep-wire will catch, and part. But the cutter takes prompt care of wrecks in the channel, laying its charge of dynamite carefully around 1t, and then withdrawing and pushing a firing g-button. The water bulees upon the surface in curious ly silent manner as the charges go off; but the bottom of the sea carries the sound so well that, although it is practically inaudible on the surface, it conveys the impression to the inhabi- tants on the shore that heavy firing is going on somewhere out to sea. This completely finishes the wreck, how ever, and after one blow up the sweep wire passes over the spot as though there had never been a wreck there.
 Another Hun Crime!
 But the particular reason which ex- cites the envy of the mine-sweepers for the cutter is that the concussion of the cutters dynamite kills endless quantities of fish, just as the old jug and lime trick used to do in the Wis consin lakes before wisconsin declar- ed it illegal. And all the cutter has to do is to steam back where the wreck was, and scoop them up off the surface. Then it goes back to the station from which it set out with dy- namite an hour before, laden down with fresh fish. And on the sweep CTS, although occasionally they do a little fishing, they actually buy fish at the base very often! Imagine a lot of fishermen aboard a fishing trawler buying fish!
 I might add that even when the sweepers explode a mine instead of sinking it-i. e.. when 8 bullet acci- dently knocks off detonator- horn in- stead of boring hole into the mines buoyancy-chamiber- ninety per cent. of the mine's explosive force goes in to the air, and it Is rarely that the concussion succeeds in killing any fish.
 P1ayng With Fire.
 A good many mines which have broken adrift from their moorings af- ter a gale over the North Sea, wash inshore, and. after rolling around ir the shadows, finally go off, unfortun. ately killing some of the local inhab- itants who gather to watch the fright ful globes. It seems incredible. but on a number of occasions civilians who know nothing of mines have en. deavored to salve mines tossing about offshore, and have been killed. IT one town I visited recently, a mine was reported approaching the break water one morning, and before the lo cal Coast guard could come up to takt charge, 1t had gone off, killing sever civilians and wounding twenty, blow ing a great gap in the stone breakwa ter, hurting great timbers a quarter 0 "a mile inland and smashing glass il Ecottages for ten miles around.
 By this time, however, the danger ,of standing idly by, watching mine drifting inshore, have been we'll ad vertised, and nowadays, when a min is sighted, civilians gather up thei children and flee to the inland bor ders of the town until the mine ha been salved.
 But the greatest damage mines do l to the sweepers. The flow of mer chant traffic up and down the coast of England, which German mines ar intended to stop, has not stopped; fact, has not even abated.