Submarine Warfare of To-day How the Submarine Menace Was Met and Vanquished, with Descriptions of the Inventions and Devices Used, Fast Boats, Mystery Ships, Nets, Aircraft, &c. &c., Also Describing the Selection and Training of the Enormous Personnel Used in This New Branch of the Navy

IT is a mere truism to say that the sea outflanks all land operations in warfare. Yet how many people fully realise that the left wing of the Allied armies in Belgium and France...

THE task which confronted the naval minesweeping organisations in the years succeeding 4th August 1914 was an appalling one. Any square yard of sea around the 1500 miles of coas...

THE hour was that of the Allies' greatest need--the last months of the year 1914. On that fateful 4th August the British navy was concentrated in the North Sea, and the chance f...

BACK once again on the old cruiser with training completed and awaiting draft to the zones of war. Then came the sailing orders. The name of each officer was called in turn and...

WHEN all is said and done, anti-submarine warfare is very like big-game hunting. Success depends entirely on the initiative, skill and resource of the individual hunter. Contrar...

THE last few chapters have dealt mainly with the weapons used in anti-submarine warfare. We now come to the naval bases on which the fleets armed with these curious devices were...

IT has already been shown that the science of aerial warfare is closely allied with that of under-sea fighting. Airships and seaplanes play important parts in all anti-submarine...

TO those unversed in modern war it may have appeared strange that, although the Allied navies held command of the sea from the opening of the Great War in 1914 to the signature...

OF all the weapons used in the anti-submarine war the two most important were the _hydrophone_ and the _depth charge_. They were employed in conjunction with each other and comp...

HAVING described the _raison d'être_ of the new navy, and how it became a fleet in being, with its own admirals, captains, staffs, bases and all the paraphernalia of war, I can...

HOW many people realise that, with a single unimportant exception, there was no part of the English or Scottish coast which was not mined-in at least once by German submarines d...

ON the evening of 30th May 1916 six of his Majesty's drifters were lying alongside the quay of a Scottish naval base having their few hours' "stand-off" after weary days patroll...

A GREAT work of rescue was carried on throughout the war on all the seven seas by vessels of both the old and the new navy. This service was rendered to ally, neutral and enemy...

NO calling tempers the human steel in so short a period as that of the sea. At all times and in every part of the world the sailorman wages a never-ending fight with Nature in h...

THE piratical warfare of German submarines produced many sea mysteries. Some were solved after the lapse of months and even years, while others will, in all probability, remain...

ALTHOUGH the convoy system was employed at the beginning of the war for the transport of the Imperial armies to France, and subsequently for all the Allied troop movements overs...

ALTHOUGH modern war has shown that there exists no certain antidote for the submarine, it nevertheless brought into being many curious weapons of attack and defence. It is the p...

AN earlier chapter described the periodical overhauls necessary to keep the ships of the hard-worked auxiliary navy in proper fighting condition. These "refits" were needed not...

THERE are few things more heart-breaking than sea patrol, which forms the principal duty of anti-submarine fleets. Hours, days and even months may pass with nothing to relieve t...

WHAT undoubtedly forms the most effective counter to unrestricted submarine warfare is the explosive mine barrage, as employed against the German U-boats in the North Sea and th...

TWO drifters, about a mile apart, with no lights to indicate their presence, were drifting idly with the ebb tide. It was an oppressively hot night in mid-August. Scarcely a rip...

THERE were duties performed by the new navy which bore no relationship to anti-submarine fighting, or, in fact, to warfare at all, unless it was to the ceaseless battle waged be...

HITHERTO I have dealt with the scientific training of the personnel, the armament and the general organisation of the anti-submarine fleets, leaving it to the imagination of rea...

EVERYONE familiar with English history knows that it was a severe gale which destroyed the scattered and defeated units of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and that, in more modern t...

THE "Q" boat, or mystery ship, has been surrounded by so much secrecy that to most people its very being is an unknown quantity. Yet it is to these curious vessels of all sizes...

BUILT by King Charles I. for the Stuart navy, and used for over two and a half centuries as the university of the Senior Service, the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, is a buildi...