This auxiliary unit during the war was composed of something under one
hundred mine-sweeping trawlers, patrol trawlers, and mine-net
drifters, with a complement of about fifteen hundred men. In the year
1916 it became apparent that the mine-sweeping force was not strong
enough to cope with the large number of enemy mines laid in the area.
Consequently the patrol trawlers were converted into mine-sweeping
trawlers.

The vessels employed in mine-sweeping on our coasts are of various
types. I will not touch on the Fleet Sweepers, the twin-screw ships,
the gunboats, and other craft, attached to the Fleet, whose duty it is
to search the approaches to the Fleet bases in advance of the Fleet,
but will confine myself to a description of the work performed by the
hired paddle steamers, trawlers, drifters, and motor launches that
constitute the auxiliary force at the Harwich base.

First to speak of those sturdy little craft, the steam trawlers--as
fine sea-boats as you will find the world over. They are of various
sizes, the largest being of about 350 tons displacement. Their
weatherly qualities make them excellent mine-sweepers; the powerful
winches with which in time of peace they used to hoist in their
trawl-beams enable them to deal efficiently with a mine-sweeping wire.
Their draught, of from fourteen to sixteen feet, is certainly somewhat
against them in their war work, but gives them a good hold of the
water; and as these boats are somewhat down by the stern, their
propellers are so deep that they never race in the heaviest weather. A
certain proportion of them carry wireless. At the beginning of the war
each trawler was armed with a three-pounder gun, which could pierce
and sink a German submarine of the earlier type. Now the trawlers and
drifters carry six-pounders, and in some instances twelve-pounders.

The writer was wont to go out to the Dogger Bank with the Hull
trawlers long ago, when these were all sailing craft, well-found
ketches, no steam being used save for the donkey engine, whose
function it was to haul in the trawl-beam; the crew of each vessel
consisting of five hands, including the small boy and the child cook.
To him, as to all those who knew our North Sea trawlers in the pre-war
days, the change that has been effected in the personnel of these
vessels by war conditions is amazing. Yet these are the same men, the
same rough, hard-bitten fishermen, as fine sailors as use the seas. As
I knew them, ma