AL TRAWLER RESERVE 181

Mine-sweeping trawlers--Captains courageous--Scotch
drifters--The motor launches--Keeping open the
swept channels.

CHAPTER XII

WORK OF THE AUXILIARIES 207

Mine-sweeping methods--Indicator nets--Heavy
losses--Brilliant rescues.

CONCLUSION 231

_Part I_

THE HARWICH FORCE

CHAPTER I

THE OPENING OF THE WAR

CHAPTER I

THE OPENING OF THE WAR

The light cruisers and destroyers--Harwich in war time--The
Harwich Force goes out--The first shots of the naval
war--Sinking of the _Koenigin Luise_--Loss of the
_Amphion_.

He who undertakes to write the history of the Naval Forces which had
Harwich as their base during the Great War will have a wonderful story
indeed to tell--from the sinking, within a few days of the declaration
of war, of the German mine-layer _Koenigin Luise_ by a section of the
force, down to the day when there steamed into Harwich harbour, under
the escort of the Harwich Force, the surrendered submarines of the
beaten enemy. To those who manned our ships during those four
terrible years it must all seem now like some strange dream--the
weary, watchful patrolling through storm or fog, with no lights
showing on sea or shore; the feeling of the way by dead reckoning and
lead in dark wintry weather along the enemy's coasts, with an
ever-vigilant foe above, below, and on the surface of the sea; the
amazing adventures; the risks boldly taken; and ever and anon an
action fought with a fierce determination on both sides.

For the Germans fought bravely and skilfully on occasion during the
first years of the war. One gathers that it was not until the end that
their _moral_ began to weaken. They thought that they could shake the
_moral_ of the British Navy by methods of frightfulness, by the
cold-blooded murder of the survivors of sinking ships, and so forth.
But it was their own _moral_ that failed at last. For this parvenu
German Navy, good though its ships and good its personnel, was lacking
in one essential--the tradition that inspires our own Navy, the
significance of which tradition the German, who knows not chivalry, is
incapable of understanding. A Navy with an old and glorious tradition
could not have surrendered itself, as did the German Navy, without
having come out and made a fight-