r guns have been raised and will go
aboard another ship of the same size, purchased, or just being
finished, and named the "Audacious." Indeed, I was informed on "good
authority" that the "Audacious" was afloat, had been towed into
Birkenhead and that the repairs to her bottom were nearly finished.
You can hear similar stories wherever the "accident" is discussed. I
have heard it so many times that I ought to believe it. Yet if one
hundred people separately and individually make assurances concerning
something of which they have no personal knowledge, it does not go down
with a true news man. I was able to run across a man who saw the
affair of the "Audacious." He laughed at the stories of shallow water
and raised guns. His position was such, both then and thereafter, that
I was sure that he knew and told me the truth.

Later I learned that the "Audacious" was too far off the Irish coast to
permit of talk of shallow water, and that neither guns nor 30,000-ton
warships are raised from fifty-fathom depths.

Yet I am willing to narrate what has not been permitted publication in
England, and I think not elsewhere: that the mines about Lough Swilly,
along the Scotch and Irish coasts, and in the Irish Sea, were laid with
the assistance of English fishing-boats flying the English flag. These
boats had been captured by the Germans and impressed into this work.

There are also stories of Irish boats and Norwegian trawlers in this
work, but I secured no confirmation of such reports.

It is still unsettled in British Admiralty circles as to whether the
"Audacious" came in contact with a mine or torpedo from a German
submarine. Two of her crew report that they saw the wake of a torpedo.
Reports that the periscope of a submarine showed above the water I have
reason to reject.

English reports were suppressed--the admiralty claimed this right,
since there was no loss of life--in the belief that if the ship was
torpedoed by a submarine, the Germans would give out the first report,
and thereby be of assistance in determining the cause. But to-day the
Germans have their doubt as to where the "Audacious" is, and as to
whether or not she was ever really sunk.

Expert opinion is divided in authoritative circles in England as to the
cause of the disaster; but more than 400 mines have been swept up along
the Irish and Scotch coasts by the English mine sweepers.

While upon this subject, I ought to narrate that the study of th