horse-power were being installed in Short, Wight, and
Sopwith seaplanes, with a view not chiefly to speed but to the carrying
of torpedoes. These machines were not successful at first, but
experiment was active. Two aeroplanes and one airship had been fitted
with machine-guns; petrol incendiary bombs had been tried with success;
and gear for the release of bombs was being gradually improved. More
important still, wireless telegraphy plants had been set up at the
various seaplane stations on the coast, and sixteen seaplanes, operating
in connexion with these stations, had been fitted with transmitting
apparatus.

These preparations, when they are looked back on across the years of
war, may seem tentative and small, but the idea which dominated them is
clear enough. Whether war would come soon was doubtful; what was certain
was that war, if it did come, would come from the nation which for many
long years had boasted of war, preached war, and intended war. The main
concern of the Naval Air Service, in co-operation with the navy, was the
defence of the East Coast from attack, whether by sea or by air, and the
safeguarding of the Channel for the passage of an expeditionary force to
the coast of Belgium or France. Other uses for a naval air force were a
matter of time and experiment. There was at first no general scheme,
prepared in detail, and ready to be put into action, for the offensive
employment of naval aircraft, so that the work of the service tended to
relapse into defence. Very little had been done to provide for the
co-operation of aircraft with the fleet at sea. The _Mayfly_ mishap had
left us unsupplied with airships of the necessary power and range for
naval reconnaissance, nor were the means at hand to enable seaplanes to
do scouting work for the fleet. In December 1912 a design for a
specially constructed seaplane-carrying ship had been submitted by the
Air Department after consultation with Messrs. Beardmore of Dalmuir, but
when the war came no such ship was in existence. The light cruiser
H.M.S. _Hermes_ had been adapted for seaplane carrying and had operated
with the fleet during the naval manoeuvres of July 1913, but this was no
more than a makeshift. The _Hermes_ was refitted and re-commissioned in
October 1914 to carry three seaplanes, and at the end of that month was
sunk by a torpedo from an enemy submarine on her passage from Dunkirk to
Dover.

War is a wonderful stimulant; and many things were don