affic and the annoyance
of the enemy. Its doings are recorded by flags stuck into charts; its
casualties are buried in obscure corners of the newspapers. The Grand
Fleet knows it slightly; the restless light cruisers who chaperon it
from the background are more intimate; the destroyers working off
unlighted coasts over unmarked shoals come, as you might say, in
direct contact with it; the submarine alternately praises and--since
one periscope is very like another--curses its activities; but the
steady procession of traffic in home waters, liner and tramp, six
every sixty minutes, blesses it altogether.

Since this most Christian war includes laying mines in the fairways of
traffic, and since these mines may be laid at any time by German
submarines especially built for the work, or by neutral ships, all
fairways must be swept continuously day and night. When a nest of
mines is reported, traffic must be hung up or deviated till it is
cleared out. When traffic comes up Channel it must be examined for
contraband and other things; and the examining tugs lie out in a blaze
of lights to remind ships of this. Months ago, when the war was young,
the tugs did not know what to look for specially. Now they do. All
this mine-searching and reporting and sweeping, _plus_ the direction
and examination of the traffic, _plus_ the laying of our own
ever-shifting mine-fields, is part of the Trawler Fleet's work,
because the Navy-as-we-knew-it is busy elsewhere. And there is always
the enemy submarine with a price on her head, whom the Trawler Fleet
hunts and traps with zeal and joy. Add to this, that there are boats,
fishing for real fish, to be protected in their work at sea or chased
off dangerous areas whither, because they are strictly forbidden to
go, they naturally repair, and you will begin to get some idea of what
the Trawler and Auxiliary Fleet does.

THE SHIPS AND THE MEN

Now, imagine the acreage of several dock-basins crammed, gunwale to
gunwale, with brown and umber and ochre and rust-red steam-trawlers,
tugs, harbour-boats, and yachts once clean and respectable, now dirty
and happy. Throw in fish-steamers, surprise-packets of unknown lines
and indescribable junks, sampans, lorchas, catamarans, and General
Service stink-pontoons filled with indescribable apparatus, manned by
men no dozen of whom seem to talk the same dialect or wear the same
clothes. The mustard-coloured jersey who is cleaning a six-pounder on
a Hull boa