ewhat,
and a return must now be made to earlier days.

Two more Astra-Torres were ordered from France, one known as No. 8,
being a large ship of 4,00,000 cubic feet capacity. She was fitted
with two Chenu engines of 240 horse-power, driving swivelling
propellers. This ship was delivered towards the end of the year 1914.
The second Astra was of smaller capacity and was delivered, but as will
be seen later, was never rigged, the envelope being used for the
original coastal ship and the car slung to the envelope of the ex-army
airship Eta.

On January 1st, 1914, an important event took place: the Army disbanded
their airship service, and the military ships together with certain
officers and men were transferred to the Naval Air Service.

Before proceeding further, it may be helpful to explain the system by
which the naval airships have been given numbers. These craft are
always known by the numbers which they bear, and the public is
completely mystified as to their significance whenever they fly over
London or any large town. It must be admitted that the method is
extremely confusing, but the table which follows should help to
elucidate the matter. The original intention was to designate each
airship owned by the Navy by a successive number. The original
airship, the rigid Mayfly, was known as No. 1, the Willows airship No.
2, and so on. These numbers were allocated regardless of type and as
each airship was ordered, consequently some of these ships, for example
the Forlaninis, never existed. That did not matter, however, and these
numbers were not utilized for ships which actually were commissioned.
On the transfer of the army airships, four of these, the Beta, Gamma,
Delta and Eta, were given their numbers as they were taken over,
together with two ships of the Epsilon class which were ordered from
Messrs. Rolls Royce, but never completed. In this way it will be seen
that numbers 1 to 22 are accounted for.

In 1915 it was decided to build a large number of small ships for
anti-submarine patrol, which were called S.S.'s or Submarine Scouts.
It was felt that it would only make confusion worse confounded if these
ships bore the original system of successive numbering and were mixed
up with those of later classes which it was known would be produced as
soon as the designs were completed. Each of these ships was
accordingly numbered in its own class, S.S., S.S.P., S.S. Zero,
Coastal, C Star and North Sea, from 1