AT SEA: Quiet But Fierce

Far more than 2,000 men and 200 ships (the number asked) last week answered the British Admiralty’s call for volunteers to sweep mines, which in a fortnight sank 27 ships off England’s coasts. A British mine-laying force went out to sow a new field between the Thames River and the mouth of the River Scheldt on Belgium’s coast, to bottle Germany’s submarine mine layers farther up into the North Sea. French patrols safely brought in some convoys of merchantmen carrying war supplies from the U. S.; France announced sinking seven U-boats in two days, bringing the total which the Allies claim to have sunk in three months to 43, or more than half the number Germany is said to have had on hand when war began. Figuring replacements at two per week (Churchill’s figure), this would make Germany’s net loss up to this week 17.

“Lindy.” In charge of mine research for the Admiralty was put First Lord Winston Churchill’s inventor-friend, Frederick Alexander Lindemann, Oxford professor, scientist, aviator, director of the R. A. F.’s Physical Laboratory in World War I. One mine brought in for “Lindy’s” inspection was retrieved by a brave diver who went to the bottom alone to get it. Report was that the triggers of the new mines were found to be so sensitive they responded to sound waves as well as magnetism.

Sweepers. Wooden ships returned to their own. A “splinter fleet” of fishing smacks from ports like Grimsby and Hull was equipped with extra-heavy bottom-trawling nets, or with heavy chains to drag between them well astern.

As in the last war, most of the sweep volunteers were fishermen, whose hard-boiledness is widely advertised now by their radio telephones. Magnificent profanity, ribald bets and sweepstakes played against death filled the short-wave bands. The Royal Navy makes no attempt to discipline these mariners, whose women are busy at home weaving nets for artillery camouflage. The special naval rank of “Skipper” is accorded their captains, and when they talk with His Majesty’s officers they don’t bother to salute, remove pipes or cigarets from mouths, or hands from pockets. The Royal Navy appreciates what tough work it is they do, having a mine-sweeping fleet of its own. Publicly discovered last week was the fact that Robin Inskip, 22, son of Viscount Caldecote (Lord Chancellor in the Chamberlain War Cabinet), was aboard the mine sweeper Aragonite when she was blown out of water last fortnight with serious injury to four men. Safe home in London with his family, Robin Inskip chirped: “A bit of a shakeup.”

Scores. At week’s end, reported losses of neutral and Allied shipping from all causes totaled only 15 vessels, 65,634 tons, of which 10,086 tons was the big British refrigerator ship Doric Star which radioed from the South Atlantic that she was being attacked, was heard from no more. Probable assailant: the German raider Admiral Scheer. Germany claimed a grand total of 194 merchantmen (68 neutral, for which she was “sorry”) with a tonnage of 735,768—nearly 250,000 tons a month, which would be about one-fourth the highest monthly figure reached in World War I.

Germany further claimed, last week, another submarine blow to the Royal Navy: a cruiser either of the London (9,750-ton) class or the Dorsetshire or Norfolk (9,925 tons). The alleged striker: Lieut. Günther Prien, 31, Hero of Scapa Flow.