United States or Montserrat ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The firing died away down the line; the dumb guns moved blindly towards the shifting sounds of strife like monsters mouthing for the prey that was denied them, but the fog held and the merciful dusk closed down and covered the flight of the stricken German Fleet for the shelter of its protecting mine-fields.
'But ze mines! objected the Frenchman. 'There again we are fairly safe. The launch is of such shallow draught that she will easily pass over the mine-fields. Floating mines we must of course risk, but there are not likely to be many about, for the Turks only send them down when an attack is expected. One other point is in our favour. This launch is fast.
Certain of the craft must be armed sufficiently to drive off hostile craft, trying to drag or countermine the defensive mine-fields; some must be able to add to the defensive mine-fields by planting mines, and some must be able to pilot friendly ships through the defensive mine-fields; others still must be able to countermine, drag, and sweep for any offensive mines that the enemy may plant.
Nor was our feeling of security increased by the knowledge that we were skirting the edges of one of the largest mine-fields in the Adriatic.
Strong redoubts, mine-fields, concrete gun emplacements everything that the best brains of the German Army could devise for our destruction had been lavished on the German lines. And behind the first line was a second and behind the second line a third. And now here we stand in the midst of what was once so vast a system.
It will be remembered that the E-11 and the E-14 passed through five or more mine-fields, thence through the Dardanelles into the Sea of Marmora, and even into the Bosphorus under seemingly impossible conditions.
And again, if the mine-fields were placed in close proximity to their bases, it would be comparatively easy for German submersibles of the Lake type, possessing appliances to enable divers to pass outboard when the vessel is submerged, to go out and cut away the mines and thus render them ineffective. Nets are also used to hinder the outward passage of the submarine.
That book of sea superstitions was on my table, some weeks later, and a sailor, who gave up trading to the East to patrol mine-fields for three years, and who has never been known to lose any time when in doubt through wasting it on a secret propitiatory gesture, picked up the book, smiling a little superciliously, lost his smile when examining it, and then asked if he might borrow it.
Now the pitiable thing about it was that all this enormous destruction proved to have been wrought for nothing, for the Germans, instead of throwing huge masses of infantry against the forts, as it was anticipated that they would do, and thus giving the entanglements and the mine-fields and the machine-guns a chance to get in their work, methodically pounded the forts to pieces with siege-guns stationed a dozen miles away.
Thus, the British Grand Fleet was at sea in the early part of the war, cruising here and there, begging for battle. Then it was that it learned how to avoid submarines and mine-fields. Submarines had played a greater part than expected, because Germany had chosen a guerrilla naval warfare: to harass, to wound, to wear down.
Word Of The Day