A beginning had been made, in 1909, with a Trawler Section of the Reserve, which numbered 1500 officers and men at the beginning of 1914. But no one had predicted the enormous requirements and special demands of the present war, which, in form and character, differs from all other wars. It has witnessed the entry of the submarine into the hostilities as a commerce destroyer; and there has taken place what has amounted in practice to an obliteration of the distinction between the ship of war and the merchant vessel. Everything that could float came into the Navy, from the stately liner, built as a moving palace of the sea, to the sturdy tramp-steamer, the steam yacht and motor boat, and the humble fishing lugger. The Admiralty Transport Department progressively took up from one-third to one-half of the entire tonnage of the Mercantile Marine, and the number continued to increase; the vessels being employed as mine-carriers and layers, troop and horse transports, observation ships, balloon ships, and vessels for numberless other services. The Merchant Service Guild furnished officers drawn from the Merchant Service; and great numbers of Reserve men of many categories came in, with men taken into the Reserve or serving in their own ships, as well as many thousands of hardy seafaring men from the fisheries.

It was an herculean labour to create out of these diverse and scattered elements the homogeneous force which is the British War Navy of to-day. We cannot pay too great a tribute to the officers and men who have come into the Service. We cannot set too high a value on the services of those officers and men of the Royal Navy and its Reserve who have laboured without rest or pause to create the great force upon which we depend for much of the sea work of the war. We cannot forget the ceaseless work that has been in progress in the dockyards and private yards of the country in altering, reconstructing, repairing and fitting for their duties the countless vessels which have been brought into the service of the Navy. Nor can we forget the officers and men who go about the ordinary business of the sea in the terrible conditions of this war.

Although the Grand Fleet, in its northern anchorages,

controls the naval situation throughout the world, it rarely gives any public token of its existence. When an English coast town is bombarded, or a raid is made in the Channel, or vessels are sunk by submarine, the lesser elements of the enemy fleet are at work, and the lesser elements of our own Fleet are called upon to engage them. Such was the nature of the action in which the 'Swift' and 'Broke' so gloriously distinguished themselves. It was to provide a home for his destroyers and submarines that the enemy created a base at Zeebrugge, and brought thither, by inland communications which sea power could not reach, guns of the largest calibres to defend it. The question has often been asked, Why did not the Fleet destroy this hornet's nest? The reason is obvious. Zeebrugge has become more formidable than any of the forts of the Dardanelles, and is not a proper object of attack by battleships or battle-cruisers. There has always been misunderstanding in the public mind on such matters. When Sir Charles Napier was in the Baltic, in 1854, he was attacked at home because he did not destroy Cronstadt or Helsingfors. He had declined to play the enemy's game by thus endangering his ships. Captain (afterwards Admiral Sir B. J.) Sulivan, who was with the Fleet, put the naval view quite clearly in a letter written at the time, which throws light upon the situation that has arisen at Zeebrugge. A military operation was required to accomplish the task.

'We know (said Capt. James) that two guns have beaten off two large ships with great loss. Had Nelson been here with thirty English ships-we have had, English and French, twenty-seven-he would have blockaded the gulf for years, without thinking of attacking such fortresses to get at ships inside. Brest, Toulon and Cadiz were probably much weaker than these places. . . . I suppose there will be an outcry at home about doing nothing here, but we might as well try to reach the moon' ('Life and Letters of the late Admiral Sir Bartholomew James Sulivan, K.C.B., 1810-1890,' Murray, 1896).

Zeebrugge, however, has never been long left undisturbed by attack from the sea or the air. In August 1915 monitors were employed there, but the mounting of heavier guns on shore seems to have rendered the

employment of big ships dangerous. German destroyers, submarines and mine-layers continued to issue from the port, notwithstanding frequent attempts to damage the place. In May 1917 an enemy flotilla from Zeebrugge was encountered by a force under command of Commodore R. Y. Tyrwhitt, and chased by destroyers to within range of the batteries at their base. Two days later a very heavy bombardment of Zeebrugge was carried out under the Vice-Admiral commanding at Dover, the Royal Naval Air Service taking part and engaging in fifteen combats. Great damage was believed to have been inflicted. Yet a few days later a French flotilla encountered a force of German destroyers which had issued from the port. The history of the repeated attacks on Zeebrugge shows that, though some destruction may be the result of bombardment of the place, it is difficult, if not impossible, to destroy such a position by purely naval means, when it is defended by powerful modern concealed guns and protected by extensive minefields, through the secret passages of which destroyers and submarines may issue.

Undoubtedly British destroyers have played a very great and distinguished part in the war in this region and elsewhere. Flotillas of them are attached to the Grand Fleet for all its services and requirements. We know how gallantly they came into action at the Jutland Bank. Large numbers of them are employed in the Destroyer Patrol Flotillas, some of whose officers have recently been rewarded for their long and arduous work in all weathers and in many circumstances of peril. Because Ramsgate was bombarded, the Dover Patrol has been attacked in the newspapers by people who knew nothing whatever of the circumstances or of the character of destroyer work. It was revealed, as by a flash of lightning, when, in the night of April 20-21, a German flotilla suddenly loomed up out of the darkness, near Dover, and within five minutes, in an action of the most gallant character, two of the enemy vessels were sunk and a third was damaged or destroyed.

The work of these patrols has been carried on ceaselessly day and night ever since the war began; not only in the fine days of summer, but in the howling storms of autumn, in seas heavy and steep, into which the

destroyer thrusts her nose, quivering, pitching and rolling, while the briny torrent crashes over her forecastle; or she lifts her bow and forefoot clear over the ridge of some mighty sea mountain to plunge downward into the seething hollow beyond, whence the salt surge, in masses too dense to be called spray, dashes against the charthouse or flies high over the bridge and funnels, or sweeps a foot deep over the upper deck; or again in the bitter days and nights of winter blizzards, in the teeth of north-east gales, when ice clothes every wire and stay, snow and salt whiten the bow and bridge and sheeted tubes and guns, and the cold penetrates to the bone. It is well to realise what our destroyers and torpedo-boats are doing for us in the war. Wherever troops or army stores are transported, they are acting as escorts; they regularly convoy ships in all our waters and out in the Atlantic; they are in the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, the Egean; they are called upon to give protection to cable ships and coolie labour and other ships. Few people could have foreseen the enormous demands which would be made upon our destroyer flotillas by the many military enterprises in which we have engaged. It is doubtful if the United States Navy could have rendered more valuable service than in sending to us the flotilla of destroyers which recently arrived in British waters, or the Japanese in despatching their light forces to the Mediterranean.

From destroyers it seems natural to turn to the submarines. Of these vessels we hear very little. They have, nevertheless, been active ever since certain of them appeared to reconnoitre the Bight of Heligoland within three hours of the outbreak of war. They have surprised us at times by torpedoing German ships in the Baltic, and Turkish vessels in the Sea of Marmora and even at the Golden Horn. The submarines have been busy in seeking for targets, which the retiring enemy does not often offer to them. Indeed, it would be true to say that the very completeness of our sea command-command of the sea surface-has deprived our submarines of the opportunities they would have welcomed. Never have they met an enemy without giving him the best their armament could bestow. It may seem strange, but it is true that, of all our fighting ships, the submarine is the

only one that cannot, except in purely fortuitous circumstances, engage an enemy of its own class.

We come now to the depôt or mother-ships, which are essential to the services of the smaller vessels, unless, which may happen in some cases, these are attached to a port and are provided with a depôt on shore. The mother-ships are usually cruisers of an obsolete type, sometimes with guns removed, and always fitted specially for their service. Once they were smart ships, the pride of a squadron, but now, in humbler service, they do work as useful and as essential. They are small perambulating dockyards and store-houses. The lesser craft in war, especially destroyers and torpedo-boats, require constant care to maintain them in efficiency. In slight and accidental collisions or encounters with an enemy they may receive dents or be holed, and their plates may have started.' The mother-ship sends artificers on board, who have equipment for rivetting and making good damage with new plates, or, if the injury be serious, of patching up the vessel to enable her to proceed to a dockyard. Engine and boiler troubles are made good by the skilled men in the depôt ship; and slight defects arising in gun-gear, torpedo-tubes, searchlights, wireless and electric equipment are undertaken. Reserves of torpedoes and shells may be supplied from the same source, with many miscellaneous kinds of stores, whether necessary to the ship or personal to the men, ship chandlery, haberdashery, and so forth. Medical officers are attached to the mother-ships and are responsible for the health of the men in their flotillas. Submarines may have a more intimate relation to their mother-ships, because, in port, officers and men do not customarily live on board the submarine craft.

The Royal Naval Air Service lives in close relation with the vessels employed in the long-coast patrols maintained by destroyers and auxiliaries. They have done good service together on the Belgian coast, at the Dardanelles and elsewhere. The naval airmen flew before the war. There was the Air Department at the Admiralty, directed by Captain Murray F. Sueter; and the Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps had its 'Central Air Office,' its Flying School at Eastchurch, and