USES OF TRAWLERS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1393, 1 May 1915, Page 4

USES OF TRAWLERS.

Tiie nickname ol “mosquito fleet,” applied to the navy's torpedo flotilla, might now more properly be given to the steam fishing trawlers, of which the Government is gathering together a swarm for the threefold purpose of mine sweeping, protecting battleships from submarines, and operating in the shadows of the Belgian coast against the Germans. More than 500 of these boats were requisite ned. They are found so useful that the Government evidently thinks it cannot have too many. Trawlers still continnv their original duty ol sweeping !or menaces to shipping, as enormous quantities of mines are still strewed at sea. bollowinu the German raid on Scarborough and Hartlepool, as many as 1500 mines were picked up in one week. Many boats have been lost in this work more than have been officially announced. These German mines, with their bustling contact points, often explode in the nets. They have enough weight attached to their cables to sink them about tour feet under the surface, so they tun with the tide to the shallower water, whore the weight strikes bottom and anchors. Nothing is so effective against submarines as a cordon of trawlers around a fleet. The submarines must come close to be effective, and they aie easily de tected by the trawlers on rising tc the surface to use the periscope. Trawlers have already taken patt in the Belgian coast operations. They car- - one gun forward, another aft, and two abeam. The weapons ar- quick-firers of comparatively small calibre, but the boats, sailing in close under the lee of the sand dunes, and increasing the general volume of fire, help to prevent enemy guns from taking a base along the snore and making a direct target of the big monitors and cruisers.

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