DOVER BARRAGE REMOVED.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1941, 18 February 1919, Page 4

DOVER BARRAGE REMOVED.

The Dover barrage Ini'; been removed. The stories oT (lie Dover patrol are many and varied, and are all, or nearly all, centred in the system of defence set up between the shores of France and England to guard the entrance to the Channel. The object was to prevent the entrance of enemy s submarines, a difficult business, as it was necessary to keep the passage partially open for the merchant shipping traffic. Nets alone were found to be of little use, and in 1917 a barrage of mines and other buoyed obstacles was fixed up and constantly guarded by tinned trawlers and drifters. The enemy destroyers from the Belgian ports were always on the watch for an opportunity to attack the small vessels and destroy the barrage, so as to permit of the submarines getting through. The heroic conduct of the crews of these trawlers in the raid made on the night of February 14th-15th of last year, affords a line example of tint lighting fishermen’s devotion to duty, and will always stand out as a most gallant episode in the story of the Dover barrage. On the night in question a flotilla of ten enemy destroyers crept down in the darkness upon the British boats and succeed-' ed in sinking eight of them. It was a deliberate work of destruction, for the drifters’ crews were unable to offer much resistance, and weie practically helpless against their heavily-armed antagonists. But the survivors got their small boats out, carrying their wounded with them, and got away from their ship. Two stokers of the Violet Mary actually returned to their boat after the enemy had retired and extinguished the tires in the burning vessel, although the ammunition of their small guns was still exploding on the deck. Then they got their wounded shipmates on board, and took their little ship into harbour. Nearly (iO British seamen were killed in' this affair, and the funeral service, which was held in Do\ei Church, was a pathetic gathering attended by all the skippers ami crews of the trawler fleet in port.