SUBMARINE WAR.

Taihape Daily Times, 23 April 1918, Page 7

SUBMARINE WAR.

.TALES OP THE DOVES PAT&OL. (£'y John &• Margcrison, in the Lon don Express) There is one section of the Sure Shield about which the general public know little or nothing. Its name is the Dover Patrol, but its duties do not confine it to the port of that name; its units can be met/all over the place —from Iceland out into the wastes of the Northern Atlantic; from the Orkney Islands as far west as Land's End.

Under the orders of the Admiral Commanding are all sorts nf ships; though all of one condition —excellent. Huge though elderly battleships, fast and armoured cruisers, weird-looking monitors, scouts, gunboats, destroyers torpedo-boats, trawlers, submarines armed yachts, passenger liners, oceangoing cargo-steamers, paddle pleasure boats, tugs, pilot yawls, and cutters, perky little racing motor-boats —all these and more are there. They have some queer yarns in the patrol. There was a trawler who went fishing and got a U-boat on the end of her line. But the fish was strong, and ran away with the angler instead of coming to the top to fight.

The angler held on her end of the line —a stout wire hawser—and exercised much cunning,, towing three buckets, astern so that the submarine should not go too far from home home. And, presently, the U-boat ended as congers do; he died violently. Then there was an elderly torpedoboat who entered into a game of "touch last" with a U-boat, chasing her round and round the hull of a supposedly neutral tramp. Her solitary six-pounded being engaged in persuading the "neutral" to remain neutral for the time being, she could not fire, but at length a lucky move set the weapon free, and, in quick time, it made a colander of that U-boats' conning tower—and the hunt was over. Then the tramp wasi (searched; (her cargo of beans was found to be mostly rubber; and she went into durance vilo till the Prize Court found time to deal with her.

"Von Tirpitz" was still another submarine, whose commander had fitted him with a pair of sickle shears on his bows —exactly like the infamous admiral's famous whiskers — wherewith to cut through nets spread to catch him. But a drifter of the Patrol met him, two well-aimed shots ■singed his beard and he ended as herring do—in a net.

They take part in Zeppelin and Oof ha hunts; they chase Hun torpedo craft back into the Zeebrugge defences, and occasionally strafe those defences, and nurse the transports across the Sliver Streak, and they are gluttons for fighting. They make light of the job; death is ever grinning at them, but the sturdy mariners of the Patrol refuse to recognise him. They say, simply and in . true sea-fashion; "If we weren't here we'd be somewhere else; somebody's got to do the job; why not us?"