BAFFLED DIVERS.

Taranaki Daily News, 1 October 1915, Page 8

BAFFLED DIVERS.

GREAT NET IN CHANNEL. BRITAIN ADDS SECOND FENCE TO SEA BARRICADE. Paris, August 26. The North Channel, whlcn separates England and Scotland from Ireland, is now barred against submarines. The great achievement has been carried out by the same organisation that, in February, March and April, spread the net across the Strait of Dover, from Folkestone to Cape Gris Nez, which accounted for a number of untersee'boots until the "vermin," as they are termed by the Royal Navy, learned to give the strait a wide berth.

No sooner was the "great net," as it is called in England, safely placed in position than with the same secrecy and speed observed in the first instance the work of putting down the North Channel net was begun.

There has been, for months past, a. boom in glass factories in the United Kingdom. The men were kept hard at work turning out glass bul'bs, not unlike those you see on telegraph poles, but about 101) times as large. It the workers were inclined to grumble at the long hours, they were told that they were doing important war work. They were also told not to breathe even to their own wives what they were making. Glass manufacture, on a large scale, stems a strange war industry. War breaks glass, lots of it, but glass hitherto has had no function in war save to be broken. Many heads were scratched in vain efforts to solve the puzzle of what Kitchener, or Jellicoe, could possibly want with those glass cylinders, , BUOYS FOR THE NETS. As fast as they were finished, they were sent in carload lots to a port on the West Coast, and there loaded on trawlers. The reader has now guessed the riddle that puzzled the worKmen. They were the anchor buoys of the net. Invisible at a distance of a few feet, they are said to be as effective as ordinary buoys, » From Port Patrick, in Scotland, to the neighborhood of Skernaghan Point, just north of Belfast Lough, in Ireland, i.s the new submarine danger zone. The net is not a continuous wire barrier stretching across without a break. Thereare a number of nets, overlapping 'one another, and watched like hawks by patrol boats and destroyers. When a submarine pokes her nose into one of them, she drags it. The disturbance is at once noted, and in a twinkling «e. stroyers are 011 the job, hastening from all directions. The submarine cannot disentangle herself while under the surface; she can no longer sneak away, because the destroyers can follow the net, no matter how far she drags it. There .5 nothing to do but come to the surifi'.ce at once, or in a day or two, and surrender or be sunk.

The reason why the British Admiralty does not announce the destruction of submarines will now be understood. The only way for the Germans to discover that the new net has been placed, unless the spies on shore learned about it, was 11 lose some ships. And the British, if they could keep secret from the enemy the fact that submarines had been netted and destroyed in the- North Channel, could hope to net more of them. This could continue only for a short time. Many U" boats cannot have failed to return before the German Admiralty suspected what was the trouble. It i*s not positively known that any submarines were caught in the North Channel net, but unless the German spy system gave warning it is almost certain some victims fell into the trap. PROTECTS BRITISH SHIPS. The principal object of these nets, of course, is not to catch submarines, but to protect British shipping. The tremendous strategic importance of the nets wil be made clear from a ffiance at a map of the British Islands. The German submarine bases are Wilhelmshaven, Cuxhaven, Qstond and Zeebrugge. Were it not for the nets the U boats would swarm down through the Struts of. Dover and make the transportation of soldiers and munitions across the channel most hazardous. As

a matter of fact, not a submarine lias been in the channel since the Folkestone net was stretched, because the trip around the North of Scotland, down through the Irish Sea and around the South of England, and back again, is about 4000 miles greater than the steaming radius of any, save the newest U boajls numbered from 50 upwards. The Germans thought that by turning out boats of the 50 class, like the Uol, which went to Constantinople, they could penetrate the channel and demoralise the transport service, but now comes the new .net across the North Channel. This adds 500 miles to the trip, which now must be made along the West of Ireland through the open sea. This additional 1000 miles for the round trip i? too much even for the new boats to negotiate unless they receive fuel somewhere en route. The actual time consumed in making such a round trip at fifteen knots running on the surface, would be more than two weeks, while in going around the North of Ireland the submarines have to travel beneath the waves, because the destroyer flotillas attached to the squadrons 'based on Lough Swilly and Sheep Haven constantly exercise by patrolling outside the guarded harbors where the great Dreadnoughts lie ( and the strain on the crews does not permit the U boats to remain at sea more than a month. So the transport and supply ships which are the life of the great army in Flanders'are still safe. And even the trip into the North Sea, formerly possible for the U3O and her class of second-rate submarines, can now be made only by the most powerful under-water cruisers. This accounts for the falling off in the number ot ships torpedoed in Irish waters.