THE LITTLE SHIPS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 65, 20 September 1940, Page 20

THE LITTLE SHIPS

"Behind The Fleets." By A. D. Devine. Published by John Murray, London. This is as much as may be told of the motor-boats, the drifters, the trawlers, the mine-sweepers and the destroy-ers-all those small ships of every type and class which cover the ships of the British Grand Fleet and guard the No Man’s Land of the sea. Without them the ceaseless movement of our Merchant Navy-those ships which plough through 85,000 miles of the world’s sealanes each day — would end in disaster and confusion. There is little glamour about these small and assorted ships, but there is

great and shining courage. Mr. Devine forceg us to acknowledge and appreciate it with an understanding born of long personal acquaintance. "Behind the Fleets" follows his other two books — "The Merchant Navy Fights," and "The Wake of the Raiders." In brisk, picturesque language he unravels, with all the intensity of a superb mystery story, the facts which made up the daily news bulletins of the first months of the war. Here is history; here is courage born of nobility of character and devotion to the task in hand. These are men of our blood; these are men who will never acknowledge defeat; these are the men whose spirit lives in the tradition of all the long history of the sea and Britain’s part played on its shifting waterways. Because information must not reach the enemy of the loss of all their Uboats, many of these stories cannot yet be made public, yet here is one example, told briefly and without names. It is the story of a tiny fishing boat off the coast of Scotland which dropped a depth charge on a U-boat and brought it to the surface, disabled. But it is moreit is a story of the spirit of the Navy and its little boats. The Germans shelled that little fishing craft as they tried to escape. But those fishermen were Scots, and tenacious. The engineer piled on the steam, the skipper manned the tiny gun-a toy compared with that on the U-boat. And the fishermen®won. While their little shell of a ship shuddered to the point of disaster under the demands made on her engines, they overhauled the U-boat and sank her. Then came another long fight against the seas to reach port, for she had suffered terrible punishment. It is a thrilling story, from first-hand knowledge. Mr. Devine has lived on these ships and among these men. He tells us of their valour; their grim humour; their ceaseless vigilance that the shores of Britain may be guarded and our sea ways kept free for the passage of food and war materials and troop transports.