CHAPTER III 



THE FIRST SWEEPERS 



It is claimed, and perhaps time will show that 

 the claim is not unjustly made, that the employment 

 of nets in connection with the trapping of the earliest 

 of the German submarines originated with an East 

 coast drifter skipper. Let the claim be considered, 

 and it will be obvious that at the least the submarine 

 catching at the outset was a development of the 

 system of catching herrings with the drift-nets. 



A " fleet " of nets from a single drifter, it has 

 been shown, could extend a distance of two miles. 

 There were many such drifters in employment when 

 war broke out; many more whose " fleets " in each 

 case would make a vertical wall in the sea a mile 

 and a half long. At the height of the herring sea- 

 son, when the Yare would be packed with drifters 

 and Yarmouth was the centre from which the ves- 

 sels worked, a round thousand of the craft would 

 be scouring the North Sea and the " fleets " would 

 stretch across from the English to the Jutland coast. 

 In such a mass of netting it was almost impossible 

 to avoid entanglement, even by skilled skippers, 

 and it sometimes happened that a drifter would get 



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