FISHERMEN IN WAR TIME 



trawling. This was long after the war began, when 

 the arrangements concerning fishing made by the 

 naval authorities had reached a state of considerable 

 perfection, and everything which experience could 

 suggest had been done with the two-fold object of 

 protecting the fisherman and enabling him to carry 

 on his work. 



The smack carried a crew of five and she was on 

 a fishing-ground. Another smack was about four 

 hundred yards away, and her crew were hauling 

 the gear when they heard a loud explosion and saw 

 a large column of smoke on the water. The skipper 

 at once hauled his gear and went to the wreckage, 

 lowered his boat, and made a search. All that was 

 seen of the crew of five was the skipper, floating in 

 the wreckage. He was picked up and taken on board 

 the rescuing smack, but he had been terribly injured 

 and was dead. All that it was possible to do in this 

 case was for a coroner's jury to say that the skipper 

 met his death through his vessel being blown up by 

 a mine. That was one of the inevitable hazards of 

 the sea in war-time, and a danger which was con- 

 stantly met by those who kept the trade routes 

 clear. 



That wonderful system of sea clearance was in 

 full operation very early in the war, and those who 

 visited the North-East coast at the time of the 

 panic-stricken bombardment by runaway German 

 warships in December, 1914, had an opportunity of 

 seeing the sweepers at work, for they were operating 

 close inshore, in that great North Sea fairway be- 



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