MINE-SWEEPERS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXXV, Issue 8275, 21 October 1915, Page 2

MINE-SWEEPERS.

THE FISHER FLEET.

Mr Ashmead Bartlott speaks of the immense number of drifters mid trawlers winch are used for carrying supplies between ships and the shore of liallipoli Peninsula, and whoso hands work often 16 hours of the 24, in all weathers. it is the. mates of these men, in boats like those, who carry out ! the mine-sweeping without which the iSavy could not keep the seas. Before the war over 25,(J0G lisiiing craft, manned by nearly 100,000 ; men, were busy supplying the British ■"'' islands; their catch was valued at over £10,000,000. But the war knocked half the bottom out of their industry. Some thousands of the fishermen, however, Were R.N.R.. men; hundreds o.f r these wore distributed .among tho vessels of the fleet, and from the surplus was formed the nucleus of the Royal Naval Division. Many wore drafted into patrol service, and their special knowledge and experience of the North Sea proved invaluable. When it wayS found necessary to extend mine-sweeping opora- [ tions. lai;ge numbers of fishermen ofI feral themselves, and oven in the first j few months of tho war more than 6000 were employed. And now they are at .it" in. the ■Dardanelles. All through the winter the mine-sweepers have kept the seas, and they have certainly saved numbers of, valuable lives and vain-

ships of war. One example of their work ' was the clearing of the mine fields that were laid by the German vessels that raided Scarborough. The mine-sweeper has to. meet all sorts of difficulties, any of which v

be a matter of life and death, or perhaps h'uudreds of deaths and the destruction of a. ship of war. He comes across moored mines, floating mines, observation minos, which are exploded' electrically from the shore, and the new and really infernal kind that automatically rises and sinks, so 'that the fact that a certain area has been swept is no guarantee,, that it is not after all hiding there.. To destroy mooredfcmines, a pair of 'mine-sweepers is employed. Each boat tows over its stern a wooden contrivancel called a kite, with planes so arranged that it dives beneath the surface when it is towed, the depth of the divo varying with the tewing. To each of these kites a block is fitted, and a wire hawser from the stern of one ship runs through the block of its own kite across through the block of the second kite up to the stern of the second ship, where it is secured. The ships steal ahead at equal speed, the kite dives to a corresponding depth, and the wire hawser is stretched out under .the water between them. This hawser fouls the mooring wiro of a mine, and as the ships steams on slide up the wire till it reaches the mine, when it strikes the horns actuating the detonator, and fires the mine. The sweepers keep too far ahead to be injured by the flying pieces of metal. Other pairs of 'Ships follow the first couple, each pair having its hawser at a different depth, and small buoys are dropped by them as they proceed, marking the area swept. The sinkers of the mines are swept by a trawl which drags along the bottom. When the increased weight of a trawl shows that a sinker has been fouled a small wiro is swept round the mine, and a counter-mine, which is secured to the small wire by a running shackle, slides down the wiro till it collides with the mine and explodes it. Floating mines are swept for chiefly by drag-nets tewed between two ships in the manner described.