NAVAL WARFARE.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16204, 6 May 1918, Page 7

NAVAL WARFARE.

THE NEW DANGER ZONE. (By Cable.—Press Association. —Copyright.) (Australian and N.Z. Cablo Association.) (Received May sth, 5.5 p.m.) LONDON, May 4. Mr Archibald Hurd, writing in :he "Daily Telegraph" discussing the new danger zone in the North Sea says that it reveals ah old well-guarded secret. The wisdom of the policy of allowing the submarines to reach tho high seas and hunting them thero had long been doubted. It was felt that it would be better to block their exits from their bases. Tho Admiralty had admitted that nets had not been a success as a barrage, and that the only effective barrage would consist of an enormous mine-field. The schemo was begun under Admiral Lord Jellicoe, and the work must have occupied at least a year. Many establishments were kept busy making tens of thousands of mines and other contrivances. The new danger zone covers over 120,000 square miles. .Mines, earlier in the war, were often defective, but many improvements were effected after Lord Jellicoe became First Sea Lord. Ho turned his attention to the problem almost immediately he had been called to the Admiralty. To fight the submarines he decided that the only way was to prevent them reaching the trade ■ routes. Every seaman realised that mines would do this better than anything else. It would now appear that Lord Jellicoe was alluding to this now mine-field when he prophesied that the submarine would be mastered ly next August.

Mr Hurd points out that mines ;*.rc specially effective against Germany's latest submarines owing to the latter's great bulk. TOLL OF THE SUBMARINE. (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) (Received May sth, 11.20 p.m.) NEW YORK, May 4. Mr Bainbridgo Colby, a member of the Shipping Board, in a speech at Baltimore, declared that more than 10,000,000 tons of shipping was submarined in 1917. Tho sinkings last month were more than the combined tonnage built in Britain and the United States during the same period. The present total of shipping completed in the United States amounts to 977,371 tons.

CITY OF ATHENS DISASTER. (By Cable.—Prcaa Association.—Copyright.) (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) NEW YORK, April 3. The revised list of passengers and crew of the ship City of Athens, shows that 67 were drowned, including women and children, and 7 United States marine recruits, who were on their way to Port Royal. The French warship which struck the City of Athens lost 10 sailors, but picked up the City of Athen's survivors uy the aid of her searchlight, and brought them to an Atlantic port, although. herself in a disabled condition. A recent cable message stated : —A French warship rammed and sank the American steamer Citv of Athens (5604 tons) in a dense fog'off the Delaware coast. Seventy-four persons are reported to have been drowned. A later report stated: Sixty-one of the passengers and crew out of a total of i 63 aboard the City of Athens were saved. The steamer sank in a few minutes. _ NEW YORK, May 3. Ihe Norwegian steamer Fjell tons) and the British steamer Livingstone collided in a fog off the "Virginia coast. The Fjell sank. There were no casualties.

AMSTERDAM. Mar 3. The majority of the crews of two submarines at Ostend became insane and the crew of another mutinied owing to bad food. Twelve were arrested. FRENCH STEAMER TORPEDOED. (Australian and X.Z. Cable Association.) (Received May sth, 5.5 p.m.) PARIS, May 3. The French steamer Provence (3911 tons) narrowly escaped being torpedoed in the Mediterranean on the morning of April 13tli. She was torpedoed tho samo evening, bnt reached Palamos, whero she grounded.