DOVER BARRAGE REMOVED.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2962, 7 April 1919, Page 4

DOVER BARRAGE REMOVED.

The Dover barrage has been removed. The stories of the Dover patrol are many and varied and are all, or nearly all, centred in the system of defence set up between the shores of France and England to guard the entrance to the Channe . The object was to prevent the entrance of enemy submarines, a difficult business, as it was necessary to keep the passage partially open for the merchant shipping traffic. Nets alone were found to be of little use, and in 1917 a barrage of mines and other buoyed obstacles was nxea up and constantly guarded by armed trawlers and drifters. The enemy destroyers from the Belgian ports were always, on the watch for an opportunity to attack the small vessels and destroy the ban age, so as to permit of the submarines getting through. The heroic conduct of the crews of these trawlers in the raid made on the night of February 14-15 of last year, affords a fine example of the fishermen’s devotion to duty, and will always stand out as a most gallant ep' s o e in the story of the Dover barrage. On the night in question a flotilla of ten enemy destroyers crept down in the darkness upon the Britsh boats and succeeded in sinking eight of them. It was a deliberate work of destruction, for the drifters and were practically helpless against their heavily-armed antagonists. But the survivors got their small boats out, carrying their wounded with them, and got away from their ship. Two stokers of the Violet Mary actually returned to then boat after the enemy had retired and extinguished the fires in the burning vessel, although the ammunition of their small guns was still exploding on the deck. Then they got their wounded shipmates on board, and took their little ship into harbour. Nearly sixty British seamen were killed in this affair, and the funeral service, which was held in Dover Church, was a pathetic gathering attended by all the skippers and crews of the trawler fleet in port.