TENTH CRUISER SQUADRON.

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 56, 8 March 1919, Page 11

TENTH CRUISER SQUADRON.

Sir Eric Geddes has done well to direct attention to tho excellent work of the Tenth Cruiser Squadron, which, as perhaps few. people* aro aware, was formed of mercantile liners. He says they were a littlo advertised power. They worked among the fogs -of the northern latitudes, which seem to have shrouded them and tfteir work from the public eye, save on the occasion when, though with severe loss, they successfully frustrated the attempt of a raider to break the cordon. The Tenth Cruiser Squadron, said Sir Eric, with its famous flagship, the cruiser Alsatian, from 1914 to 1917 held the 800 miles stretch of grey sea from the Orkneys to Iceland. In those waters they intercepted 15,000 ships taking succour to our enemies, and they did that almost under Arctic conditions, and mainly in the teeth of storm and blizzard; and out of that 15,000 they missed just 4 per cent., a most remarkable achievement under almost impossible conditions. The squadron was thus in a great measure responsible for the effectiveness of the blockade, which as much as any other weapon crushed the life out of Germany.