ALWAYS BUSY

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 106, 31 October 1942, Page 8

ALWAYS BUSY

THE LITTLE SHIPS

N.Z. WATCHDOGS

They have no Bomb Alley to run, no HeH*s Corner to turn. They haven't the daily battle to fight with stukas and Dorniers and Focke-Wulfes, like their famous kin-ships in . the Mediterranean Sea and the English Channel. Not yet, anyway. . . . But our own "Little Ships of the Navy/ watching New Zealand's coasts through your every1 sleeping and waking hour, are the vanguard of our home defence. Like the patrols an army sends out into no man's land, they watch and listen with constant vigilance for movements of the enemy. They sweep the shipping lanes for mines, tap their depths for the sinister presence of submarines, and check the identity and intensions of every vessel that comes and goes. And they are fighting patrols, too — ready for instant destructive and delaying action against an intruder. Their strength increases and their teeth grow steadily sharper. I have spent some days at sea with the little ships that guard the approaches to one of our ports, writes an official war correspondent, and. I am sceptical about the chances of an enemy submarine or surface raider slipping undiscovered into harbour. It is of the Little Ships of the Navy, whose constant activity is known only vaguely to the public, that most can be said. They are the minesweepers, trawlers, submarine chasers, and patrol launches that belong to an ever-grow-ing flotilla. Some of them are converted excursion steamers, fishing trawlers, and luxury motor-cruisers— evidence of the improvisation we had to undertake when war began—but in recent months specially-designed vessels have arrived unheralded in New Zealand waters after long and lonely journeys from Britain. Others are rising steadily on the slips of local shipbuilding yards. ONCE A FERRY STEAMER. , I went to' sea in a little grey ship which few would recognise today as a once well-known ferry steamer plying across one of the Dominion's harbours. She has little room for passengers now. Down below, where city workers and shoppers used to crowd, are the permanent quarters of the wartime sailor. The ferry steamer has become an ocean-going ship of war, and the thousands of miles she has logged since the White Ensign was hoisted above her decks include duty in the Pacific islands. The minesweeping gear rattled out ■over the stern as we left the harbour entrance behind. All you can see of it is a float, bearing a flag, that rides

through the waves well astern and to one side. A sailor with a pair of binoculars takes up watch for whatever the simple but ingenious underwater gear might send to the surface. Enemy mines are rare game here nowadays,, but the hunt is never relaxed. Sweeping is monotonous and arduous work, especially in the frequent bad weather which the ships encounter. When a mine is caught, it meets a quick and sometimes spectacular end. j The ship lies off at a respectful distance and opens fire with small arms. Often the result will be only to pierce the outer crust of the mine and sink it; but a lucky hit on one of the detonator horns that stick out from its spherical body will set off the explosive inside. The first lieutenant of this ship, a former Merchant Navy man, has hunted mines where they come thick and fast—off England's coasts. He told me a lot of shrewd thinking and counter-thinking goes on about them between the British and the Germans. There have been constant developments on both sides of magnetic and acoustic mines—and constant developments of counter-devices. . , ~ Our ship was doing another 30b all the while she swept this shipping lane for mines. She searched the waters for a second hidden menace —enemy submarines. The method is "hushhush," and it is one of the most advanced in existence today. It provides amazing accuracy in detection and location —and our ship had, too, the means to destroy. "HARRY TATE'S NAViT. Least known of all ,are the activities of the Very Little Ships, the motor patrol boats which work mostly under cover of night. They carry on the traditions of the famous "Harry Tate's Navy" of the last war, since most of them are one-time pleasure launches, and some of them still do duty on a voluntary basis, with their owners in command—a sort of naval Home Guard. On the more important patrols, however, the Navy \ has taken them over, and they are as much ships of war as are the minesweepers. In one of these I spent a night on an outer patrol over a black and heaving sea, and learned how, unseen and unheard, they keep track of every vessel that passes in the night. Theirs is the least enviable task of all, for the sea and the weather can be unkind to Very Little Ships. Their crews often lead lonely lives, but people who live on the coasts off which they work \ know this and are good to them. At a small northern harbour last Christmas, the proprietor of a local hotel invited every crew in port to a full turkey dinner, and even sent trays down to the men who had to stay aboard on watch. A farmer in the same area has thrown open a cottage, with reading, writing,. and bathing facilities, to the crew of the launch in which I went on patrol.

Such are our Little Ships. They are many, and they are busy. Their work is not spectacular—although it will be so "when the time comes" —but we see its fruits almost every day in the safe arrival of the big vessels that bring us guns and planes and supplies, and in their unhindered departure with foodstuffs and fighting men.