PERILOUS WORK

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20629, 9 August 1941, Page 6

PERILOUS WORK

NORTH SEA MINELAYERS *. IMPREGNABLE BARRIER LONDON, July 19. With a thunderous splash, one of our North, Sea minelayers has just dropped her li,oooth mine into the great underwater barrier around our coastline, writes A. J. McWhinme in the Daily Herald. That is only one minelayer. There are others on the same job. Week in and week out .summer, and winter, they have been building strengthening and those lurking lines of underwater sentinels which wait to contact any seaborne invasion of our shores. This ship, the Teviot .Bank—which once brought cargoes of pig iron from Philadelphia to the Clyde—has already had recognition of the gallantry and devotion to duty of her officers and men. The increasing menace' of the nazj bombers and the night operations of enemy E-boats have not diverted these men from the iob of making this great sea barrier stretching from John o’ Groats to Dover, along; the Channel, and up the South-West Coast. To-day that barrier has reached such colossal proportions that I cannot visualise the most intrepid of Hitler’s potential sea invaders getting through. Britain has not built these mine barriers without losses. The last minelayer I sailed in the Pi incesr Victoria —paid the price of one of the w'ar’s most perilous jobs. But the work has gone on just tne same—with stop-watch precision.