, in part, obscured. We are, perhaps, satisfied that
alternative channels exist for passage of the tonnage they transport:
road and rail are open for inland carriage.

The situation is not quite so clear. Pressure at the rail-heads, at the
collieries, at the steelworks and the manufactories, has thrown a burden
on our island railways that they are unable to bear. But for the service
of the coasters and the resolution of the home-trade seamen, the block
to our traffic could not have been other than fatal. By relieving the
congestion on the lines, they made possible the expansion of our output
of munitions. Millions of tons that would otherwise have been put upon
land transport (and have lain to swell the accumulations), are brought
to tide-mark to be handled and cleared and ferried between home ports
and across the channels by the coasting vessels. The Fleet is coaled
and stored almost entirely by sea. Our men in France and Flanders are
carried and fed and refitted by light-draught steamers. Power is
transmitted to our Allies from British coalfields by our grimy colliers.
Constant voyaging, dispatch at the ports of lading and discharge,
seagoing through all weathers, make huge the total of their tonnage, but
their individual cargoes rank small against the mammoth burdens of the
oversea merchantmen. The sea-ants (however busily they throng the ports)
are seldom remarked; their work is carried on in the shadow of more
spectacular and lengthy voyaging. On occasion, a stray beam of popular
recognition is turned on the smaller craft--as when _Wandle_ steams up
Thames after her gallant fight, or when _Thordis_ (Bell, master) rams
and sinks a U-boat--but the light is quickly slewed again to illuminate
the seafaring of the oversea vessels. Similarly--with the men--interest
has centred on the deep-water mariner; the coasting masters and their
crews, together with the pilots, are little heard of. Their navigations,
steering by the land on a short passage of a tide or two, have not the
compelling emphasis of long voyaging on distant seas. Chroniclers of our
deeds and fates have set out the drawn agony of the raft and the open
boat in mid-Atlantic; they are less insistent on the tragedies (as
bitter and prolonged) of inshore waters. Perhaps they are influenced by
a common misconception that succour is ever ready at hand in the narrow
sea. There are the lifeboats on the coast, patrols on keen look-out in
the channels, vessels are ever