ing close and leaving the other half on,
making you as ugly as they could. . . . It was a nasty thing to do; but
we made the best of it, and laughed at one another."

Hardship, abuse, ridicule! The fishermen still served their trade at
sea. Now, brutality! The third hand of _Boy Ernie_ details the callous
precision of German methods in September 1915. The smack was unarmed.
". . . It was very heavy and deliberate fire. [There were two enemy
submarines.] The shots . . . were coming on deck and going through the
sails. We threw the boat overboard and tumbled into her. . . . I started
sculling the boat away from the smack, all the time under fire; but the
Germans were not content with firing shells at a helpless craft--they
now turned a machine-gun on to defenceless fishermen in a boat on the
open sea. . . . The boat was getting actually riddled by the machine-gun
fire, and before I knew what was happening, I was struck by a bullet on
the right thigh, and began to bleed dreadfully. . . . The smack was
blown to pieces and went down. This was the work of one of the
submarines--while she was sinking the smack the other was firing on us."

Throughout all the malevolent and calculated campaign of destruction,
the fishermen remain steadfast to their old traditions of humanity. When
_Vanilla_ is torpedoed without warning and vanishes in a welter of
broken gear, her sea-mate, _Fermo_, dodging a second torpedo, steams to
the wreckage to rescue the survivors--but finds none. In a heavy gale,
_Provident_ of Brixham risks her mast and gear, gybing to close the
sinking pinnace of the torpedoed _Formidable_, and rescue the exhausted
seventy-one men who crowded her. The instances of fisher help to
merchantmen in peril are uncounted and uncountable.

In the distant days when the Sea Services were classed apart, each in
its own trade and section--working by a rule that admitted no
co-partnery--we foreign traders had little to do with those whom (in our
arrogance) we deemed the 'humble' fishermen. In the mists of the channel
waters, we came upon them at their trawls or nets. Their floats and
buoys obstructed our course; the small craft, heading up on all angles,
confused the operation of a 'Rule of the Road.' Impatient of an
alteration that took us miles from a direct course, we felt somewhat
resentful of their presence on the sea-route. That they were gathering
and loading a cargo under stress and difficulty that contrasted with
_our_ ea