heard.
But in August, 1914, there came a change, so dramatic, so sudden, that
maritime nations were stunned. Germany, in an excess of war fever, broke
the sea laws, and laughed while women and children drowned. Crime
followed crime, and the great voice of the Republican West protested in
unison with that of the Imperial East. Still the Black Eagle laughed as
it flew far and wide, carrying death to whomsoever came within its
shadow, regardless of race and sex.

But there was an avenger upon the seas, one who had been rocked in its
cradle from time immemorial, and to whom the world appealed to save the
lives of their seamen. It sailed beneath the White Ensign and the Blue,
and with aid from France, Italy and Japan it fought by day and by night,
in winter gale and snow, and in summer heat and fog, in torrid zone and
regions of perpetual ice to free the seas of the traitorous monster who
had, in the twentieth century, hoisted the black flag of piracy and
murder. For three years this ceaseless war was waged, and then, with her
wonderful patience exhausted, the great sister nation of the mother
tongue joined her fleets and armies with those of the battle-worn Allies
and peace came to a long-suffering world.

In that abyss of war there was romance sufficient for many generations
of novelists and historians. Many were the epic fights, unimportant in
themselves, but which need only a Kingsley or a Stevenson to make them
famous for all time. So with the happenings to be described in this
book, many of them historically unimportant compared with the
epoch-making events of which they formed a decimal part, but told in
plain words; just records of romance on England's sea frontier in the
years 1914-1918.

Although jealous of any encroachment on the space available for the
description of guerrilla war at sea, there are many things which must
first be said regarding the organisation and training of what may
appropriately be termed the "New Navy," which took the sea to combat the
submarine and the mine; also of the novel weapons devised amid the whirl
of war for their use, protection and offensive power. Into this brief
recital of the events leading to the real thing an endeavour will be
made to infuse the life and local colour, which, however, would be more
appropriate in a personal narrative than in a general description of
anti-submarine warfare of to-day, but without which much that is
essential could not be written without dire