CHAPTER IX
THE AMERICAN MINE BARRAGE IN THE NORTH SEA
I
Was there no more satisfactory way of destroying submarines than by pursuing them with destroyers, sloops, chasers, and other craft in the open seas? It is hardly surprising that our methods impressed certain of our critics as tedious and ill-conceived, and that a mere glance at a small map of the North Sea suggested a far more reasonable solution of the problem. The bases from which the German submarines found their way to the great centres of shipping were Ostend and Zeebrugge on the Belgian coast, Wilhelmshaven and Cuxhaven on the German coast, and the harbour of Kiel in the Baltic Sea. From all these points the voyage to the waters that lay west and south of Ireland was a long and difficult one; in order to reach these hunting grounds the German craft had either to pass through the Straits of Dover to the south, or through the wide passage-way of the North Sea that stretched between the Shetland Islands and Norway, and thence sail around the northern coast of Ireland. We necessarily had little success in attempting to interfere with the U-boats while they were making these lengthy open-sea voyages, but concentrated our efforts on trying to oppose them after they had reached the critical areas.
But a casual glance at the map convinced many people that our procedure was a mistake. And most newspaper readers in those days were giving much attention to this map. Many periodicals, published in Great Britain and the United States, were fond of exhibiting to their readers diagrams of the North Sea ; these diagrams contained one heavy black bar drawn across the Straits of Dover and another drawn across the northern passage from Scotland to Norway. The accompanying printed matter informed
244
