Ebook The Cinderellas of the Fleet

This Little Book does not pretend to be a history of anti-submarine warfare. Neither is it a scientific treatise on the instruments and methods used in this the newest phase of naval fighting. On the other hand, I am afraid there is all too little in it of the romantic personal element, in which a war fought largely by kid reservists in small boats is bound to be rich. It is the story of an idea and how it grew in the face of indifference and ridicule to a success as unexpected by the regular Navy as it was by the average layman. It is the story of the Submarine Chasers.

Without wishing to underrate the part played in the war by the high-seas fleets of Great Britain and our own country, we may say that their part was largely a potential one. The actual work of strafing the U-boat, which was the big job of the war, was done by the scrubs - the destroyers, the yachts, the trawlers, the drifters, the motor craft, that Rudyard Kipling so aptly dubbed "The Fringes of the Fleet."

When the war cloud burst over Europe the submarine was the big, new, practically untried instrument of naval warfare, to which the Germans, foiled in their attempt to terminate the conflict in a single, rapid thrust, looked to isolate England and to bring down the mighty British Fleet, bit by bit, to the level of their own. No weapon had yet been devised to counter it nor any successful method of fighting it evolved. Its success was appalling and to make matters worse, it seemed to evolve and multiply much more rapidly than the means and methods of combatting it.

But gradually, out of the chaos and the experience dearly bought with countless lives and scores of ships, there was evolved a method of defense against the submarine and then a method of aggressive warfare, with specially designed boats and numerous and elaborate instruments for apprehending and destroying the tin shark.