MINE-SWEEPING FLEETS
For clearing away the mines dropped by an enemy special vessels are
employed. Each vessel is fitted on both sides with a curious contrivance
known as the “picking-up gear.” This apparatus is lowered into the
water, and “picks up” any mines which may lie in the path of an
on-coming fleet. When a mine-field is discovered by either destroyers or
seaplanes these vessels are immediately dispatched to destroy it; and
they are aided, in the case of the British Navy, by a large flotilla of
steam trawlers. Many of these auxiliary vessels are not fitted with the
_picking-up gear_, but go to work in pairs. Two vessels, connected
together by a long wire rope weighted in the centre to keep it
submerged, range themselves on each side of a mine-field, and by
steaming ahead in a parallel line sweep up the mines floating between
them. This process can be carried on simultaneously by a large number of
trawlers, covering a very wide area of sea. In the meantime the attached
destroyers and seaplanes can be searching for new fields. It often
happens during sweeping operations that mines are brought into contact
with each other and violent explosions occur. Sometimes the vessels
engaged in this hazardous work will themselves strike one of the mines,
but it is more often the _searching_ flotillas which meet with sudden
disaster in this way. Fully equipped mine-sweepers usually precede a
fleet of battleships and big cruisers through dangerous and narrow seas,
within the likely zone of hostile mines.
The British Mine-Sweeping Fleet comprises the following vessels:—_Circe_
(810 tons), _Jason_ (810 tons), _Speedy_ (810 tons), _Leda_ (810 tons),
_Gossamer_ (735 tons), _Seagull_ (735 tons), _Skipjack_ (735 tons), and
_Speedwell_ (735 tons).
These eight vessels are obsolete torpedo-gunboats which have been
specially fitted out for the work of mine-sweeping. There is also a
large flotilla of steam fishing trawlers engaged. Some of these vessels
were purchased by the Admiralty before the war, and were also equipped
for mine-sweeping; but many others were, by special arrangement, handed
over to the Navy on the outbreak of war. The whole of the mine-sweeping
fleet is manned by a special section of the Royal Naval Reserve, known
as the “Trawler Section,” which consists of about 142 _skippers_ and
1,136 men. This is, of course, in addition to the several thousand naval
sailors employed on the regular mine-sweepers, named above, and also to
those employed on the large number of additional small steamers taken
over for this work by the Admiralty at the commencement of hostilities.
It is estimated that the task of keeping the North Sea clear of mines
during the first four weeks of the Great War required over 100 vessels
and 5,000 sailors, in addition to the usual destroyer and submarine
patrols with their crews, and also to the seaplanes with their pilots
and observers.
Almost any steamship can be quickly converted into an effective
mine-sweeper, and for this reason it is impossible to give here more
than the very briefest information concerning the vessels employed in
these operations by the other Naval Powers at war. Russia had fifteen
special mine-sweeping vessels building when war broke out; but,
doubtless, many small merchant ships have since been used for this
purpose. France employed a number of mine-sweepers in the Adriatic; and
Japan used some in clearing the approaches to Tsing-tau. Germany and
Austria, of course, did not need many vessels of this kind, as the
Allied Navies laid comparatively few mines and German oversea commerce
ceased to exist almost as soon as war was declared. It was in the North
Sea, during the first phase of the naval war, that the value of a big
British mine-sweeping fleet made itself so wonderfully apparent.