This barquentine was commissioned as a Q-ship in March, 1918, was well armed, but was also employed simultaneously in carrying coal to France.]
Thus, all round our coasts, in the North Sea, English Channel, Irish Sea, and Atlantic: from as far north as the Orkneys and Shetlands to as far south as the Bay of Biscay, and as far west as the coast of North America, these Q-sailing-ships were doing their job of work. The fitting out, the manning of these craft and of their guns, put a great strain on our manhood, already greatly diminished by the demands of our Armies abroad and munition makers at home. Nor could the Navy proper and the Auxiliary Patrol Force afford to be weakened. On the contrary, destroyers and light cruisers were being built and commissioned at a rapid rate: whilst more minesweepers, more trawlers and drifters, were daily consuming scores of men. Add to this the fact that other men as gunners were required in great numbers—for practically every British merchant ship became defensively armed—and one can see how important to our island nation and the overseas Empire is the existence of peace-time shipping, with all that it connotes—steamships, liners, tramps, colliers, trawlers, drifters, yachts, fishing smacks, it does not matter. From all these, and from the few full-rigged ships and sailing coasters, we had to draw our supplies of personnel, and it still takes longer to train a man into a sailor than into a military unit.
Never before, not even in Armada days, and probably never again, could such a call come from the fleet in being to the fleet of merchantmen. The sailing ship has had many centuries of usefulness as a fighting ship and a cargo carrier, and if she is being gradually killed by the mechanical ship she is dying hard. Apparently in neither capacity has she quite finished her fascinating and illustrious history.
It was on February 17, 1917, that Commander Gordon Campbell, still in command of _Farnborough_, now named Q 5, again sank a submarine, but in circumstances which, hid from publication at the time, sent a thrill through the British Navy and especially among those who had the good fortune to be serving in that area. The scene was again off the south-west Irish coast, and the enemy at the beginning of the month had commenced the unrestricted warfare portion of their submarine campaign. The Germans, as we have since learned, possessed at this date ninety-five submarines in addition to eight in the Baltic and thirty-one in the Mediterranean. The orders to their submarine captains were very drastic and left no uncertainty, and one of these commanding officers informed one of my friends after the war that unless they were successful in sinking plenty of shipping they soon were removed from their command.
