Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/272

254 The other vital points were Newport, Rhode Island, where the six mine-layers were assembled; and Fort William and Kyle of Lochalsh on the western coast of Scotland, which were the disembarking points for the ships transporting the explosives. Captain Belknap's men were very proud of their mine-layers, and in many details they represented an improvement over anything which had been hitherto employed in such a service. At this point I wish to express my very great appreciation of the loyal and devoted services rendered by Captain Belknap. An organizer of rare ability, this officer deserves well of the nation for the conspicuous part which he played in the development of the North Sea Mine Barrage from start to finish. Originally, these mine-layers had been coastwise vessels ; two of them were the Bunker Hill and the Massachusetts, which for years had been "outside line" boats, running from New York to Boston; all had dropped the names which had served them in civil life and were rechristened for the most part with names which eloquently testified to their American origin—Canonicus, Shawmut, Quinnebaug, Housatonic, Saranac, Roanoke, Aroostook, and Canandaigua. These changes in names were entirely suitable, for by the time our forces had completed their alterations the ships bore few resemblances to their former state. The cabins and saloons had been gutted, leaving the hulls little more than empty shells; three decks for carrying mines had been installed; on all these decks little railroad tracks had been built on which the mines could be rolled along the lower decks to the elevators and along the upper mine deck to the stern and dropped into the sea. Particularly novel details, something entirely new in mine-layers, were the elevators, the purpose of which was to bring the mines rapidly from the lower decks to the launching track. So rapidly did the work progress, and so well were the crews trained, that in May, 1918, the first of these ten ships weighed anchor and started for their destination in Scotland. Already our navy had selected as bases the ports of Inverness and Invergordon, on Moray Firth, harbours which were reasonably near the waters in which the mines were to be laid. From Invergordon the Highland Railway crosses Scotland to Lochalsh, and from Inverness the Caledonian Canal runs to Fort William. These two