Having broken up the submarine-attack, a little later, they were once again of most timely service. At the entrance of the harbour, Chaser 130 sighted two floating mines. One of these she destroyed by gunfire, and the other she rendered harmless, just as a detachment of British destroyers was bearing down upon it at thirty knots. In this attack on Durazzo, every enemy boat in the harbour was either sunk or disabled; and no better example could be cited of America's naval coöperation.
Nor did this end upon the water, and, necessarily brief as this review must be, it must still be remembered that it extended both to land and air. With a personnel of thirty officers and 486 men, her Naval Railway Battery rendered very important assistance. With the first shipment arriving at St. Nazaire on July 25, 1918, all these heavy guns were mounted and ready in a little more than three weeks, and were in full action against the enemy throughout September and October. Laon, Longuyon, and Montmedy were the main objectives against which they were employed, 193 rounds being fired at the first of these, 119 at the second, and no less than 295 at what was one of the key positions behind the German retreat.
Finally, in turning from a record of service not to be estimated in many volumes, and with America's sonship of admiralty already, as we may hope, amply proved, let us finish this chapter with the following report of a young American naval ensign, working with a patrol of British seaplanes over the waters of the North Sea. "On June 4th," he said, "we received orders to carry out a reconnaissance and hostile aircraft patrol over the North Sea and along the coast of Holland. It was a perfect day for such work, for the visibility was extremely good, with a light wind of 15 knots and clouds at the high altitude of about eight or ten thousand feet. Our three machines at Felixstowe rose from the water at twelve o'clock, circled into patrol formation, and proceeded northeast by north along the coast to Yarmouth. Here we were joined by two more planes but not without some trouble and slight delay because of a broken petrol pipe which was subsequently repaired in the air. We again circled in formation, Captain Leckie, D.S.O., of Yarmouth, taking his position as leader of the squadron.
"At one o'clock the squadron proceeded east; our machine, being in the first division, flew at 1,500 feet, and at about half a mile in the rear of Captain Leckie's machine, but keeping him on our starboard quarter. We sighted nothing at all until half-past two, when the Haaks Light Vessel slowly rose on the horizon, but near this mark and considerably more to the south we discovered a large fleet of Dutch fishing smacks. This fleet consisted of more than a hundred smacks. Ten minutes later we sighted the Dutch coast where we changed our course more to the northeast. We followed the sandy beaches of the Islands of Texel and Vlieland until we came to Terschelling. In following the coast of Vlieland we were close enough to distinguish houses on the inside of the Island and even to make out breakers rolling up on the sandy beach.
"At Terschelling we proceeded west in accordance with our orders, but soon had to turn back because of Captain Leckie's machine which had fallen out of formation and come to the water. This machine landed at 3.15 and we continued to circle around it, finding that the trouble was with a broken petrol pipe, until about fifteen minutes later, when we sighted five German planes steering west, a direction which would soon bring them upon us. At this time Captain Barker had the wheel; Lieutenant Galvayne was seated beside him, but if we met the opposing forces he was to kneel on the seat with his eyes above the cowl, where he could see all the enemy planes and direct the pilot in which direction to proceed. I was in the front cockpit with one gun and 400 rounds of ammunition. In the stern cockpit, the engineer and wireless ratings were to handle three guns. We at once took battle formation and went forward to meet the enemy, but here we were considerably surprised to find that, when we were nearly within range, they had turned and were running away from us. At once we gave chase, but soon found that they were much too fast for us. Our machine had broken out of the formation and with nose down had crept slightly ahead of Captain Leckie, and we, being the nearest machine to the enemy, I had the satisfaction of trying out my gun for a number of rounds. It was quite impossible to tell whether I had registered any shots or not. Our purpose in chasing these planes was to keep them away from the machine on the water, which, if we had not been there, would have been shot to pieces. Finding that it was useless to follow them, as they could easily keep out of our range, we turned back and very shortly we were again circling round our machine on the water.
"It was not long before the enemy again came very close to us, so we gave chase a second time. This time instead of five machines as before there were only four, and one small scout could be seen flying in the direction of Borkum. It was the fourth time that we went off in pursuit of the enemy that we suddenly discovered that a large number of hostile planes were proceeding toward us, not in the air with the other four planes, but very close to the water. There were ten planes in this first group, but they were joined a few minutes later by five more. The scouts were painted black, the two-seaters green, and seemed very hard to pick up. We swung into battle formation and steered for the middle of the group. When we were nearly within range, four planes on the port side and five on the starboard side rose to our level of 15,000 feet. Two planes passed directly beneath us firing upward. Firing was incessant from the beginning, and the air seemed blue with tracer smoke. I gave most of my time to the four planes on our port side because they were exactly on the same level with us and seemed to be within good range, that is about two hundred yards. When we had passed each other, I looked around and noticed that Lieutenant Galvayne was in a stooping position, with head and one arm on his seat, the other arm hanging down as if reaching for something. I had seen him in this position earlier in the day so thought nothing of it. All this I had seen in the fraction of a second, for I had to continue firing. A few minutes later I turned around again, and found, with a shock, that Lieutenant Galvayne was in the same position. It was then that the first inkling of the truth dawned upon me. By bending lower I discovered that his head was lying in a pool of blood.
"From this time on I had no clear idea of just what our manoeuvring was, but evidently we took up a running fight steering east, then circled until suddenly I found our machine had been cut off from the formation and we were surrounded by seven enemy seaplanes. This time we were steering west or more to the southwest. We carried on a running fight for ten miles or so, until we drove the seven planes off. One of them was driven down, and made a very poor landing. Another was badly hit, side-slipped, and crashed in flames from a height of 2,000 feet. During the last few minutes of the fight, our engine had been popping altogether too frequently, and soon the engineer came forward to tell us that the fourth engine petrol pipe had broken. By this time I had laid out Lieutenant Galvayne in the wireless cockpit, cleaned up the second pilot's seat, and taken it myself.
"The engagement had lasted about half an hour, and the closest range was one hundred yards, while the average range was two hundred. The boat with Ensign Eaton in it landed between the Islands of Texel and Vlieland, while the other boat, which had not taken any part in the fight, was last seen two miles off Vlieland.... We descended to the water at 5.45, ten miles northwest of Ylieland. During the ten minutes we were on the water, I loosened Lieutenant Galvanye's clothing, made his position somewhat easier, and felt for his heart, which, at that time, I was quite sure was beating feebly. When we rose from the water and ascended to 1,500 feet, we sighted two planes which later proved to be the two Yarmouth boats. We picked them up, swung into formation, and laid out a course for Yarmouth.
"At ten minutes to seven, we sighted land, and, twenty minutes after, we were resting on the water in front of Yarmouth slipway. We at once summoned medical aid but found that nothing could be done. The shot had gone through his head, striking the mouth and coming out behind this ear, tearing a gash of about two inches in diameter. The boat had been more or less riddled, a number of shots tearing up the top between the front cockpit and the beginning of the cowl. The total duration of the flight was seven hours and ten minutes."