CHAPTER VIII
A TYPICAL WAR BASE
The last few chapters have dealt mainly with the weapons used in anti-submarine warfare. We now come to the naval bases on which the fleets armed with these curious devices were stationed for active operations.
Around the coasts of the British Isles there were about forty of these war bases, each with its own patrol flotillas, minesweeping units and hunting squadrons. The harbours, breakwaters and docks had to be furnished with stores, workshops, wireless stations, quarters for officers and men, searchlights, oil-storage tanks, coal bunkers, magazines, fire equipment, guard-rooms, signal stations, hospitals, pay offices, dry docks, intelligence centres and all the vitally necessary stores, machinery and equipment of small dockyards.
To do this in the shortest possible time, and to maintain the supplies of such rapidly consumed materials as oil fuel, coal, food, paint, rope and shells for perhaps a hundred ships for an indefinite number of years, it was often necessary to lay down metals and sidings to connect the base with the nearest railway system. At many bases secure moorings had also to be laid by divers, and the channels and fair-ways dredged. The larger bases also required temporary shore defences, and booms arranged across the harbour entrances to prevent hostile under-water attacks.
Then came the problem of finding the personnel. The ships had already been provided for, but to keep them in fighting condition, and for the work of administration, it was necessary to have a shore navy behind the sea-going units. An admiral from the active or retired list was appointed to each base as the "Senior Naval Officer." Then came additions to his staff in the persons of executive and engineer commanders, officers of the Reserve, chaplains, surgeons and paymasters. With these departmental chiefs came their respective staffs of warrant officers, petty officers, wireless operators, engine-room artificers, motor mechanics, shipwrights, carpenters, smiths, naval police, signalmen, storekeepers, sick berth attendants and parties of seamen. Finally, a generous supply of printed forms and train-loads of stores.
This then, in brief outline, was the material which went to form the war bases of the auxiliary, or anti-submarine, fleets. In many cases much more was required, especially at such important depôts as Dover, Granton and Queenstown. About the permanent dockyards, like Portsmouth, Devonport and Rosyth, or the Grand Fleet bases, nothing need be said here, because they do not come within the scope of this book. The same may also be said of that desolate but wonderful natural anchorage, Scapa Flow, the headquarters of the Grand Fleet in the misty north. Each of these mammoth naval bases had an auxiliary base for anti-submarine and minesweeping divisions.
With a knowledge of these essentials a more detailed description of a typical war base and the work of its staff may prove of interest. Taking as an example a large depôt, supplying all the needs of over a hundred erstwhile warships, and situated in the centre of the danger zone, we find a central stone pier on which has been erected a perfect maze of wood and corrugated iron buildings, with the tall antennæ of a wireless station, a little look-out tower and a gigantic signal mast from which a line of coloured flags is aflutter in the sea breeze. The shore end of the pier is shut off from prying eyes by a lofty wooden palisade with big gates, in one of which is a small wicket. Outside a sentry with fixed bayonet paces to and fro.
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