It had been an Admiralty regulation that when a submarine was sunk and its loss proved, the successful crew was awarded £1,000 for each submarine recorded, which was divided proportionately according to rank. Submarines claimed to have been sunk run to over two hundred. Many and various were the methods by which they were sent to the bottom of the sea; but so far as a number of inventors or the originators of ingenuity were or are concerned, it would appear that virtue alone remains their sole reward. * * * * * Since this book was accepted for press my attention has been called, in the February number, 1920, of _Pearson's Magazine_, to an article by Admiral Sims of the U.S.A. Navy, entitled "How the Mystery Ships Fought," in which he says: "Every submarine that was sent to the bottom, it was estimated, amounted in 1917 to a saving of about 40,000 tons per year of merchant shipping; that was the amount of shipping, in other words, which the average U-boat would sink, if left unhindered to pursue its course. "This type of vessel (Q-boats) was a regular ship of His Majesty's Navy, yet there was little about it that suggested warfare. _Just who invented this grimy enemy of the submarine is, like many other devices developed by the war, unknown._ It was, however, the natural outcome of a close study of German naval methods. The man who first had the idea well understood the peculiar mentality of the U-boat commanders." Extracting further paragraphs from Admiral Sims' article: "There is hardly anything in warfare which is more vulnerable than a submarine on the surface within a few hundred yards of a four-inch gun. A single well-aimed shot will frequently send it to the bottom. Indeed, a U-boat caught in such a predicament has only one chance of escape; that is represented by the number of seconds which it takes to get under water. "Clearly the obvious thing for the Allies to do was to send merchant ships armed with hidden guns along the great highways of commerce. The crews of these ships should be naval officers and men disguised as merchants, masters, and sailors." At p. 104 of the magazine Admiral Sims refers directly to my invention as described and illustrated: "Platforms were erected on which guns were emplaced; a covering of tarpaulin completely hid them; yet a lever pulled by the gun crews would cause the sides of the hatchway covers to fall instantaneously. _Other guns were placed under lifeboats, which, by a similar mechanism, would fall apart_ or rise in the air exposing the gun. "From the greater part of 1917 from twenty to thirty of these ships (Q-boats) sailed back and forth in the Atlantic."