During the month of January, 1917, the naval base at Lowestoft called for volunteers for work described as ‘dangerous, at times rather monotonous, and not free from discomfort.’ Everyone, of course, knew that this meant life in a Q-ship. The vessel selected was the 122-ton three-masted topsail schooner _Result_, which was owned at Barnstaple, and had in December come round to Lowestoft from the Bristol Channel. Here she was fitted out and commissioned at the beginning of February, being armed with a couple of 12-pounders, but also with torpedo-tubes. As a sailing craft she was slow, unhandy, and practically unmanageable in light winds. At the best she would lie no nearer to the wind than 5-1/2 points, and in bad weather she was like a half-tide rock. True, she had a Bolinders motor, but the best speed they could thus get out of her was 2-1/2 knots. The result was that her officers had great difficulty in keeping her out of the East Coast minefields, and did not always succeed. She took in 100 tons of sand as ballast, and a rough cabin was fashioned out of the hold for the two officers. In command was appointed Lieutenant P. J. Mack, R.N. (retired), a young officer who had seen service at the Dardanelles in the battleship _Lord Nelson_ and in the historic _River Clyde_, whence he had been invalided home. As he was not an expert in the art of sailing, there was selected to accompany him as second in command Lieutenant G. H. P. Muhlhauser, R.N.R., who was not a professional seaman, but a keen amateur yachtsman of considerable experience, who had made some excellent cruises in his small yacht across the North Sea and had passed the Board of Trade examination as master of his own yacht. The sailing master who volunteered was an ex-schooner sailor, and her mate also was an old blue-water seaman. The motor man was a motor mechanic out of one of the Lowestoft M.L.’s, and there was a trimmer from the Trawler Reserve. She carried also a wireless operator, a cook, a chief petty officer, deckhands, and some Royal Naval ratings for the armament. All the crew, consisting of twenty-two, had seen considerable service during the war in various craft, and one of the deckhands was in the drifter _Linsdell_, which was blown up on an East Coast minefield at the commencement of the war. He had been then picked up by H.M.S. _Speedy_, who in turn was immediately blown up. This man survived again, and was now a volunteer in a Q-ship. _Result’s_ crew were trained to go to their ‘panic stations’ at the given signal, when the bulwarks were let down and the tarpaulins removed from the guns, the engineer on those occasions standing at the hatchway amusingly disguised as a woman passenger, arrayed in a pink blouse and a tasselled cap which had been kindly provided by a lady ashore.