“The question of the use of these mines as an adjunct to a Battle Fleet in a Fleet action has not been put forward so strongly as desirable as compared with their use for preventing ingress or egress to a port. They can be used with facility in the open sea in depths up to 150 fathoms. There is no question that they could be employed with immense effect to protect the rear of a retreating Fleet. This type of mine is quite different to the blockade mine. They are offensive mines. Is it wise, indeed is it prudent not to acquaint ourselves, by exhaustive trials, what the possibility of such a weapon may be, and how it may be counteracted?” CHAPTER XVI THE NAVY IN THE WAR SCAPA FLOW. Ages before the War, but after I became First Sea Lord on Trafalgar Day, 1904, I was sitting locked up in a secluded room that I had mis-appropriated at the Admiralty, looking at a chart of the North Sea, and playing with a pair of compasses, when these thoughts came into my mind! “Those d--d Germans, if dear old Tirpitz is only far-seeing enough, will multiply means of ‘dishing’ a blockade by making the life of surface ships near the coast line a burden to them by submarines and destroyers. (At this time the Germans had only one submarine, and she a failure!) Also, as their radius of action grows through the marvellous oil engine, and ‘internal combustion’ changes the face of sea war, we must have our British Fleet so placed at such a distance from hostile attack that our Force off the Enemy’s Coast will cut off his marauders at daylight in the morning on their marauding return.” I put that safe distance for the British Fleet on my compasses and swept a circle, and behold it came to a large inland land-locked sheet of water, but there was no name to it on the chart and no soundings in it put on the chart. I sent for the Hydrographer, and pointing to the spot, I said: “Bring me the large scale chart. What’s its name?” He didn’t know. He would find out. He was a d--d long time away, and I rang the bell twice and sent him word each time that I was getting angry!