The Boom Defence staff is placidly serene. The turn of this department comes after a heavy gale has damaged the submarine nets, chains and buoys. The torpedo officers and their "parties" are discussing the best way of moving four of these steel monsters from a neighbouring depot ship to a new "Q" boat with only a rowing-boat at their disposal--soon the O.O.W. will be called upon to supply a drifter for the purpose. In the ordnance store a veteran P.O. is trying to make his list of returned brass shell-cases correspond with the number of shells supplied to various ships six months before. He knows the sailors' fondness for shell-cases as ornaments in their little far-away homes, and, failing to make all the figures agree, decides that some _must_ have been "washed overboard." The Port Minesweeping Officer is discussing with his sea commanders the clearing of a new mine-field laid by U-C-boats within the past few days, when a sudden stir is caused by the arrival of a signal from the wireless room to the effect that one of his vessels has struck a mine in lat. ---- long. ---- and is sinking. He appeals by telephone to the M.L. commander and in less than ten minutes a flotilla of fast launches is racing at 19 knots to the rescue. [Illustration: MOCK-WHEEL AND COMPASS-PEDESTAL OF THE "HYDERABAD" _Thornycroft & Co., Ltd._] [Illustration: WHICH COLLAPSE AND LEAVE A CLEAR RANGE FOR THE GUNS _Thornycroft & Co., Ltd._] In the Admiral's cabin there is to be a conference of senior officers later in the day to decide on the best means of ridding the seas within that area--and each base has its own area of sea--of a hostile submarine which has been inflicting undue loss upon shipping, its latest victim being a Danish barque. The combined wardroom and gunroom has some twenty occupants, reading the newspapers and magazines, warming themselves before the two big fires, or talking in little groups. This base has suffered some heavy losses lately, but reference to those "gone aloft" is seldom made, except quietly and a little awkwardly. The talk is of theatres in neighbouring towns, the respective merits of certain types of ships and weapons, the prospects of early leave, the dirty warfare of "Fritz" or the "beauties" of the North Sea in winter.