All this without considering the main battle fleets or, in fact, any portion of the regular navy, and the ships required for the transport of food, troops and munitions of war, together with their escorts. Some idea of the numbers engaged in keeping the Allies supplied with the diverse necessities of life and war may be gathered from the fact that the average sailings in and out of the harbours of the United Kingdom alone during the four years of war amounted to over 1200 a week. The immense fleet forming the new navy was not homogeneous in design, power, appearance or, in fact, in anything except the spirit of the personnel and the flag beneath which they fought--and alas! nearly 4000 died. The squadrons, or units, as they were called, consisted of fine steam yachts, liners from the ocean trade routes, sturdy sea tramps, deep-sea trawlers, oilers, colliers, drifters, paddle steamers, and the more uniform and specially built fighting sloops, whalers, motor launches and coastal motor boats. The latter type of craft was aided by its great speed, nearly fifty miles an hour; but more about these ships and their curious armament later. WAR BASES The great auxiliary navy had to be built or obtained without depleting the ordinary mercantile fleets, and the shipbuilding and repairing yards, even in the smallest sea and river ports, worked day and night. The triumph was as wonderful as it was speedy. In less than fifteen months from August, 1914, the new navy was a gigantic force, and its operations extended from the Arctic Sea to the Equator. All units were armed, manned and linked up by wireless and a common cause. Before this could be accomplished, however, the problem of maintaining this vast fleet and adequately controlling its operations had to be faced and overcome. The seas adjacent to the coasts of the United Kingdom, the Mediterranean Littoral and Colonial waters were divided into "patrol areas" on special secret charts, and each "area" had its own naval base, with harbour, stores, repairing and docking facilities, intelligence centre, wireless and signal stations, reserve of officers and men, social headquarters, workshops and medical department. Each base was under the command of an admiral and staff, many of the former returning to duty, after several years of well-earned rest, as captains and commodores, with salaries commensurate with their reduced rank. Their staffs consisted of some six to twelve officers of the new navy, with possibly one or two from the "pukka service," and their command often extended over many hundreds of square miles of submarine and mine infested sea.