_August 19th._ Got liberty after coaling ship and went ashore. Was hungry, so bought quite a dinner—one omelette, two steaks, two orders of peas and potatoes, tomato salad, three plates of ice-cream, five small cakes, two peaches, coffee, and some champagne. Wasn’t at all hungry when I got through. The life begins to agree with me. It may be noted that in these extracts from the day’s routine of several weeks of active duty, the _Corsair_ was engaged in patrolling a certain definite area of ocean and in escorting single ships through her block, like a policeman on a beat, or in saving mariners and vessels in distress. Incidentally she endeavored to lift the scalp of Fritz whenever opportunity offered. These areas, as laid off on the chart in degrees of latitude and longitude, would measure perhaps sixty by one hundred miles. The same system was employed by the Queenstown destroyer flotilla during the early months of its service. Some protection was given shipping and the submarines were driven farther offshore, but as an offensive campaign the patrol system was a little better than nothing. Of the destroyer patrol, Admiral Sims had this to say: The idea is sound enough if you can have destroyers enough. We figured that to make the patrol system work with complete success, we should have to have one destroyer for every square mile. The area of the destroyer patrol off Queenstown comprised about 25,000 square miles. In other words, the complete protection of the trans-Atlantic trade would have required about 25,000 destroyers. The alternative and by far the more effective scheme was to group a number of merchant vessels or transports and send them out from port or take them in with a sufficient force of destroyers and yachts to screen the convoy from submarine attack. Valuable ships could not be allowed to run by themselves. This was the procedure worked out and generally adopted after the United States had come into the war, and it made possible the enormous task of placing two million men in France and feeding a large part of Europe besides. When the _Corsair_ was on the Breton patrol, in company with other American yachts, it was difficult to realize how few U-boats were actually cruising at one time and how great were the odds against finding one in a designated patrol area.