France was magnificent, but her maritime strength in the Atlantic was almost spent. To safeguard the approaches to her ports in which American regiments and divisions were to be landed, hundreds of thousands of men, with their mountains of supplies, was more than she could attempt. Help was needed and the American Navy was eager to respond, but no more destroyers were available. It was necessary to retain a certain number of them in home waters as units of the fighting fleet of big ships which was held in readiness for whatever emergency the war might suddenly unfold. To France, therefore, the Navy was compelled to send whatever it could lay hands on at short notice, planning to reinforce this vanguard with destroyers as fast as they could be launched and commissioned. In these circumstances the only ships which could be hastily fitted out and sent across were the larger yachts, about twenty in number, whose owners had enrolled and offered them for service when the war clouds were gathering. It had been expected that these pleasure craft, with their volunteer officers and crews, would be used only in the coastal patrol areas and not for duty in the war zone, and in the naval organization they were defined as belonging to “Class IV,” which had a limited field of operation. This was no obstacle, it is needless to say, for when the greater opportunity offered, the amateur bluejackets who manned these yachts were eager to shift into “Class II,” or combatant ships, and to sign on for the adventure in the war zone. The story of one of these yachts which bravely endured almost two years of battering service in foreign waters is more than a record of a single ship, for it will convey, I hope, something of the spirit and the experiences which they all shared together and which the Navy at large regards with pride as worthy of its traditions. These ships were flung into work for which they were presumably unfitted, into a kind of warfare which was wholly novel, and they sailed with crews who were mostly greenhorns, but they passed the test with flying colors and their admiral who commanded the American Naval Forces in France took pleasure in writing, not long ago: _U.S.S. Pennsylvania New York, N.Y. 8 September, 1919_ MY DEAR MR. PAINE: I am glad that you are to write the war story of the _Corsair_ because the story of the yachts that came to France in 1917 is well worthy of record. These vessels, designed for pleasure and manned, in large part, by officers and men of little naval training, but of unconquerable spirit, were by peculiar circumstances given an important rôle in the war. [Illustration: _Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N.Y._ ADMIRAL H. B. WILSON, COMMANDING THE U.S. NAVAL FORCES IN FRANCE]