Because of the lack of destroyers, the yachts contributed a large share of the American naval effort on the French coast during the summer and fall of 1917—trying months of the submarines’ greatest activity. Their work then and subsequently, whether on troop and store-ship escort in the Bay of Biscay, convoy escort through the difficult coastal channels of France, or on the Gironde convoys, was frequently hazardous and was always well done. Very sincerely H. B. WILSON (_Admiral, U.S. Navy_) Such was the “Suicide Fleet” as it was dubbed by certain pessimists who were later compelled to eat their words. Of these yachts one of the largest and fastest was the _Corsair_, owned by J. Pierpont Morgan, and the second of her name to fly the pennant of the American Navy in war-time. The first _Corsair_ was renamed the _Gloucester_ and won a well-deserved renown at Santiago in 1898, under Lieutenant Commander Richard Wainwright, who engaged two Spanish destroyers, driving one ashore and sinking the other in the most brilliant single exploit of that battle. In size and armament either destroyer was more than a match for the converted yacht, called a gunboat by courtesy, whose main battery consisted of four six-pounders. This was the kind of blue-water warfare which American sailors would have vastly preferred in 1917, ship to ship, between honorable foemen, as navies had fought in days gone by. The contrast between the naval careers of these two _Corsairs_ is wide and significant. The older ship had known what to expect, a certain chivalry of the sea which had never been obscured, even when men slew each other with cutlass and boarding-pike upon reddened decks. It was exemplified in the conduct of the Spanish Admiral Cervera, and reflected in the behavior of Captain “Jack” Phillip of the _Texas_ when he shouted to his bluejackets in the moment of victory, “Don’t cheer, boys. The poor devils are dying.” The _Corsair_ of twenty years later was to sail against an enemy who skulked beneath the sea with malice toward all and mercy toward none, who counted women and children as fair prey in war, and whose trail was marked by the agonies of unarmed and helpless castaways adrift in open boats. This _Corsair_ was no fragile, fair-weather yacht whose cruises had been confined to sheltered reaches, but a powerful ship familiar with the Atlantic in all seasons. She was no longer young, as vessels go, with eighteen years of service to her credit, but the Lloyd’s surveyor rated her as staunch and sound in every respect. As a yacht the _Corsair_ had made six voyages to Europe, while owned by the late J. Pierpont Morgan, and her shapely lines were known to mariners from the Channel ports to the Mediterranean and the Golden Horn.