The writer was wont to go out to the Dogger Bank with the Hull trawlers long ago, when these were all sailing craft, well-found ketches, no steam being used save for the donkey engine, whose function it was to haul in the trawl-beam; the crew of each vessel consisting of five hands, including the small boy and the child cook. To him, as to all those who knew our North Sea trawlers in the pre-war days, the change that has been effected in the personnel of these vessels by war conditions is amazing. Yet these are the same men, the same rough, hard-bitten fishermen, as fine sailors as use the seas. As I knew them, many of the trawler skippers could not read or write, but they knew their North Sea. Charts they despised; with compass and lead alone they found their way unerringly even to the coasts of Iceland; for they carried a mental chart in their memories, and had an intimate knowledge of the soundings of all these waters. They could smell their way across the North Sea in the thickest weather, so to speak. These men, who have been fishermen from infancy and have faced danger throughout their lives, brought up in the roughest of schools, now belong to the R.N.T.R., the Royal Naval Trawler Reserve, and man the mine-sweeping trawlers. Some of them might appear rude in speech and manners to residents of garden cities, but to those who know them these are true men led by "captains courageous," and they call for the admiration and respect of all Englishmen for the way in which they have carried out their perilous duties throughout the war. The mine-sweeping trawler carries a crew of about fifteen men. One scarcely recognises in them the whilom fishermen. The skipper of a craft that used to form part of a fishing fleet now has warrant rank and is smart in naval uniform. The men, too, wear the badges of a distinguished service. The discipline enforced in a mine-sweeping trawler now comes nearly up to the standard of the Grand Fleet ships. Skippers and men mostly come from the fishing ports of the North Sea--Hull, Yarmouth, and the others; Harwich itself, of course, is not a fishing centre. The mine-sweeping trawlers are organised in divisions of from four to seven vessels, each division being under the command of an R.N.R. lieutenant.