This was in the small hours of the dark morning of April 21, 1917, some of the German destroyers having crept into the Straits and shelled both Dover and Calais. In the case of the former town there were no casualties, but over a hundred shells were thrown into Calais, several people being killed, others {216} injured, and a good many houses being destroyed. Out on patrol and near mid-channel steaming westward, were the _Swift_ and _Broke_, the _Swift_ leading under Commander Ambrose Peck, and the _Broke_ in charge of Commander E. R. Evans. Of the two vessels, soon to become immortal, the _Swift_ was seven years the older, having been launched at Birkenhead in 1907 from the yards of Messrs. Cammel Laird. She had a displacement of 1,800 tons and carried four 4-inch guns. The _Broke_, on the other hand, had only just been completed before the outbreak of war, and, although approximately of the same dimensions, carried six 4-inch guns and three torpedo-tubes. By a remarkable coincidence, in view of what was to come, she bore the name of that Sir Philip Broke who commanded the _Shannon_ during her historic duel in the spring of 1813, with the _Chesapeake_, when the latter was captured, after a most heroic resistance, during a hand-to-hand struggle on her deck. Commander Evans was, of course, the famous Polar explorer, who had been second-in-command to the ill-fated Captain Scott. The sea was quite calm, but, in the black night, it was impossible to see more than half a mile ahead; and the enemy vessels were but six hundred yards distant when they were spotted by the destroyers' lookouts. Six in number, and including amongst them some of the fastest destroyers in the world, they were then on the port bow and travelling at high speed in an opposite direction to that of the _Swift_ and _Broke_; and, almost simultaneously, they became aware of the presence of the two Britishers. Instantly they {217} sounded their fire-gongs, and, six to two, opened rapid fire. A minute before and the _Swift_ and _Broke_ had been respectable members of a gallant flotilla. Ten minutes later--such is the luck of the sea--and they had written their names forever in British naval history.