The small Irish coasting steamer _Downshire_ was made a victim on the 21st of February, 1915, but instead of sending a torpedo into her hull, the commander of the _U-12_, the submarine which overhauled her, resorted to boarding. After trying to elude the submarine by steering a zigzag course, the _Downshire_ was finally overtaken. The crew was ordered to take to the small boats, while nineteen men of the submarine, which had come above water, watched the operations from the deck. A crew from the submarine took one of the small boats of the steamship and rowed toward her. They placed a bomb in a vital spot and set it off, sinking the merchantman. In this way the submarine's commander had saved a torpedo. A conversation which took place between the captains of the two craft revealed the methods by which the submarine commanders were able, not only to steal up on their intended victims, but to elude being sighted by the patrolling British warships. Some fishing smacks had been in the vicinity while the _Downshire_ was sunk, and the British captain asked the German captain why they had not been attacked. The latter hinted that his plans worked best if the fishing boats were unmolested. When asked whether he had hidden behind one these little boats he changed the subject, but it was learned later that the commanders of the submarines made a practice of coming to the surface right near fishing boats and bade them act as screens while they lay in wait for victims. By keeping the small boats covered with a deck gun or by putting a boarding crew aboard, it was possible for the commanders of the submarines to keep their periscopes or the hulls of their vessels behind the sails of the fishing boats, unobservable to lookouts on larger ships. By the 23d of February, 1915, the success of German submarines had been so marked that the insurance rates on merchantmen went up. Lloyd's underwriters announced that the rate on transatlantic passage had gone up nearly one per cent. And on the same day it was announced that the British Government would thereafter regulate steamship traffic in the Irish Sea. Certain areas of the Irish Sea were closed to all kinds of traffic; lines of passage were defined and had to be followed by all merchantmen, and vessels of all descriptions were ordered to keep away from certain parts of the coast from sunset to sunrise. The comparatively small size of the submarines made it possible for the German admiralty to load them on to trains in sections and transport them where needed, and in this manner some were sent from the German ports on the North Sea to Zeebrugge, there assembled and launched. Others were sent to the Adriatic, arriving at Pola on the 25th of February, 1915. These were intended for use in the Mediterranean as well as in the Adriatic Sea.