More than once during the war British salvage officers had hot times with burning ships, and one of their most thrilling adventures sprang from a collision between two oil tankers called the _War Knight_ and the _O. B. Jennings_. A big convoy of ships was proceeding along the English Channel in the early hours of March 24, 1918. It was pitch dark, and the ships with their attendant destroyers were steaming at full speed without lights in order to dodge the attentions of German submarines. Too late the officers on the _War Knight_ saw a dark shape appear immediately in their course. A moment afterwards came a terrific impact. The bow of the _War Knight_ cut into the side of the _O. B. Jennings_, bursting one of the mighty tanks full of naphtha. It flashed into one gigantic flame which instantly blotted out most of the crew of the _War Knight_, and in a minute or two a Niagara of naphtha from the fractured tank was setting the whole sea ablaze. The one or two men still alive on the flaming _War Knight_ frantically hurled themselves overboard, to meet a terrible end in the fiery sea. It was an awful sight. The fire leaped to the skies, while the men of the _O. B. Jennings_, in that moment’s respite before the blazing naphtha floated round to the other side of their ship, rushed to their boats and got away. But Captain Nordstrom and his officers stuck to their ship, though she was belching flames and every moment her other tanks threatened to explode and blow her sky high. Then a British destroyer speeded into the full glare of the light, and one by one the little band of heroes jumped to safety. The captain, leaping last, slipped between the two vessels to what seemed certain death, and for a space it seemed that he, too, was to lose his life, but the prompt measures of the British sailors eventually led to his rescue. By now the two ships were blazing like funeral pyres in a sea of flames. Great billows of smoke rolled from the stricken tankers in the dawn, blotting out the heavens, looking almost solid enough to stand on. With incredible pluck a naval officer, watching his opportunity, plunged into the inferno aboard the _War Knight_ and made fast a mighty steel towing hawser. Jumping back to his ship, he took in tow the flaming tanker which had now drifted right into one of our minefields. It was a gallant piece of work. British mines were all around him, waiting to blow him to pieces, but regardless of danger he kept his course. Once a big explosion shook the stricken vessel as she struck a mine. Luckily, the ship towing her escaped, and the salvage officer, seeing at last that it was not possible to prevent the tanker from burning out, decided to sink her by gunfire on a sandy bottom where there was at least the prospect of salving her later on. Never again, however, did the _War Knight_ sail the seas. She proved a total loss.