The fisherman’s device for catching members of the finny tribe was, of course, applied to submarines. Long nets with meshes ten or fifteen feet square proved of great service when the war was young. Dropped in the course of an approaching U-boat, the probability was that she would poke her nose into it and find extreme difficulty in getting out. Subsequently cutters were fitted to the enemy’s craft, but nothing could eliminate the movement of the net, which was supported on the surface by small buoys or planks. Moored nets with mines attached boded no good to the submarine that was unfortunate enough to encounter the obstacle. An enemy commander found that his boat was towing a red buoy, and shortly afterward that she was entangled in wire-netting. “For an hour and a half,” he relates, “the netting carried us with it, and although I made every effort to get clear of it, rising and then sinking with the object of getting to the bottom of the netting, it was all in vain, for we were always dragged back, sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left.” By increasing the weight of water in the tanks the U-boat managed to tear the netting. She remained under water for eighteen hours, came up and found patrol craft in the vicinity, and was compelled to descend for another six hours. After a further look round, the officer adds, “I remained submerged for two hours, then slowly turned outward, and at a distance of some fifty yards from the leading enemy craft passed toward the open sea. At nine o’clock in the evening we were able to rise to the surface in safety.”