When war occurred the Coast Guard was transferred from the Treasury
Department to the Navy Department, and the personnel now consists of 227
officers and 4,683 warrant officers and enlisted men.
In the work of examining and considering the great volume of ideas and
devices and inventions submitted from the public, the Naval Consulting
Board has rendered a signal service. Beginning March, 1917, the Navy
Department was overwhelmed with correspondence so great that it was
almost impossible to sort it. Letters, plans, and models were received
at the rate of from 5 to 700 a day. Within a year upward of 60,000
letters, many including detailed plans, some accompanied by models, have
been examined and acted upon. To do this work a greatly enlarged office
force in the Navy Department was necessary, and offices were established
in New York and San Francisco. While a comparatively small number of
inventions have been adopted--some of them of considerable value--the
majority has fallen into the class of having been already known, and
either put into use or discarded after practical test.
And thus the Navy Department is carrying on its share of the war, a
share significant at the very outset as one of our most important
weapons in the establishment of the causes for which the United States
entered the great conflict.
CHAPTER XVI
The beginning of the end--Reports in London that submarines were
withdrawing to their bases to head a battle movement on the part of the
German Fleet--How the plan was foiled--The surrender of the German Fleet
to the combined British and American Squadrons--Departure of the
American Squadron--What might have happened had the German vessels come
out to fight
In the early fall of 1913 an American naval officer, who enjoyed to a
peculiar degree the confidence of certain officers of the British
Admiralty, was attending to duties of an extremely confidential nature
in London when one morning he was accosted by a friend, an officer high
in the councils of His Majesty's Navy.
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