[Letter From RADM Joseph Strauss to Dr. Eugene Grow Re: Minesweeping after World War I]

[Letter From RADM Joseph Strauss to Dr. Eugene Grow Re: Minesweeping after World War I]

Author: U.S. Navy Atlantic Fleet Mine Force

Year: 1919

U. S. NAVAL FORCES OPERATING IN EUROPEAN WATERS MINE FORCE, U.S. ATLANTIC FLEET, U. S. S. BLACK HAWK, Flagship. Kirkwall, Orkney Islands, 22 July 1919. JS/WPB. My dear Doctor: I have your letter of March fourteenth before me and it is a reproach I assure you reminding me ihat I have never answered it and thanked you for the information it contained. I find your advice was good, for all of the securities show an advance. I have been up in Kirkwall for about three months. It is a most desolate place, not even tempting one to take a walk on shore. I made one visit to London recently, stopping for a day at Inverness. The latter place is much the same as usual and I met several friends on the streets and their greetings were cordial enough to make it pleasant. It is a slow and dangerous process to pick up what is left of the fifty-six thousand mines that we planted last year. We find that about forty to forty-three percent are still moored in the places where they were planted. You can readily calculate what a vast number of these things are yet to be picked up in an area of some six thousand square miles. We are very careful but nevertheless have had one vessel sunk with the loss of se