Читать книгу The Radio Boys with the Iceberg Patrol; Or, Making safe the ocean lanes онлайн

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“It’s all of that,” replied the captain. “That’s why I’m seeking the appointment. It was rather exciting work over on the other side when we didn’t know what moment we’d strike a mine or be torpedoed by a submarine. Now in these piping times of peace, I feel that I’m getting rusty and I want the stir and danger all over again, and I look for plenty of it up there.”

“The Iceberg Patrol is a comparatively recent development in the naval service, isn’t it?” inquired Mr. Layton.

“Yes,” was the reply. “The thing that really stirred our own and other governments to action was the terrible disaster to the Titanic in nineteen hundred and twelve. The world rang with the horror of that. You, Mr. Layton, remember that an underwater spur of an iceberg ripped through her side as she turned in an effort to escape and sank her with the loss of hundreds of lives. The determination not to permit a thing of that kind to happen again caused the nations to get together and establish the Iceberg Patrol.”

“It was a frightful calamity,” remarked Mrs. Layton. “I suppose that the same thing has happened more than once, only on a smaller scale.”