Even supposing such to be the case, what fate was in store for the crew of this helpless machine? This part of the North Sea on which they had alighted was a sort of nautical No Man's Land. Fishing vessels gave it a wide berth, fearing the deadly and unseen menace of the mines. Merchantmen no longer followed the once busy maritime highway that led to the erstwhile prosperous port of Hamburg. Save for rare excursions on the part of the German torpedo flotillas and the occasional "sweeps" of Beatty's light cruisers and destroyers nothing afloat was likely to pass that way. Should the seaplane remain seaborne sufficiently long she might drift ashore, but from the direction of the wind it was pretty obvious that she would do so somewhere on the German Frisian group outside the southern portion
