Watercolor of Royal Navy motor launch ML148, by LHS, 1918. The motor launch was a small vessel designed for harbor defense and anti-submarine work. The Elco company built 580 between 1915 and 1918 in three series of different lengths: 1 to 50 (75 ft.), 51 to 550 (86 ft.), and 551 to 580 (80 ft.). The original armament of a 13 pound cannon was later replaced by three depth charges. Signed: L.H.S. 18
Signed: L.H.S. 18On the launch bow: ML148
"The French and Italians had by far the preponderance in capital ships, but the real action in the Mediterranean by this date was the antisubmarine war, and here the balance had quietly swung decisively toward the British. In May 1917 the total of patrol vessels of all sorts in the Mediterranean, from destroyers to sloops, from trawlers to small torpedo boats, was: British, 429; French, 302; Italian, 119; and Japanese, 8. The British had really learned that the Mediterranean was too important to be left to the French. British interests, whether they were shipping or overseas expeditions, were extensive, and they could not rely on others who, with the best will in the world, were apt to lack the resources to do the job. The British were forced to assume the leading part in the antisubmarine war."
Pre-war planning had called for France to move its fleet to the Mediterranean Sea to protect shipping while Great Britain protected France's Atlantic coast. After Italy entered the war in 1915, France, Britain, and Italy struggled to coordinate coverage of the Mediterranean. Britain's empire required maintaining passage through the Suez Canal to transport oil from Persia, and to support the war effort in Palestine and Mesopotamia.
A Naval History of World War I by Paul G. Halpern, pp. 392–393, copyright © 1994 by the United States Naval Institute, publisher: UCL Press, publication date: 1994
Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean, submarine, antisubmarine war, 1917, May, 1917-06-01, ML148
