The War Illustrated, Volume 3, No. 54, Page 268, September 13, 1940.

"We thought it was "Good-night, nurse’," said the skipper of the "Arctic Trapper" with the usual gift of understatement practised by those at sea. He was describing the moment at which his gun crew had already brought down one Nazi and the other five Nazis-five of them-turned and made a determined attack on him to avenge their comrades. The "Arctic Trapper" is a Grimsby trawler built for the North Sea fishing and familiar with the run out of Grimsby to Spitsbergen or Iceland.

"She looks shabby, mind you," admitted the engineer who accompanied us in the launch which put out to take aboard the "Arctic Trapper’s" mail. "But she’s a right ship. You should see her moving."

The sirens had just gone on land when we came aboard, and Skipper William Hilldrith mentioned casually enough: "You’ll see all the boys manning their action stations just as they were the other day." That "other day" was the day the "Arctic Trapper" brought down two German ‘planes with her one gun, a score which brought congratulations from the First Lord of the Admiralty.

"The wife’s got the telegram," said the skipper. "Otherwise you could see it." But I did see the young ex-railway porter from Grantham, who is the gunner, and his gun crew, all Grimsby fishermen, who shot down the second Nazi ‘plane while machine gun fire from a German formation was swishing about them. On the wrists of these men are home-made identity disks. These are painfully shaped by hand and are punched out with the seamen’s names. They are made of parts of German ‘planes which have been brought down.

"That’s what made us steam towards them so fast," said the crew. And the recipe for shooting down Nazi ‘planes?

"You want to get the first shot in," said the young gunner. "They must be in range, of course."

George Kirby photographed them as they waited at their gun stations, while the sirens screeched across the water from the land: heavy-eyed but eager, they waited for them, unshaven but alert at their precious gun. The raiders passed and the "Arctic Trapper" was ordered off to a new position as we left.

"She don’t look up to much, but she moves lovely," ruminated the engineer. And the little boat that smacked down two of the ineffectual eagles sent to terrify the South Coast of England sailed by across our stern, solid and small in sunset.