Inevitably looming at the end of the 30-ies of the threat of war forced the British Admiralty to take all possible measures to strengthen the fleet, and to do this required quickly and at minimal cost. If the ensuring action of the fighting force of the fleet one way or another was solved through the construction of various types of destroyers, as we told you in previous issues, the issue of the protection of navigation in the waters surrounding Britain and her possessions, looked much sharper. Three dozen sloops, mostly obsolete, slow moving, not able to ward off even the plane-“whatnot” — that could oppose the “mistress of the seas” potential enemy for tens of thousands of miles coastal strip of the Empire, which yet “never the sun went down”.
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