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To protect Royal Navy ships drifters laid mine and anti-submarine barrages across the English Channel. Anti-submarine measures were an entirely new branch of naval work and many changes had to be made in the design and application of those measures learning mainly from experience and mistakes. In theory submarines caught in nets could not manoeuvre and would generate turbulence on the surface and give their position away. Torpedo boat destroyers then had the opportunity to hunt them down and attack them. From the arrival of the first nets at Dover until the last patrol after the signing of the Armistice the important work of the drifters was unceasing.

The nets were made of thin galvanised wire. Each net was 100 yards long and varied in depth from 30ft to 120ft dependent upon the depth of the water. Each drifter carried 10 nets covering an area of 1,000 yards and a fleet of drifters were used to protect the channel.

The first problem in this new naval defence system was how to float the nets. At first a vegetable substance from the West Indies called “kapok” was used but after losing many hundreds of nets this method was abandoned and experiments with other methods such as cork and sealed drums were used. After many alternatives were tried the ideal solution was found. Hollow glass balls!

Glass balls proved perfect. They were inserted in net bags held with twine and they proved extremely durable when secured to the head of the net. A net 100 yards long required about 150 hollow glass balls to float it effectively. The drifters working on the 25-mile cross-channel barrage kept their station and worked in all weathers and were respected by every naval ship crossing the channel to France.

The difficulty the Admiralty had was in procuring the hundreds of thousands of hollow glass balls needed for the anti-submarine net defences. At first, they were supplied from Norway but they proved to be very expensive but later, from 1915, ample supplies were procured from the British glass trade. This included Ayres Quay Glassworks, Southwick Glassworks and Candlish Glassworks at Seaham Harbour. The Seaham Glassworks therefore played a vital role in combatting the menace of U-boats in World War 1 and after the war the Admiralty expressed its satisfaction at the way these firms fulfilled these important tasks.