Todd war diary, 3 August 1914-29 February 1916 / Arthur Todd - Page 143
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[Page 143]
Most skippers in being stopped took it as a personal insult and submitted to an examination with very bad grace. The Americans were particularly angry and we can quite sympathise with them in feeling hurt at being searched in sight of their home port by a foreign man-o-war. Still a war was on and the right of search was granted by international agreement.
On sighting a ship a stop signal was hoisted and usually after a bluff about not reading the signal or not seeing pretending not to see it the ship hove to.
We sent a boats crew aboard if the weather was reasonably good and while one officer inspected the ships papers and had a look at the cargo another lined up the crew and looked for enemy subjects.
Quite often Huns were caught disguised as Swedes and Danes having neutral papers in their possession either forged bought or stolen. These were promptly marched off and retained on board the man-o-war till they could be disposed of ashore or into other ships.