In the spring of 1940, Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, was walking along the quayside of a British port to inspect a fleet of Royal Navy ships. Told it was a ship of the Royal Naval Patrol Service, he smiled and said: "They are like a lot of bloody pirates." HMT Rolls-Royce swept almost 200 mines around Britain – more than any other ship in the Royal Navy. They were supported by more than 700 women of the Women's Royal Naval Service. But air attacks claimed 77 armed trawlers and whalers, which was more than a quarter of all Royal Navy ships sunk by aerial assaults.