The Spectator at war: Light boats

From ‘News of the Week‘, The Spectator, 10 July 1915:

IN the western theatre of the war there has been a great deal of talk about renewed German activity on a huge scale, of imperative orders by the Kaiser to take Calais without delay, of vast movements of troops, and of huge guns intended when Calais is taken to bombard Dover and cover the invasion of England by aluminium boats. What special virtue there is in aluminium for this purpose does not appear. We can understand that aluminium was a very proper metal out of which to construct boats meant to be dragged across the Syrian Desert in order to facilitate the passage of the Suez Canal. It is, however, difficult to believe that even Germans would have recourse to aluminium craft for transporting sixty thousand or seventy thousand troops and their munitions.