 Over the next five months, "Auk" and her sister ships - together with a group of 110-foot subchasers ((SC's)) supported by an Allied flotilla of British and American logistics and repair ships and loaned British Admiralty naval trawlers - carried out the dangerous task of sweeping some 55,000 mines sown in 1918 between the coasts of Scotland and Norway to contain the German U-boats in the North Sea.