ordnance pieces, aircraft parts and ammunition. War materials and food were sent by sea from Belfast to Great Britain, some under the protection of the neutral Irish tricolour. The M.V. Munster, for example, operated by the Belfast Steamship Company, plied between Belfast and Liverpool under the tricolour, until she hit a mine and was sunk outside Liverpool. British preparation Government preparation There was little preparation for the conflict with Germany. However at the time Lord Craigavon, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland since its inception in 1921, said: "Ulster is ready when we get the word and always will be." He was asked, in the N.I. parliament: "if the government realized 'that these fast bombers can come to Northern Ireland in two and three quarter hours' ". His reply was: "We here today are in a state of war and we are prepared with the rest of the United Kingdom and Empire to face all the responsibilities that imposes on the Ulster people. There is no slacking in our loyalty." Dawson Bates, the Home Affairs Minister, apparently refused to reply to army correspondence and when the Ministry of Home Affairs was informed by imperial defence experts in 1939 that Belfast was regarded as "a very definite German objective", little was done outside providing shelters in the Harbour area. Air-raid shelters Belfast, the city with the highest population density in the UK at the time, also had the lowest proportion of public air-raid shelters. Prior to the "Belfast Blitz" there were only 200 public shelters in the city, although around 4,000 households had built their own private shelters. These private air-raid shelters were Anderson shelters, constructed of sheets of corrugated galvanised iron covered in earth. Since most casualties were caused by falling masonry rather than by blast, they provided effective shelter for those who had them. No searchlights were set up in the city at the time, and these only arrived on 10 April. There was no smokescreen ability, however there were some barrage balloons positioned strategically for protection. Given Belfast's geographic position, it was considered to be at the fringe of the operational range of German bombers and hence there was no provision for night-fighter aerial cover. Indeed, on the night of the first raid, no Royal Air Force (RAF) aircraft took to the air to intercept German planes. On the ground, there were only 22 anti-aircraft guns positioned around the