Allied Maritime Transport Council is set up

On 15 February 1918 representatives of Great Britain, France, Italy and the United States met at the Foreign Office in London to prepare the creation of an inter-Allied body that was to carry out the Paris resolutions of 3 December 1917 on the joint management of shipping. A British chronology of the war records under this date that representatives of the Allied governments agreed to set up the Allied Maritime Transport Council. The date is confirmed by the British official history of seaborne trade. Arthur Salter, an official of the British Ministry of Shipping, later wrote that it was an informal meeting.

Ten weeks had passed since the Paris resolution, and the council still existed only on paper. Meanwhile the situation was more dangerous than ever. Shipping losses had exceeded shipyard output throughout 1917, and in February 1918 British yards delivered only about 100,000 tons of new ships, less than half the tonnage sunk in that time. The harvests in Britain, France and Italy had been poor, and an exceptionally severe frost on the Atlantic coast of the United States paralysed for several weeks the shipping that was to bring food from there. Salter recalled that the men responsible for shipping felt like sappers listening to the enemy tapping at a mine, while the public and most officials noticed nothing.

Work before the council was set up

The officials of the three European powers did not wait for a formal organisation. The most urgent matter was coal for Italy, which mined hardly any of its own. In 1917 it had imported on average only about 440,000 tons a month and made up the shortfall from stocks that had just run out. The Italians claimed they needed 800,000 tons, with an absolute minimum of 690,000. After examining the matter, the Allied officials concluded that they must be guaranteed at least 600,000 tons a month. The British Ministry of Shipping, which had to find the additional ships, agreed to this provisionally, and shipments began in February, without waiting for approval by the council. It was also devised that some of the coal would go to Italy by rail through France, which saved ships and reduced the risk of torpedoing on the long sea route.

What was agreed in London

The meeting at the Foreign Office laid down the general principles on which the new organisation would work, chose for it the name Allied Maritime Transport Council and provisionally appointed its secretary. This was Salter himself, Director of Ship Requisitioning at the Ministry of Shipping. It was also decided to give the council a permanent staff to provide it with an executive apparatus, and to convene it for its first session in March. According to the British official history, the aim was to avoid building a new, large office that would duplicate the national ones. Each country was therefore to have its own section, answerable to its own government, and the heads of these sections were together to form the council’s executive body.

The United States was in a special position. Formally it was not a member of the alliance but an associated power, and its representative did not hold ministerial rank and could not commit his government to the same extent as the ministers of France, Italy and Great Britain. His presence, however, ensured the Americans a share in the work, and in the executive body they were to be represented on an equal footing with the Europeans.

The council met for the first time on 11 March at Lancaster House in London. The first balance sheet presented to it showed that the Allies lacked ships to carry about 10 million tons of necessary imports.