Convoy committee

On 17 May 1917 the British Admiralty set up a committee to draw up a general plan for sailing merchant ships in convoys (PL) on the ocean routes. The British chronology of the war stresses that this followed a decision of the Cabinet and was done in cooperation with the Ministry of Shipping. Its members were four naval officers, among them Commander H. W. Longden and Fleet Paymaster H. W. E. Manisty, who later directed the organisation of convoys, as well as Norman Leslie of the Ministry of Shipping, who knew the movement of ships in British ports in detail. It was the first body charged with preparing convoys not as an experiment but as a permanent system. The same day the War Cabinet decided that British ministries were henceforth, as far as possible, to buy food and raw materials in North America, and to keep purchases in more distant markets to a minimum. The shorter routes across the North Atlantic were to save ships and make them easier to protect.

The April disaster and the wrong figures

The decision was brought about by April 1917, the worst month of the whole submarine war. German submarines, which had been waging unrestricted submarine warfare since February, sank that month, according to various tallies, from about 835,000 to more than 860,000 tons of shipping, most of it in the approaches to the British Isles. Together with losses from other causes it came to about 880,000 tons. The Admiralty had long maintained that it did not have enough ships for convoys. It relied on its own weekly returns, which showed about 2,500 ships entering British ports every week and as many leaving. These, however, also counted the Channel ferries and small coasters that called at several ports a day. Commander Reginald Henderson, who organised the escorted sailings of colliers to France, checked the Ministry of Shipping’s records with Norman Leslie in April. It turned out that only about 120–140 ocean-going ships arrived each week. That many could already be escorted.

Lloyd George at the Admiralty

By the end of April convoys were being urged by shipowners, some naval officers, Admiral Sims, recently arrived in London, and the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George. On 26 April the head of the Anti-Submarine Division, Rear-Admiral Alexander Duff, wrote in a minute to the First Sea Lord, Admiral John Jellicoe, that the time had come to be ready to introduce convoys at any moment. Jellicoe agreed to a trial the next day. On 30 April Lloyd George, by arrangement with the First Lord of the Admiralty, Edward Carson, came to the Admiralty. In his memoirs he wrote that he had announced “peremptory action” there on convoys, and that only the prospect of being overruled in their own building forced the admirals to give way. This version long found its way into the textbooks. Naval historians point out, however, that the decision on a trial had been taken before the Prime Minister’s visit. In his own report to the Cabinet Lloyd George himself noted that Duff had “completely changed his mind” and that Jellicoe agreed with him at least as to an experiment. The visit may have speeded matters up, but it did not decide them.

The admirals still had doubts. Jellicoe did not want to take destroyers from the Grand Fleet, and Duff feared that a single successful attack on a close-packed convoy could end in disaster. Lloyd George later wrote bitterly that both had been converted against their will. More than three weeks passed between the decision on a trial and the setting up of the committee.

The trial from Gibraltar

When the committee began its work, the first trial convoy was already at sea. Ships coming from the Mediterranean had been held at Gibraltar from 6 May, and on 10 May 17 steamers left there in formation, sailing at an average speed of about 6.5 knots. Through the most dangerous waters near Gibraltar they were escorted by armed yachts, and on the ocean by two Q-ships, Mavis and Rule. On the last and most dangerous stretch before the Channel, destroyers and a seaplane from the Scilly Isles were waiting for them. On 20 May the convoy reached Plymouth without loss (some studies give 22 May, when the ships continuing east reached the Downs anchorage), two days faster than if the ships had sailed singly on roundabout routes. On 24 May a second trial convoy, of 12 ships, left Hampton Roads in Virginia. More and more escort vessels could be provided by the Americans, whose first destroyers had arrived at Queenstown on 4 May.

The committee sat for less than three weeks. On 6 June it presented a report that provided for regular convoys to Britain from Gibraltar, from Dakar for ships from South America, Africa and the Far East, from Hampton Roads and from New York, as well as convoys leaving British ports. Cruisers were to escort the ships across the ocean to a rendezvous with destroyers a few hundred miles from the coast. The Admiralty approved the plan in mid-June, and the first regular convoys sailed in the summer of 1917.