Port and Transit Executive Committee

On 3 November 1915 the Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, signed a minute setting up the Port and Transit Executive Committee. The new body was to investigate the difficulties and congestion in British ports, docks and warehouses, to regulate work and traffic in the ports and to settle disputes between all who used them. Unlike earlier committees, it could also issue directions to port authorities. This is how the British official history of seaborne trade gives the date and content of the minute. Arthur Salter, then an official of the Admiralty’s Transport Department, later wrote in his book on the control of shipping that the committee was constituted only in December 1915.

Choked ports

The problem had been growing since the beginning of the war. The army and the navy occupied quays and ships, traffic shifted from the east coast ports to the west coast, and ships arrived irregularly, often in whole groups, because they were held back on account of the submarine threat. The railways were short of wagons, and dockers were leaving for the army. Ships waited for weeks to be unloaded, and every day of delay reduced carrying capacity at a time when tonnage was already scarce and freight (PL) rates were rising fast. The worst situation was in Liverpool, where a local coordinating committee had been set up as early as May 1915. Similar committees were later formed in Glasgow and Bristol. In London, choked with wool that was moving too slowly to the mills in Bradford, no such arrangement could be introduced.

In August the Admiralty’s committee for the diversion of ships to ports warned that without prompt action the congestion would become worse than ever before. Large shipments of grain from North America, maize from Argentina and cotton were expected, and the Ministry of Munitions was starting an enormous programme of orders. The President of the Board of Trade, Walter Runciman, set up a joint committee, which first met on 7 October. Its members soon concluded that advice was not enough, because too many departments and interests were involved in every port question. They asked for executive powers and for the new body to be appointed jointly by the Admiralty, the War Office and the Board of Trade. All three departments agreed and approached the Prime Minister.

Membership and first tasks

The chairman was Lord Inchcape, a shipowner who had earlier headed the Board of Trade’s committee on dock congestion. The members included representatives of the Admiralty and the War Office, Lloyd’s, the Port of London Authority, the railways, as well as the war risks insurance associations and the Liverpool shipowners. Both existing committees, the Admiralty’s and the Board of Trade’s, were absorbed into the new body. The committee met weekly, and its standing sub-committee daily. From forty-three principal ports it received daily reports on the state of the quays, warehouses, labour, lighters and wagons.

The first urgent matter was protecting dockers from recruitment. Lord Derby’s recruiting scheme was just getting under way, and port workers were not on the list of reserved occupations. As early as 12 November Lord Derby agreed that essential port workers should not be accepted for immediate service, and at the beginning of December most categories of port transport workers were placed on that list. The committee functioned until the end of the war. According to Salter, delays in the ports reduced British imports during some periods of the war more than the losses of ships sunk by the enemy.