Requisitioning of ships to carry food

On 10 November 1915, the same day on which Britain introduced licences for ships trading between foreign ports, a second Order in Council empowered the Board of Trade to requisition ships for the carriage of food and other goods. To carry it out, the Requisitioning (Carriage of Foodstuffs) Committee was set up. It was chaired by John Henry Whitley, a Liberal MP and Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, and its members were three shipowners: F.C. Gardiner, Ernest Glover and Richard Holt. The last two sat on the advisory committee of the Admiralty’s Transport Department, which requisitioned ships for the army and navy. This was meant to avoid conflicts between the two bodies. For the same reason one of the committee’s two secretaries was Arthur Salter, an official of the Transport Department and later one of the creators of inter-Allied shipping control.

Bread and freight from America

The government was worried above all about bread. According to the British official history, the rise in grain freight from New York to Liverpool alone raised the price of the four-pound loaf in October 1915 by more than a penny compared with August 1914, the most since the beginning of the war. Shipowners’ profits aroused widespread indignation. The Liverpool Steam Ship Owners’ Association proposed a radical solution: to restrict by bans or duties the import of goods not needed in wartime, so as to free ships and quays for essential goods. The Board of Trade rejected this idea for fear of confusion in trade, unemployment in the industries affected and disputes with the Allies, the neutrals and the Dominions. It decided to deal with only two matters: British ships in trade between foreign ports and the freight of grain from North America.

Although the order conferred wide powers, for the time being the committee was to provide tonnage only for the carriage of wheat from North America. It was a requisition of a special kind. The Transport Department took a ship, paid the owner a fixed rate according to the so-called Blue Book and disposed of it itself. The food committee merely ordered the owner to send the ship for a specified cargo to a specified port, and freight rates remained at market level. It acted on the instructions of the Cabinet committee on food supplies, which determined the imports required. According to Salter, the aim was to increase wheat imports to 800,000 quarters (about 175,000 tons) a week and to bring down freight rates. The Port and Transit Executive Committee, set up a week earlier, was to report regularly on the situation in the ports receiving grain, so that new deliveries would not congest the quays.

Modest results

For the first three months the committee directed fewer ships into the grain trade than the market was attracting there anyway, so its decisions changed nothing. For seven weeks wheat imports averaged only 510,000 quarters a week, and Atlantic freight rates continued to rise. Only from March 1916 did the committee begin to direct more ships than the market would have attracted. According to Salter, freight rates then fell by more than half by the end of June, and weekly imports rose to 665,000 quarters. Salter nevertheless judged the experiment critically: the reductions in freight went mainly to merchants rather than consumers, and the ships directed to carry wheat were then lacking for the carriage of other, equally necessary goods. The committee’s activity was soon curtailed.