Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/104

86 or because their instructions from Berlin were explicit to that effect. Having constantly before my eyes this picture of the Grand Fleet immune from torpedo attack, naturally the first question I asked, when discussing the situation with Admiral Jellicoe and Others, was this: "Why not apply this same principle to merchant ships?"

If destroyers could keep the submarines away from battleships, they could certainly keep them away from merchantmen. It is clear, from the description already given, precisely how the battleships had been made safe from submarines ; they had proceeded, as usual, in a close formation, or "convoy," and their destroyer screen had proved effective. Thus logic apparently indicated that the convoy system was the "answer" to the submarine.

Yet the convoy, as used in previous wars, differed materially from any application of the idea which could possibly be made to the present contest. This scheme of sailing vessels in groups, and escorting them by warships, is almost as old as naval warfare itself. As early as the thirteenth century, the merchants of the Hanseatic League were compelled to sail their ships in convoy as a protection against the pirates who were then constantly lurking in the Baltic Sea. The Government of Venice used this same device to protect its enormous commerce. In the fifteenth century the large trade in wool and wine which existed between England and the Moorish ports of Spain was safeguarded by convoys, and in the sixteenth century Spain herself regularly depended upon massing her ships to defend her commerce with the West Indies against the piratical attacks of English and French adventurers. The escorts provided for these "flotas" really laid the foundation of the mighty Spanish fleet which threatened England's existence for more than a hundred years. By the time of Queen Elizabeth the convoy had thus become the all-prevailing, method of safeguarding merchant shipping, but it was in the Napoleonic wars that it had reached its greatest usefulness. The convoys of that period were managed with some military precision; there were carefully stipulated methods of collecting the ships,