Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/107

1917J at the Admiralty they showed themselves almost unanimously opposed to the convoy.

"The merchantmen themselves are the chief obstacle to the convoy," said Admiral Jellicoe. "We have discussed it with them many times and they declare that it is impossible. It is all right for war vessels to manoeuvre in close formation, they say, for we spend our time practising in these formations, and so they think that it is second nature to us. But they say that they cannot do it. They particularly reject the idea that when in formation they can manoeuvre their ships in the fog or at night without lights. They believe that they would lose more ships through collisions than the submarines would sink."

I was told that the whole subject had been completely threshed out at a meeting which had been held at the Admiralty on February 23, 1917, about six weeks before America had entered the war. At that time ten masters of merchant ships had met Admiral Jellicoe and other members of the Admiralty and had discussed the convoy proposition at length. In laying the matter before these experienced seamen Admiral Jellicoe emphasized the necessity of good station-keeping, and he described the close Formation which the vessels would have to maintain. It be necessary for the ships to keep together, he explained, otherwise the submarines could pick off the stragglers. He asked the masters whether eight merchant ships, which had a speed varying perhaps two knots, could keep station in line ahead (that is, in single file or column) yards apart, and sail in two columns down the Channel.

"It would be absolutely impossible," the ten masters replied, almost in a chorus.

A discouraging fact, they said, was that many of the ablest merchant captains had gone into the navy, and that many of those who had replaced them could not be depended on to handle their ships in such a formation.

"We have so few competent deck officers that the captian would have to be on the bridge the whole twenty-four lours," they said. And the difficulty was not only with :he bridge, but with the engine-room. In order to keep the ships constantly the same distance apart it would be necessary accurately to regulate their speed ; the battleships could do this because they had certain elaborate devices, which the merchant vessels lacked, for timing the revolu-