Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/113

1917] have been established in any complete and systematic way at such an early date. And we furnished other ships than destroyers, for besides providing what I have called the modern convoy that which protects the compact mass of vessels from submarines it was necessary also to furnish escorts after the old Napoleonic plan. It was the business of the destroyers to conduct the merchantmen only through the submarine zone. They did not take them the whole distance across the ocean, for there was little danger of submarine attack until the ships had arrived in the infested waters. This would have been impossible in any case with the limited number of destroyers. But from the time the convoys left the home port there was a possibility that the same kind of attack would be launched as that to which convoys were subjected in Nelsonian days; there was the danger, that is, that surface war vessels, raiders or cruisers, might escape from their German bases and swoop down upon them. We always had before our minds the activities of the Moewe, and we therefore deemed it necessary to escort the convoys across the ocean with battleships and cruisers, just as was the practice a century ago. The British did not have ships enough available for this purpose, and here again the American navy was able to supply the lack ; for we had a number of pre-dreadnoughts and cruisers that were ideally adapted to this kind of work.

On April 30th I received a message from Admiral Jellicoe requesting me to visit him at the Admiralty. When I arrived he said that the projected study of the convoy system had been made, and he handed me a copy of it. It had been decided to send one experimental convoy from Gibraltar. The Admiralty, he added, had not yet definitely decided that the convoy system should be adopted, but there was every intention of giving it a thorough and fair trial. That same evening at dinner I met Mr. Lloyd George, Sir Edward Carson, and Lord Milner, and once more discussed with them the whole convoy idea. I found the Prime Minister especially favourable to the plan and, in fact, civilians in general were more kindly disposed toward the convoy than seamen, because they were less familiar with the nautical and shipping difficulties which it involved.