Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/153

1917] passed through these Straits. This was the great route to the East by way of the Suez Canal. From Gibraltar extended the Allied lines of communication to southern France, Italy, Salonika, Egypt, Palestine, and Mesopotamia. There were other routes to Bizerta (Tunis), Algiers, the island of Milo, and a monthly service to the Azores.

The Allied forces that were detailed to protect this shipping were chiefly British and American, though they were materially assisted by French, Japanese, and Italian vessels. They consisted of almost anything which the hard-pressed navies could assemble from all parts of the world antiquated destroyers, yachts, sloops, trawlers, drifters, and the like. The Gibraltar area was a long distance from the main enemy submarine bases. The enemy could maintain at sea at any one time only a relatively small number of submarines ; inasmuch as the zone off the English Channel and Ireland was the most critical one, the Allies stationed their main destroyer force there. Because of these facts, we had great difficulty in finding vessels to protect the important Gibraltar area, and the force which we ultimately got together was therefore a miscellaneous lot. The United States gathered at this point forty-one ships, and a personnel which averaged 314 officers and 4,660 men. This American aggregation contained a variegated assortment of scout cruisers, gun-boats, coastguard cutters, yachts, and five destroyers of antique type. The straits to which we were reduced for available vessels for the Gibraltar station and the British navy was similarly hard pressed were illustrated by the fact that we placed these destroyers at Gibraltar. They were the Decatur and four similar vessels, each of 420 tons—the modern destroyer is a vessel of from 1,000 to 1,200 tons—and were stationed, when the war broke out, at Manila, where they were considered fit only for local service; yet the record which these doughty little ships made is characteristic of the spirit of our young officers. This little squadron steamed 12,000 miles from Manila to Gibraltar, and that they arrived in condition immediately to take up their duties was due to the excellent judgment and seamanship displayed by their commanding officer, Lieutenant-Commander (now Commander) Harold R. Stark. Subsequently they made 48,000 miles