Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/320

302 the coal—evidently in the hope of causing explosions when the vessels were at sea—and other damage of a more subtle nature had been done, it evidently being the expectation that the ships would break down when on the ocean and beyond the possibility of repair. Although our navy yards had no copies of the plans of these vessels or their machinery—the Germans having destroyed them all—and although the missing parts were of peculiarly German design, they succeeded, in an incredibly short time, in making them even better and speedier vessels than they had ever been before.

The national sense of humour did not fail the transport service when it came to rechristening these ships; the Princess Irene became the Pocahontas, the Rhein the Susquehanna; and there was also an ironic justice in the fact that the Vaterland, which had been built by the Germans partly for the purpose of transporting troops in war, actually fulfilled this mission, though not quite in the way which the Germans had anticipated. Meanwhile, both the American and the British mercantile marines were supplementing this German tonnage. The first troops which we sent to France, in June, 1917, were transported in ships of the United Fruit Company ; and when the German blow was struck, in March, 1918, both the United States and Great Britain began collecting from all parts of the world vessels which could be used as troop transports. We called in all available vessels from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and the Great Lakes; England stripped her trade routes to South America, Australia, and the East, and France and Italy also made their contributions. Of all the American troops sent to France from the beginning of the war, the United States provided transports for 46.25 per cent., Great Britain for 51.25, the remainder being provided by France and Italy. Of those sent between March, 1918, and the armistice, American vessels carried 42.15 per cent., British 55.40 per cent.

Yet there was one element in the safe transportation of troops which was even more fundamental than those which I have named. The basis of all our naval operations was the dreadnoughts and the battle-cruisers of the Grand Fleet. It was this aggregation, as I have already indicated,