Bayly's War by Steve Dunn

Author:Steve Dunn [Dunn, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Western
ISBN: 9781526701244
Google: b4mKtQEACAAJ
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books Limited
Published: 2018-01-15T03:23:04+00:00

Instead Sims argued for escorted convoy.

The advantages of the convoy were thus so apparent that, despite the pessimistic attitude of the merchant captains, there were a number of officers in the British navy who kept insisting that it should be tried. In this discussion I took my stand emphatically with these officers. From the beginning I had believed in this method of combating the U-boat warfare. Certain early experiences had led me to believe that the merchant captains were wrong in underestimating the quality of their own seamanship. It was my conviction that these intelligent and hardy men did not really know how capable they were at handling ships.18

Politicians such as Prime Minister Lloyd George were also strong advocates of the system and eventually the Admiralty ran a ‘trial’ convoy to Gibraltar. It was a success and, as Sims reported:

On May 21st the British Admiralty, which this experimental convoy had entirely converted, voted to adopt the convoy system for all merchant shipping. Not long afterward the second convoy arrived safely from Hampton Roads, and then other convoys began to put in from Scandinavian ports. On July 21st I was able definitely to report to Washington that the success of the convoys so far brought in shows that the system will defeat the submarine campaign if applied generally and in time.19

And so convoy became the lot of the USN ships at Queenstown. By the end of June, twenty-eight American destroyers were escorting convoys, rather than simply conducting patrols as had been the original plan. And despite their personal reservations, Daniels and Benson continued to send all available destroyers; by the end of August, the number at Queenstown had risen to thirty-five. Sims was informed by Daniels that the ‘paramount duty’ of American destroyers in European waters was the protection of US troop transports and that everything was secondary to that.20 And Bayly, wise after the event for he had definitely been in the ‘anti’ camp, wrote ‘considering that in our past wars the necessity and value of convoys were so clearly recognised it is difficult to see why they were so long delayed in the Great War’.21

Convoy escort was both arduous and humdrum. The incoming convoys were met some 500 miles west of Ireland by mixed flotillas of USN and RN ships and guided to port. ‘Our routine was five days at sea and three days in Queenstown’ recalled Lieutenant Commander William Halsey* of Benham, ‘with five days for cleaning boilers every fifth trip.’22

In one week in July, for example, USS Shaw escorted three convoys. On 21 July, Shaw and USS Parker met and escorted RMS Celtic (now a troopship) safely to St-Nazaire, and then to Queenstown.** On 24 July she was covering the outbound Convoy OQ2 and the inward HS6, in company with Wadsworth, Jacob Jones, Ericsson, Burrows, Paulding, Sterret and Porter, all USN destroyers. And on 28 July Shaw, Trippe, Wadsworth, McDougal, Porter, Wainwright, Jacob Jones and Ericsson formed an escort for an incoming convoy of nineteen ships. This

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