KEEPING THE SEAS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 134, 4 December 1939, Page 7

KEEPING THE SEAS

WORK OF THE NAVY

-IMPRESSIVE FIGURES

GERMAN LOSSES

*■■? (British Official Wireless.)

RUGBY, December 2. '

It is authoritatively stated hi London that in the three months of the war the British Navy has enabled nearly 21,000,000 gross tons of British shipping to keep the seas with the loss of ju^t 4 per cent, of the total naval tonnage in actual losses or disablements.

The British Navy at the beginning of the war totalled 1,500,000 tons of ships, reckoning on a displacement basis, comprising all types' of battleships, cruisers, destroyers, / and submarines. To this must' be added an 'unspecified amount of the commissioned tonnage for Navy purposes, which is. not inconsiderable when one thinks of the total number of bigl passenger liners and other suitable craft which Britain possesses.

Germany has only put.out of-action through sinking about 53,000 tons of warships,- and the most important units in' this group were upward of a quarter of a century old. Nor do these figures make allowance for completions in one of the most extensive building programmes the world has ever seen. ,

On the- other hand, it is officially stated in London that the total of German merchant vessels captured or sunk • since the outbreak of the war is 34 ships of 145,301 tons. Sixteen vessels were captured by the British witli a tonnage of 59,754 and by the French three ships with a tonnage of 16,122, Fifteen vessels have been sunk or scuttled with a tonnage of 69,425. To this list must be added the German vessel Watussi, of 9500 tons, which has been scuttled by her crew.