WORK OF THE SILENT NAVY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16924, 9 August 1918, Page 5

WORK OF THE SILENT NAVY.

20,000,000 MEN CONVOYED. ONLY 3282 CASUALTIES. PROTECTION OF MERCHANTMEN. (Received 8.20 p.m.) A. and Router. LONDON, Aug. 7. A Press Bureau statement, affording an idea of the activities of the British Navy, shows that between tho declaration of war and June 30 last, allied needs involved the sea carriage of 20,000.000 men, 2,000,000 animals, and 110,000,000 tons of naval and military stores. Tho total losses of men embarked, due to etiemv action, to April 30, reached tho relatively trivial figure of 3282. The transportation of well over a million Americans to July 31 involved the organisation of 51 British ocean escorts and 393 destroyer escorts, and 40 American ocean escorts &H 335 destroyer escorts. In the courso of such duties British escorts steamed over a million and a-quartcr miles a month. Patrol vessels engaged in frustrating submarine activities voyaged at least six million miles a month in home waters.

! Evidence of the success of the convoyI ing system was shown by the fact that ! British steamboats, exceeding 500 gross i tons, to and from tho United K; .jdom on I the main ovorsea routes, 93.8 per cent. j» of which wero convoyed, between March ' and June last, sustained submarine lossos I totalling 1.23 per cent., compared with 5.41 per cent, of losses between April and ] Juno last year, before convoying was esi tablished.