MAKING THE SEA ROUTES SAFE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLII, Issue 11610, 9 August 1918, Page 5

MAKING THE SEA ROUTES SAFE.

THE VALUE OF ESCORTS.

THE CORNER WEIL TURNED,

London, August 7.

A Press Bureau statement, affording an idea of tlie activities of the British .Navy, shows that between the declaration of war and the 30th June last, the Allied needs involved the sea carriage of twenty million men, two million animals, a hundred and ten “million tons of naval stores. The total losses of the men embarked to>”enemy action, to 30th April reached the relatively trivial figure of 3283. The transnortation of .well over a million Americans to July 31st: involved the organisation of fifty-one British ocean escorts, 393 destroyer forty American ocean escorts, 335 destroyers escorts. J'.ln the course of such duties, the British escorts steamed over a'million and a quarter miles monthly. The patrol vessels engaged in frustrating the submarine activities voyaged at least sis million miles monthly in Home waters. Evidence of the success of convoying was shown by the fact that British shipping using the main oversea routes, convoyed between March and June last, sustained submarine losses totalling 1.23 per cent, compared with 5.14 per cent, losses between April and June last year, before convoying was es tablished.

The world’s new merchantmen construction for|tho quarter ended June 30th, is announced as 1,343,274 gross tons, comprising 442,966 British, and 800,008 Allied and neutral. This compares with the world’s output of 870,817 tons for the quarter ended March 31. The world’s output for the quarter ended June 30 exceeded the losses from all causes by 296,696 gross tons. The new construction of British merchantmen completed in July reached 141.948 gross tons, giving 905,194 for the seven mouths of this year, and 1,490,025 for the year ending on July 31st, compared with 83,073 for July last year. 578,643 to the Ist of September last year, and 865,147 for the year ending July Ist, 1917.

The Controller-General states Shat July is always a bad month for shipbuilding owing to the workmen’s holidays, while this year the serious influenza epidemic had proved an additional drawback. - Nevertheless the British output for July 1918 had increased 1-74 per cent, compared witii July of 1910 and 71 per cent, compared'with July of 1917.