BRITISH SHIPPING

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 62, Issue 4429, 23 May 1941, Page 3

BRITISH SHIPPING

THE CONVOY SYSTEM. “We cannot as yet express the effect of convoy in this war in a percentage of ships lost at sea, because the exact figures are still an official secret, but anyone acquainted with the world of shipping knows that the weekly inflow of supplies to Britain cannot be maintained with fewer than 800 to 1000 ships on the move. The average number recorded as lost in recent nine-week’s Admiralty returns is 16 ships. Out of 1000 ships that is 1.6 per cent. The corresponding figure for the last war, covering not a few weeks, but the whole period of convoy, was 1.67 per cent. There is,

therefore, nothing to justify the suggestion that the convoy system is out of date, or that it has failed to provide results equal to those of the last war. Another point which the critics of convoy ignore is the proportion of weekly loss due to enemy mines. These losses do not, save in rare instances occur to ships in convoy. They arise while ships are moving to the assembly port, or in coastal waters after dispersion. Convoy can in no way be held responsible for them. Here, again, official secrecy prevents us from countering the criticisms with actual figures, and the records of the last war would be misleading, since we know that the enemy’s mining effort this time has been of a different nature and on a different scale, and no parallel can fairly be drawn.”—-A Naval Correspondent in the “Manchester GutirUian.”