It was agreed between the War and Navy Departments that the Army should take charge of the work of operating docks and providing and loading cargoes and that in the hands of the Navy should lie the responsibility of providing more tonnage when necessary and of equipping, keeping in repair, operating and escorting the transports. To the Navy therefore belongs the credit of having operated with marvelous success for a year and a half an ocean ferry service of enormous proportions across 3,000 miles of submarine infested seas. To call it a ferry service is no exaggeration. For the convoys started so promptly from American shores, moved with such precision across the Atlantic, discharged their passengers and left upon the homeward trip in such good time that the ships came and went upon almost as sure a schedule as that of a ferry across a river. In all, seventy-six groups of transports sailed with troops, the size of a group ranging all the way from a single unescorted ship to as many as fifteen troop ships escorted by from one to four or five cruisers, destroyers and converted yachts. The famous Leviathan, with her capacity for carrying from 9,000 to 11,000 men, made ten such trips, most of them unescorted, her own guns, the skill of her gun crews, the care with which watch was kept and her speed and maneuvering ability being thought to give her ample protection. Trip after trip the Leviathan took with the greatest regularity, steaming down New York Bay with her decks brown with khaki-clad men, speeding across the Atlantic, unloading on the other side and returning to her dock in the New York port promptly in sixteen days. And in eight days more, just as promptly, would she be ready for another trip.
From a beginning that was next to nothing, for it lacked merchant ships, organization, officers, crews, there was developed a cruiser and transport fleet of 42 transports and 24 cruisers with a personnel of 3,000 officers and 42,000 men. There was a fleet of cargo carrying ships in steady service numbering 321 and aggregating 2,800,000 tonnage, nearly one-third of which were supplied by the United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation and officered and manned by the efforts of the Navy Department. At the end of hostilities there had been transported across the Atlantic in the seventeen months from the first sailing over 2,000,000 troops, of which 911,000 had been carried by U. S. naval transports and 41,500 by other United States ships, while British and British leased ships had carried 1,075,000 and French and Italian ships 52,000. In the summer of 1918 as many as 300,000 per month were carried overseas. Of the entire army of 2,079,880 men American ships carried 46¹⁄₄ per cent and British ships 51¹⁄₄ per cent, while 2¹⁄₂ per cent sailed in French and Italian ships. Of the total strength of the naval escort guarding these 2,000,000 troops 82³⁄₄ per cent was furnished by the United States, 14¹⁄₈ per cent by Great Britain and 3¹⁄₈ per cent by France. All the troops carried in American ships were escorted by American warships, cruisers, destroyers and converted yachts, and American destroyers gave a large part of the safe conduct through the danger zone to the troops that were carried by British, French and Italian ships.
The enemy had counted confidently upon being able to paralyze American transport of troops and supplies by submarine activity and his undersea vipers were constantly speeding back and forth and up and down through the eastern waters of the Atlantic and even as far as its western shores. But no troop transport on its heavily laden eastward trip was ever lost and none at all under American escort. Only three troop ships, all told, were sunk by submarines, and these were westward bound and the loss of life was very small. The first convoy of troop ships twice battled with submarines and many others were attacked, while the naval officers who did convoy duty saw the undersea boats upon almost every voyage. By submarines and raiders there were lost during our war period 130 cargo carrying ships but under the guarded convoy system these losses steadily decreased.
In a convoy the troop or merchant vessels sailed in echelon formation with destroyers or cruisers steaming in front and at the rear while a destroyer ranged in zig-zag course along each side. Naval gun crews manned each ship and on each one, in addition to the watches kept on board the escorting vessels, keen eyes constantly swept the surrounding waters, every moment of the day and night. At night all lights were dimmed, so that not a ray of even a lighted match on deck was ever visible, and the great black hulks rushed onward through the darkness, never knowing at what moment they might collide with one another or with one of the escorting vessels. But so skillfully navigated were they that all such dangers, though they were very real, were escaped.
No greater feat was achieved by our fighting forces than this of ferrying across the Atlantic an army of 2,000,000 troops, with their food, equipment, and munitions, and the material necessary in enormous amounts for the creating and carrying on of the Service of Supply. It was an arresting achievement not only because of its unparalleled bigness and its audacity and success but also because of its vital importance. Without it the war could not have been won. And the credit for the achievement belongs to the American Navy. Our co-belligerents gave vitally important aid. But the American Navy suggested, developed, organized, supervised, operated and was responsible for the entire huge system. Into its success went many factors, not the least of them the foresight and watchfulness and careful planning of the officials of the Navy, from the Secretary down to the junior officers on the troop ships. There was constant study of the submarine peril and of means to lessen it, and it was, by autumn of 1918, almost eliminated by the combined efforts of the associated nations. There were the zeal and diligence of officers and crew alike and the consequent high morale, the skill of the gun crews, who never ceased from the effort to make it better still by daily target practice, and that constant attention to detail which leaves no loophole anywhere through which success might dribble and slide away. And finally there were the skill, courage, devotion and audacious spirit of the naval officers whose ships escorted the convoys back and forth across the ocean. All these and other factors combined to make possible an achievement that stands out commandingly even in a war compact of big things and huge achievements.
By Permission of Mid-Week Pictorial, New York Times Co.
Mine Barrage Across the North Sea
CHAPTER XI
WORKING WITH THE ALLIED NAVIES
The American Navy was the first section of the American fighting forces to take part in the war. It was ready to begin operations at once upon our declaration of war, it lost no time in sending its first contingent across the ocean and the importance of its coöperation with the navies of our co-belligerents constantly increased until the end of hostilities. Aside from the vital consequence of its achievement in operating an Atlantic ferry, one of the capital performances of the entire war, its chief work was done in coöperation with the British, French and Italian navies in European waters from the Mediterranean to the White Sea.