The convoy system, however, accomplished all that was expected of it, and was markedly successful.
It was our destroyers at Queenstown, our forces on the French coast and at Gibraltar, our cruisers escorting convoys crossing the Atlantic, that made it the success it was—and it was one of the most successful measures of the war.
President Wilson, as I have said, favored its adoption from the beginning; in fact, wondered why the Allies had not adopted it upon the outbreak of war in Europe. It was one of the first measures recommended by the General Board. But at the time this country entered the war, the Allies were pursuing exactly the opposite method; that is, dispersion of shipping.
When troop transportation was first determined upon, in May, 1917, we adopted the convoy system for troop-ships. It was in that month that the British decided to try out the plan for merchant ships, to see whether it would work. The first experimental convoy arrived in England from Gibraltar, May 20. A few convoys were despatched in June, and on June 22 Sims cabled me: "The British Admiralty have now adopted the convoy system and will put it into effect as fast as ships can be obtained for high sea convoy against raiders, and destroyers for escort duty in submarine zone." He reported two routes in operation, stated that eight convoys a week were planned, and recommended that we furnish one cruiser or battleship a week for high sea escort. On June 30, I informed him that the Department would assign seven cruisers for this duty. Our destroyers were engaged in the danger-zone from the time the first trans-Atlantic convoys were started.
Putting the convoy system into effect was a big job, involving the larger part of the world's shipping—a reversal of method that necessitated a radical change in the naval scheme. Concerning the part the United States Navy played in this great task, Admiral Sims wrote in the World's Work:
I do not wish to say that the convoy would not have been established had we not sent the destroyers for that purpose, yet I do not see how it could have been established in any complete and systematic way at such an early date. And we furnished other ships than destroyers, for, besides providing what I have called the modern convoy—protecting the compact mass of vessels from submarines—it was necessary also to furnish escorts after the old Napoleonic plan. It was the business of the destroyers to conduct merchantmen only through the submarine zone. They did not take them the whole distance across the ocean, for there was little danger of submarine attack until the ships reached the infested waters. This would have been impossible in any case with the limited number of destroyers.
But, from the time the convoys left the home port, say New York or Hampton Roads, there was the possibility of the same kind of attack as that to which convoys were subjected in Nelsonian days—that is, from raiders or cruisers. We always feared that German cruisers or raiders of the Moewe type might escape into the ocean and attack these merchant ships, and we therefore had to escort them across the ocean with battleships and cruisers just as they did a century ago. The British did not have ships enough available for this purpose, and here again the American Navy was able to supply the lack; for we had a number of pre-dreadnaughts and cruisers that were ideally adapted to this kind of work.
AT GIBRALTAR, KEY TO THE MEDITERRANEAN
Above: U. S. S. Buffalo, Schley and Jupiter.