| Period. | |
| 1918. | Gross Tons. |
| January | 6,336,663 |
| February | 6,326,965 |
| March | 7,295,620 |
This statement embraces all United Kingdom seaborne traffic other than coastwise and cross Channel.
The Month's Submarine Record
The British Admiralty, in April, 1918, discontinued its weekly report of merchant ships destroyed by submarines or mines, and announced that it would publish a monthly report in terms of tonnage. These figures are shown in the table above. The last weekly report was for the period ended April 14, and showed that eleven merchantmen over 1,600 tons, four under 1,600 tons, and one fishing vessel had been sunk.
In regard to the sinkings in April, French official figures showed that the total losses of allied and neutral ships, including those from accidents at sea during the month, aggregated 381,631 tons.
Norway's losses from the beginning of the war to the end of April, 1918, amounted to 755 vessels, aggregating 1,115,519 tons, and the lives of 1,006 seamen, in addition to about 700 men on fifty-three vessels missing, two-thirds of which were declared to be war losses.
The American steamship Lake Moor, manned by naval reserves, was sunk by a German submarine in European waters about midnight on April 11, with a loss of five officers and thirty-nine men. Five officers and twelve enlisted men were landed at an English port. Eleven men, including five navy gunners, were lost when the Old Dominion liner Tyler was sunk off the French coast on May 3. The Canadian Pacific Company's steamer Medora also was sunk off the French coast. The Florence H. was wrecked in a French port by an internal explosion on the night of April 17. Out of the crew of fifty-six men, twenty-nine were listed as dead or missing, twelve were sent to hospital badly burned, two were slightly injured, and only thirteen escaped injury. Of the twenty-three men of the naval guard only six were reported as survivors.
Six officers and thirteen men were reported missing as the result of two naval disasters reported on May 1 by the British Admiralty. They formed part of the crews of the sloop Cowslip, which was torpedoed and sunk on April 25, and of Torpedo Boat 90, which foundered.
According to Archibald Hurd, a British authority on naval matters, the area in the North Sea which was proclaimed by the British Government as dangerous to shipping and therefore prohibited after May 15 is the greatest mine field ever laid for the special purpose of foiling submarines. It embraces 121,782 square miles, the base forming a line between Norway and Scotland, and the peak extending northward into the Arctic Circle.