It is true that merchant captains had much to learn about steaming and manœuvring in formation, but I was sure they could pick it up quickly and carry it out successfully under the direction of naval officers—the convoy commander being always a naval officer.

The naval officer not only has a group of vessels that are practically uniform in speed and ability to turn around quickly, but he is provided also with various instruments which enable him to keep the revolutions of his engines constant, to measure distances and the like. Moreover, as a junior officer, he is schooled in manœuvring these very ships for some years before he is trusted with the command of one of them, and he, therefore, not only knows their peculiarities, but also those of their captains—the latter very useful information, by the way.

Though it was necessary for the merchantmen, on the other hand, to bring their much clumsier ships into formation with perhaps thirty entirely strange vessels of different sizes, shapes, speeds, nationalities, and manœuvring qualities, yet I was confident that they were competent to handle them successfully under these difficult conditions. Indeed, afterward, one of my most experienced destroyer commanders reported that while he was escorting a convoy of twenty-eight ships they kept their stations quite as well as battleships, while they were executing two manœuvres to avoid a submarine.

Such influence as I possessed at this time, therefore, I threw in with the group of British officers which was advocating the convoy.

There was, however, still one really serious impediment to adopting this convoy system, and that was that the number of destroyers available was insufficient. The British, for reasons which have been explained, did not have the necessary destroyers for this work, and this was what made so very important the participation of the United States in the naval war—for our navy possessed the additional vessels that would make possible the immediate adoption of the convoy system. I do not wish to say that the convoy would not have been established had we not sent destroyers for that purpose, yet I do not see how otherwise 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—that which protects 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 the 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 had arrived in 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 there was a possibility that the same kind of attack would be launched as that to which convoys were subjected in Nelsonian days; there was the danger, that is, that surface war vessels, raiders or cruisers, might escape from their German bases and swoop down upon them. We always had before our minds the activities of the Moewe, and we therefore deemed it necessary to escort the convoys across the ocean with battleships and cruisers, just as was the practice 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-dreadnoughts and cruisers that were ideally adapted to this kind of work.

III

On April 30th I received a message from Admiral Jellicoe requesting me to visit him at the Admiralty. When I arrived he said that the projected study of the convoy system had been made, and he handed me a copy of it. It had been decided to send one experimental convoy from Gibraltar. The Admiralty, he added, had not yet definitely decided that the convoy system should be adopted, but there was every intention of giving it a thorough and fair trial. That same evening at dinner I met Mr. Lloyd George, Sir Edward Carson, and Lord Milner, and once more discussed with them the whole convoy idea. I found the Prime Minister especially favourable to the plan and, in fact, civilians in general were more kindly disposed toward the convoy than seamen, because they were less familiar with the nautical and shipping difficulties which it involved.

Naval officers were immediately sent to Gibraltar to instruct the merchant masters in the details of assembling and conducting vessels. Eight-knot ships were selected for the experiment, and a number of destroyers were assigned for their protection. The merchant captains, as was to be expected, regarded the whole enterprise suspiciously, but entered into it with the proper spirit.

On May 20th that first convoy arrived at its English destination in perfect condition. The success with which it made the voyage disproved all the pessimistic opinions which the merchant sailors had entertained about themselves. They suddenly discovered, as I had contended, that they could do practically everything which, in their conferences with the Admiralty, they had declared that they were unable to do. In those meetings they had asserted that not more than two ships could keep station; but now they discovered that the whole convoy could sail with stipulated distances between the vessels and keep this formation with little difficulty. They were drilled on the way in zigzagging and manœuvring—a practice carried out subsequently with all convoys—and by the time they reached the danger zone they found that, in obedience to a prearranged signal, all the ships could turn as a single one, and perform all the zigzag evolutions which the situation demanded. They had asserted that they could not sail at night without lights and that an attempt to do so would result in many collisions, but the experimental convoy proved that this was merely another case of self-delusion. Naturally the arrival of this convoy caused the greatest satisfaction in the Admiralty, but the most delighted men were the merchant captains themselves, for the whole thing was to them a complete revelation of their seamanly ability, and naturally it flattered their pride. The news of this arrival naturally travelled fast in shipping circles; it completely changed the attitude of the merchant sailors, and the chief opponents of the convoy now became its most enthusiastic advocates.

Outside shipping circles, however, nothing about this convoy was known at that time. Yet May 20th, the date when it reached England safely, marked one of the great turning-points of the war. That critical voyage meant nothing less than that the Allies had found the way of defeating the German submarine. The world might still clamour for a specific "invention" that would destroy all the submarines overnight, or it might demand that the Allies should block them in their bases, or suggest that they might do any number of impossible things, but the naval chiefs of the Allies discovered, on May 20, 1917, that they could defeat the German campaign even without these rather uncertain aids. The submarine danger was by no means ended when this first convoy arrived; many anxious months still lay ahead of us; other means would have to be devised that would supplement the convoy; yet the all-important fact was that the Allied chiefs now realized, for the first time, that the problem was not an insoluble one; and that, with hard work and infinite patience, they could keep open the communications that were essential to victory. The arrival of these weather-beaten ships thus brought the assurance that the armies and the civilian populations could be supplied with food and materials, and that the seas could be kept open for the transportation of American troops to France. In fine, it meant that the Allies could win the war.