A MERCHANT FLEET AT WAR By ARCHIBALD HURD Author of “The British Fleet in the Great War,” “Command of the Sea,” “Sea-Power,” etc. etc. CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne 1920 All rights reserved All rights reserved...

During a war, which was at last to draw into its vortex practically the whole human race—the issue depending, first and foremost, on sea power—there was little time or opportunity or, indeed, inclination on the part of British seamen to keep a record of their varied activities. The very nature of many of the incidents recorded in the following pages precluded the preparation of detailed reports at the time. Nor can we forget that many of the officers and men, to whose resource, courage, and devo

There was never a time in our history when the value of the Mercantile Marine to our national life was as apparent as it is to-day. After passing through the crucible of war, we are what we are, mainly, because we are the possessors of ships. When the Great War came, we possessed only a small, though highly trained, Army, and the guns of our Navy extended little further than high-water mark. How could we, a community of islanders, in partnership with other islanders living in Dominions thousands

In order to obtain the truest conception of what the Cunard Company stood for in 1914, it will be well not only to consider very briefly its first origin and steady growth, but to refresh our memories by recalling one or two of the tidemarks of ocean-going navigation. Thus it was in 1802, in the year, that is to say, following Nelson’s great victory at Copenhagen, in the year of the Peace of Amiens, and three years before the Battle of Trafalgar, that the first successful, practical steamer was

With the war now over, and after five years, during which the public mind has been accustomed to emergency arrangements of all sorts, nothing is more difficult than to reconstruct the enormous and unprecedented activities that were called so suddenly into being in the first war weeks of 1914; and in these the Cunard Company had a typical and vitally important part to play. Of the number of navigating officers in their employment, namely 163, no fewer than 139 were in the Royal Naval Reserve, and

We have confined ourselves so far to the adventures of the Cunard vessels that were used in the early stages of the war for purely combatant purposes. They were, as has been seen, merely a small, though important, fraction of the whole fleet, and indeed the distinction that we have drawn is a somewhat difficult one to maintain. Thus, from acting, as we have shewn, as purely combatant cruisers, the Aquitania , Caronia , Laconia and Carmania passed to different and even more valuable work; and at

With the subsequent progress in infamy of Germany’s submarine campaign it was natural that the sensibilities of the civilised world, so shocked by the ruthless sinking of the Lusitania , should have become somewhat dulled. But it is clear, in retrospect, that this tragic event marked an epoch in the slow gathering of the non-combatant world’s condemnation. Upon the general events preceding the loss of this world-famous vessel, this is not, perhaps, the place to dwell. It will be remembered howev

We have dealt at length in the previous Chapter with the loss of the Lusitania not only because, as we have said, her torpedoing marked an epoch in the history of crime at sea, and was perhaps the determining factor in the entrance of America into the war, but because the Cunard Company was thus identified with this world-tragedy, and its servants exemplified then, as always, the noblest traditions of the British Mercantile Marine. Unhappily the Lusitania , although the circumstances of her loss

Enough , perhaps, has already been written to show how intimately the Cunard Company was bound up with every phase, not only of our mercantile, but our naval effort at sea; how its long experience of maritime organisation, placed unreservedly at the country’s disposal, became an asset in the hands of the Government of almost incalculable importance, and how, in the course of its everyday unadvertised duties, it lost more than half its tonnage. It was not only at sea, however, and not wholly in c