The extent to which an adequate flow of supplies was maintained was necessarily a military matter, and the fundamental question was how best to protect merchant ships from submarines. After 12 months of the war at sea in 1914–18, 68 per cent of merchant ship losses were accounted for by submarines. The equivalent figure for 1939–45 was 44 per cent. The worst years for merchant seamen were 1917 and 1942, when respectively 94 and 77 per cent of sinkings were due to submarines.
In the First War it took the Admiralty a long time before it gave in to pressure, and finally, in April 1917, began to organise convoys. This was quite a policy turnaround considering that in January 1917 the Admiralty had issued a pamphlet that, in response to its critics, recorded that: ‘…the system of several ships sailing together in a convoy is not recommended in any area where submarine attack is a possibility.’2 Convoying, however, quickly proved successful by demonstrating that unescorted ships were much more likely to be sunk than those sailing in company and with escorts. In 1939 there was still some residual Admiralty resistance to convoys, but the main problem – as indeed it had been in 1917 – was a lack of suitable ships and a general shortage of sufficient ships of any kinds.
The first homeward-bound convoy sailed from Gibraltar in mid-May 1917 escorted by two special service ships (small, armed merchant ships manned by the Navy) and three lightly armed steam yachts. Convoy escorts were not markedly superior in the earlier phases of the Second War. The SC7 convoy that sailed from Halifax, Nova Scotia, in October 1940 was escorted by a sloop and an armed steam yacht. After two days the yacht returned to port, leaving the sloop as the sole escort until joined after nine days by a corvette and another sloop. Of the 30 ships that began the crossing, 21 were sunk by submarines, 15 of them in one six-hour period. The war was almost two years old before North Atlantic convoys were escorted for the whole crossing. The most heavily protected convoys were those bound for Murmansk and Malta. Losses were especially heavy in the Malta convoys, which, although made up of the fastest and most modern ships in the British merchant fleet, came under heavy attack from aircraft and surface ships. Similar onslaughts were experienced in the Arctic convoys. These engagements were arguably the most significant military events in the war at sea in Europe during the Second World War.3
It may have taken the Admiralty a long time to develop effective tactics for the protection of merchant ships, but it was very quick to decide that it would like to impose military discipline on merchant seamen. In 1915 the two leading figures in the largest of the seamen’s unions, Havelock Wilson and Edward Tupper of the National Association of Sailors and Firemen, were summoned to the Admiralty to be told by the Prime Minister of a proposal to conscript merchant seamen for national service. Apart from the fact that at this time conscription had not yet been introduced for the armed forces, the union leaders, who were well known as super-patriots, were outraged at the idea that, although still working for civilian employers, seafarers themselves would be subject to military law if conscripted. The Prime Minister and his colleagues met with adamant refusal from the two union leaders and no more was heard of the scheme. However, the idea resurfaced in 1941 when Lord Marchwood, together with a group of retired admirals, some serving naval officers and members of the consular corps, were proposing that merchant seamen become an auxiliary service of the Royal Navy. This time the proposal lacked any superior backing and was quickly strangled by an ad hoc alliance of trade union leaders and shipowners.4
In both wars the Royal Navy took over large numbers of fast passenger liners for use as armed merchant cruisers, and many of their crews, including officers, volunteered to go with them and were duly entered into the Royal Navy. In the Second War, 50 of these ships were taken by the Navy and 15 were sunk, mostly by submarine, two of them, the Jervis Bay and the Rawalpindi, in hopelessly one-sided engagements with German battlecruisers. In the First World War 17 armed merchant cruisers were lost, also in the main to submarines. Other and similar merchant ships were taken up for Government service as hospital ships. Their crews stayed with them but retained their civilian status.
It was a matter for some understandable grievance that merchant seamen who stayed by ships transferred into the Royal Navy would be paid on service rates that were considerably lower than those paid to merchant seamen. In the Second World War the problem was pragmatically dealt with by paying these men a special rate. Generally, and as for other industrial workers, rates of pay for seafarers significantly increased in both wars. Able seamen who were earning £5 per month had doubled their wages by 1918. These gains did not survive the inter-war depression. In September 1939 the able seaman’s wage, at £9 6s 0d, had only recently got close to the 1918 level. By 1945 wages had once again doubled, although seafarer’s working hours were much longer than those in any other industry. In 1939 the basic working week before overtime was 64 hours, which was 20 hours longer than in the building industry and 17 hours longer than in engineering. Even when the basic week was reduced in 1943 to 56 hours, it was 10 hours longer than the all-industry average. The biggest wartime grievance, however, had little to do with either wage levels or working hours. What angered seamen was that their wages were stopped from the moment their ships were sunk. In the First War they had to wait until mid-1917, and until mid-1941 in the Second, before survivors were paid until their return to the UK.
In terms of more than just danger, the years 1917 and 1941 were significant ones for merchant seamen. For more than two decades before 1914 shipowners had fought a militant and highly organised campaign against the seafarer trade unions. By far the largest of the unions, the National Association of Sailors and Firemen, had a modest ambition – the creation of national collective bargaining machinery. In 1917, and at the height of the German submarine onslaught, the Government pressured the shipowners into creating the National Maritime Board, and also produced some significant symbolic gestures. A silver badge was struck for war-disabled seamen, a roll of honour to publicise brave deeds was to be issued regularly, and an Act of Parliament provided for the voluntary adoption of a standard uniform, identical in style to that of the Royal Navy and differing only in badge and insignia of rank. In 1941 the provisions of the Essential Work Order as applied to merchant seamen certainly tied them to their industry, but in return provided paid continuous employment, paid leave, paid study leave for approved courses, and proper compensation for lost effects in the event of shipwreck. In this war there was little additional need for symbolic gestures.
In 1928 the Prince of Wales had acquired the additional title of ‘Master of the Merchant Navy and Fishing Fleets’, and this then passed subsequently to the Monarch. Resentments in the First War at merchant seamen’s ineligibility for medals and honours were laid to rest as the CBE, OBE, MBE, DSC, DSM, BEM and Mentioned in Dispatches all became available. In January 1940 Royal Assent was given to the production and distribution of a Merchant Navy buttonhole badge to be worn voluntarily. Merchant seamen, however, still commonly believed that they went unnoticed and unappreciated. Rarely practised but significantly often spoken of, the MN badge could be worn upside down as NW, to indicate ‘Not Wanted’.
There were roughly a quarter of a million seafarers employed aboard British merchant ships in 1914 and almost 200,000 in 1939. In both years at least one-third of these were foreigners – mainly Europeans, but also Indian, Chinese, West African, West Indian, East African and Arab. Ships regularly employed in the trade to the Indian sub-continent were typically manned by British officers and Indian petty officers and ratings, and complements were high. In 1940 the Clan Forbes, for example, had a total crew of 108, of whom 87 were Indian. At the same time the Biafra, a ship trading to West Africa, had a total crew of 54, of whom 27 were from Nigeria and Sierra Leone. Manning levels per ship, whatever the nationality composition of the crew, changed little between the two wars, although average ship size increased considerably. The crews engaged in UK ports for coal-burning tramps averaged at about 42 men in both wars. Ships in the cargo liner trades, and with ratings recruited in India and China, rarely had crews of less than 80. Cargo liners with all-European crews comprised between 50 and 60. The fact of war made very little difference to crew size. In the First War the average foreign-going merchant ship doubled its complement of radio officers (from one to two) and