Convoys Were The Heart of Britain

A convoy shepherded by destroyers and Lockheed Hudsons (not seen in the photograph) approaching a British port. These were the ships and men that kept Britain alive during World War Two. These ships were of all classes from the liner to the creaking tramp, and of their anonymous skippers, true sons of Britain, prepared to die. at any moment that the old country shall live.

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Captains of merchant ships planning the next convoy in conference somewhere underground in secret warrens built of steel and concrete. They were receiving instructions concerning the route to be taken and learn how the naval escort will protect them. In these subterranean labyrinths officers and men of the Royal Navy, Royal Naval Reserve and Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve worked in close cooperation with the R.A.F. and the Merchant Navy.

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Bluejackets in the wireless-room in the underground headquarters of the Battle of the Atlantic.

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Mr. A. V. Alexander, First Lord of the Admiralty, receives information from a convoy commodore on the return to port after a voyage across the Atlantic.

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Note —Total enemy tonnage, captured, sunk or scuttled, from beginning of the war was 3,391,000 tons gross. The monthly average of British, Allied and neutral losses from Sept. 1939 to June 1941 was 324,000 tons, about equal to actual losses in June 1941. The Admiralty announced that the June figures would be the last of the records of losses to be published in that form. 'Figures in table corrected to June, 1941.

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