British merchant mariner
August 1941
We haven't been able to use our usual shipping routes to get to London ever since France fell. Everything has been thrown off schedule – the timings are so unpredictable that our men on the ground can’t even allocate manpower or handle the cargo reliably.
Ever since France fell, everything has to go through the North Channel, and those Germans are picking our vessels off once we head through there. Even convoys aren’t helping. It doesn’t matter if we’re escorted or unescorted, once we head through the North Channel those U-boats start chasing us like a pack of hungry wolves. In fact, the weather and the use of convoys recently has only slowed us down - we can only travel at seven knots when there's a storm, which gives the pack enough time to surround us. The convoys can’t protect merchant ships at night, and the U-boats have been increasing in number lately. It's estimated that there are 36 U-boats at sea every day, when there were only 24 in May. We've lost about 1200 British merchant ships from January to June this year, and we're losing around 260 000 gross register tonnes per month. Some of the escorts - particularly the Royal Canadian Navy fleets - aren't doing their job too. I was under the impression that the convoys were meant to protect the merchant ships, but the escort fleets keep haring off to chase and destroy U-boats, instead of protecting us.
What’s really worrying me isn't my survival, but the survival of our country. It is obvious that our country doesn't have enough ships. I used to think that Britain had a huge merchant fleet. Wasn’t that our pride? But ever since the Phoney War that hasn’t been the case. We’ve been losing ships to U-boats and the weather, and our shipyards aren’t capable of replacing them. Many young shipbuilders went over to the navy or military to do their duty. Three thousand workers from the core of our shipbuilding industry were called up for military service, and only five hundred of them returned to the industry last year. I've heard the news, the Ministry of Labour has recently announced that all of our industries should help the military, and blocked shipbuilders from deferring by subjecting them to military conscription.
Britain has had to purchase about a hundred obsolete secondhand ships from the United States to compensate for the shortfall in domestic production, but even these ships will eventually require repairs at the dockyards. What's going to happen once all the shipbuilders are conscripted? Are we meant to depend solely on American ships? Are we meant to trust the future of our great country's ships to people who haven't worked since the 1920s - cleaners, clerks, and manual labourers? The closest thing the dockyards have to skilled workers are house electricians and hand riveters. I wouldn't trust them to build anything that goes on the water.
Every time we set sail and the sun sets I think that this might be the time where I don’t come back. Between the U-boats, the dreadful weather, and the fickle escorts, I'm not sure which one will get me first. I just hope that our country can survive, even if I don't.
