2

The Admiralty Task

Sea War Alone — The Admiralty War Plan — The U-Boat Attack — The Asdic Trawlers — Control of Merchant Shipping — The Convoy System — Blockade — Record of My First Conference — Need of the Southern Irish Ports — The Main Fleet Base — Inadequate Precautions — “Hide-and-Seek” — My Visit to Scapa Flow — Reflection at Loch Ewe — Loss of the “Courageous” — Cruiser Policy — The First Month of the U-Boat War — A Fruitful September — Wider Naval Operations — Ardour of the Polish Navy — President Roosevelt’s Letter.

ASTONISHMENT WAS WORLD-WIDE When Hitler’s crashing on-slaught upon Poland and the declarations of war upon Germany by Britain and France were followed only by a prolonged and oppressive pause. Mr. Chamberlain in a private letter published by his biographer described this phase as “twilight war”;¹ and I find the expression so just and expressive that I have adopted it as the title for this Book. The French armies made no attack upon Germany. Their mobilisation completed, they remained in contact motionless along the whole front. No air action, except reconnaissance, was taken against Britain; nor was any air attack made upon France by the Germans. The French Government requested us to abstain from air attack on Germany, stating that it would provoke retaliation upon their war factories, which were unprotected. We contented ourselves with dropping pamphlets to rouse the Germans to a higher morality. This strange phase of the war on land and in the air astounded everyone. France and Britain remained impassive while Poland was in a few weeks destroyed or subjugated by the whole might of the German war machine. Hitler had no reason to complain of this.

The war at sea, on the contrary, began from the first hour with full intensity, and the Admiralty therefore became the active centre of events. On September 3, all our ships were sailing about the world on their normal business. Suddenly they were set upon by U-boats carefully posted beforehand, especially in the western approaches. At nine that very night the outward-bound passenger liner Athenia of 13,500 tons was torpedoed, and foundered with a loss of a hundred and twelve lives, twenty-eight of them American citizens. This outrage broke upon the world within a few hours. The German Government, to prevent any misunderstanding in the United States, immediately issued a statement that I personally had ordered a bomb to be placed on board this vessel in order by its destruction to prejudice German-American relations. This falsehood received some credence in unfriendly quarters.² On the fifth and sixth, the Bosnia, Royal Sceptre, and Rio Claro were sunk off the coast of Spain, the crew of the Rio Claro only being saved. All these were important vessels.

My first Admiralty minute was concerned with the probable scale of the U-boat menace in the immediate future:

Let me have a statement of the German U-boat forces, actual and prospective, for the next few months. Please distinguish between ocean-going and small-size U-boats. Give the estimated radius of action in days and miles in each case.

I was at once informed that the enemy had sixty U-boats and that a hundred would be ready early in 1940. A detailed answer was returned on the fifth, which should be studied.³ The numbers of long-range endurance vessels were formidable and revealed the intentions of the enemy to work far out in the oceans as soon as possible.

* * * * *

Comprehensive plans existed at the Admiralty for multiplying our anti-submarine craft. In particular, preparations had been made to take up eighty-six of the largest and fastest trawlers and to equip them with Asdics; the conversion of many of these was already well advanced. A wartime building programme of destroyers, both large and small, and of cruisers, with many ancillary vessels, was also ready in every detail, and this came into operation automatically with the declaration of war. The previous war had proved the sovereign merits of convoy. The Admiralty had for some days assumed control of the movements of all merchant shipping, and shipmasters were required to obey orders about their routes or about joining convoy. Our weakness in escort vessels had, however, forced the Admiralty to devise a policy of evasive routing on the oceans, unless and until the enemy adopted unrestricted U-boat warfare, and to confine convoys in the first instance to the east coast of Britain. But the sinking of the Athenia upset these plans, and we adopted convoy in the North Atlantic forthwith.

The organisation of convoy had been fully prepared, and shipowners had already been brought into regular consultation on matters of defence which affected them. Furthermore, instructions had been issued for the guidance of shipmasters in the many unfamiliar tasks which would inevitably fall upon them in war, and special signalling as well as other equipment had been provided to enable them to take their place in convoy. The men of the merchant navy faced the unknown future with determination. Not content with a passive role, they demanded weapons. The use of guns in self-defence by merchant ships has always been recognised as justifiable by international law, and the defensive arming of all sea-going merchant ships, together with the training of the crews, formed an integral part of the Admiralty plans which were at once put into effect. To force the U-boat to attack submerged and not merely by gunfire on the surface not only gave greater chance for a ship to escape, but caused the attacker to expend his precious torpedoes more lavishly and often fruitlessly. Foresight had preserved the guns of the previous war for use against U-boats, but there was a grave shortage of anti-aircraft weapons. It was very many months before adequate self-protection against air attack could be provided for merchant ships, which suffered severe losses meanwhile. We planned from these first days to equip during the first three months of war a thousand ships with at least an anti-submarine gun each. This was in fact achieved.

Besides protecting our own shipping, we had to drive German commerce off the seas and stop all imports into Germany. Blockade was enforced with full rigour. A Ministry of Economic Warfare was formed to guide the policy, whilst the Admiralty controlled its execution. Enemy shipping, as in 1914, virtually vanished almost at once from the high seas. The German ships mostly took refuge in neutral ports or, when intercepted, scuttled themselves. None the less, fifteen ships totalling seventy-five thousand tons were captured and put into service by the Allies before the end of 1939. The great German liner Bremen, after sheltering in the Soviet port of Murmansk, reached Germany only because she was spared by the British submarine Salmon, which observed rightly and punctiliously the conventions of international law.⁴

* * * * *

I held my first Admiralty conference on the night of September 4. On account of the importance of the issues, before going to bed in the small hours I recorded its conclusions for circulation and action in my own words:

5.IX.39.

1. In this first phase, with Japan placid, and Italy neutral though indeterminate, the prime attack appears to fall on the approaches to Great Britain from the Atlantic.

2. The convoy system is being set up. By convoy system is meant only anti-submarine convoy. All question of dealing with raiding cruisers or heavy ships is excluded from this particular paper.

3. The First Sea Lord is considering movement to the western approaches of Great Britain of whatever destroyers and escort vessels can be scraped from the Eastern and Mediterranean theatres, with the object of adding, if possible, twelve to the escorts for convoys. These should be available during the period of, say, a month, until the flow of Asdic trawlers begins. A statement should be prepared showing the prospective deliveries during October of these vessels. It would seem well, at any rate in the earliest deliveries, not to wait for the arming of them with guns, but to rely upon depth-charges. Gun-arming can be reconsidered when the pressure eases.

4. The Director of the Trade Division (D.T.D.) should be able to report daily the inward movement of all British merchant ships approaching the island. For this purpose, if necessary, a room and additional staff should be provided. A chart of large size should show at each morning all vessels within two, or better still three, days’ distance from our shores. The guidance or control of each of these vessels must be foreseen and prescribed so that there is not one whose case has not been individually dealt with, as far as our resources allow. Pray let me have proposals to implement this, which should come into being within twenty-four hours, and work up later. The necessary contacts with the Board of Trade or other departments concerned should be effected and reported upon.

5. The D.T.D. should also prepare tomorrow a scheme under which every captain or master of a merchant ship from the Atlantic (including the Bay) is visited on arrival by a competent naval authority, who in the name of the D.T.D. will examine the record of the course he has steered, including zigzags. All infractions or divergences from Admiralty instructions should be pointed out, and all serious departures should be punished, examples being made of dismissal. The Admiralty assume responsibility, and the merchant skippers must be made to obey. Details of this scheme should be worked out in personnel and regulations, together with appropriate penalties.

6. For the present it would seem wise to maintain the diversion of merchant traffic from the Mediterranean to the Cape route. This would not exclude the passage of convoys for troops, to which, of course, merchant vessels which were handy might add themselves. But these convoys can only be occasional, i.e., not more than once a month or three weeks, and they must be regarded, not as part of the trade protection, but as naval operations.

7. It follows from the above that in this period, i.e., the first six weeks or two months of the war, the Red Sea will also be closed to everything except naval operations, or perhaps coastal traffic to Egypt.

8. This unpleasant situation would be eased by the deliveries of the Asdic trawlers and other reliefs. Secondly, by the determination of the attitude of Italy. We cannot be sure that the Italian uncertainty will be cleared up in the next six weeks, though we should press His Majesty’s Government to bring it to a head in a favourable sense as soon as possible. Meanwhile the heavy ships in the Mediterranean will be on the defensive, and can therefore spare some of the destroyer protection they would need if they were required to approach Italian waters.

9. The question of a breaking-out of any of the five (or seven) German ships of weight would be a major naval crisis requiring a special plan. It is impossible for the Admiralty to provide escorts for convoys of merchant ships against serious surface attack. These raids, if they occur, could only be dealt with as a naval operation by the main Fleet, which would organise the necessary hunting parties to attack the enemy, the trade being cleared out of the way so far as possible till results were obtained.

The First Lord submits these notes to his naval colleagues for consideration, for criticism and correction, and hopes to receive proposals for action in the sense desired.

The organisation of outward-bound convoys was brought into force almost at once. By September 8, three main routes had begun to work, namely, from Liverpool and from the Thames to the western ocean, and a coastal convoy between the Thames and the Forth. Staffs for the control of convoys at these ports and many others at home and abroad were included in the war plan, and had already been dispatched. Meanwhile, all ships outward bound in the Channel and Irish Sea and not in convoy were ordered to Plymouth and Milford Haven, and all independent outward sailings were cancelled. Overseas, arrangements for forming homeward-bound convoys were pressed forward. The first of them sailed from Freetown on September 14 and from Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the sixteenth. Before the end of the month regular ocean convoys were in operation, outward from the Thames and Liverpool and homeward from Halifax, Gibraltar, and Freetown.

Upon all the vital need of feeding the island and developing our power to wage war there now at once fell the numbing loss of the Southern Irish ports. This imposed a grievous restriction on the radius of action of our already scarce destroyers:

A special report should be drawn up by the heads of departments concerned and sent to the First Lord through the First Sea Lord and the Naval Staff upon the questions arising from the socalled neutrality of the so-called Eire. Various considerations arise: (1) What does Intelligence say about possible succouring of U-boats by Irish malcontents in West of Ireland inlets? If they throw bombs in London,⁵ why should they not supply fuel to U-boats? Extreme vigilance should be practised.

Secondly, a study is required of the addition to the radius of our destroyers through not having the use of Berehaven or other South Irish anti-submarine bases; showing also the advantage to be gained by our having these facilities.

The Board must realise that we may not be able to obtain satisfaction, as the question of Irish neutrality raises political issues which have not yet been faced, and which the First Lord is not certain he can solve. But the full case must be made for consideration.

* * * * *

After the institution of the convoy system, the next vital naval need was a safe base for the Fleet. At 10 P.M. on September 5, I held a lengthy conference on this. It recalled many old memories. In a war with Germany, Scapa Flow is the true strategic point from which the British Navy can control the exits from the North Sea and enforce blockade. It was only in the last two years of the previous war that the Grand Fleet was judged to have sufficient superiority to move south to Rosyth, where it had the advantage of lying at a first-class dockyard. But Scapa, on account of its greater distance from German air bases, was now plainly the best position and had been definitely chosen in the Admiralty war plan.

In the autumn of 1914, a wave of uneasiness had swept the Grand Fleet. The idea had got round, “the German submarines were coming after them into the harbours.” Nobody at the Admiralty then believed that it was possible to take a submarine, submerged, through the intricate and swirling channels by which the great lake of Scapa can alone be entered. The violent tides and currents of the Pentland Firth, often running eight or ten knots, had seemed in those days to be an effective deterrent. But a mood of doubt spread through the mighty array of perhaps a hundred large vessels which in those days composed the Grand Fleet. On two or three occasions, notably on October 17, 1914, the alarm was given that there was a U-boat inside the anchorage. Guns were fired, destroyers thrashed the waters, and the whole gigantic armada put to sea in haste and dudgeon. In the final result the Admiralty were proved right. No German submarine in that war ever overcame the terrors of the passage. It was only in 1918, after the mutiny of the German Navy, that a U-boat, manned entirely by officers seeking to save their honour, perished in a final desperate effort. Nevertheless, I retained a most vivid and unpleasant memory of those days and of the extreme exertions we made to block all the entrances and reassure the Fleet.

There were now in 1939 two dangers to be considered: the first, the old one of submarine incursion; the second, the new one of the air. I was surprised to learn at my conference that more precautions had not been taken in both cases to prepare the defences against modern forms of attack. Anti-submarine booms of new design were in position at each of the three main entrances, but these consisted merely of single lines of net. The narrow and tortuous approaches on the east side of the Flow, defended only by remnants of the blockships placed in the former war and reinforced now by two or three recent additions, remained a source of anxiety. On account of the increased size, speed, and power of modern submarines, the old belief that the strong tidal streams made these passages impassable to a submarine no longer carried conviction in responsible quarters. As a result of the conference on my second evening at the Admiralty, many orders were given for additional nets and blockships.

The new danger from the air had been almost entirely ignored. Except for two batteries of anti-aircraft guns to defend the naval oil tanks at Hoy and the destroyer anchorage, there were no air defences at Scapa. One airfield near Kirkwall was available for the use of naval aircraft when the Fleet was present, but no provision had been made for immediate R.A.F. participation in the defence, and the shore radar station, although operative, was not wholly effective. Plans for basing two R.A.F. fighter squadrons at Wick had been approved, but this measure could not become effective before 1940. I called for an immediate plan of action. Our air defence was so strained, our resources so limited, and our vulnerable points – including all vast London – so numerous, that it was no use asking for much. On the other hand, protection from air attack was now needed only for five or six great ships, each carrying a powerful antiaircraft armament of its own. To keep things going, the Admiralty undertook to provide two squadrons of naval fighter aircraft whilst the Fleet was in Scapa.

It seemed most important to have the artillery in position at the shortest interval, and meanwhile there was nothing for it but to adopt the same policy of “hide-and-seek” to which we had been forced in the autumn days of 1914. The west coast of Scotland had many landlocked anchorages easy to protect from U-boats by indicator nets and ceaseless patrolling. We had found concealment in the previous war a good security; but even in those days the curiosity of a wandering airplane, perhaps fuelled by traitor hands, had filled our hearts with fear. Now that the range of aircraft exposed the whole British Islands at any time to photographic reconnaissance, there was no sure concealment against large-scale attack either by U-boats or from the air. However, there were so few ships to cover, and they could be moved so often from one place to another, that, having no alternative, we accepted the hazard with as good grace as possible.

* * * * *

I felt it my duty to visit Scapa at the earliest moment. I had not met the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Charles Forbes, since Lord Chatfield had taken me to the Anti-Submarine School at Portland in June, 1938. I therefore obtained leave from our daily Cabinets, and started for Wick with a small personal staff on the night of September 14. I spent most of the next two days inspecting the harbour and the entrances with their booms and nets. I was assured that they were as good as in the last war, and that important additions and improvements were being made or were on their way. I stayed with the Commander-in-Chief in his flagship, Nelson, and discussed not only Scapa but the whole naval problem with him and his principal officers. The rest of the Fleet was hiding in Loch Ewe, and on the seventeenth the Admiral took me to them in the Nelson. As we came out through the gateway into the open sea, I was surprised to see no escort of destroyers for this great ship. “I thought,” I remarked, “you never went to sea without at least two, even for a single battleship.” But the Admiral replied, “Of course, that is what we should like; but we haven’t got the destroyers to carry out any such rule. There are a lot of patrolling craft about, and we shall be into the Minches in a few hours.”

It was like the others a lovely day. All went well, and in the evening we anchored in Loch Ewe, where the four or five other great ships of the Home Fleet were assembled. The narrow entry into the loch was closed by several lines of indicator nets, and patrolling craft with Asdics and depth-charges, as well as picket boats, were numerous and busy. On every side rose the purple hills of Scotland in all their splendour. My thoughts went back a quarter of a century to that other September when I had last visited Sir John Jellicoe and his captains in this very bay, and had found them with their long lines of battleships and cruisers drawn out at anchor, a prey to the same uncertainties as now afflicted us. Most of the captains and admirals of those days were dead, or had long passed into retirement. The responsible senior officers who were now presented to me as I visited the various ships had been young lieutenants or even midshipmen in those far-off days. Before the former war I had had three years’ preparation in which to make the acquaintance and approve the appointments of most of the high personnel, but now all these were new figures and new faces. The perfect discipline, style and bearing, the ceremonial routine – all were unchanged. But an entirely different generation filled the uniforms and the posts. Only the ships had most of them been laid down in my tenure. None of them was new. It was a strange experience, like suddenly resuming a previous incarnation. It seemed that I was all that survived in the same position I had held so long ago. But no; the dangers had survived too. Danger from beneath the waves, more serious with more powerful U-boats; danger from the air, not merely of being spotted in your hiding-place, but of heavy and perhaps destructive attack!

Having inspected two more ships on the morning of the eighteenth, and formed during my visit a strong feeling of confidence in the Commander-in-Chief, I motored from Loch Ewe to Inverness, where our train awaited us. We had a picnic lunch on the way by a stream, sparkling in hot sunshine. I felt oddly oppressed with my memories.

For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground

And tell sad stories of the death of kings.

No one had ever been over the same terrible course twice with such an interval between. No one had felt its dangers and responsibilities from the summit as I had or, to descend to a small point, understood how First Lords of the Admiralty are treated when great ships are sunk and things go wrong. If we were in fact going over the same cycle a second time, should I have once again to endure the pangs of dismissal? Fisher, Wilson, Battenberg, Jellicoe, Beatty, Pakenham, Sturdee, all gone!

I feel like one

Who treads alone

Some banquet hall deserted,

Whose lights are fled,

Whose garlands dead,

And all but he departed!

And what of the supreme measureless ordeal in which we were again irrevocably plunged? Poland in its agony; France but a pale reflection of her former warlike ardour; the Russian Colossus no longer an ally, not even neutral, possibly to become a foe. Italy no friend. Japan no ally. Would America ever come in again? The British Empire remained intact and gloriously united, but ill-prepared, unready. We still had command of the sea. We were woefully outmatched in numbers in this new mortal weapon of the air. Somehow the light faded out of the landscape.

We joined our train at Inverness and travelled through the afternoon and night to London. As we got out at Euston the next morning, I was surprised to see the First Sea Lord on the platform. Admiral Pound’s look was grave. “I have bad news for you, First Lord. The Courageous was sunk yesterday evening in the Bristol Channel.” The Courageous was one of our oldest aircraft carriers, but a very necessary ship at this time. I thanked him for coming to break it to me himself, and said, “We can’t expect to carry on a war like this without these sorts of things happening from time to time. I have seen lots of it before.” And so to bath and the toil of another day.

In order to bridge the gap of two or three weeks between the outbreak of war and the completion of our auxiliary anti-U-boat flotillas, we had decided to use the aircraft carriers with some freedom in helping to bring in the unarmed, unorganised, and unconvoyed traffic which was then approaching our shores in large numbers. This was a risk which it was right to run. The Courageous attended by four destroyers had been thus employed. Towards evening on the seventeenth, two of these had to go to hunt a U-boat which was attacking a merchant ship. When the Courageous turned into the wind at dusk, in order to enable her own aircraft to alight upon her landing-deck, she happened, in her unpredictable course, by what may have been a hundred-to-one chance, to meet a U-boat. Out of her crew of 1,260 over 500 were drowned, including Captain Makeig-Jones, who went down with his ship. Three days before another of our aircraft carriers, later to become famous, H.M.S. Ark Royal, had also been attacked by a submarine while similarly engaged. Mercifully the torpedoes missed, and her assailant was promptly sunk by her escorting destroyers.

* * * * *

Outstanding among our naval problems was that of dealing effectively with surface raiders, which would inevitably make their appearance in the near future as they had done in 1914.

On September 12 I issued the following minute:

Cruiser Policy

In the past we have sought to protect our trade against sudden attack by [means of] cruisers; having regard to the vast ocean spaces to be controlled, the principle was “the more the better.” In the search for enemy raiders or cruisers, even small cruisers could play their part, and in the case of the Emden we were forced to gather over twenty ships before she was rounded up. However, a long view of cruiser policy would seem to suggest that a new unit of search is required. Whereas a cruiser squadron of four ships could search on a front of, say eighty miles, a single cruiser accompanied by an aircraft carrier could cover at least three hundred miles, or if the movement of the ship is taken into account, four hundred miles. On the other hand, we must apprehend that the raiders of the future will be powerful vessels, eager to fight a single-ship action if a chance is presented. The mere multiplication of small, weak cruisers is no means of ridding the seas of powerful raiders. Indeed they are only an easy prey. The raider, cornered at length, will overwhelm one weak vessel and escape from the cordon.

Every unit of search must be able to find, to catch, and to kill. For this purpose we require a number of cruisers superior to the 10,000-ton type, or else pairs of our own 10,000-ton type. These must be accompanied by small aircraft carriers carrying perhaps a dozen or two dozen machines, and of the smallest possible displacement. The ideal unit of search would be one killer or two three-quarter killers, plus one aircraft carrier, plus four ocean-going destroyers, plus two or three specially constructed tankers of good speed. Such a formation cruising would be protected against submarines, and could search an enormous area and destroy any single raider when detected.

The policy of forming hunting groups as discussed in this minute, comprising balanced forces capable of scouring wide areas and overwhelming any raider within the field of search, was developed so far as our limited resources allowed, and I shall refer to this subject again in a later chapter. The same idea was afterwards more fully expanded by the United States in their task force system, which made an important contribution to the art of sea warfare.

* * * * *

Towards the end of the month I thought it would be well for me to give the House some coherent story of what was happening and why.

Would it not be well for me to make a statement to the House on the anti-submarine warfare and general naval position, more at length than what you could give in your own speech? I think I could speak for twenty-five or thirty minutes on the subject, and that this would do good. At any rate, when I saw in confidence sixty press representatives the other day, they appeared vastly relieved by the account I was able to give. If this idea commended itself to you, you would perhaps say in your speech that I would give a fuller account later on in the discussion, which I suppose will take place on Thursday, as the budget is on Wednesday.

Mr. Chamberlain readily assented, and accordingly in his speech on the twenty-sixth he told the House that I would make a statement on the sea war as soon as he sat down. This was the first time, apart from answering questions, that I had spoken in Parliament since I had entered the Government. I had a good tale to tell. In the first seven days our losses in tonnage had been half the weekly losses of the month of April, 1917, which was the peak year of the U-boat attack in the first war. We had already made progress by setting in motion the convoy system; secondly, by pressing on with the arming of all our merchant ships; and thirdly, by our counter-attack upon the U-boats. “In the first week our losses by U-boat sinkings amounted to 65,000 tons; in the second week they were 46,000 tons; and in the third week they were 21,000 tons. In the last six days we have lost only 9,000 tons.” ⁶ I observed throughout that habit of understatement and of avoiding all optimistic forecasts which had been inculcated upon me by the hard experiences of the past. “One must not dwell,” I said, “upon these reassuring figures too much, for war is full of unpleasant surprises. But certainly I am entitled to say that so far as they go these figures need not cause any undue despondency or alarm.”

Meanwhile [I continued], the whole vast business of our worldwide trade continues without interruption or appreciable diminution. Great convoys of troops are escorted to their various destinations. The enemy’s ships and commerce have been swept from the seas. Over 2,000,000 tons of German shipping is now sheltering in German, or interned in neutral harbours…. In the first fortnight of the war we have actually arrested, seized, and converted to our own use, 67,000 tons more German merchandise than has been sunk in ships of our own…. Again I reiterate my caution against oversanguine conclusions. We have in fact, however, got more supplies in this country this afternoon than we should have had if no war had been declared and no U-boat had come into action. It is not going beyond the limits of prudent statement if I say that at that rate it will take a long time to starve us out.

From time to time the German U-boat commanders have tried their best to behave with humanity. We have seen them give good warning and also endeavour to help the crews to find their ways to port. One German captain signalled to me personally the position of a British ship which he had just sunk, and urged that rescue should be sent. He signed his message, “German Submarine.” I was in some doubt at the time to what address I should direct a reply. However, he is now in our hands, and is treated with all consideration.

Even taking six or seven U-boats sunk as a safe figure,⁷ that is one-tenth of the total enemy submarine fleet as it existed at the declaration of war destroyed during the first fortnight of the war, and it is probably one-quarter or perhaps even one-third of all the U-boats which are being employed actively. But the British attack upon the U-boats is only just beginning. Our hunting force is getting stronger every day. By the end of October, we expect to have three times the hunting force which was operating at the beginning of the war.

This speech, which lasted only twenty-five minutes, was extremely well received by the House, and in fact it recorded the failure of the first German U-boat attack upon our trade. My fears were for the future, but our preparations for 1941 were now proceeding with all possible speed and on the largest scale which our resources would allow.

* * * * *

By the end of September, we had little cause for dissatisfaction with the results of the first impact of the war at sea. I could feel that I had effectively taken over the great department which I knew so well and loved with a discriminating eye. I now knew what there was in hand and on the way. I knew where everything was. I had visited all the principal naval ports and met all the Commanders-in-Chief. By the letters patent constituting the Board, the First Lord is “responsible to Crown and Parliament for all the business of the Admiralty,” and I certainly felt prepared to discharge that duty in fact as well as in form.

On the whole the month of September had been prosperous and fruitful for the Navy. We had made the immense, delicate, and hazardous transition from peace to war. Forfeits had to be paid in the first few weeks by a world-wide commerce suddenly attacked contrary to formal international agreement by indiscriminate U-boat warfare; but the convoy system was now in full flow, and merchant ships were leaving our ports every day by scores with a gun, sometimes high-angle, mounted aft, and a nucleus of trained gunners. The Asdic-equipped trawlers and other small craft armed with depth-charges, all well prepared by the Admiralty before the outbreak, were now coming daily into commission in a growing stream with trained crews. We all felt sure that the first attack of the U-boat on British trade had been broken and that the menace was in thorough and hardening control. It was obvious that the Germans would build submarines by hundreds, and no doubt numerous shoals were upon the slips in various stages of completion. In twelve months, certainly in eighteen, we must expect the main U-boat war to begin. But by that time we hoped that our mass of new flotillas and anti-U-boat craft, which was our first priority, would be ready to meet it with a proportionate and effective predominance. The painful dearth of anti-aircraft guns, especially 3.7-inch and Bofors, could, alas, only be relieved after many months; but measures had been taken within the limits of our resources to provide for the defence of our naval harbours; and meanwhile the Fleet, while ruling the oceans, would have to go on playing hide-and-seek.

* * * * *

In the wider sphere of naval operations no definite challenge had yet been made to our position. After the temporary suspension of traffic in the Mediterranean, our shipping soon moved again through this invaluable corridor. Meanwhile, the transport of the Expeditionary Force to France was proceeding smoothly. The Home Fleet itself “somewhere in the North” was ready to intercept any sortie by the few heavy ships of the enemy. The blockade of Germany was being enforced by similar methods to those employed in the previous war. The Northern Patrol had been established between Scotland and Iceland, and by the end of the first month a total of nearly three hundred thousand tons of goods destined for Germany had been seized in prize against a loss to ourselves of a hundred and forty thousand tons by enemy action at sea. Overseas, our cruisers were hunting down German ships while at the same time providing cover against attack on our shipping by raiders. German shipping had thus come to a standstill. By the end of September, some three hundred and twenty-five German ships totalling nearly seven hundred and fifty thousand tons were immobilised in foreign ports. Few, therefore, fell into our hands.

Our Allies also played their part. The French took an important share in the control of the Mediterranean. In home waters and the Bay of Biscay they also helped in the battle against the U-boats, and in the central Atlantic a powerful force based on Dakar formed part of the Allied plans against surface raiders.

The young Polish Navy distinguished itself. Early in the war three modern destroyers and two submarines, Wilk and Orzel, escaped from Poland and, defying the German forces in the Baltic, succeeded in reaching England. The escape of the submarine Orzel is an epic. Sailing from Gdynia when the Germans invaded Poland, she first cruised in the Baltic, putting into the neutral port of Tallinn on September 15 to land her sick captain. The Esthonian authorities decided to intern the vessel, placed a guard on board, and removed her charts and the breech-blocks of her guns. Undismayed, her commanding officer put to sea after overpowering the guard. In the ensuing weeks the submarine was continually hunted by sea and air patrols, but eventually, without even charts, made her escape from the Baltic into the North Sea. Here she was able to transmit a faint wireless signal to a British station giving her supposed position, and on October 14 was met and escorted into safety by a British destroyer.

* * * * *

In September I was delighted to receive a personal letter from President Roosevelt. I had met him only once in the previous war. It was at a dinner at Gray’s Inn, and I had been struck by his magnificent presence in all his youth and strength. There had been no opportunity for anything but salutations.

It is because you and I occupied similar positions in the World War that I want you to know how glad I am that you are back again in the Admiralty. Your problems are, I realise, complicated by new factors, but the essential is not very different. What I want you and the Prime Minister to know is that I shall at all times welcome it, if you will keep me in touch personally with anything you want me to know about. You can always send sealed letters through your pouch or my pouch.

I am glad you did the Marlborough volumes before this thing started – and I much enjoyed reading them.

I responded with alacrity, using the signature of “Naval Person,” and thus began that long and memorable correspondence – covering perhaps a thousand communications on each side, and lasting till his death more than five years later.