One Century Ago: We Got Ourselves a Convoy!

Now that we can look back upon the whole course of the campaign, we can usefully study why it was that the choice should have been so long in doubt, and at the time there were many, including among civilians, who were familiar with the idea of convoy, and inferred, from its success in former wars, that it was an obvious and infallible method whose value had been strangely overlooked.

Henry Newbolt, History of the Great War, Naval Operations, Vol. V., 2-3.

In this undated photograph, United States merchant vessels approach the coast of England during the First World War. The second experimental convoy, the first originating from the North American continent, to test this contested transatlantic shipping strategy left Hampton Roads for Ireland on May 24, 1917. (Naval History and Heritage Command image)    

The convoy system, originally known as "wafting," had been used sporadically by the English since the early-1500s.  The practice was still in place 350 years ago when groups of merchant vessels laden with tobacco left Hampton Roads on their way to England, hoping not to run afoul of what was then the scourge of the seas, the Dutch.  A century ago, however, the practice had long been out of favor, and for the first three years of the First World War, the British had been paying for it dearly in terms of tonnage, war material, and lives lost to their German adversaries. 

Smaller convoys had been instituted by the British practically before the war officially began, the first being, ironically enough, to the Dutch.  The so-called "Beef Trips" along the Hook of Holland route began in July, 1916.  Another convoy arrangement had also been put into place to protect colliers bound for France, yet the Admiralty insisted that the term "convoy" was inappropriate, calling the arrangement instead, "controlled sailing." First Sea Lord Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, RN, had approved the arrangement in January 1917, yet he still strongly resisted any recommendation that the same strategy be used in transatlantic shipping.  Despite relenting to Norwegian demands to provide a similar measure of protection to their merchant vessels a couple of months later, no serious consideration was given to instituting the convoy system across the Atlantic, where U-boats inflicted most of the British losses.

Similar losses being incurred by American-flagged ships in no small part precipitated the U.S. entry into the war on April 6, 1917, but Americans too were reluctant to resurrect convoying from American ports.  President Woodrow Wilson was fond of saying that his Navy would hunt down the Kaiser's submarines on the open ocean and strike their bases, which he called "hornets' nests." The Royal Navy had followed this strategy, known as the patrol system, since the beginning of the war but had precious little to show for it.  

Rear Admiral William S. Sims, USN, who arrived in London on April 10 as a liaison officer to the British Admiralty, later wrote, "One of the astonishing things about this war was that many of the naval officers of all countries did not seem to understand until a very late date that it was utterly futile to send anti-submarine surface craft out into the wide ocean to attack or chase away submarines. The thing to do, of course, was to make the submarines come to the anti-submarine craft and fight in order to get merchantmen." Many mid-grade officers of the Royal Navy agreed with him, yet simple, even traditional, ideas can run afoul of a hidebound orthodoxy at the top, and that is what Sims encountered both within the Admiralty in London, and later from his superiors in Washington. 

Admiral Jellicoe's attitude reflected that of his predecessor, Adm. Sir Henry Jackson, and the chief of the Admiralty War Staff, Adm. Sir Henry Oliver.  Fixated on the Mahanian concept that decisive duels between dreadnoughts constituted the raison d'être of modern navies, they negated its role as a guarantor of maritime commerce.  As a consequence, the battleships of the Grand Fleet assembled together in Scapa Flow received the greatest protection from submarines, while the widely dispersed merchant vessels approaching Britain from around the world received little to none, and the nation began to starve.

Making matters worse for the merchantmen, the senior strategists of the Royal Navy operated under the assumption that a proper convoy would require a 1-1 ratio of escorts to merchant vessels, in which case, even if the entire U.S. Atlantic Fleet came to their aid after entering the war, it would not be enough to make the arrangement practicable.  And with its commander, Adm. Henry T. Mayo, just as convinced that he needed most of his ships at home to protect against a German onslaught against the eastern seaboard, Sims' proposal seemed a non-starter. 

The tide began to turn, however, when Jellicoe along with the Admiralty revised its estimates on how many ocean-going escort vessels might actually be needed to begin convoying vessels across the Atlantic, helped in no small measure by Destroyer Division 8's arrival in Ireland on May 4.  The day before that, Sims received word from Washington that 36 destroyers would be on their way.  Although the destroyers of Division 8 began their service in British waters on May 8, they were assigned only to patrol duties.  Under pressure from Parliament, however, reeling from the news that April had been the most successful month of the war for German submarines, the decision was made to assemble a trial convoy and sail it from Gibraltar in the Mediterranean, which departed for Britain on May 10.  A subsequent naval staff study concluded, "The trial had been an entire success, and from that moment it may be said that the submarine menace was conquered."

Despite such superlatives from officers typically given to understatement, the newly-converted Admiralty could not usher their new allies across the pond into their new way of thinking.  The U.S. Navy turned down a request to send a convoy of 16 to 20 ships from Hampton Roads with one of the three American destroyer divisions being sent to British waters after Division 8, so the British resolved to show their American cousins that it could be done.  Their second trial convoy, made up of 12 ships and escorted by the armored cruiser HMS Roxburgh, left Hampton Roads on May 24.  All the vessels of the convoy, with the exception of two that fell behind, reached their destinations safely by June 10.

Despite one of the stragglers being torpedoed and sunk, the vessels of this first transatlantic convoy of the war had a much better survival rate than they would have had alone.  Before the convoy system was finally instituted on the Atlantic crossings, a merchant vessel had a one in four chance of being attacked.  Although it would be a few months before convoying once again became a regular part of maritime commerce originating from Hampton Roads, it was clear that this centuries-old practice would bring the reign of terror spawned by the newest naval weapon to an end at last.

Commander Taussig's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Not Fun Voyage to Ireland

Hurry up and wait.

Everyone in the Navy experiences the phenomenon before a deployment, but Lieutenant Commander Joseph K. Taussig was struck with an acute case of this military malady virtually from the moment he received a phone call at his home in Norfolk, Virginia, on the evening of April 13, 1917, informing him that his six destroyers were to depart Hampton Roads for New York in a matter of hours. So urgent were the orders from Washington that 15 of his men were left behind because the division got underway before the expiration of liberty the following morning.  

Artist Bernard Gribble probably patterned his famous painting, "Return of the Mayflower," now in the collection of the U.S. Naval Academy Museum, after press photos of the arrival of the "Special Service Division" at Queenstown, Ireland, on May 4, 1917. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file) 

Greeted with great fanfare after his arrival at Queenstown in Cork Harbor, Ireland, on May 4, Taussig and his men coming to the aid of the beleaguered British were hailed as heroes.  He also achieved instant worldwide fame, uttering one of the first great American sound bites of the Great War.  Newspapers across the Anglophone world printed his upbeat reply to Vice Adm. Sir Lewis Bayly, who had asked him, "When will you be ready to go to sea?" 

"We are ready now, sir, that is, as soon as we finish refueling."

On May 4, 1917, Joseph K. Taussig is captured in mid-salute as he greets Royal Navy Vice Adm. Sir Lewis Bayly (far right) at Admiralty House in Queenstown (now known as Cobh), Ireland after leading Destroyer Division Eight across the Atlantic from Boston on April 24 on his flagship, USS Wadsworth (DD-60), seen approaching the town in the photograph to the right.  The journey had actually begun at the York River near Hampton Roads, Virginia, on April 14. (Hampton Roads Naval Museum file)  

"Of course you know how destroyers are-always wanting something done to them," Taussig continued.  "But this is war, and we are ready to make the best of things and go to sea immediately." Had Taussig been as brutally honest with the Royal Navy's commander-in-chief of the coasts of Ireland that day about his voyage as he was known to be later in his career, perhaps the headlines would have been a bit different. 

It is unknown whether Taussig commiserated with his subordinates before or during the history-making voyage to Queenstown aboard his flagship USS Wadsworth (DD-60), but he vented his frustrations with his superiors within his diary.  Even one century later, perhaps some of his frustrations might resonate with commanders today.

After arriving at New York Navy Yard about 13 hours after departing Hampton Roads on April 14, leaving 15 of his men behind in the rush, he noted:

It was Saturday night, and of course nobody paid any attention to us.  So, just as I supposed, the great emergency requiring us to sail at daylight was no emergency at all, and it would have been much better had I been given some discretion in the matter and allowed to remain in Hampton Roads until my liberty men returned. But it is the way we have in the Navy.  Somebody somewhere is generally prone to "fly off the handle." 

What made things even more frustrating for Taussig was that only two of his destroyers were allowed to dock upon arrival, and when he enquired as to why, he was informed that his flotilla was not even supposed to be in New York at all and was instead directed to proceed directly to Boston.  He wrote:

There certainly is a lack of communications somewhere.  But what can we expect? Our Navy Department is absolutely unorganized so far as its duty in connection with carrying on a war is concerned.  Evidently things are very much upset at headquarters.  Perhaps someday we will have a real General Staff, but until that day comes we must continue to be buffeted around in all sorts of ways.

The metaphorical buffeting continued after Taussig's arrival in Boston, where yard officials estimated that preparations for "any service that might be required" would take ten days.  Admiral William S. Benson, the Chief of Naval Operations, called from Washington, declaring flatly that "the destroyers must be ready to leave immediately on receipt of orders, but [he] did not say when the orders were coming." 

For nearly three years, the American march towards war was characterized by numerous fits, and non-starts, particularly after the sinking of the British liner RMS Lusitania in May 1915.  Almost two years later, several weeks after the official declaration of war against Germany, nothing had happened.  Unlike the way the war in Europe had begun nearly three years before, American forces did not surge into combat, guns blazing. An entire army would have to be moved from one continent to another before American forces would make a demonstrable impact.  But politically, something, anything, needed to happen, despite the fact that, according to a U.S. Naval Academy history of the war, "[a]pproximately two-thirds of our ships...were not materially ready for instant service and 90 per cent fell far short of the compliment necessary for the efficient fighting of these ships." 

William S. Sims, seen here as a vice admiral

in the garden of the Admiralty headquarters

in London later in the war, was the architect

of the strategy of filling gaps in Royal Navy's

defenses piecemeal, but immediately, rather

than organizing a grand naval force to help

the British, which would have taken much longer. 

Sims learned from Adm. Sir John Jellicoe, First

Sea Lord, that the British did not have that kind

of time. (Naval History and Heritage Command

photograph)

The head of the Naval War College, Rear Adm. William S. Sims, had been clandestinely dispatched to London before the declaration of war, and from there after consulting with the Admiralty he devised an approach both befitting a Navy clearly not ready for large-scale conflict and a uniformed leadership wary of ceding operational control to foreigners.  Sims recommended that the only way to get American naval forces immediately into the war and achieve the greatest impact right away would be "to use its available units to strengthen the weak spots in other Navies and thus effect a more vigorous conduct of the war already so thoroughly underway in all areas."  

In no other area was the Royal Navy in more need of assistance than against U-Boats that at that point were an existential threat to Britain's continued prosecution of the war.  This strategic plan, to buttress the Royal Navy where needed immediately rather than send a large force of American warships, resonated with Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels and led directly to Taussig being tapped to lead the first mission of assistance to the British.  In Taussig's case, however, the many hands up and down the chain of command between Sims and Taussig did not make for light work.  The secrecy practiced at the departmental level made the preparation process all the more difficult for Taussig.  In his diary, Taussig mused that "it would seem that the whole result of this war, which has been going on for nearly three years, depends on whether or not six little destroyers sail from Boston for the English Channel on a certain indefinite date known to no one- not even those who are issuing the orders.  Can you beat it!"

Taussig did as best he could under the circumstances, working as hard as possible, but fully expecting to be ordered to sea before his ships were ready, which is exactly what happened.  On the morning of April 24, a week after arriving in Boston, two officers from Washington arrived with signal books and sealed orders, to be opened 50 miles out to sea.  Taussig's "Special Destroyer Division" was to begin their journey immediately.  Left on the pier were ice machines that they now had no time to install, as well as target practice ammunition, wrecking mines, and pay accounts.  "Some of our lamb's wool-lined jackets did not arrive either," he wrote, "but what I regret most is the non-arrival of a large box of laundry which has been following us from Norfolk."

"I always have the blues when I leave home for a trip," Taussig wrote after getting underway, "but I feel more that way tonight than usual."  In addition to missing his wife and young daughter, the frustrating fortnight he had experienced left him feeling that "the [Navy] department did not treat us right."  Taussig continued:

Instead of nagging us and not giving us any information, I feel sure that the proper procedure in this case would have been for me to be ordered to Washington and get the situation explained to me confidentially.  I feel that the Department kicked us out rather discourteously instead of saying to us, "You fellows are up against a tough proposition.  The Department knows that you will do your best and wishes you success.  Good-bye and good luck." If we had been treated that way I would be in a much better frame of mind tonight.  

This undated photograph taken aboard USS Wadsworth might or might not show conditions aboard the destroyer as she made her initial journey from Boston, Massachusetts to Queenstown (now Cobh) Ireland in 1917.  Joseph Taussig reported in his diary that for six days his destroyers dealt with "half a gale, the wind blowing steadily from SSE," so it is conceivable that this image was from that voyage.  In any event it gives an indication of conditions in the North Atlantic aboard the destroyers that for the rest of the First World War would help the Royal Navy defeat the Kaiserliche Marine. (Naval History and Heritage Command image) 

It is a truism that a kvetching Sailor is a happy Sailor, and despite losing about ten hours conducting repairs en route, Taussig and his gallant crew were happy indeed to have reached Queenstown intact, almost ten days after their departure from Boston.  After all, he wrote in his diary, it could have been much worse, and not just because of the heavy winds that buffeted them for over half the voyage.  Rear Adm. Sims noted that German submarines had laid mines directly off Queenstown the day before Destroyer Division 8's arrival, and they had been discovered just in time. As the windows of Admiralty House shook with the explosions of mines being harvested by Royal Navy minesweepers on the evening of May 3, Vice Adm. Bayly remarked jokingly "that it was a pity to interfere with such a warm welcome as had apparently been planned for our crusaders."  As Taussig and his officers sat down to dinner at Admiralty House after the following evening, the German mines were still exploding in Cork Harbor.  "This again impressed our men," Sims wrote, "with the fact that the game which they had now entered was a quite different affair from their peace-time manoeuvres [sic]"   

Despite the fact that the greatest naval engagement of the war, the Battle of Jutland almost one year before, had forced the Germans to conclude that only the Kaiserliche Marine's submarines could win the war, savage skirmishes continued between surface combatants.  A battle between two British destroyers, HMS Swift and HMS Broke, and six German destroyers early on the morning of April 21 off Dover involved torpedoing at eyeball-to-eyeball range, culminating in Broke ramming one her stricken assailants. For the two minutes the ships were locked together, "a boarding encounter with cutlasses and bayonets, recalling the days when wooden warships came together and the men fought on the decks," ensued.  When it was over, 22 British sailors were killed and 40 were wounded, while 72 of their adversaries perished, along with two of the German destroyers.

HMS Broke rams German destroyer G-85 during a fierce engagement south of Goodwin Sands at approximately 1 in the morning on April 21, 1917.  Her captain, Royal Navy Cmdr. E.R.G.R. Evans, later wrote, "I hit her at full speed almost at right angles abreast after funnel, port side, and she literally tore her side out and bent my stem to port." Not long after the battle, Evans was promoted to captain. (Auckland [New Zealand] Weekly News, July 12, 1917/ Wikimedia Commons)

Captain E.R.G.R. Evans, RN, in 1917.

Upon entering Cork Harbor, the man who commanded HMS Broke during that furious fight, Cmdr. Edward R.G.R. Evans, boarded Wadsworth with a pilot to guide her to her new berth in Queenstown.  He handed Taussig a note written by the First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, Adm. Sir John Jellicoe, a fellow veteran of the Boxer Rebellion, which said in part:

My experience in China makes me feel perfectly convinced that the two nations will work in the closest cooperation and I won't flatter you by saying too much about the value of your help. 

Just over 123 years after Congress authorized the construction of six frigates to comprise a force that could, in part, protect the nation from the Royal Navy, six American destroyers joined their counterparts in the Royal Navy to face a foe neither had faced together.  The shared struggle at sea during that unprecedented war, and the one that would follow a generation later, built the fraternal bond that still exists between the Royal Navy and the U.S. Navy, one century later.

Editor's Note: For incontrovertible, encyclopedic proof that the naval war between the Entente and the Central Powers was far from over when Cdr. Taussig arrived, check out the new book, Clash of Fleets: Naval Battles of the Great War, 1914-1918 by Vincent P. O'Hara and Leonard R. Heinz (Naval Institute Press, 2017).