course for its destination. The Admiralty convoy board
knew so accurately the position of all the submarines
that it could almost always route the convoys around
them. It was an extremely interesting experience to
watch the paper ships on this chart deftly turn out of the
course of U-boats, sometimes when they seemed almost
on the point of colliding with them. That we were able
constantly to save the ships by sailing the convoys around
the submarines brings out the interesting fact that, even
had there been no destroyer escort, the convoy in itself
would have formed a great protection to merchant shipping.
There were times when we had no escorting vessels to send
with certain convoys; and in such instances we simply
routed the ships in masses, directed them on courses
which we knew were free of submarines, and in this way
brought them safely into port.
III
The Admiralty in London was thus the central nervous system of a complicated but perfectly working organism which reached the remotest corners of the world. Wherever there was a port, whether in South America, Australia, or in the most inaccessible parts of India or China, from which merchantmen sailed to any of the other countries which were involved in the war, representatives of the British navy and the British Government were stationed, all working harmoniously with shipping men in the effort to get their cargoes safely through the danger zones. These danger zones occupied a comparatively small area surrounding the belligerent countries, but the safeguarding of the ships was an elaborate process which began far back in the countries from which the commerce started. Until about July, 1917, the world's shipping for the most part had been unregulated; now for the first time it was arranged in hard and fast routes and despatched in accordance with schedules as fixed as those of a great railroad. The whole management of convoys, indeed, bore many resemblances to the method of handling freight cars on the American system of trans-continental lines. In the United States there are several great headquarters of freight, sometimes known as "gateways," places, that is, at which freight cars are assembled from a thousand
