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    The Merchant Navy
    The Merchant Navy
    The Merchant Navy
    Ebook97 pages52 minutes

    The Merchant Navy

    By Richard Woodman

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    About this ebook

    At one time British ships carried half of the world's trade, transporting every conceivable type of freight from and to all four corners of the globe – and in times of crisis the merchant fleet has also offered military assistance. In fact, the merchant convoys and armed cruisers that defied the German blockades to supply Britain in the First World War were so pivotal that they were recognised as a second 'navy' – the Merchant Navy. This fleet again saw service in the Second World War, continuing to keep Britain provisioned even in its darkest hour. Richard Woodman here relates the Merchant Navy's colourful history and brings to life the day-to-day experiences of the seamen.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateApr 10, 2013
    ISBN9780747813484
    The Merchant Navy
    Author

    Richard Woodman

    Richard Woodman has previously worked for The Trinity House Service. He is also the author of the Nathanial Drinkwater stories and other maritime works.

    Read more from Richard Woodman

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    4/5

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    • 5/5
      This is probably the best book I have read on the Battle of the Atlantic. It details the conflict in exquisiste detail from 1939 through 1943 with great detail and examples. It was such a good book that I had to obtain a copy after reading it in the library.
    • 4/5
      The subtle factors behind decisions that are made during wartime are often hidden even though they may have a substantial impact on many lives. Richard Woodman, in The Real Cruel Sea, describes the economic disincentive to form convoys of ships during World War I, even though there was substantial evidence that more ships were saved through this method. Ship owners were against the plan because ever since the introduction of the steam engine, they were no longer at the mercy of the wind and could sail on a regular schedule. Anything that might interfere with regular sailings would have an impact on their profits. Naval aficionados disliked the idea of using naval forces in a defensive manner. It was somehow less manly. But the most scurrilous reason was that investors reaped enormous benefits from having a ship sunk. Since the government requisitioned the ships for war support, it would indemnify the ship investors should the ship be torpedoed. Even with an Excess Profits Tax, Mr. Bonar Law, Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1917 described the substantial profits he made following liquidation of a ship. Meanwhile, the poor seaman had his wages stopped the minute the ship went down.

      Follow the money, a Watergate dictum that we might wish to observe as more and more funding goes to Iraq.

      In WW II we prided ourselves on our ability to produce ever increasing numbers of ships to replace those that had been sunk. Unfortunately, we all too often forget that irreplaceable people went down with those ships. This book is a reminder.

      Corrections: 11/21/10

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    The Merchant Navy - Richard Woodman

    WHAT IS THE MERCHANT NAVY?

    MARITIME NATIONS are defined by their possession of a navy and a mercantile marine, the first consisting of their armed ships of war, the second of privately owned vessels that carry cargoes for profit either in the national interest, as imports and exports, or on behalf of others. Such national commercial ‘fleets’ are commonly referred to as a ‘mercantile marine,’ but in Britain it is known as the ‘Merchant Navy’ as a result of its importance and extraordinary sacrifice in the First World War. This was repeated between 1939 and 1945 when the integration of merchant shipping with the armed forces was so close that it did, in fact, become a second ‘navy,’ all ships being armed. The ships of national mercantile marines ‘wear’ the maritime ensign of the country in which they are registered and by which they are regulated; the ships of the British Merchant Navy wear the red ensign. Although initially also a naval ensign, an Act of Parliament in 1864 had made this the exclusive flag of privately owned British vessels.

    Historically, the private ownership of vessels has been vested in a wide range of commercial entities. Some possessed no more than perhaps one or two vessels of a single type; others comprised huge and complex conglomerates with scores of ships designed with different purposes in mind and trading all over the globe under a variety of company names. Today the British Merchant Navy includes not only ships owned by British citizens, but also those placed by their owners under British regulation under the Tonnage Tax regime. This entitles them to wear the red ensign of Great Britain and, in exchange for certain undertakings (chief of which is the training of young seafarers) to receive tax breaks. British registry implies their owners sign-up to certain audited practices, which range from safety and maintenance standards to the protection of the environment through on-board regulation. This assurance of quality allows an owner of a British registered ship to be placed on the so-called ‘white list’ of national registers, making his vessels more attractive to those seeking safe and profitable delivery of their cargoes. Owning a British-registered vessel also guarantees the protection of the Royal Navy in troubled times.

    HOW IT ALL BEGAN

    The origins of both the British Merchant and Royal Navies lie in the first half of the sixteenth century when, under Henry VIII, England in particular began to flex her muscles as a potential maritime power. There had been an early medieval trade with western France (then mostly fiefdoms of the Norman kings of England), wine being the most important import. It was loaded in Bordeaux in large casks, or ‘tuns’, from which we derive the expression for describing a ship’s capacity, or ‘burthen.’ This system of measurement facilitated both the levying of the king’s customs duties and the value of a vessel when requisitioned for war. Growing exports of English wool for manufacture into cloth in Flanders encouraged trade on the east coast of England, but much commerce at the time was borne not in English ships but in those of the Hanseatic League – a confederation of the mercantile associations of port-states in what is now modern Germany – which established commercial bases in places as far apart as Bergen (in Norway) and London. These ‘easterlings’ became renowned for their straight-dealing, from which is derived the word ‘sterling’ as a mark of the soundness of the British national currency. With much of our trade in the hands of foreigners, there was little call for any major home-grown enterprise until the reign of Richard II (1377–99), when this became a political issue. In 1381 the first ‘Navigation Act’ forbade the export of cargo in anything other than an English vessel, encouraging the growth of small ship-owning syndicates of English merchants.

    Merchant ships during the reign of Edward IV in the late fifteenth century. The first Navigation Act of 1381 had already forbidden the export of cargo in anything other than an English vessel, encouraging the growth of

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