Convoys at Sea

Convoys were anything from 10 to 100 ships. If you had a 100 ship convoy, you’d have 10 columns of 10 ships. In the centre of the front would be the commodore of the convoy. He’s the boss man on the merchant ships. At the rear would be the rescue vessel. Around the convoy, you’d have the escort vessels, and they’d try to do what they call an asdic screen to detect any submarine. In the centre of the, at the front of the escort vessels is the senior officer of the escort group, and the rest were the escort vessels. Hopefully they put a screen around all the convoys. And also to try to avert submarines, you got notice by WT regularly as to where they were supposed to be and you try to do what you call a zig-zag pattern and I remember some of the convoys we went all the way from Iceland in the north to the Azores in the south to avoid submarines.