1 January 1941 – £17. 12s 6d per month.
1 February 1943 – £24. 0s 6d per month.[192]
These amounts include a ‘war risk’ (danger money) payment of £3 rising to £10. In addition to these incremental improvements, paid leave and continuity of employment were introduced for the first time. Foreign seamen were paid less than their British counterparts, a source of understandable friction.
Despite the terrible risks involved, there was never a serious shortage of crewmen during the war years, but the same cannot be said of ships for them to sail. By November 1939, the whole of the Belgian fleet had been made available to Britain plus half the Norwegian and Dutch fleets; however, as the German invasion of Europe spread an average of 26 per cent of the Norwegian, Dutch, and Belgian fleets were caught in their home ports and captured. Following the fall of France in June 1940, approximately ½ million tons of French shipping came into British hands, unfortunately matched almost exactly by tonnage of British ships caught in French ports at the same time. Danish shipowners proved to be generally pro-German, and ordered their ships at sea to put into neutral ports, but despite this a number of Danish ships found their way to the UK and operated under British flag, crewed by Danes, for the duration of the war. Greek ships later became an important addition to the fleet.
Formal possession of the ships of the British fleet remained unchanged for the war years, although the Government, through the agency of the Ministry of Shipping (incorporated into the Ministry of War Shipping in May 1941), had, by the summer of 1940, requisitioned all vessels and agreed terms with their owners.[193] This for the most part left crewing, maintenance, and the day-to day running of the ships to the owners, while all decisions as to cargoes and destinations were taken by the Ministry.
By the spring of 1941 a serious shortage of tonnage had manifested itself as a result of war losses. As a consequence, Britain’s annual imports dropped sharply from 42,000,000 tons (42,672,000 tonnes) to 28,500,000 tons (28,956,000 tonnes) – less than had been imported in the dark days of 1917. Britain’s minimum requirement for her civilian population alone amounted to 25,000,000 tons (25,400,000 tonnes) p.a. in addition to which it was estimated that 7–8 tons (7.1–8.1 tonnes) of supplies would be required to support every soldier in Europe when the time for an offensive came – double for the Pacific. To help alleviate the problem, the United States released quantities of old laid up tonnage to Britain on bareboat charter – in which the charterer, in this case the British government, in return for paying a correspondingly low charter rate to the owner, agrees to accept the lion’s share of the risks, and crews and operates the ship as the owner in all but name. The United States further assisted by requisitioning all French, Italian, and Yugoslav ships held in US ports and turning them over to Britain. In 1943 another tonnage crisis was eased when the United States agreed to divert ships from the Pacific to the Atlantic.[194]
That the Allies were able to keep the convoys going at all is due in no small part to the Second World War phenomenon the Liberty ship. This British-designed, 10,800 ton deadweight,[195] 11 knot, 3-cylinder steam-engined cargo ship was enthusiastically adopted by the United States Maritime Commission (USMC) which, however, altered the propulsion system from coal- to oil-fired, and to drastically cut building time, changed the hull design from all riveted to all-welded construction. The USMC also instituted a system of prefabrication whereby sections of ships would be constructed at sites all over the country and transported to the shipyards for final assembly. Placing orders in private and government-owned shipyards in the United States, the USMC built 5777 of these amazingly versatile ships between 1939 and 1945, with design configurations varying from the basic general cargo freighter to tankers, hospital ships, floating repair shops and tank transports (‘zipper ships’).
This phenomenal effort represents the most prodigious shipbuilding programme ever undertaken, accounting for a total of 56,300,000 deadweight tons (57,200,800 tonnes), at a cost of $13 billion, and constitutes one of the most significant contributions made by any nation to the eventual winning of the Second World War.[196]
The basic premise behind the Liberty ships was to build them faster than it would be possible for the Axis powers to sink them. It was said that they were ‘built by the mile, and chopped off by the yard’, and indeed one Liberty ship is recorded as having been launched 4 days and 15½ hours after her keel was laid. This rapid rate of build inevitably caused a few problems, particularly as inexperienced workers often manned shipyards during the war years. Liberties experienced a high percentage of defects, and 1 in 30 suffered major hull fractures.[197]
Britain placed orders for Liberty ships in US yards, and built similar-sized ships of various standard design types in British shipyards. Adoption of the faster welding method was slow in coming however, and most British-built ships were riveted, although a nod towards modern methods was made with the utilisation of a prefabrication system similar to that in the United States. A significant proportion of ships built in the UK were coal-fired, for the understandable reason that Britain had a considerable coal resource to draw upon. Canada took the opportunity to expand its shipbuilding capacity, and had considerable success in producing standard cargo ships, with designs which tended to follow the British types, but a construction method which favoured welding over riveting.[198] While it would have been impossible to meet the vast tonnage requirements without the massive industrial capacity of the United States, it is also true to say that the US alone could not have met the demands, and the substantial building and repair programmes put in hand by British and Canadian shipyards were vital contributions to ultimate victory.
It was calculated that if a Liberty ship made one loaded trip across the Atlantic she had done all that could be expected, and was unlikely to survive another. The rate at which they would be sunk by the enemy, or would in all probability fall apart due to the way in which they were constructed, would see to that. Despite these pessimistic predictions, war-surplus Liberty ships were snapped up by commercial shipping companies at knock-down prices after the war, and many a fortune was made with them. Liberty ships were to be seen plying the trade routes of the world until the early 1970s, and such was the success of the type that as they came at last to the end of their colourful careers, shipyards around the world fell over themselves to produce designs for ‘Liberty replacement types’. The best-known UK version proved to be the Austin & Pickersgill SD14, which kept the same basic design but with a diesel engine, a deadweight increased to just over 14,000 tons (14,224 tonnes) and much improved cargo handling gear.
Of the convoys to Russia, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound commented that they were ‘a most unsound operation, with the dice loaded against us in every direction’.[199] Despite this a total of 4,430,000 tons (4,500,880 tonnes) of essential equipment and foodstuffs were transported by this method, although ship losses were higher than on any other Allied convoy route – 7.8 per cent eastbound, 3.8 per cent westbound (in ballast).
A quarter of all Allied supplies to Russia were carried in the Arctic convoys, but the United States sent almost half its total aid to Russia across the Pacific to Vladivostock, carried in Russian ships which, as Russia was not at war with Japan, travelled largely unmolested.
195
h The deadweight of a merchant ship equates to the tonnage of cargo carried plus banker fuel and luboils, when fully loaded.
197
8 Sawyer, L & W. Mitchell (1970)