Convoy concentration, dispersion, and forgotten global risk

A sinking off Africa prompts Clarke to examine why shipping continued independently through waters treated as relatively safe. An unescorted convoy could combine the defensive guns of several merchantmen and complicate a surface raider's attack, but it could also present a submarine with a concentrated group of targets. He presents dispersion as a genuine contemporary risk calculation rather than an obviously foolish choice judged from hindsight. The example supports a broader argument that steam-era range limits and long periods of geographically concentrated war had weakened older institutional expectations that naval conflict would become global.