The British Merchant Navy and American Merchant Marine had different wartime pay scales: American rates could be roughly double British rates, even though public remembrance in the United States is much thinner. Both services deserve more attention. Popular memory often treats convoy escorts as a handful of inadequate small ships, although Atlantic convoys could include converted destroyers, corvettes, frigates, sloops, trawlers, and fleet destroyers. Even a half-dozen or dozen escorts could not watch every approach, and a wolf pack could draw them toward one attack while other submarines slipped in elsewhere. A comparison with modern helicopter-supported anti-submarine groups shows how much wartime escorts lacked the wide, fast-moving sensor screen available today. Merchant seamen still faced extreme danger. Convoy protection was a large and evolving system rather than a simple heroic stereotype.
Chapter · 4:05-9:10
Why the Merchant Navy and Merchant Marine are remembered differently
The opening compares wartime pay and public memory, then challenges the idea that merchant ships crossed the Atlantic with only token escort protection.