Pen & Sword Maritime, 2024
Excerpt:
Foreword
The story today is as dramatic as it was over 80 years ago, when the events described took place against the backdrop of world war on land and at sea; the actions of the merchant seamen and the medical officers deputed to travel with the convoys remain as heroic as they were at the time and the losses as tragic. As much as the men rejoiced at those they saved, they had to endure immense sadness when they saw the lives of others literally ebb away in freezing conditions in an unforgiving ocean. From a twenty-first-century vantage point it is staggering to think that, given the vast number of convoys operating on routes throughout the world, only 30 ships of an average of 1,500 gross registered tons were ever available to pick up survivors. It truly is a record of ‘great deeds’ in ‘little ships’.
