A CONVOY CONFERENCE 201 THE OLD HARBOUR, PLYMOUTH 205 CONVOY SAILING FROM PLYMOUTH SOUND 207 INWARD BOUND 217 A TRANSPORT LOADING 219 A CONVOY IN THE ATLANTIC 224 THE BOWS OF THE _KASHMIR_ DAMAGED BY COLLISION 227 THE MAYFLOWER QUAY, THE BARBICAN, PLYMOUTH 233 EVENING: THE MERSEY FROM THE LANDING-STAGE 241 THE STEERSMAN 243 THE WORK OF A TORPEDO 244 TRANSPORTS DISCHARGING IN LIVERPOOL DOCKS 245 TROOP TRANSPORTS DISEMBARKING AT THE LANDING-STAGE, LIVERPOOL 249 'M N' 252 [Illustration: THE CLYDE FROM THE TOWER OF THE CLYDE TRUST BUILDINGS] INTRODUCTION WRITTEN largely between the shipping crisis of 1917 and the surrender of German undersea arms at Harwich on November 20, 1918, this book is an effort to record a seaman's impressions of the trial through which the Merchants' Service has come in the war. It is necessarily halting and incomplete. The extent of the subject is perhaps beyond the safe traverse of a mariner's dead reckoning. Policies of governmental control and of the economics of our management do not come within the scope of the book except as text to the diary of seafaring. Out at sea it is not easy to keep the right proportions in forming an opinion of measures devised on a grand scale, and of the operation of which we see only a small part. Our slender thread of communication with longshore happenings is often broken, and understanding is warped by conjecture. In pride of his ancient trade, the seaman may perceive an importance and vital instrumentality in the ships and their voyages that may not be so evident to the landsman. By this is the mariner constantly impressed: that, without the merchant's enterprise on the sea--the adventure of his finance, his ships, his gear, his men--the armed and enlisted resources of the State could not have prevailed in averting disaster and defeat.