Here, as at Queenstown, the main task was one of escort duty; and the American forces quickly became responsible for the safety of ninety per cent. of all the traffic along the French coast and in the Bay of Biscay. In the first three months of 1918, fifty-four convoys of 186 ships were thus escorted by the American destroyer-flotillas; while, in the third three months, these figures had increased to ninety-eight convoys of 742 ships. During July and August, 1918, these forces escorted no less than 3,500,000 tons of shipping--the entire French coast having been practically placed under the command of the American Rear-Admiral H. B. Wilson. Almost contemporary with the development at Brest had been that of the American naval forces based upon Gibraltar. Here, on August 18 1917, had arrived the U.S.S. _Birmingham_, then the flagship of Rear-Admiral Wilson and a scout-cruiser of the United States Atlantic Fleet. With her had come {263} the _Sacramento_, and, in less than four days, this vessel was at sea again escorting an English convoy--the American naval officers, just as at Queenstown, acting under the orders of the British Admiral. By the following March, twenty-eight American vessels were regularly operating from Gibraltar, and, by June, there were thirty-five, with another forty based upon Corfu--those at Gibraltar, under Rear-Admiral Niblack, acting as an integral part of the British forces and being entirely at the disposal of the British admiral in command. Here also, as at Brest, the vessels were very various, consisting of cruisers, destroyers, and gun-boats, with a number of yachts, converted into warships, and some coast-guard cutters. Of these the larger vessels were continually on escort duty between the Mediterranean and England as also between the Continent and the chief South American ports. They furnished a quarter of the total escorts for local Mediterranean convoys, and more than seventy per cent. of the escorts for ocean and deep-sea merchantmen. To the smaller vessels were allotted patrol-duties at the mouth of the Mediterranean, local convoy work, and convoy work with vessels bound to and from the Azores. Far less sea-worthy than the larger vessels, and, as regarded the yachts, not intended for war-service, theirs were, perhaps, the hardest tasks of all and as little dramatic as those of the others. Precisely in the same spirit, however, of cheerful grumbling as that of their sea-loving British brethren, the officers and men of these heterogeneous vessels set themselves to compass their various tasks. {264}