How did convoy protection work?

**fredmiracle** · 06-06-2014, 19:22

I know a lot of sloops and smaller frigates had to do convoy duty. But I'd like to know more about the mechanics of how convoys actually worked in practice.

Obviously the main job of the escort would be to dissuade smaller raiders and privateers from attacking. That seems straightforward.

But what if the escort faced something too big to handle? Say an escorting 14 gun sloop encountered a 40 gun frigate, or an escorting 32 gun frigate encountered a ship of the line? What was the response? Did the escort run away from impossible odds? Or did it try to fight and delay the raider to give the merchant ships time to escape?

Did attackers ever work together? For example, I could imagine a situation in which two weak raiders might attack a convoy from different sides, with one to draw off / engage a more powerful escort ship while the other picked off merchants. Did such things happen, or it wasn't done?

I assume if things were going badly the convoy would scatter? How would an attacker respond to this? For example, would they start firing to sink as many as possible, or send out boats to try to capture?

**Berthier** · 06-06-2014, 20:20

Hi Fred, the escort would stay and fight to delay any attempt to attack the convoy, the larger the convoy of course the larger the escort. Often on larger convoys older 64's or 50's might be used in addition to faster smaller ships. The job of the smaller ships was to identify threats early to allow the convoy to change direction and flee if possible. Remember not all escorted ships were unarmed and thus unable to put up some defence to a small privateer or sloop. East Indiamen were often large ships and armed and although their gunnery may have been ordinary they could put up a bit of a fight. The main issue for merchantmen was their crew sizes were quite small.

Attackers, especially privateers sometimes worked together thus making it possible to pick off ships who had a small or only a single escort. It was difficult for an escort to cover the whole convoy, it takes a long time to beat upwind across several miles if the convoy is scattered and an attacker could shadow a convoy from just on the horizon waiting for chances to sail in with the wind, snatch a prize and sail off all the while the escort might have been miles away trying to claw its' way up to the scene of action against an unfavourable wind. I think of these actions as not unlike the U Boat war of WW1 and 2. Escorted convoys, strays were picked off, worst case the convoy would scatter and every man for himself. The difference from U Boat warfare was that attackers were often privateers or lone naval ships who wanted to capture for prize money. Destroying the convoy was done when there was no opportunity to take the ships (insufficient manpower to crew, enemy re-inforcements approaching, ships damaged etc). As the attackers were ususally faster than the merchants, escaping was determined by luck, the number of merchants vs the number of attackers, weather etc.

**Berthier** · 06-06-2014, 20:34

The "ultimate" convoy protection battle of the period was probably the Glorious 1st June where entire British and French fleets battled it out over three days to protect a grain convoy travelling from US to France. Although the British fleet one a tactical victory against the French fleet they failed in their interception of the grain convoy which was a strategic defeat of sorts.