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The convoy system had not then been instituted, the British depending on patrol. This was trying duty, searching for the U-boat that might be anywhere within four or five hundred square miles, for the ocean was strewn with wreckage for three hundred miles from shore.

The Queenstown "area" comprised twenty-five thousand square miles, and yet this wide zone of trans-Atlantic shipping, west and south of Ireland, had been left almost unprotected. "Sometimes only four or five British destroyers were operating in this great stretch of waters," said Admiral Sims, "and I do not think the number ever exceeded fifteen."

Soon after the Americans arrived, the few British destroyers at Queenstown were withdrawn. Urging the sending of all floating craft available, Sims had informed us in his cablegram of April 28th:

Yesterday the War Council and Admiralty decided that coöperation of twenty-odd American destroyers with base at Queenstown would no doubt put down the present submarine activity which is dangerous and keep it down. The crisis will be passed if the enemy can be forced to disperse his forces from this critical area.