LETTERS Make Way for Convoy HX-355! want to thank the members of the Society most heartily for your support in our efforts to get Congresswoman Helen Delich Bentley's bill for the Normandy Convoy adopted by Congress. Now that we have been successful with the bill we can go full ahead on fundraising and the myriad other details necessary to make the Normandy Convoy a reality. Our historian, Sherod Cooper, looked up the designation of the last eastbound convoy from New York. It sailed in May 1945 and was designated HX-354. I guess that makes us HX-355! BRIAN HOPE, President Project Liberty Ship Baltimore, Maryland
We Really Had to Win This One One must question Donald A. Landauer' s assertion, in his letter in Sea History 67, that it did not matter to the outcome of World War II whether Britain was successfully invaded by Hitler or not, since we had most of Italy and all of North Africa as supply depots. What war history has the writer been reading for him to make such a statement? It was because of the Battle of the Atlantic and the Battle of Britain that the AJlies had both Italy and North Africa. Before we entered the war in December 1941,Britain had, since 1939, been fighting Germany. Britain held off Hitler 's invasion attempt (Operation Sea Lion) in 1940 and, at the same time, held onto North Africa by fighting both the Italian and German armies. When we entered the war, Britain was our only supply depot in Europe, and became the main base from which the Allies drove the Axis armies from North Africa, invaded Italy and launched the D-day invasion of the European continent. The successes of the Allies were made possible by a massive build-up of men, planes, ships, tanks, special weapons and a vast variety of equipment, to say nothing of the British forces that had been fighting Hitler all along. All this had to be shipped across the Atlantic to our European base, Britain. Hitler tried to prevent the shipments with a fierce submarine warfare. If the Battle of the 4
Atlantic had not been won, Europe would have been lost. F. W. STEVENS San Diego, California
Armed Guardsmen Braved the Battle The supply ships and the Navy gun crew aboard the merchant ships that braved the Battle of the Atlantic in the early part of the war were the only reason supplies reached Great Britain. Air cover was non-existent and, in the early days, had planes with only a two hundred mile coverage. And a Navy pilot once told me that in the very early days they only had "dummy guns and ammunition." However, the Navy gun crew was there for the full 3000-mile journey. We do not want to take anything away from our courageous brothers on escort vessels or those who fought in the sky but we want history to be accurate when accounting for victory in the "Battle of the Atlantic." Moreover, from 1940 to the end of the war, the US Navy Armed Guardsmen could be found in every theater of war doing the same thing as they were doing in the Atlantic. LEO GULLAGE Lakeland, Florida
Drumbeat Tells All Readers who have a special interest in "The Battle of the Atlantic" article should read Drumbeat by Michael Gannon, a voluminous book which deals with this subject in enormous detail, researched from face-to-face meetings with a prominent U-boat commander and American and British naval officers at the time. It's as much or more shocking than the also inexcusable Pearl Harbor disaster. Where was our navy, why didn't the Anglophobic Admiral King make use of intelligence data offered by the British, and why did we leave lights aglow all along our coast to silhouette our ships for the German submarines? Drumbeat tells it all. JERREMS C. HART Vero Beach, Florida Further discussion of this issue can be found in "A Critical Supply Line" on pages 8-9.-ED
Finding the Longitude-Or Not Just after reading "Finding the Longitude" (SH 66)-particularly Champlain's idea that "God did not intend that man should ever be able to determine longitude at sea"-I found in Champlain 's
Treatise on Seamanship the following: "Never forget often to ascertain variations of the compass needle in all localities, that is, to know how much it varies from the meridian toward the east or west, which is useful in determining longitudes if one has observations for them ; and when you return to the same place where you took them, and find the same variation, you would know whereabouts you are, whether it be in the hemisphere of Asia or that of Peru .. . ." Samuel Eliot Morison, translator of this passage, adds this comment: "How Champlain expected to find longitude by this means is beyond my comprehension .... It would seem that he subscribed to an erroneous theory as old as Columbus-that the lines of compass variation ran due north and south so that if you found your local variation you would know what longitude you were at." Later in Champlain 's treatise, under the section "Divine Providence," we read: " ... man hath no certain knowledge in his voyages of longitudes . . .. " Taking these two sections, together with Morison's footnote, I think that Champlain thought (erroneously) that he could get approximate longitudes, as opposed to accurate latitudes. JOHN KEYES Montpelier, Vermont
What About Bowditch? In Sea History 66, the three part "Finding the Longitude" sheds light on important parts of the story of navigation. As excellent as this three article series is, it will not be complete from an American perspective until you review the life and works of Nathaniel Bowditch. Bowditch was a self-educated intellectual giant who has been neglected in American history. An outstanding sailormathematician, he was the author of the first edition of The American Practical Navigator, and he taught every sailor that sailed with him to navigate. F. B. TURBERVILLE, JR. Milton, North Carolina
The Lady Has a Name In 1987 I was fortunate enough to go on a cruise of two weeks aboard the Sea Cloud-leaving Papeete to visit islands in French Polynesia. At one point we stopped at an island specifically to see this ship, remarkably preserved, which was said to have been blown ashore in a typhoon in the 1800s. I do not find her in the International Register of Historic SEAHISTORY68,WINTER 1993-1994