Last Saturday the Admiralty published a statement as to the
destruction of merchant ships by German cruisers. It is believed that eight or nine German cruisers are in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. Upwards of seventy British, Japanese, French, and Russian ships are searching for these cruisers. Captures have generally been made on routes where the Admiralty instructions for merchant ships have been ignored. But even so the percentage of loss is much less than was reckoned on before the war. Out of four thousand British vessels engaged in foreign trade, only thirty-nine—or just under one per cent.—have been sunk by the enemy. The reduction of the rate of insurance from five guineas to two guineas has not done any injury to the solvency of the fund. We may add that on Tuesday a Manchester ship was sunk by a German mine off the north coast of Ireland and fourteen lives were lost. This is the first loss from a mine in British waters outside the North Sea.
Previous page
