Dictionary:
con·voy (kŏn'voi')  |
[From Middle English convoyen, to escort, from Old French convoier, variant of conveier. See convey.]
| 5min Related Video: convoy |
| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: convoy |
For more information on convoy, visit Britannica.com.
| Antonyms: convoy |
Definition: protect, escort
Antonyms: ignore, neglect
| Military History Companion: convoy |
Convoy (from Fr.: convoyer, to convey) is the practice of transporting men or material together for the purpose of safeguarding them. Although most famously used as a means to counter the U-boat menace in the two world wars, it has long meant the grouping together of military as well as civilian ships or vehicles for control as well as protection.
During the medieval period ships sailed in concert for mutual protection but the use of an organized convoy system as we now know it dates from the separation of ships into specialist classes and the development of a state-based navy. During the Anglo-Dutch wars of the 17th century merchantmen were regularly organized into escorted convoys along trade routes dictated by the prevailing winds. These protected them from individual raiders but not from fleet actions and in 1665 a Dutch convoy had its escort overwhelmed and 180 out of 200 merchantmen taken. In spite of events like this, insurance premiums on vessels in time of war were consistently lower for those that sailed in convoys. By the time of Waterloo the Royal Navy had in place a sophisticated system for the protection of merchant ships.
With the coming of steam it was argued that since ships could now move independently of the wind, they could avoid interception altogether. The ‘all your eggs in one basket’ argument was put forward, as were the arguments that convoys would clog up ports, delays would occur due to ships waiting for the convoy to form up, and anyway there were too many ships to convoy. Behind these arguments was a deeply felt belief that submarines could be hunted like any other warship and that convoys were somehow effeminate, a position to which the Admiralty clung despite abundant proof to the contrary until obliged by Lloyd George to reintroduce convoys in 1917.
This same psychopathology afflicted the US Navy's Adm King in 1941-2, when he ignored bitterly won British experience and opposed the introduction of convoys in American waters, being therefore personally responsible for the loss of hundreds of merchant ships and thousands of lives. The Japanese refused to adopt the convoy system throughout WW II and lost their entire merchant navy. The British found that convoys, by enabling escort vessels to be concentrated, became the focus for hunter-killer operations with which they inflicted greater casualties on the U-boat service than suffered by any other branch of any country's armed forces. Convoys were still vulnerable to heavy German surface raiders, but with the exception of the infamous scattering of the Arctic convoy PQ 17, escort vessels self-sacrificially defended their charges against this threat also.
The ‘all your eggs in one basket’ argument acquired renewed vitality in the age of nuclear attack submarines and stand-off weapons that could deliver tactical nuclear weapons. Happily the matter was never put to the test.
Bibliography
— Jon Robb-Webb
| US Military Dictionary: convoy |
(of a warship or armed troops) accompany (a group of ships or vehicles) for protection.
in convoy (of traveling vehicles) as a group; together:
the army trucks had passed through in convoy the previous evening.See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.
| US History Encyclopedia: Convoys |
Employed from classical antiquity for the secure passage of land and seaborne commerce, as well as for passage of migrant peoples and fighting forces through hostile regions, convoys proved of signal importance during the European penetration of Africa, the Orient, and the Americas. The maritime convoy system of medieval England, which emerged early in the thirteenth century, afforded the model, providing armed escort vessels for both the cross-Channel wool trade and troop transports bound for beleaguered Calais and Bordeaux.
Early in the conquest of America, Spain employed close escorts and support forces to safeguard its homeward-bound treasure galleons. It established a compulsory convoy system in 1543, enabling the merchants of Seville to dispatch a flota ("fleet") of thirty to ninety merchantmen twice annually to the West Indies, thereby frustrating repeated attacks by British and French freebooters. The Armada of 1588 itself represented a classic prefigurement of the modern troop convoy.
Subsequent English overseas expansion rested not only on mercantile enterprise, an emergent Royal Navy, and deliberate nurture of the colonial system through the Navigation Acts, but also on resolute enforcement of the convoy acts, dating from 1650, that regulated the organization of convoys and required the arming of merchantmen. Throughout its conflict with France from 1674 to 1815, England refined—notably in the Compulsory Convoy Act of 1798—the complex operation of its ocean and coastal convoy systems. During the American Quasi-War with France (1798–1800), U.S. frigates escorted British convoys in the Caribbean; less than fifteen years later those frigates, abetted by privateers, attacked British transatlantic convoys with but limited success.
With the establishment of the Pax Britannica, the vital role of convoys rapidly diminished. Notwithstanding the virtual disintegration of the American merchant marine during the Civil War, the British Admiralty in 1872 acquiesced in abolishing the Compulsory Convoy Act, relying thereafter on naval patrol of threatened sea routes. That policy proved disastrously ineffective during World War I against commerce-raiding German U-boats. Not until May 1917, when shipping losses threatened Britain with imminent starvation and U.S. escort vessels became available, did the Admiralty reinstitute convoys. The vast shipping control system that developed, with its complex intelligence apparatus, decisively reduced losses of merchant ships bound for Britain and safeguarded the massive American troop movements to France.
Allied convoy systems during World War II achieved worldwide dimensions, owing to the phenomenal range of Germany's commerce-raiding effort, which included a substantial Luftwaffe threat in the North Sea, the Arctic, and the Mediterranean. The Allies virtually eliminated Germany's surface raiders during 1943, but German U-boats, operating singly or in "wolf packs" of fifty or more submarines, extended "tonnage warfare" strategy from the North Atlantic to the Caribbean, the South Atlantic, and ultimately the Indian Ocean. Allied experience indicated both the suicidal impracticality of independent merchantman sailings and the striking economy of large convoy formations, particularly as land and carrier-based air cover, pinpoint location of individual stalkers by radar and high-frequency direction finders, and evasive convoy-routing procedures increasingly hampered U-boat reconnaissance patrolling.
With the advent of nuclear weaponry, the wide dispersion of convoyed shipping, and the employment of aerial transports, as during the Berlin Airlift (1948–1949), became characteristic elements of modern convoy operations.
Bibliography
Marcus, Geoffrey J. A Naval History of England: The Formative Centuries. London: Longmans, 1961.
Morison, Samuel Eliot. The History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Boston: Little, Brown, 1947.
Roskill, Stephen W. The War at Sea: 1939–1945. London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1954.
United States, Department of the Army. Military Convoy Operations in the Continental United States. Washington, D.C.: Headquarters, Dept. of the Army, 1981.
—Philip K. Lundeberg/C. W.
| Military Dictionary: convoy |
(DOD) 1. A number of merchant ships and/or naval auxiliaries usually escorted by warships and/or aircraft-or a single merchant ship or naval auxiliary under surface escort-assembled and organized for the purpose of passage together. 2. A group of vehicles organized for the purpose of control and orderly movement with or without escort protection that moves over the same route at the same time and under one commander. See also coastal convoy; evacuation convoy; ocean convoy.
| Word Tutor: convoy |
The convoy of ships came under attack as soon as they left the harbor.
Tutor's tip: I wanted to "convey" (to communicate) my best wishes to the Admiral, but he was at the head of the "convoy" (a protected group of vehicles, such as ships) and I could not get near him.
| Wikipedia: Convoy |
A convoy is a group of vehicles (of any type, but usually motor vehicles or ships) traveling together for mutual support and protection. Often, a convoy is organized with armed defensive support, though it may also be used in a non-military sense, for example when driving through remote areas.
Contents |
Naval convoys have been used for hundreds of years, and examples of merchant ships traveling under naval protection have been traced back to the 12th Century.[1] The use of organised naval convoys dates from when ships began to be separated into specialist classes and national navies were established.[2]
By the French Revolutionary Wars of the late 18th century, effective naval convoy tactics had been developed to ward off pirates and privateers. Some convoy contained several hundred merchant ships. The most enduring system of convoys were the Spanish treasure fleets, that sailed from the 1520s until 1790.
When merchant ships sailed independently, a privateer could cruise a shipping lane and capture ships as they passed. Ships sailing in convoy presented a much smaller target: a convoy was no more likely to be found than a single ship. Even if the privateer found a convoy and the wind was favourable for an attack, it could hope to capture only a handful of ships before the rest managed to escape, and a small escort of warships could easily thwart it. As a result of the convoy system's effectiveness, wartime insurance premiums were consistently lower for ships which sailed in convoys.[2]
Many naval battles in the age of sail were fought around convoys, including:
By the end of the Napoleonic Wars the Royal Navy had in place a sophisticated convoy system to protect merchant ships.[2] Losses of ships traveling out of convoy were so high that no merchant ship was allowed to sail unescorted.[1]
In the early 20th century, the dreadnought changed the balance of power in convoy battles. Steaming faster than merchant ships and firing at long ranges, a single battleship could destroy many ships in a convoy before the others could scatter over the horizon. To protect a convoy against a capital ship required providing it with an escort of another capital ship; at very high cost.
Battleships were the main reason that the British Admiralty did not adopt convoy tactics at the start of the first Battle of the Atlantic in World War I. But the German capital ships had been bottled up in the North Sea, and the main threat to shipping came from U-boats. From a tactical point of view, World War I-era submarines were similar to privateers in the age of sail: only a little faster than the merchant ships they were attacking, and capable of sinking only a small number of vessels in a convoy because of their limited supply of torpedoes and shells. The Admiralty took a long time to respond to this change in the tactical position, and in April 1917 convoy was trialled, before being officially introduced in the Atlantic in September 1917.
Other arguments against convoy were raised. The primary issue was the loss of productivity, as merchant shipping in convoy has to travel at the speed of the slowest vessel in the convoy and spent a considerable amount of time in ports waiting for the next convoy to depart. Further, large convoys were thought to overload port resources.
Actual analysis of shipping losses in World War I disproved all these arguments, at least so far as they applied to transatlantic and other long-distance traffic. Ships sailing in convoys were far less likely to be sunk, even when not provided with any escort at all. The loss of productivity due to convoy delays was small compared with the loss of productivity due to ships being sunk. Ports could deal more easily with convoys because they tended to arrive on schedule and so loading and unloading could be planned.
In his book On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, Norman Dixon suggested that the hostility towards convoys in the naval establishment were in part caused by a (sub-conscious) perception of convoys as effeminating, due to warships having to care for civilian merchant ships.[3] Also, it should be noted that convoy duty exposes the escorting warships to the uncomfortable and sometimes outright hazardous conditions of the North Atlantic, but with only extremely rare occurrences of visible achievement (i.e. fending off a submarine assault).
The British adopted a convoy system, initially voluntary and later compulsory for almost all merchant ships, the moment that World War II was declared. Each convoy consisted of between 30 and 70 mostly unarmed merchant ships. [4] Canadian, and later American, supplies were vital for Britain to continue its war effort. The course of the second Battle of the Atlantic was a long struggle as the Germans developed anti-convoy tactics and the British developed counter-tactics to thwart the Germans.
The power of a battleship against a convoy was dramatically illustrated by the fate of Convoy HX-84. On November 5, 1940, the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer encountered the convoy. Maiden, Trewellard, Kenbame Head, Beaverford, and Fresno were quickly sunk, and other ships were damaged. Only the sacrifice of the Armed Merchant Cruiser HMS Jervis Bay and failing light allowed the rest of the convoy to escape.
The power of a battleship in protecting a convoy was also dramatically illustrated when the German warships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau came upon an eastbound British convoy of 41 ships, HX-106 in the North Atlantic on February 8, 1941. When they noticed the presence in the escort of the old battleship, HMS Ramillies, they fled the scene, rather than risk damage from her 15" guns.
The enormous number of vessels involved and the frequency of engagements meant that statistical techniques could be applied to evaluate tactics: an early use of operational research in war.
On the entry of the U.S. into World War II, the U.S. Navy decided not to instigate convoys on eastern seaboard of the U.S. Fleet Admiral Ernest King ignored advice on this subject from the British as he had formed a poor opinion of the Royal Navy early in his career. The result was what the U-boat crews called their second happy time, which did not end until convoys were introduced.[2]
The German anti-convoy tactics included:
The Allied responses included:
They were also aided by
During World War II, Japanese vessels rarely traveled in convoys. As a result, their merchant fleet was largely destroyed by Allied submarines.[2]
Many naval battles of World War II were fought around convoys, including:
The convoy prefix indicates the route of the convoy. For example, 'PQ' would be Iceland to Northern Russia and 'QP' the return route.
The success of convoys as an anti-submarine tactic during the world wars can be ascribed to several reasons related to u-boat capabilities, the size of the ocean and convoy escorts.
In practice, Type VII and Type IX U-boats were limited in their capabilities. Submerged speed and endurance was limited and not suited for overhauling many ships. Even a surfaced U-boat could take several hours to gain an attack position. Torpedo capacity was also restricted to around fourteen (Type VII) or 24 (Type IX), thus limiting the number of attacks that could be made, particularly when multiple firings were necessary for a single target. There was a real problem for the U-boats and their adversaries in finding each other; with a tiny proportion of the ocean in sight, without intelligence or radar, warships and even aircraft would be fortunate in coming across a submarine. The Royal Navy and later the United States Navy each took time to learn this lesson. Conversely, a U-boat's radius of vision was even smaller and had to be supplemented by regular long-range reconnaissance flights.
For both major allied navies, it had been difficult to grasp that, however large a convoy, its " footprint" (the area within which it could be spotted) was far smaller than if the individual ships had travelled independently. In other words, a submarine had less chance of finding a single convoy than if it were scattered as single ships. Moreover, once an attack had been made, the submarine would need to regain an attack position on the convoy. If, however, an attack were thwarted by escorts, even if the submarine had escaped damage, it would have to remain submerged for its own safety and might only recover its position after many hours' hard work. U-boats patrolling areas with constant and predictable flows of sea traffic, such as the United States Atlantic coast in early 1942, could dismiss a missed opportunity in the certain knowledge that another would soon present itself.
The destruction of submarines required their discovery, an improbable occurrence on aggressive patrols, by chance alone. Convoys, however, presented irresistible targets and could not be ignored. For this reason, the U-boats presented themselves as targets to the escorts with increasing possibility of destruction. In this way, the Ubootwaffe suffered severe losses, for little gain, when pressing pack attacks on well-defended convoys.
The largest convoy effort since World War II was Operation Earnest Will, the U.S. Navy's 1987–88 escort of reflagged Kuwaiti tankers in the Persian Gulf during the Iran–Iraq War. In the present day, convoys are used as a tactic by navies to deter pirates off the coast of Somalia from capturing unarmed civilian freighters who would otherwise pose easy targets. It seems that satellite surveillance, aircraft carriers, cruise missiles and modern submarines have turned the tactical advantage decidedly in favour of the attacker.[citation needed] See the modern naval tactics article for an idea of the problems facing the defender.
The word, "convoy" is also associated with groups of road vehicles being driven, mostly by volunteers, to deliver humanitarian aid, supplies, and – a stated objective in some cases – "solidarity".[5]
In the 1990s these convoys became common travelling from Western Europe to countries of the former Yugoslavia, in particular Bosnia and Kosovo, to deal with the aftermath of the wars there. They also travel to countries where standards of care in institutions such as orphanages are considered low by Western European standards, such as Romania; and where other disasters have led to problems, such as around the Chernobyl disaster in Belarus and Ukraine.
The convoys are made possible partly by the relatively small geographic distances between the stable and affluent countries of Western Europe, and the areas of need in Eastern Europe and, in a few cases, North Africa and even Iraq. They are often justified because although less directly cost-effective than mass freight transport, they emphasise the support of large numbers of small groups, and are quite distinct from multinational organisations such as United Nations humanitarian efforts.
The film Convoy (inpsired by a 1975 song of the same name) explores the camaraderie between truck drivers, where the culture of the CB radio encourages truck drivers to travel in convoys.
Truckers' convoys were created as a byproduct of the 55 mph speed limit and 18-wheelers becoming the prime targets of speed traps. Most truckers had difficult schedules to keep and as a result had to maintain a speed above the posted speed limit in order to reach their destinations on time. Convoys were started so that multiple trucks could run together at a high speed with the thinking being that if they passed a speed trap the police would only be able to pull over one of the trucks in the convoy. The truckers convoy is more similar to the caravan than to the military convoy.
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| Translations: Convoy |
Dansk (Danish)
n. - eskorte, kolonne, transport
v. tr. - eskortere, ledsage
Nederlands (Dutch)
konvooi, het reizen/ varen onder konvooi, escorteren
Français (French)
n. - convoi
v. tr. - convoyer (bateau), escorter (qn)
Deutsch (German)
n. - Konvoi, Geleit
v. - begleiten, Geleitschutz geben
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - νηοπομπή, φάλαγγα οχημάτων, εφοδιοπομπή
Português (Portuguese)
n. - comboio (m), escolta (f)
v. - comboiar, escoltar
Español (Spanish)
n. - convoy, escolta
v. tr. - navegar o transitar en forma de convoy
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - skydd, eskortfartyg, transport, kolonn
中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
护送, 警护, 护卫, 护航
中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 護送, 警護, 護衛
v. tr. - 護航, 護送
한국어 (Korean)
n. - 호위, 호위군, 호송 선단
v. tr. - 호송하다
日本語 (Japanese)
v. - 護送する
n. - 護送, 護衛, 護衛隊, 護送される船団
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) قافله سيارات, مجموعه سفن تحت حمايه
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - שיירה מוגנת, ליווי
v. tr. - הגן, ליווה (ספינה)
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