SEA LANES KEPT OPEN

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20111, 4 December 1939, Page 7

SEA LANES KEPT OPEN

BRITISH NAVY’S WORK LOSSES ONLY 4 PER CENT. HEAVY ENEMY LOSSES (British Official Wireless.) Reed. 9 a.m. RUGBY. Dec. 2. It is authoritatively stated in London that in the three months of war the British Navy has enabled 21,000.000 gross tons of British shipping to keep the seas, with the loss of just 4 per cent of the total naval tonnage in actual losses or disablements.

The British Navy at the beginning of the war totalled 1,500,000 tons of ships, reckoning on a displacement basis, comprising all types, battleships, cruisers, destroyers and submarines. To this must be added an unspecified imount of commissioned tonnage for navy purposes which is not inconsiderable when one thinks of the tptal lumber of big passenger liners and ither suitable craft that Britain possesses. Germany has only put out of iction through sinking about 53,000 tons of warships, and the most important units in this group were upwards of a quarter of a century old.

Nor do these figures make allowance for completions from one of the most extensive building programmes the world has ever seen.

On the other hand, it is officially dated in London that the total German merchant vessels captured or sunk since the . outbreak of the war is.. 34 ships of 145,301 tons. Sixteen vessels were captured by the British with a tonnage of 59,754, and by the French three ships with a tonnage of 16,122. Fifteen vessels have been sunk or scuttled, with tonnages totalling 69,425. Further to this list must be added the German vessel Watussi, of 9500 tons, which, according to a Capetown report, was intercepted by South African bombing planes this morning south of Cape Point and, after being ordered to proceed to Simonstown, was scuttled by her crew, the survivors of which were later picked up.