Convoys

Twenty-one of the ships in this database were sailing in convoy when they were attacked; eight others were sailing alone. Below is each of those convoys: where it came from, who escorted it, how many ships were in it and how many did not arrive. The Belgian ships are named with each.

Those that sailed alone

Not every ship sailed in convoy. Eight of the ships here were unescorted when they were attacked – the source says so plainly. A ship on her own made better speed and waited for nobody, but she also had nobody to shoot back or pick up survivors. For these eight it is established that they sailed alone; it is not a gap in the data.

• M/V ALEX VAN OPSTAL · 15 September 1939
• S/S LUXEMBOURG · 21 June 1940
• S/S VILLE DE GAND · 18 August 1940
• S/S VILLE DE LIEGE · 13 April 1941
• M/T LUBRAFOL · 9 May 1942
• M/V BRABANT · 13 May 1942
• S/S BELGIAN FIGHTER · 9 October 1942
• M/V BELGIAN AIRMAN · 14 April 1945

Every convoy (1,069)

Our ships sailed in 1,069 different convoys, 1,195 times in all, spread over 63 series. 54 of our ships appear in them. What follows is not a list of disasters but of crossings: the great majority simply arrived.

Search by convoy number, port or ship name; click a column heading to sort differently. An empty cell means the source does not say. Of the 1,069 convoys, 121 lost a ship; the rest arrived complete.

The sunk and damaged columns come from our own records where we hold those figures, and otherwise from the notes against the ships in that convoy. Those notes are a lower bound: by no means every damaged ship carried one.

This list comes from the Arnold Hague Convoy Database, the work of Arnold Hague (1930–2006) with John K. Burgess and Don Kindell. It holds convoys for which no record survives in the National Archives. What is taken from it are the facts – which ship in which convoy, from where to where, on what day – and only for the ships in this database. See convoyweb.org.uk.

Why a convoy number does not give a position

A convoy is not a place but a passage: forty ships crossing an ocean together over days or weeks. “ONS-154” therefore cannot tell you where a ship went down – only where she had come from and where she was bound. The positions on this site do not come from the convoy number but from the U-boat's own attack report as it has come down to us, with latitude, longitude and naval grid square.

That is why 28 of the 63 ships have a position. The other 35 were not hit by a U-boat: they struck a mine, were bombed, or were lost to weather or collision, and none of that appears in the U-boat reports. For those ships the place has to come from somewhere else.