The Merchant Navy
	Survivors from the Orama climb into captivity on the Admiral Hipper		“Their job was to steam on and on and on, which they did through thick and thin, to their eternal credit and our sincerest admiration”
		In the fight against Germany, British, Allied and neutral vessels steamed an estimated 200 million miles. More than 4,786 ships totalling twenty-one million tons were lost and more than 32,000 seamen were killed. Nearly 5,000 went missing, their fate unknown. With a death rate exceeding one in four, the Merchant Navy suffered a far higher casualty rate than any of the armed services. Details

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Britain’s ultimatum to Germany expired on September 3rd 1939 and although the RAF launched air raids on the lock-gates at Wilhelmshaven the following day, the ships of the Merchant Navy continued to plod their slow way along the trade routes that they had followed for generations.

For most Merchant Seamen, the start of the war meant only the need to repaint their ships in wartime colours and the gradual introduction of war time emergency measures. For most seamen therefore, the war was slow to start, but not for all.

However there was no “Phoney War” for the men of Britain’s Merchant Navy. The outbreak of hostilities meant that they were immediately liable to be attacked without warning, by submarines, by surface ships and by aircraft as well as finding themselves running the gauntlet of numerous uncharted minefields.

For many Merchant Seamen this ordeal by battle at sea had come twice in their lifetimes. Some had even been captured before and knew at first hand, the problems of coming to terms with the loss of their ships, deaths of fellow crew members and the ensuing long wearisome captivity.