Transcribed from several original documents received from Roger Griffiths - His source: Public Records Office, Kew.

Crossed out ships did not sail, underlined ships returned to port (except those that are linked, which will automatically be underlined).

MoWT=Ministry of War Transport

Comparing the information in this table with Arnold Hague's listing for SC 17 at ships in all SC convoys, we see that he has Kingsland in station 13, but this ship is crossed out on the original Advance Sailing Telegram, and is listed in Convoy SC 18. It'll also be noticed that Hague has some of the ships in different stations from what is given above.

Notes:
Commodore E. W. Leir was in Nailsea Court, Vice Commodore was D. MacKellar in Empire Mariner.

Average speed: 7.1 knots.

The Convoy had 20 ships when leaving Halifax, 11 were present at rendezvous with local escort on Jan. 5-1941, the following ships having lost touch with the convoy:

Embassage, at 12:00 on Dec. 24 - 44 22N 60 21W
Rudby, at 06:45 Dec. 25 - 44 43N 57 26W.
Hellen, at 08:00 Dec. 26 - 45 05N 53 50W
Lautaro, at 08:00 Dec. 27 - 45 23N 59 22W
Empire Mariner, at 16:00 Dec. 31 - 52 56N 36 27W
Baron Haig, at 08:00 Jan 4-1941 - 55 63N 21 08W
Baron Ramsay, Elisabeth Lensen and Thyra same time, date and position as Baron Haig.

The Commodore says:
"With the exception of leaders of columns the station keeping was the worst I have experienced, and was not up?(word missing in margin of page) to convoys speed as the ships had a margin of (words missing) or more.
Visual signalling generally very slow and inaccurate".

He also indicates that 2 ships had to return to Halifax because they had lost lifeboats.

The convoy arrived rendezvous on Jan. 5.

Ocean Escort: HMS Maloja (parted company at 6 p.m. Jan. 3.
Other escort vessels: HMS Veteran, Wolverine and Delphinium. The latter was met at 13:10 on Jan. 6-1941, 36 hours after rendezvous time. Visibility during that period was limited to 1 to 1 1/2 miles. Convoy probably passed 10 miles to the north of rendezvous (due to no sights and bad weather).

The convoy had air escort from time to time on Jan. 7.

A. Hague lists the following escorts (extracted from this list of SC convoy escorts, based on Arnold Hague's database, received from D. Kindell; dates are European style, day/month/year):
Arbutus - From 07/01/41 to 09/01/41
Delphinium - From 07/01/41 to 08/01/41
Deptford - From 07/01/41 to 08/01/41
Erica - From 07/01/41 to 08/01/41
Maloja - From 23/12/40 to 03/01/41
Veteran - From 07/01/41 to 08/01/41
Wolverine - From 07/01/41 to 08/01/41

Back to Convoy Index