Ships
PQ 13 comprised 19 merchant ships; seven British, four American, one Polish, four of Panamanian and one of Honduran registry. It was commanded by Commodore D.A. Casey in River Afton. The convoy was escorted for the first stage of its voyage, from Scotland to Iceland, by a Local Escort Group, of two destroyers and an ASW Trawler. For the second stage, from Iceland to the Soviet Union, the Ocean escort was two destroyers, and two trawlers, augmented by three whalers being transferred to the Soviet Navy. The Ocean escort was commanded by Capt. LS Saunders, in the cruiser Trinidad. In support of the convoy escort, and guarding against a sortie by the German battleship Tirpitz, was a Heavy Cover Force, comprising the battleships Duke of York (V. Adm. ATB Curteis commanding), King George V, the battlecruiser Renown, the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious, two cruisers, Kent and Edinburgh, and sixteen destroyers. (Ashanti, Bedouin, Echo, Escapade, Eskimo, Faulknor, Foresight, Icarus, Inglefield, Ledbury, Marne, Middleton, Onslow, Punjabi, Tartar and Wheatland) This force was intended to accompany PQ 13 at a distance until it was past Bear Island.
Read more about this topic: Convoy PQ 13
Famous quotes containing the word ships:
“I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep”
—James Elroy Flecker (1884–1919)
“Haven’t you heard, though,
About the ships where war has found them out
At sea, about the towns where war has come
Through opening clouds at night with droning speed
Further o’erhead than all but stars and angels
And children in the ships and in the towns?”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Shuttles in the rocking loom of history,
the dark ships move, the dark ships move,
their bright ironical names
like jests of kindness on a murderer’s mouth;”
—Robert Earl Hayden (1913–1980)