Convoy SC 7 - Ships of The Convoy

Ships of The Convoy

For more details on this topic, see Order of battle for Convoy SC-7.

The slow convoy SC-7 left Sydney, Nova Scotia on 5 October 1940 bound for Liverpool and other British ports. The convoy was supposed to make 8 knots, but a number of its 35 merchant ships were much slower than this. The convoy consisted of older, smaller ships, mostly with essential cargoes of bulk goods. Much of the freight on these ships originated on Canada's east coast, especially from points to the north and east of Sydney. Typical cargoes included pit props from eastern New Brunswick for the British coal mines, lumber, pulpwood, grain from the Great Lakes ports, steel and steel ingots from the Sydney plant, and iron ore from Newfoundland bound for the huge steel plants of Wales. The largest ship in the convoy was the 9,512-ton oil tanker MV Languedoc, belonging to the British Admiralty, which was bound for the Clyde with fuel for the Royal Navy. Another ship, the British SS Empire Brigade, carried a valuable cargo of trucks.

Many of the ships were British, but the convoy also included Greek, Swedish, Norwegian and Dutch vessels. The convoy commodore, Vice Admiral Lachlan Donald Ian Mackinnon, a retired naval officer who volunteered for this civilian duty, sailed in the SS Assyrian, a British ship of 2,962 tons. As convoy commodore, Mackinnon was in charge of the good order of the merchant ships, but did not command the escort.

The sloop HMS Scarborough was sole naval escort for the first three quarters of the journey. There was no aircraft protection in 1940 for Allied ships in the Atlantic Ocean after leaving coastal regions. Scarborough would have had little chance against a surface attack by a German raider.

Many of the merchant ship captains were resentful at having to sail in convoy, and would have preferred to take their chances on their own rather than risk such a slow crossing with a weak escort. They were often uncooperative; at one point early in the voyage Scarborough's captain was shocked to find a Greek merchant ship in the convoy travelling at night with her lights on.