For all these vessels to shoot the Strait of Gibraltar in sequence and arrive punctually at various Barbary coast beaches, the two-week voyage must, in Churchill’s phrase, “fit together like a jewelled bracelet.” The challenge had roused the Royal Navy to its keenest pitch of seamanship, and the convoys held such perfect alignment that “only the boiling white foam thrown up by the screws betrayed that the ships were moving.”
Gt
