Grand Harbour in Malta, a British possession that initially served as a base for French as well as British ships. At the Malta conference, March 2 to 9, 1916, the French agreed move their base. They first went to Argostoli in Cephalonia, then to Corfu. In the message, the writer notes that they are no longer in Malta, but in Corfu, and that the enemy submarines are rather numerous.

Malta - Grand Harbour



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Message from Corfu dated 23 January, likely 1917. [The French fleet had moved from an Allied base on the British possession of Malta to Corfu after the March 1916 Malta conference.]

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Monday, July 16, 1917

". . . the Malta-Alexandria convoy was introduced on 22 May [1917] with four ships escorted by four trawlers. It proved a success; only two ships were lost between 22 May and 16 July. The French on 18 June formally established a special directorate for the submarine war. The Direction générale de la guerre sous-marine was to a large extent the result of pressure from the French parliament, where there were strong suspicions that the French naval staff had been to tradition-bound and had not paid enough attention to submarine warfare."

Quotation Context

Source

A Naval History of World War I by Paul G. Halpern, page 393, copyright © 1994 by the United States Naval Institute, publisher: UCL Press, publication date: 1994

Tags

1917-07-16, 1917, July, convoy, convoy system, Malta, Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean