North Atlantic Convoy

The convoy war began in September 1939 and did not end until the German surrender, the longest continuous campaign of the war. America joined it before it was at war. In September 1941 U.S. Navy destroyers began escorting convoys as far as Iceland. USS Kearny was torpedoed on October 17 and USS Reuben James was sunk on October 31 with the loss of a hundred men, five weeks before Pearl Harbor.

An escort's work was the same in any weather: hold station on the flanks of thirty or forty merchant ships making eight knots, watch the sonar, and turn into the gale when the sonar found something.

The merchant sailors who crewed the ships had one of the highest casualty rates of any American service. Their ships were the whole point.

One destroyer takes the crest of a wave bow-on, throwing white water the height of her bridge, while the merchant ships behind her wallow in the trough. The palette is almost monochrome — slate, iron and a single patch of yellow where the sky thins out over the horizon. The sea occupies more than half the picture and is the real subject. The ships are small against it, and meant to look it.