On Monday the Admiralty announced that two very fast and
heavily armed German raiders attacked a convoy in the North Sea on October 17th, midway between the Shetland Islands and the Norwegian coast. The convoy consisted of twelve merchant vessels. Two British destroyers, ` Mary Rose' and ' Strongbow,' formed the escort. The destroyers fought a most gallant but unequal engage- ment until they were both sunk. Three of the merchant vessels managed to escape, but fire Norwegian, one Danish, and three Swedish vessels, all unarmed, were afterwards deliberately sunk by the German raiders. There was no examination, no warning of any kind, and no attempt was made to rescue the crews or the passengers. There has been some bitter criticism of this episode, and a statement on the subject in the House of Commons is promised. For all details we must therefore wait, but we are prepared to believe that the criticism will be found to have been unjustified. The sea is a large place, and it is absolutely impossible to prevent milers dashing out occasionally in darkness and mist and temporarily escaping detection.
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