To the heads of the Naval Staff, the loss of so famous a ship as the Hood was a heavy blow. It was essential that the Bismarck be overtaken and destroyed. There were at this time ten convoys at sea in the Atlantic, some of which had battleship or cruiser escort, while others had only a screen of lighter vessels, destroyers, frigates, corvettes, or sloops.
Of all these various escorting ships, only the battleships, cruisers, and fleet destroyers could be regarded as having any battle value against the Bismarck. These classes could, however, be considered as a potential reserve to be brought in against her, provided she came within reach of them and provided the risk of removing them from their convoys was acceptable.
The cruiser London, which was escorting a convoy from Gibraltar to the Ended Kingdom, and the cruiser Edinburgh, which was near the Azores, were ordered to proceed as necessary for shadowing the Bismarck. Hundreds of miles to the northwest, the battleship Ramillies, with Convoy HX in mid-Atlantic, was ordered away from her convoy to close and intercept the enemy from the westward.
As was usual when with a convoy, the Ramillies had been steaming at 8 knots. Captain Read rang down for 18 knots, but his year-old ship took some little time to work up to this speed and in the process unavoidably emitted volumes of black funnel smoke. Captain Read felt very awkward about this, since he had made a number of reproving signals during the previous days to various merchant ships of the convoy for doing the same thing, and he felt that the Masters must now be enjoying themselves.
In half an hour he had left the convoy behind and was steering northwest to get to the westward of the Bismarck. Copyright , by Russell Grenfell. Back on the eastern side of the ocean, about miles from the Irish coast, the battleship Rodney , with the destroyers Somali, Mashona , Tartar, and Eskimo, was escorting the Britannic en route to the United States. They had left the Clyde at 1 p. She had not been properly refitted for over two years, and her machinery was in a most precarious condition.
