The aim of our project is to give detail of the major shipping fleets from countries around the World, highlighting major war-time conflicts, and detailing the crew and social issues of the Merchant Navy.

"Sea Transport is the stem from which victory blooms. Since without supplies no army is good for anything."
Winston Churchill 1943

"Commanders engaged on both sides are ultimately dependent on sea transport for the troops, airmen, equipment, food, ammunition and fuel that they need to fight as such, it is the Battle for Sea Control. Leadership has never placed sufficient emphasis upon Sea Power it dominated strategy, political and military."
Captain AT Mahan, USN.

"We must ensure the maintenance of a large, modern and highly efficient Merchant Navy. This country must never forget the debt she owes to her merchant seamen. The men who sailed the convoys to Britain, to Malta, to Russia and all over the world must be sure of steady employment, ships designed to give them good living conditions, good standards of food and proper provision for their welfare."
Winston Churchill 1945 Conservative Manifesto.

"They have brought us our lifeblood and they have paid for it with some of their own. I saw them bombed off the Phillipines and in New Guinea ports. When it was humanly possible, when their ships were not blown out from under them or torpedoed, they have delivered their cargoes to us who needed them so badly. In war it is performance that counts."
General Douglas MacArthur. US South East Asia Command.

"I cannot say too often or too clearly that without the Merchant Ships taken up from trade and those remarkable Merchant Seamen, this operation could not have been undertaken, and I hope this message is clearly understood by the British Nation."
Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse, Commander-in-Chief, Fleet Falkland.