Before the “Liberty Ships” started to flow from the United States to Britain there had to be some sort of “stop gap” measure to help with the replenishment of ships So the United States government powers offered to sell to the Brits a 100 or more existing merchant ships. The “catch” to this was the transactions would be commercial and by the shipowners themselves, and we are not talking “state of the art ships of the era”...these merchant ships were old, and some were obsolete....in fact some dated from WW I.Now one would think that these vessels....being in the condition they were, would not cost a great deal of money....well that is where you would be very wrong. Actually the average price per deadweight ton was around $45.00. When you factor in a ship with a deadweight tonnage of 12,650 tons, you can see a half a million dollars for some ships that dated back as far as 1920, may not have been such a good buy from a nation that was short on money to start with. The reader here is saying, “Well why try to make a buck off of a nation that is attempting to fight a war that will benefit the United States?????”. Well actually the world “ship market” was driving up the cost, and a few other things that was also “attached” to this overall reasoning. You see there were other nations, one being the Japanese market, shopping for ships as well as the British. Also, the British were a particular bunch when it came to what they “desired” in ships. The British would snub there nose at turbine engines with water-tube boilers and twin screws, and there reasoning behind this was due to their engineers not being familiar with this type of engine. So, this in itself would limit the number of ships that was available for sale. Of course not all individuals in the United States government was in favor of this particular ship situation and all that went with it. Even the maritime trade unions got involved in voicing there dissatisfaction, on the basis that the United States was depleting their own merchant marine fleet, and shouldn’t enter into letting any nation purchase vessels until a “build up” was completed. This whole thing kind of put a dark cloud over the British maritime interest, but it all did happen and the Brits did get their ships.
The United States was “big hearted” about the whole purchasing agreement; they even done all the repairs and made the purchased ships serviceable, now you can’t beat that for making the customer happy. Really the reason that this took place was to not tax the already “overloaded” British Shipbuilding program. The Brits would put a crew on board prior to the debarking from the US. All of these vessels were renamed, and all had the prefix of “Empire”.
I guess one would think that with all of these ships this would pretty much take care of Britain’s problem for a spell. Actually that was not the case at all. Britain continued to have a huge gap in the number of ships sunk with the number that was to replenish the shrinking bulk of ships available. The United States got into actually building the ships for the war effort in 1943, and it was not until a year after that the gap seemed to shrink and disappear. Also everyone involved got smarter on how the convoys were escorted, and the techniques concerning U-boats was expanded upon.