NavList:

Grey ships steaming along on a grey sea under a grey sky; a long grey swell rolling in from the west. There had been no hint of the sun at noon, so there had been no sights; the barometer was staying the same. Yorke walked into the chartroom to look at the chart. Hobson had put a pencilled cross, with the time and date, showing the noon position by dead reckoning, and the convoy’s zig-zag progress across the chart was so slight he had to use a sharp pencil. Six knots - Columbus’s little ships must have crossed to the New World at about that speed when running before the Trade winds. Six knots. A man walking briskly made five. The convoy from Liverpool to Freetown was going the whole way at slightly more than the speed of a man walking to church on a Sunday morning with a nip in the air. That was the speed at which most convoys crossed the Atlantic, simply because six knots was the speed that most small merchant ships could guarantee to maintain ...