Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1918-04-11
1917 SHIP LOSSES WERE LESS THAN
 JULY ESTIMATES
Fall Thirty Per Cent Under Figures Set by Brit
 ish War Cabinet.

1 London, March 3l.-tC0freep pOn0 ent of the Associated Press) 1 tc.al net reduction of the worlds
 merchant shipping from submarine attacks and marine risks, from the
 beginning of the war to the end of l 19f7, has peen thirty per cent less i than the British authorities esti-
 mated last July. asserts the British i war cabinet in it's first annual re-
 port just published.
 This net reduction. as announced | by the war cabinet, is under 2,130,- l 900 tons ross of 16 per cent These figures coincide approxi- mately with the secret report Of the l British Admiralty on submarine ship ping losses and world shipbuilding g
 made public by the British embassy 1 in Washington late in March. The Admiralty figures showed that the total loss to allied and neutral ship ping since the beginning outside the Central Powers had, meantime turn ed out 6.606,215 tons and there was added to this output 2,5S9,0e0 tons of enemy vessels captured and brought into service. The total net loss to world shipping from all causes, ex- elusive of that of German and her allies was placed by the Admiralty at 2,632 ,297 tons.
 The war cabinet summarizing the shipping situation declared in it Sre- port. that the effect of the intensi- fife dsupmarine warfare has been far below what the German people were promised. The German official fig urese for September claim 612000 tons. but then actually sunk less than half of this amount of nationalists. Yet in September the overseas sail ines of shipsi were 20 per cent great CT in numbers and 30 per cent great CT in tonnage than in April.
 The general result of the German attack. though serious enough is not unprecedented. In the two years af- ter Trafalgar. when our command of the seas was unQuestfoned we still lost .045 merchant ships by capture, and in the whole period from 1794 to 1915 We lost over 10000 merchant ships
 "Nor should We lose sight of the very heavy losses sustained by the enemy in the present war At the commencement Ios hostilities. Ger many had 915 ships abroad. of which only 19S got home safely The re- mainder within few days were cleared from the oceans. In the ag- sregate the German merchantile marine consisted of over 5000. GOO tons: at the present time nearly of this has been sunk or captured. while the bulk of the rest is lying useless in harbor''
 Describing them steps taken to fight the U-poats. the war cabinet announced that 3.400 vessels now are employed as minesweepers and on auxiliary patrol duties and their number constantly is increasing.
 The convoy system of protecting vessels from submarine attack is de- clared by the cabinet to have been markedly effective ir reducing the losses It adds
 During the last few months ga per cent of all vessels sailing in all the Atlantic trades were conveyed and since the convoy system started the total percentae of loss to vessels while actually in convoy, whether as the result of enemy or marine risks. has been 0.S2 per cent in the case of Atlantic conveys. and 0.5S per cent in the case of all merchantile con- voy systems taken together.
 What this measure of success has cost in effort. skill and persistence can only be realized by fxng at tention on the formidable capabilities of the new weapon in it's recent de- velopmelts. The German submarine has a surface speed up to IS knots and $ submareej speed of h 70 II knots. She carries from 15 to 20 torpedoes; she can travel 100 miles completely submerged: and she can remain under water sitting on the cotton for period up to IS hours. submarine attacking with a tor rero only shows about 3 inches of perscope at intervals. with the result that few ships which are torpedoed ever see the submarine which has carried out the attack. The range of the torpedoes fired by a submarine IS anything up to ] miles and the speed of the torpedo is as nigh as 10 l-nnY- V