Few situations were more desperate than that of the British in the early years of World War Two when they faced being starved into submission by German blockade. Desperate times, as the saying goes, call for desperate measures. And few measures show how desperate the British were to combat the threat of submarine and air attack on their convoys than the first stopgap counters to the threat; the CAM and MAC vessels of the British and Dutch merchant marine – in essence civilian aircraft carriers!