y the summer of 1917, during World War I, circumstances in Britain were extremely dire. Since 1914, the lives of 40,860 British merchant seamen, fishermen, and passengers had been lost, and 5,696 ships sunk, most by the dozens of German U-boats patrolling the Atlantic. The threat was grave not just to those crossing the seas, but to Britain itself, which, by many estimates, had only about six weeks of food remaining. “Britain was only ever going to succumb to Germany if the country starved, and the Germans came very close to succeeding,” says archaeologist Innes McCartney of Bangor University. “The merchant marine was being decimated and Britain wasn’t able to produce new ships as quickly as
