Was there a reason that these ships couldn’t be sailed to England?
They still hated England for saving them in WW1
Fuel. The Vichy agreement was to keep the fuel tanks of the war ships very low. They would have had a hard time sailing across the Med to North Africa, let alone to England.
Churchill wasn’t sure what Vichy France would have done with these ships and he didn’t want them falling into German hands.
Vichy France was not interested in fighting with Britain and the US. They wanted to stay out of the war. Southern France and the north African colonies were not occupied by Germans in 1940. Operation Torch, the US invasion of North Africa, led the Nazis to occupy southern France.
“Was there a reason that these ships couldn’t be sailed to England?”
As I understand it, the captains could not sail without orders to do so. Ship captains do not make government policy. The follow it. If I recall, they were ordered to scuttle.
There was an entire French fleet in Africa. Churchill had to destroy it as the French would not join him nor would they surrender it.
The French government was not willing to turn the fleet over to the British. Some senior Admirals wanted to do so, but only if the government gave the order. Nevertheless, the senior brass was determined not to turn the fleet over to the Germans if they attempted to seize it, which they in fact planned to do.
The French naval brass was thoroughly pro-Vichy, especially after the British, concerned lest the French fleet fall into the hands of the Axis following France's surrender, attacked it at Mers el-Kebir in July, 1940. Nonetheless, many French sailors remained pro-Allied, but since they were not in control, all they could do was to plot to scuttle the fleet once the Germans moved in.
Unfortunately, this possibility was foreclosed because French sentiment at the time remained agitated by the July 1940 British naval attack on French naval vessels in port at Mers-el-Kébir in Algeria. Some 1,297 French servicemen were killed, a French battleship was sunk, and five other ships damaged.
This surprise attack was controversial because Britain and France had been allies and were not at war. The result was bitterness toward Britain by many in the French Navy. This is said to have killed tentative covert plans to put the French fleet in British hands. With that in mind, the scuttling of the French fleet was the best that could be expected.