I cannot cite the source, but IIRC, Winston Churchill was confident of eventual victory against the Axis powers, as long as the Allies won the Battle of The Atlantic against the superb German U-Boat fleet.
Both Churchill and Eisenhower gave much credit to the merchant marine, both US and British for winning the war in Europe.
None of us can imagine what it must have been like crossing the North Atlantic (this story being from a different place) at 6 or 7 or 8 slowpoke knots...knowing that the convoy would not stop if your ship got blasted out from under you.
But then...I’d bet few of us can imagine flying in a B-17 with all manner of ordnance flying at you. Or Omaha Beach. Etc; Or Iwo Jima. Or a thousand others.
My uncle was in the radio shack of the USS Utah when the bombs started falling in Pearl Harbor. He then served on one of the early convoys to Murmansk in 1942. Only ten ships survived that trip. He was in the water three times, but he made it. Subsequently, at his request, he served in the South Pacific.
He first related that story to the family some 50 years afterward.
My dad (r.i.p.) was a merchant marine and sailed aboard liberty ships in both the atlantic and the pacific during dubya dubya aye aye. Oh, the stories he told...