July 4th, 1940
Western Mediterranean - The Déménagement is in full swing under the command of Vice Admiral Jean-Pierre Esteva (Amiral Sud), in Bizerte. Vice-Admiral Léon Davin (Prefect of the the 3rd Maritime Region, in Toulon) uses the full authority given to the Navy by the decree of June 13th to organize all the ports of the French Mediterranean coastline: with the troops and companies of fusiliers-marins supported by naval artillery pieces (from the depots), he puts Marseille, Toulon, La Ciotat, Sète but also Port-de-Bouc, Nice, Cannes and Port-Vendres away from enemy land raids. The air defense of the ports is considerably reinforced: the "Electro-Magnetic Detection" (DEM) barrages of the Navy, which cover Toulon and the Italian border, receive the reinforcement of English cousins: three MB-type radars (from an order placed in May 1939 and delivered in the spring of 1940).
Folded in Toulon, Marseille and Sète, they detect raids from 50 km away and alert the fighters and the DCA. This assistance to the direction of the hunt is particularly accurate in Marseille, thanks to the anti-aircraft cruiser HMS Carlisle.
On the sea, there are now more than three hundred large civilian ships (cargo ships, liners and oil tankers), nearly 150 patrol boats and auxiliary dredgers, more than 130 civilian trawlers and more than 200 small boats of all types that take turns to evacuate as many men as possible to evacuate as many men as possible to North Africa. In addition to the French ships, there are many British and Belgian ships (which, in order to preserve the state of non-belligerence with Italy embark only Belgians or civilians and sail away from the Allied convoys), or neutral ships (Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Greek, and even Egyptian!) chartered by the Allies.
Several dozen liners and fast ships arrive and are still arriving from the West Indies, West Africa and South America to reinforce the Navy's resources in the Mediterranean.
While the fast ships (liners and banana boats) sail almost without escort on direct routes to Algerian ports and make rotations in three or four days, the slower cargo ships continue, as has been the case since Italy's declaration of war, to form convoys which first move westwards towards the Balearic Islands, before plunging southwards towards Oran (their rotation then often exceededs seven or eight days); they are escorted by avisos and other patrol boats and auxiliary dredgers under the orders of Amiral Sud. Finally, there are trawlers and various small boats who make quick trips back and forth between the secondary ports of Provence and Corsica: each crossing only allowing for the evacuation of a handful of soldiers, but these rotations follow one another in less than two days and the number of men evacuated in this way increases little by little. The formed units that are to be deployed in Corsica did not have to look far to complete their numbers.
