"Convoy was a huge money-maker in 1940, and a tremendous morale booster less than a year into the war. Although it has a certain jingoistic quality, it also had documentarian values still rare in the early British war films, and its propagandist optimism was at least relatively honest insofar as the progress of the war at sea was concerned. The film was so successful both with public and critics that, together with Chaplin's The Great Dictator, it achieved the rare distinction of often playing two theatres in the same town simultaneously. Incidentally, not the least of the reasons for its success was the use of a one-word vulgarism--a word never spoken on the screen until then--which always brought the house down. Cunningly, that scene was also included in the trailer, so quite possibly as many Britons were lured in by smut as by patriotism!" William K. Everson