On 5 March 1941, First Lord of the Admiralty A. V. Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Hillsborough asked Parliament for "many more ships and great numbers of men" to fight "the Battle of the Atlantic", which he compared to the Battle of France, fought the previous summer.[11] The first meeting of the Cabinet's "Battle of the Atlantic Committee" was on March 19.[12] Churchill claimed to have coined the phrase "Battle of the Atlantic" shortly before Alexander's speech,[13] but there are several examples of earlier usage.[14]