Britain had no choice but to accept the deal, but it was so much more advantageous to America than Britain that Churchill's aide John Colville compared it to the USSR's relationship with Finland. The destroyers were in reserve from the massive US WWI shipbuilding program, and many of the vessels required extensive overhaul because many were not preserved properly when inactivated. One British admiral called them the "worst destroyers I had ever seen", and only 30 were in service by May 1941. Churchill also disliked the deal, but his advisers persuaded the prime minister to merely tell Roosevelt that: