Southern Thunder: The Royal Navy and the Scandinavian Trade in World War One

By Steve R Dunn

A history and analysis of the battle for the North Sea—and the crucial supplies needed by both Britain and Germany to fight the war.
 
During World War I, the Scandinavian countries played a dangerous and sometimes questionable game; they proclaimed their neutrality but at the same time pit the two warring sides against one another to protect their import and export trades. Germany relied on Sweden, Norway, and Denmark for food and raw materials—while Britain needed to restrict the flow of these goods and claim them for herself. And so the battle for the North Sea began.
 
The campaign was ferociously fought, with the Royal Navy forced to develop new tactical thinking, including convoy, to combat the U-boat threat. Many parts of Scandinavia considered that the war had missed the region, and that it was just a distant “southern thunder.” Much of that thunder was over the North Sea. This new book tells this little-known, and often ignored, story from both a naval and a political standpoint, revealing how each country, including the USA, tried to balance the needs of diplomacy with the necessities of naval warfare.
 
From the declaration of a British blockade to delicate negotiations, the work of Royal Navy and merchant marine sailors to Admiralty infighting over the development of a new system of convoyed vessels, this book tells the story—including a tense encounter between the US Navy and the German High Sea Fleet—and includes detailed analysis and firsthand accounts of those who were there.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781526726643

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Trade and Blockade

At the end of the nineteenth century Britain was at the apogee of its power and wealth. Since Europe’s boundaries had been settled at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to the time of the rewriting of Europe’s power structure, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Britain’s gross domestic product (GDP) had increased nearly threefold and its GDP per capita by nearly twice. In the next thirty years, to the beginning of the new century, GDP grew again by another seventy-three per cent and per capita by thirty-two per cent. And the thirteen years to just before the outbreak of war saw another twenty-five per cent and eleven per cent growth respectively. From 1815 to nearly 100 years later, GDP had developed over six-fold (see also Appendix 1).

Britain’s economic development had been fuelled by coal and steam, the ‘founder members’ of the Industrial Revolution. But it was trade that had made Britain great. London’s banking system, its merchant banks and discount brokers, provided the credit and British companies provided the goods. World trade was made possible by the fact that goods bought in one country could be paid in another through bills discounted or cashed in London. As historian Peter Clarke put it, the ‘British Empire … was built on free trade. … Britain as the hub of a global finance system and the agrarian societies in other continents that increasingly supplied its essential foodstuffs’.¹

Both in imports and exports Britain led the world. It possessed an Empire built on, and of, trade. As one historian has noted: ‘Britain was the first truly globalised country, relying on imports for essential resources which could be produced less expensively abroad’.² Compared with France and Germany, Britain traded at significantly higher levels of GDP. By 1913 imports and exports represented half of the country’s GDP. For Germany the comparable figure was just over a third, and for France only thirty per cent. But a country whose wealth is built on trade is vulnerable to the disruption of it. Thus it was important that Britain had a powerful navy, capable both of defeating any major fleet sent against it and also of clearing the sea lanes far and wide of potential commerce raiders, and of keeping these routes clear for commerce thereafter.

As Simon Winchester has written: ‘The British Empire was au fond an oceanic empire – dependent on the navy to secure it’.³ The Royal Navy was Britain’s ‘senior service’ not just because it was the larger of the two fighting services but because it was also the most necessary to the survival of a prosperous and free trading commercial polity.

It was well understood that this was the Royal Navy’s job. In the Napoleonic Wars it scoured the seas for French privateers and other raiders, whilst maintaining a close blockade of Republican ports to ensure that necessary supplies were unlikely to get through to the enemy. When British trade came under attack, successive governments had no qualms about putting merchant vessels under the protection of the Royal Navy, whether the traders wanted it or not.

Parliament had addressed this issue at least five times during the Dutch and Napoleonic wars of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Compulsory Convoy Act of 1798, for example, compelled all British merchant ships sailing between British ports in time of war to sail in convoy protected by the Royal Navy, for which service a fee was charged for the aegis provided. This act was repealed in 1872, pressure from the ship owners being the reason. This repeal represented a major change in emphasis for the Royal Navy, although this was little recognised at the time. The navy’s role was now defined by phrases such as ‘securing the sea communications’, ‘protecting the ocean highways’ and ‘preserving the sea routes’; all phrases that hid the fact that merchant ships would no longer receive direct protection. Here were stored up some significant problems when war burst upon the seas in 1914.

As important as protecting British trade was the prevention of trade with the enemy; again this was seen as the navy’s responsibility. During the Napoleonic Wars the Royal Navy had followed the discipline of close blockade. Sitting outside the enemy’s ports, it stopped, searched and confiscated ships and cargoes which were seen as helping the opponent’s war effort. After the Crimean War (1853–56) the whole legality of such a blockading operation was considered at a great powers conference (the Treaty of Paris of 1856) and new rules and regulations devised, the so-called Prize Rules.

Prize Rules

Prize Rules were originally drafted at the Treaty of Paris and subsequently re-ratified at the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. In essence, they required that passenger ships may not be sunk at all; that if merchant vessels were to be sunk, their crews must first be allowed to gain a ‘place of safety’ before their ships could be disposed of (lifeboats were not considered a place of safety unless close to land); and that only warships and merchant ships that were a threat to the attacker could be legally sunk without warning.

The Treaty of Paris also gave legal basis to the concept of blockade. The agreement, among other things, permitted ‘close’ but not ‘distant’ blockades. A belligerent was allowed to station ships near the three-mile limit to stop or inspect traffic entering or leaving an enemy’s ports, but it was not empowered simply to declare areas of the high seas, which included the approaches to the enemy’s coast, to be off-limits.

Goods which were not permitted to pass through a blockade were designated as contraband. The definition of contraband was established by the Declaration (or Treaty) of London in 1909. Three definitions of contraband were established. One of ‘absolute contraband’, namely, articles which were clearly war materials; next was ‘conditional contraband’ which comprised articles capable of use in either war or peace. Finally a third category, the ‘free list’, contained articles that could never be deemed contraband (see also Appendix 2).

Building on the positions taken at the Hague Conference of 1907, the Declaration of London considered food to be conditional contraband which could be seized only when intended for the use of the enemy’s military forces. Among the ramifications of this decision was that food not claimed or shown on a manifest as for military use could legitimately be transported to a neutral port, even if it was then transhipped to an enemy’s territory. The starvation of civilians was thus meant to be outlawed as a weapon of war.

Absolute contraband could be impounded even on a neutral ship. Conditional contraband could be intercepted only if consigned to an enemy’s army, and free list articles were not to be indicted. The conference also ended the concept of ‘continuous voyage’. Goods could not be seized at sea on the basis that intelligence suggested they were ultimately going to be transhipped to an enemy destination.

The House of Lords had refused its consent to the Declaration, which the Liberal government in the House of Commons had been in favour of, and hence it did not ultimately come into legal force*. Britain was to owe a great debt to the Lords for this intervention when war came.

In any event, such rules of blockade could not have been obeyed in the maelstrom of war. The great Jacky Fisher**, the man who created the twentieth-century Royal Navy, foresaw this. In his view the submarine, the torpedo and light inexpensive craft which could deliver them made the shallow and confined North Sea unfeasible for the battleships and other large vessels of the navy’s battlefleet. Nor could any ships stay close to the continental coastline in the ways of the Nelsonian frigates of old. They were too vulnerable to underwater attack and too dependent on regular refuelling. Instead he strongly advocated a distant blockade in which the North Sea was sealed off at either end and patrolled only by light craft. Goods intended for the enemy, which he took to be Germany (and had believed so since at least 1904, when the Admiralty first envisaged operations against Heligoland and the German North Sea coast)***, would be stopped before they could get anywhere near their intended destination.

This pragmatic strategy eventually made its way into the British war plans. In 1913 Admiral George Callaghan, commanding the Home Fleet, received orders specifying that he should base himself on the Firth of Forth and ‘sweep and patrol’ the southern half of the North Sea with his fleet. His instructions did not specify the extent of such sweeps or their frequency, but ordered him not to pass beyond a point roughly halfway across. Callaghan was informed that, in the event of war, his actions were designed to exercise economic pressure upon Germany by cutting off German shipping from oceanic trade.

Neutral Shipping

The problem inherent with this strategy, and its concomitant actions, was both the legal position regarding them and attitude of any neutral states in a conflict. Their ships would be intercepted, their manifests examined and their cargoes potentially confiscated; but as neutral non-participants they would argue that this was a gross interference of their ‘freedom of the seas’, the concept in International Law of mare liberum. Distant blockade was already an infringement of these rights, for the Treaty of London (aka ‘Declaration concerning the Laws of Naval War, London, 26 February 1909’) was quite clear that only close blockade of an enemy’s ports or coastline was allowed. Shutting off a whole area of the seas was definitely not considered ‘fair game’. Much of the Declaration is concerned with these points.

Furthermore, the ports and shorelines of several different nations lay within the boundaries which British strategy had now determined to treat as a blockaded area. Sweden, Norway and Demark in particular had rights of territorial waters (which, in fairness, Britain did not intend to violate) and were heavily dependent on exporting for their economic health; exporting which required unfettered use of the North Sea and whose most likely recipient was Germany. Unhelpfully for Britain, Article 18 of the Declaration stated that ‘the blockading forces must not bar access to neutral ports or coasts’.

Freedom of the seas was also a particular passion of the government of the United States of America. US President Woodrow Wilson was a firm believer in free and open trade, irrespective of squabbles between nations. His Secretary of State from June 1915, Robert Lansing, had been a vigorous advocate of the concept and of the rights of neutral nations, by which of course he meant the USA, before and after taking office.

Britain’s intended strategy was thus both legally dubious and likely to provoke considerable hostility from those with whom it wished to have no conflict; indeed whose aid and succour it would need. This was not a good basis to start a war.

British and German Vulnerabilities.

As noted above, Britain was a nation built on trade. Apart from coal it was hardly self-sufficient in any key commodity.

The repeal of the Corn Laws and subsequent flood of cheaper American and Canadian corn into the country had deterred farmers from cereal agriculture. Britain had become highly dependent on imported food supplies. During the five-year period 1909–13, imports had accounted for 78.7 per cent of wheat and flour consumed in Britain and 56.2 per cent of cereals and pulses overall. British agriculture had responded by specialising in meat and dairy produce, but even here imports still accounted for 35.7 per cent of meat, 43.4 per cent of butter and 74.2 per cent of cheese consumption. Indeed, in 1913 Britain imported 18.1 million tons of foodstuffs. Nearly two-thirds of the caloric intake of the British people came from abroad. Supplies of industrial materials such as cotton, oil and rubber were completely dependent on imports, which also provided a large share of the ore or metals worked by British factories. Three-quarters of the wool woven in British mills was shipped in from overseas.

Germany was self-sufficient in coal, but by 1914 the German population was reliant on imports for much of its food. Over forty per cent of protein utilised, forty-two percent of fats and forty-five per cent of calories consumed came from abroad. Both countries’ civilian populations were thus at risk if the pre-war levels of supplies were to become unsustainable.

Furthermore, Britain and Germany imported valuable ores and minerals which were necessary for the production of armaments. Neither were self-sustaining in, for example, copper, raw cotton, iron ore or the elements necessary for the production of steel or explosives. Many of these requirements came from countries lying within the planned distant blockade of the North Sea.

Of course, any such blockade of Germany would perforce be a blockade impacting on all those neutral countries which traded with her. Of these, the most important were the adjacent nations of Netherlands and Belgium (until it was invaded and captured), together with the USA – and Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

* Neither did the USA ratify the Treaty.

** Admiral of the Fleet John Arbuthnot (Jacky) Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher of Kilverstone, GCB, OM, GCVO. Fisher was First Sea Lord from 1904 to 1910, and again in 1914–1915.

*** As Andrew Lambert has written, ‘by early 1906 the centre of naval effort was shifting from the Mediterranean to the North Sea; Germany was not only the most likely but also the only realistic enemy. Russia was no longer a naval power and the French navy had collapsed’ (Lambert, Admirals, p.312).

CHAPTER 2

The Outbreak of War and the Scandinavian States in 1914

War caught Scandinavia unawares. Indeed, in February, during a debate in parliament, Norwegian shipping magnate and Prime Minister Gunnar Knudsen told the assembly that the European situation was ‘unclouded to a degree which has not been seen for years’.¹ When the Austrians sent their ultimatum to Serbia he was on a sailing holiday.

On 1 August the German Government ordered General Mobilisation and declared war on Russia; the French commenced their General Mobilisation in response. The three Scandinavian states were quick to proclaim their neutrality, each issuing a declaration to that effect. All three mobilised their army and navy but kept strictly to a neutral posture. Their interests were best served by staying out of a conflict in which it seemed that their most important import and export markets would be involved. But each had different national leanings, allegiances and issues. Additionally, the geographical position of all three countries made them objects of interest to both Britain and Germany as potential bases from which to attack each other’s trade.

Sweden

Sweden had not engaged in any armed conflict since the Treaty of Kiel in 1814, under which Denmark had been forced to cede Norway to Sweden. But this apparent peaceful posture hid strong undercurrents within the country. The King, supported by the conservative politicians and many agrarian workers, favoured greater expenditure on armaments and a larger standing army than the policies of the reigning Liberal Party proposed. This division eventually led to the government’s resignation in February 1914. On the outbreak of war Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, a lawyer specialising in international law and governor of Uppsala County, was prime minister with a cabinet consisting of conservative-minded high officials and businessmen, most of whom lacked previous political experience.

The reason behind the drive for increased defence expenditure was Sweden’s long-held fear of Russia, its larger neighbour*. Views of Germany were more favourable. The King, Gustav V, was married to Kaiser Wilhelm’s first cousin, Victoria. And amongst the upper and middle classes, and especially in the military, there was a strong admiration and sympathy for Germany and German culture. At least one political grouping, the Aktivister (Activists), called for Sweden to support Germany in the coming conflict, and many in the pre-war army and navy had long argued for an alliance with Germany. Indeed, in 1910 there had been secret conversations between the Swedish and German General Staffs, with discussion focused on Russia.

Certainly many Swedes considered themselves to be, if not German, then Germanic. Sweden’s Aktivister, who clamoured for Sweden to join the war on Germany’s side, ‘saw the conflict as a racial contest, the struggle for the survival of Western Civilisation against the threatening barbaric east’.² The Germans were described as ‘our admirable kinsmen’, ‘noble kinsfolk’, or ‘this host of a million heroes … that … dams up the flood of real barbarians’.³

This Germanophilia was enhanced by the press. During the first weeks of the war there was a pro-German bias in the news reports, especially in the right-wing newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Aftonbladet. Telegrams about war events were nearly always of German origin, and accusations of pro-German sympathies were directed towards the head of the Swedish News Agency, Frans Gustaf Theodor Eklund, who personally favoured Germany. The Germans furthered their sway over the Swedish press, and hence popular opinion, by taking a majority stake in Aftonbladet.

German influence was also enhanced by the activities of their Stockholm legation. A department was established there whose task was to select articles from German newspapers, translate them into Swedish and distribute them freely to Swedish newspapers, mainly conservative papers in the provinces. They even employed a Swedish journalist to ensure the quality of the articles. The British legation in Stockholm later tried to counter such activities in a uniquely English manner. The legation secretary was Sir Coleridge Arthur Fitzroy Kennard, Bt, diplomat, Orientalist and poet, who was in charge of the British propaganda effort. Finding the Swedish upper class very pro-German but also sentimental and fond of late hours, he decided to attempt to make them pro-Allies by providing Stockholm with first-class British variety entertainment. Artists such as the singers and actresses Irene Brown and Betty Edwards were imported to sing for victory and ‘it drew roars of applause from the punch-drinking Swedes. It was an excellent form of propaganda.’⁴

Economically, Sweden was heavily reliant on Britain and Germany, its two foremost trading partners. Germany was a net exporter and Britain a net importer with regard to Sweden. The two countries between them accounted for fifty-one per cent of all Sweden’s exports. Sweden was a key source for iron ore, both haematite and magnetite*, as well as timber for all kinds of industrial use. Britain and Germany needed such raw materials to support their war effort. Indeed, both countries were eventually to put these commodities on their respective contraband lists.

Norway

Norway had only become a nation state in 1905, when it achieved a peaceful separation from Swedish suzerainty. It is possibly more accurate to say ‘peaceful in the end’, for there was a strong movement in Sweden which wanted a military campaign to prevent the cessation of Norway. This military intervention was only stopped by the activities of astronomer turned journalist turned politician, Hjalmar Branting, who called a general strike under the slogan ‘hands off Norway, King’. Alarmed at the prospect of not being able to recruit an effective military force for the prosecution of a campaign against the Norwegians, the Swedish government caved in and a peaceable separation followed.

With less than 2.5 million inhabitants, most of whom worked in farming and fishing, Norway was still in the process of establishing an industrial base and, indeed, the mechanisms of a democratic government. Of major importance to all the combatants in the war was Norway’s large merchant shipping fleet, the fourth largest in the world (see also Appendix 3). The young country was heavily dependent on the income generated by this merchant fleet, which held an added significance as Norway needed to import supplies of most everyday commodities. Of almost equal value was the fact that Norway was a major exporter of copper pyrites*, which ore produced both copper metal and sulphur, elements essential for war-making industries.

Quondam Foreign Minister Jørgen Løvland had previously delineated Norway’s policy as a one in which they wished to be left alone in order to get on with building a new nation. Neutrality was the cornerstone of this policy, with an emphasis on avoiding political alliances that might drag the country into other people’s wars. But Norway was also an Anglophile country. Britain was the country’s largest trading partner, taking twenty-five per cent of Norway’s exports and providing twenty-six per cent of imports, and thus foreign policy towards Britain was difficult to disentangle from economic policy.

Moreover, Britain regarded Norway as lying within its own naval sphere of influence. The fact that the Kaiser went cruising there in his yacht every year, taking a large naval escort force with him, irritated the Royal Navy planners but made Norwegians feel that Germany may well try to occupy the country in any future war.

A corollary of Norway’s commitment to neutrality was a firm belief in International Law. Norway had been at the forefront of promoting international co-operation and arbitration as a means to settle conflicts peacefully, and believed strongly that the rules established at the Hague Peace Conference of 1907 and in the London Declaration of 1909 should be respected. Norwegians needed to cleave to these agreements, given their weakness governmentally, economically and militarily. The armed forces had not fired a shot since 1814, and the political authorities had no experience of international crises.

Furthermore, the concept of blockade was a frightening one for Norwegians, for within recent memory they had suffered catastrophically from the British blockade during the Napoleonic Wars, a blockade which even informed the oeuvre of Norway’s greatest writer.* So keen was the country to assert its desire for neutrality that it made a second announcement of it when Britain declared war on 4 August.

Denmark

Denmark was an agrarian country. In 1913 thirty-two per cent of its GDP came from farming and ninety per cent of exports were agricultural (mainly processed) products of one sort or another. Germany and Britain were major export destinations. Some sixty per cent of Danish exports before the war comprised agricultural produce sold to Great Britain, while twenty-nine per cent consisted of (mainly livestock) exports to Germany. Denmark was also an exporter of horses. Up until 1914 the Danish exports of horses were usually some 20,000–30,000 animals per year, but within a few months of war some 80,000 animals had been sent out of the country, most of which were sold to Germany. As with Norway, Denmark had a strong shipping sector with a merchant fleet which earned seventy per cent of its income from sailing between foreign ports.

The humiliating defeat and loss of the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein in the Schleswig War of 1864 against Prussia and Austria cut deep in Danish society, but following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 a consensus formed in the political establishment which pragmatically recognised that, with Germany as her neighbour, Denmark would never be in a position to recover her territorial losses. Certainly, Copenhagen was seen as a most congenial posting in the German diplomatic service, and ‘it ranked second to Brussels in the hierarchy of European ministerial posts’.⁵

This pro-German consensus did not, however, extend to defence policy. Conservatives argued in favour of a strong defence centred on Copenhagen. Liberals were highly sceptical, asking the question ‘why?’. Peaceful coexistence with the giant at the door seemed to be the best way to survive.

* * *

The day that Britain declared war on Germany, Vice Admiral Sir Henry Jackson, Chief of the Admiralty War Staff, wrote an appreciation of the position of Sweden and the other Scandinavian counties. He noted: ‘it is well known that the military element in Sweden is pro-German’, and that ‘Russia is feared and mistrusted’. Furthermore, he thought that Britain was ‘credited with a desire to use her [Sweden’s] North Sea ports as bases if such would be to our advantage’.⁶

Britain’s best interests would be served, Jackson opined, if Sweden remained neutral ‘to enable trade in non-contraband to continue in her vessels and relieve us of any anxiety as to the use of her naval and military forces’.⁷

In summary, he proposed that, assuming that Sweden would not join with the Triple Entente, ‘we should endeavour to persuade her to remain neutral, particularly as her example may influence Denmark and Norway to follow her lead in either direction. The combination of these three countries against us would be serious.’⁸ With specific regard to Norway, Jackson added that her ‘friendship would be invaluable and her enmity correspondingly detrimental’, while ‘Denmark’s neutrality would be beneficial from the food supply point of view’.⁹

So, as the Royal Navy took up its wartime dispositions, Britain could look out across the North Sea with apprehension. Its major trading partners over the water had declared themselves neutral. They each held vital supplies of commodities which Britain and Germany both needed. Two had large merchant shipping fleets, essential to the maintenance of world trade. Two had inclined themselves diplomatically and practically towards Germany. And all three were geographically strategically located. As a starting point, it was not necessarily propitious.

* Sweden’s pathological fear of Russia stemmed from the defeat of King Charles XII by Peter the Great at the Battle of Poltava in 1709. The continuation of the war following that defeat led to a serious depletion of Sweden’s economic wealth, while a series of plague epidemics decimated the population.

Charles XII died at the Siege of Fredriksten in 1718, and in the peace treaty that followed his death Sweden was forced to concede her overseas empire. However, the Russian General Staff continued to count Sweden as an enemy right up to 1914.

* Haematite is a reddish-black mineral consisting of ferric oxide (Fe2O3). It is an important ore of iron. Magnetite (Fe O), also known as magnetic iron ore, is another one of the main ores of iron.

* Chemical formula CuFeS2.

* Henrik Ibsen’s poem Terje Vigen, first published in 1862, is about Terje’s desperate attempt in 1809 to run the British blockade and smuggle food from Denmark to his starving family in Norway. His attempt ends tragically. He was captured in his small rowing boat by the Royal Navy and imprisoned until the Napoleonic Wars were over, only to learn that his wife and daughter had died.

CHAPTER 3

Opening Moves, 1914–1915

Rear Admiral Dudley Rawson Stratford de Chair was rather annoyed to receive the Admiralty’s warning telegram on 29 July. He was in the process of moving into his new house. Nonetheless he rushed to Portsmouth and there began to gather together his scattered flock. As Admiral of the Training Service he commanded eight ageing Edgar-class cruisers. These, now designated the 10th Cruiser Squadron, were ordered to Scapa Flow and hence to take patrol positions across the two northern entrances to the North Sea. He and his obsolescent ships, armoured cruisers launched in 1890, were to close the forty-mile gap between the Shetland Islands and Orkney and the 150-mile gap between Shetland and a point near Norwegian territorial waters just south of the Lofoten Islands. Their orders required them to intercept merchant shipping headed inbound for Germany, and to prevent German raiders getting out into the Atlantic.*

At the other end of the British Isles the 6th Destroyer Flotilla was sent to Dover, where it would work with French forces to close the southern entrance to the ‘German Sea’. Again they were to stop and search neutral and British-flagged vessels and send them to the Downs for inspection if required.**

Thus Britain began the task of blockading Germany. But the Germans were not idle either. The converted passenger ferry Königin Luise had been requisitioned by the Kaiserliche Marine on 3 August 1914 to serve as an auxiliary minelayer, carrying 200 naval mines. Immediately on the declaration of war between Britain and Germany she sailed from Emden to place mines close to the major trade artery of the Thames Estuary. On the 5th she was able to lay a field off the Suffolk coast before being intercepted by the scout cruiser HMS Amphion and destroyers of the 3rd Flotilla. The German vessel was scuttled by her crew to avoid capture. In the following morning Amphion, heading back to Harwich, was mined on the very same field that the minelayer had left behind, and sank with the loss of 132 men plus an unknown number of rescued German prisoners. She thus gained the unwished-for distinction of being the first Royal Navy vessel lost in the war.

British opinion was outraged. Rather than send her fleet out to do battle, the German policy was to deploy minelayers and U-boats into the North Sea to wreak havoc in international waters. This was strictly against the dictates of the Treaty of London. As the Official History later noted: ‘such was the immediate success of the policy of mining in international waters which Germany had chosen to adopt. The indications were that the minefield had been laid between 3 degrees E long and the Suffolk coast – that is, right in the fairway – regardless of neutrals and of all the time-honoured customs of the sea*. It was the first opening of our eyes to the kind of enemy we had to deal with, and yet so inhuman did the practice appear in the eyes of our seamen that as yet there was no thought of retaliation in kind’.¹ On the same day that Amphion went to her doom, the Government of the USA sent a diplomatic message to both Germany and Britain, asking them if they would abide by the rules of the Declaration of London, which Germany had, of course, by now already broken. In response, the Germans cavilled and suggested several new conditions which would need to be met. Additionally they claimed the right to mine open waters off British bases. Britain did not reply until 20 August. Her government suggested that they would comply with the rules as long as they were changed. The changes included a new contraband list, the reinstatement of continuous voyage and a revision to the system of prize courts. These changes were unilaterally announced and adopted in an Order in Council* on the same day, and there the matter lay for the present.

The Germans continued their mining operations. Between 21 and 26 August a series of minefields were discovered off the Tyne and Humber ports. These took time to be reported, as continuous patrols by the destroyers based in these ports were prevented by the fear of invasion (an invasion neither planned nor envisaged by Germany), and they had been retained to guard against that risk. Minesweepers were called up and thirty-two sweeping trawlers concentrated on the Humber. But eventually the fields were seen as a blessing in disguise, as they provided a barrier to the east against the imagined invasion. Efforts were concentrated instead on keeping clear a swept channel along the coast.

Meanwhile, the Royal Navy was commencing its first attempts to interdict trade from Scandinavian ports intended for Germany. Its chosen weapon was the 2nd Cruiser Squadron of armoured cruisers. These were large ships, built in the first years of the century and almost immediately made obsolete by the advent of the battlecruiser. HMS Natal had