British ports closed to neutral fishing vessels

The British chronology of the war records under 1 February 1915 that the Admiralty issued orders forbidding neutral fishing vessels to use British ports. Among the neutrals, it was above all Dutch, Danish and Norwegian fishermen who worked the North Sea fishing grounds alongside the British, and until then their boats and trawlers had been able to put into British ports. The surviving accounts are scanty and give no details, such as the penalties for breaking the ban.

Suspect fishing boats

From the start of the war the British had suspected that the Germans were using fishing vessels for reconnaissance and minelaying. As early as November 1914, when it declared the North Sea a military area, the Admiralty accused the Germans of using trawlers and neutral ships for minelaying and scouting. The press wrote of British and neutral fishing boats that the Germans were said to be capturing and using to lay mines. A neutral fishing boat that could freely enter a British port and then return home was, in the Admiralty’s eyes, the ideal tool for a spy.

Ever tighter control

The ban was a further step in tightening control over the waters around the British Isles. British fishermen had already had to comply with ever more numerous regulations: fishing grounds were closed, and fishing vessels could operate only in designated areas. At the same time the Royal Navy was increasingly turning to British trawlers and drifters to convert them into minesweepers and patrol vessels.

From then on neutral fishermen could neither seek shelter from storms in British ports nor sell their catches there. Disputes over neutral fishing in the North Sea, especially Dutch fishing, were to drag on throughout the war. At the beginning of February 1915, however, the attention of the neutral states was quickly drawn to more important matters: the British advice to fly neutral flags and the German announcement of submarine warfare around the British Isles.