British Reprisals Order

On 11 March 1915, at a meeting of the Privy Council, King George V issued two instruments that intensified Britain’s economic war against Germany. The first was an Order in Council, known as the Reprisals Order, which put into effect what had been announced in the Anglo-French declaration of 1 March. The second was a proclamation extending the lists of contraband of war. The order was dated 11 March, but it was published only on 15 March, when the Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey, passed its text to the United States ambassador.

No ship to Germany

The preamble of the order recalled that Germany had declared the waters around Great Britain a war zone in which merchant ships were to be destroyed regardless of the lives of crews and passengers. This gave the King “an unquestionable right of retaliation”. The measures were, however, to be applied without risk to neutral ships or to human life.

The rules covered ships that had sailed after 1 March 1915. No merchant ship might continue her voyage to a German port. Unless she received a pass to a neutral or Allied port, she had to discharge her goods in a British port, where they passed into the custody of the marshal of the prize court. Goods that were not contraband were to be returned by the court to their owners on such terms as it thought just, unless they had been requisitioned for the use of the state. Ships sailing from German ports had to discharge all their German cargo in a British or Allied port. There the goods were detained or sold, and the proceeds of the sale remained in the court’s custody until the conclusion of peace.

The order went further still. Ships bound for neutral ports could be required to discharge goods destined for the enemy or belonging to him, and ships sailing from neutral ports to discharge goods of German origin or German property. A ship that sailed to an enemy port under the pretence of a voyage to a neutral one could be confiscated when next stopped. The last article provided for the rules to be relaxed for the ships of any state that undertook that no goods to Germany, from Germany or of German ownership would be carried under its flag.

New items on the contraband list

The proclamation of 11 March supplemented the contraband lists published on 23 December 1914. Among other things, raw wool and woollen yarn, tin and its ore, castor oil, paraffin wax, lubricants, cattle and horse hides, the skins of calves, pigs, sheep, goats and deer, leather suitable for harness, military boots and uniforms, as well as ammonia and its salts, urea and aniline, were added to absolute contraband. Tanning substances joined conditional contraband. The proclamation also explained that foodstuffs and animal fodder were to be understood to include oilseeds and nuts, and animal and vegetable fats suitable for making margarine.

A blockade without the name

On 1 March Asquith had deliberately avoided the word “blockade”. In the note accompanying the order, however, Grey now called the new measures a blockade outright. He gave assurances that the British government, although it was establishing a blockade, waived the right to confiscate ships and cargoes that normally attached to breaking one, and would confine itself to detaining goods destined for or originating from the enemy. He promised that cases would be dealt with quickly and with the greatest possible consideration for neutrals. He also gave assurances that outside European waters, including the Mediterranean, neutral ships carrying non-contraband German goods would not be stopped.

This did not reassure the neutrals. On 30 March the United States government replied that the order, if applied literally, would amount to practically unlimited belligerent rights over neutral trade throughout Europe. European states, including the Netherlands, also protested. The British, however, did not change the rules. The order of 11 March became the basis of the British blockade of Germany in the following years of the war.